Geology, drilling efficiency and increased focus on the best producing areas have all contributed to the dramatic increase in drilling productivity over the last 10 years in the Bakken, argue Jilles van den Beukel (ex-Principal Geoscientist with Shell) and Enno Peters. The contribution from technology is much smaller; for a given well location the well productivity has hardly improved. This has important implications: Van den Beukel and Peters expect drilling productivity to have peaked. This will limit the rate at which Bakken production can increase, even in a future high oil price world. It will also limit the ability for US tight oil to act as a swing producer. Every month the EIA produces an update of US tight oil and shale gas production. For each major play, the key figures are the total production and the added new well oil production per rig. In this paper we try […]