Oil prices have rebounded to around $25 per barrel after May contracts fell into negative prices last month, and local oilfield production continued to slow down. While the number of permits issued for new wells fell doubled from the previous year, well completions continued to drop, according to information from the Railroad Commission of Texas, compared to last year.
In February, local operators reported 1.14 million barrels of crude oil produced in Scurry County’s oilfields, compared to January’s 1.21 million barrels. In December, producers reported 1.23 million barrels.
Last February, Scurry County wells produced 1.23 million barrels of crude oil.
Year-to-date, local producers have reported 2.36 million barrels of crude oil compared to 2.57 million barrels during the first two months of 2019.
Statewide in February, operators preliminarily reported producing 98.96 million barrels of crude oil, compared to 106.1 million barrels in January. February’s daily average production was just more than 3.2 million barrels.
The commission reported that from March 2019 to February 2020, total Texas reported production was 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil and 8.4 trillion cubic feet of total gas. Crude oil production reported by the RRC is limited to oil produced from oil leases and does not include condensate, which is reported separately by the commission
Crude oil and natural gas production as reported to the commission for February 2020 came from 170,960 oil wells and 86,698 gas wells.
In Scurry County, the commission issued four permits to drill wells in April. Two permits were issued in April 2019.
In Districts 8 and 8A, which includes Scurry and the surrounding counties, 266 permits to drill new wells were issued in April.
The commission issued a total of 456 original drilling permits statewide in April 2020 compared to 909 in April 2019. The April 2020 total includes 416 permits to drill new oil or gas wells, two to re-enter plugged well bores and 27 for re-completions of existing well bores.
The breakdown of well types for original drilling permits in April 2020 is 97 oil, 15 gas, 311 oil or gas, 15 injection and 18 other permits.
Scurry County operators reported 27 completions in April. In April 2019 operators reported 37 completions. Many of the completions both years were listed as “well record only,” and included temporarily abandoned wells, repairs and wells that have been completed but not activated.
In districts 8 and 8A, 460 completions were reported in March.
In April 2020, commission staff processed 981 oil, 246 gas and 249 injection completions for new drills, re-entries and re-completions, compared to 593 oil, 143 gas, and 36 injection completions in April 2019.
Total well completions processed for 2020 year to date for new drills, re-entries and re-completions are 5,285 compared to 3,244 recorded during the same period in 2019.
Many of the state’s top crude producing counties reported drops in production from January to February.
Midland County maintained its position as the top producing county with 12.7 million barrels of crude oil produced in February.
That’s a decrease from the 13.3 million barrels produced in January.
Martin County retained the state’s second spot with 8.4 million barrels produced in February. Karnes County remained in third with 7.22 million barrels while Reeves County reported 6.8 million barrels.
Neighboring Howard County remained in fifth place with 5.8 million barrels.
Recent information technology changes are allowing the commission to report more detailed data on drilling permits and well completions each month.
The information in prior year reports may not correlate exactly to the same results on the new report.