Great work by the XCL Resources team and all of our Uinta Partners and Offset Operators for making some of the best wells in the Lower 48!
Where are the biggest shale wells being drilled today? Since 2023, we're forecasting >1 million barrel-equivalent ultimate production for 1,509 wells across Lower 48. The Permian dominates, but there are exciting developments in other basins too -- let's dig in! First, a little caveat: I am also filtering to wells with >750,000 barrels EUR, otherwise gas wells would dominate the list. Setting that aside, the Permian is the clear leader by this metric, with 1,449 million barrel wells drilled since 2023. The Delaware dominates, with over 90% of millionaire wells, reflecting the outlier nature of the basin. Taking out the Permian, the Uinta is the leading basin, with twenty-four 1MMBOE wells. Recently-acquired XCL Resources tops the ex-Permian chart with seventeen, and their in-basin neighbor Ovintiv comes in second with seven. (Shameless plug: reach out for a copy of our recent XCL-SM acquisition analysis to learn more about the deal). The Appalachian Utica comes in as the next-largest emerging million-boe play, with our models forecasting 10 wells since 2023 hitting that threshold. Encino, Antero, Ascent, and EOG show up on our list here. With a higher gas-fraction, these Utica-Pt. Pleasant wells standout on total recovery compared to the others on this list: they are essentially both massive oil and massive gas wells at the same time. Most of the remaining non-Permian million-boe wells are in classics like the Williston, Eagle Ford, and Anadarko, which are still turning out top-notch wells even 15+ years into their development. Impressive! #permian #uinta #utica #oilgas