Picking winners and losers amongst a group of peers is as American as Joe Namath, Kingsford charcoals and Michael Bolton. To pick winners and losers amongst a group of shale plays, although very American, is a pretty complex undertaking. It takes analyzing well economics, declines, pressures, geophysical properties, variations in the acreage, production stream profiles, operator techniques, global energy environment, etc. So I’m in no way picking winners and losers here. I just wanted to see how the Woodford shale type curve compares with a few other big name gas shales.
I chose to only include the Arkoma Woodford because there is a much smaller liquids component than the Cana-Woodford, plus there are a lot more wells. I included Barnett, Haynesville and Fayetteville because they are more established than say Eagle Ford and I only included wells that came online since 2008. Finally, I filtered much of the more oily wells out of the Barnett.
Here are the wells included, the map is generated from HPDI.
Here is the type curve comparison with some interesting stats. First of all, the Haynesville is by far and away the leader in terms of gas produced with 1.5 Bcf. However, the Haynesville has a tremendous first year decline at 82%. Woodford comes in with a higher cumulative gas than the other two and the most favorable 1st year decline.
So how does the Woodford stack up? Well, with the best 1st year decline and very reasonable well costs, I’d say pretty nicely. I feel that the other shales have gotten more press and attention so this is definitely interesting. A few other takeaways.. With that monstrous 82% decline in the Haynesville, its no wonder operators are trying to optimize reservoir performance with choke backs. The Barnett is a pretty mature play, perhaps the core is more drilled up than the outskirts causing newer wells to perform more poorly than say 2008, or at least a peak may have already occured. With the introduction of 9000′ laterals among other ingenuities, I think the Arkoma will continue to produce solid wells.
Check out the Woodford Unconventional Update for up to date information on the Cana-Woodford and Arkoma Woodford.
Justin Birmingham
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