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In its early days, the shale industry was made up of dozens of companies; by the end this decade's M&A, there may be only 10 or so super-shale companies doing much of the drilling. That will further slow the sector.

What emerges from the M&A will be Shale 4.0. It will be dominated by larger but slower companies like Exxon and its archrival Chevron. The end of the oil production boom isn't the end of the industry. It will just change personality: becoming more pliant to the profit motives of Wall Street. Indeed, less output growth means better returns for the stockholders of the shale companies. As tobacco proved years ago, reducing capital expenditures ' thereby freeing more cash for shareholders ' can be very profitable.

I'm afraid that, despite the rosy projections of a world moving into net-zero emissions, global oil demand is likely to surprise on the upside. The world will come to miss the wild days of the shale boom, when shareholders lost, but consumers won.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04...

Interesting data. Why should production in the Permian fall more slowly from the peak than it has in the Bakken, where production has fallen 33% in four years?

Different geology

Interesting data. Why should production in the Permian fall more slowly from the peak than it has in the Bakken, where production has fallen 33% in four years?

Short answer: I don't know but a good question.

Wild guess: Different formations, different and longer well designs, multi-zone completions? And maybe better operators.

"Why should production in the Permian fall more slowly from the peak than it has in the Bakken, where production has fallen 33% in four years?

The short answer is there is much more recoverable oil and gas, by far, in the Permian than there is in the Bakken:

(Picture Warren and Charlie salivating)

Permian (Delaware and Midland Basins): 70.5 Billion barrels of oil and 300 Trillion cubic feet of gas.
Bakken: 4.3 Billion barrels of oil and 5 Trillion cubic feet of gas.

U.S. Geological Survey assessed undiscovered, technically recoverable continuous mean resources:

46.3 billion barrels of oil and 281 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Wolfcamp shale and Bone Spring Formation of the Delaware Basin in the Permian Basin Province, southeast New Mexico and west Texas.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2018/3073/fs20183073.pdf

20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Wolfcamp shale in the Midland Basin part of the Permian Basin Province, Texas.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2016/3092/fs20163092.pdf

4.2 billion barrels of oil and 3.1 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Spraberry Formation of the Midland Basin, Permian Basin Province, Texas.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2017/3029/fs2017173029%20...

Bakken and Three Forks Formations in the Williston Basin of Montana and North Dakota. The estimate includes 4.3 billion barrels of unconventional oil and 4.9 trillion cubic feet of unconventional natural gas in the two formations.
https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/us...

I'd argue that the Bakken is more fully developed with over 11,000 wells drilled since 2013.
https://gis.dmr.nd.gov/dmrpublicportal/apps/webapp...

Bakken production peaked in October 2019 at 1.46 million barrels a day, then dropped precipitously during Covid as rig activity dropped to almost zero as wells were shut-in due to lock down and travel restrictions? North Dakota's Department of Mineral Resources indicates Baker production was up to 1.11 Million barrels per day as of February 2023. That represents a drop of ~24% from the peak.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/historicalbakk...

With rig activity ramping up again post Covid, the Bakken production decline has flattened considerably. If the oil price climbed and remained above $100/bbl for a considerable time, rig activity would pick up and, Bakken production would likely increase again.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/drilling/pdf/bakken....

"Permian (Delaware and Midland Basins): 70.5 Billion barrels of oil and 300 Trillion cubic feet of gas."

Almost, but not entirely, certain that these previously quoted numbers do not include 12 Billion barrels of additional oil that could be produced from the Permian Basin using CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2021/3057/fs20213057.pdf
https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1489/cir1489.pdf

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