Minor DUCs change

With our next update, you’ll see small adjustments to DUC counts across most regions, and more notable historical changes in South Texas. These come from our ongoing review of the data, and we’re rolling out two refinements today. Neither changes the recent trajectory of DUC counts.

1. Refrac handling. Some older wells (2014-16 vintage) with recent refracs were being counted as DUCs, which wasn’t the intent of the methodology. We’ve removed them, and this is the main driver of the South Texas changes.
2. Spudder rig logic. We’ve improved how we treat spud dates from spudder rigs (which remain excluded from our rig counts). The result is a slight increase in DUCs in very recent history.

These updates make the DUC series more accurate and more consistent with how you’d expect it to behave. Happy to walk through the changes by basin or discuss how they affect your workflows, just reach out to support@synmax.com with any questions.