::: Commonly Asked Questions about our Updated Frac Spread Counts :::
1. We’ve combined shale plays like the Marcellus and Utica into Appalachia (Appalachian Basin) as well as Uinta and Piceance which becomes Uinta-Piceance. We’ve added 20 new and improved forecasts (vs. 9) to help get more granular.
Note: The remapping is based on the EIA basin and shale maps which should help companies align our tools with other popular drilling products (EIA, Baker Hughes, other drilling data companies)
2. Our new forecasts results will be different because the mapping (shale basin – shale play – states – counties) are completely different. This leads to a wider view of the market and more granular, yet smarter, forecasting algorithm.
Note: We are checking dozens of completions every single day to continue improving the new model. Our organization has been painstakingly testing and re-testing our algorithms to get better end results for the twelve months. The crucial steps were us improving our operator/pumper matching system (done in August of 2019), improving pad allocations and dynamics of our mapping system (finished in October) and the final step, which will be ongoing, is implementing a human exception handling tool to monitor operator/pumper submitted coordinates.
FAQ:
Q: Your basin forecasts have resulted in a change in your national forecast. Why?
A: Different pad allocation and different mapping change the calculation and that adjustment (+5-10%) will, in the end, improve our accuracy. Basins that once caused us trouble (Utica, Mid-Con) are now a thing of the past.
We originally built our “regions” using a mishmash of basins and plays using a list of counties and states, not a universal method. Now they match up more readily to the mapping systems mentioned above. (EIA, Baker Hughes, other drilling data companies)
The new National Frac Spread Count number is simply all of the basins added up. This will be revised each and every week and will make reconciliation much easier as it wasn’t possible before with limited forecasts.
Q: Are any wells omitted from your calculations?
As a result of invalid coordinates, that we’re unable to clean up internally due to operator and pumper input error, we mark them as “INVALID”. This represents about ~2% of all of the wells in our system and as a result are skipped from our calculations.
Note: Each forecast is a MAX result (not sum or total). This should more than enough account for the missing wells as we’re basically adding up all of the peaks.
Q: How different are the results between your old method and the new method?
We saw material changes in the way data was being submitted publicly last year. The “lag” increased during an already delayed holiday/vacation time (Q4 2018) which made things more difficult to quantify. This led to us doing a study on all operators and how they comply with regulatory filings.
This was a crucial step to finalizing our methodology.
We quickly understood that the majority of operators were pretty good, but some required us to further deliberate. This took months to get right.
In the end the new model was on average 7% higher than our older model. Within range of our forecasts for years, but much more improved from basin to basin.
Final Thoughts:
Your feedback is also imperative along the way.
Please reach out to fsc@pvmic.com with any questions you may have.
Thank you for reading and learning more about our new shale basin/play forecasts!
Primary Vision
