Oklahoma continues dry spell of completed oil and gas wells

The first two weeks of October produced a dramatic plunge in the number of completed oil and gas wells in Oklahoma, going from a high 29 completion reports on October 2 to none over a four-day stretch. It is a reflection of what is happening in the industry in the rest of the world as oil and gas firms prepare for a slight slowdown in drilling activity.

So far this week, only three completion reports were filed and they were in Canadian, Hughes and Kingfisher counties. The largest well had production of 308 barrels of oil a day.

The four previous days of reports saw no completions while a week ago, two reports were filed.

Oklahoma started the month with 15 completions on the first day, 29 on the second and 17 reports on October 3 before dropping to five reports on the 4th and two on the 7th.

What might be happening is a move by energy firms to archive their uncompleted wells or DUCS (drilled but uncompleted wells.)

One publication indicated that operators in the U.S. shale plays managed to shelve 8,108 such DUCS  as of July 2019 and 51% were in the Permian Basin. It not only results in wells waiting to be completed, if they ever are but a lot of so-called stranded capital.