OCR Text |
Show Drilling activity in 1978 way ahead of last year Completions of wells drilled for oil and gas in the United States through the first nine months of this year are nearly 12 percent ahead of the nine-month total for 1977. Through September, 34,981 completions were recorded, according to Petroleum Information Corporation. This total compares with 31,248 in the first three quarters of last year, a gain of 11.9 percent. Two thirds of the wells completed this year are producers. The 9,017 gas wells completed through September Sep-tember represent an increase in-crease of 24.5 percent from last year. Emphasis on gas prospects continues contin-ues strong. This year completion total included 14,220 wells completed as oil producers. produ-cers. This is an increase of 4.7 percent over last year's first nine months. Exploration. . .wells drilled in search of new fields. ..also is running well ahead of year-ago figures. Through September, Septem-ber, 5,091 new field wildcats were completed, a gain of 12.9 percent from 4,509 completed through September of 1977. These new field wildcats wild-cats resulted in 439 discoveries and 457 new gas fields. The overall wildcat success ratio was 17.1 percent, down slightly slight-ly from the 18.7 percent record of 1977, but still comparing favorably with long term industry performance, per-formance, according to Petroleum Information. Wells completed this year accounted for nearly 167 million feet of hole, up 12.7 percent from just over 148 million feet in 1977. The greater percent- age-wise gain in footage as compared to the gain in completions reflects an increase in average total depth of wells this year. Average total depth during dur-ing the first nine months of the year was 4,772 feet, 30 feet more than in the 1977 period. Texas is the leading state in drilling activity, with 12,120 completions through September. Oklahoma Okla-homa is second with 4,099; Kansas third with 3,054; Louisana fourth with 2,680 and California " fifth with 1,842. Projection of drilling, using a historical basis, would indicate that between be-tween 49,000 and 50,000 completions will be tallied by the end of 1978. Petroleum Information pointed out, however, that the high level of rig activity continues and that many welb have completed complet-ed drilling and are awaiting await-ing comletion rigs before their final status is determined. deter-mined. This would indicate indi-cate that earlier predictions predic-tions that 1978 may be the first 50,000 well year since the late Fifties remain resonable. Petroleum Information, a wholly-owned subsidiary of A. C. Nielson Co., Northbrook, Illinois, offers of-fers reporting services, data and data analysis services, maps, logs and technical exploration and engineering as vices to the petroleum and related industries. |