We believe that Lower 48 dry gas production in November-2023 at around 105 Bcf/d is accurate as we are seeing higher than expected production from Permian-NM and the NorthEast. We had originally expected production to average 105 bcf/d for an entire month by March-2024 instead of by November-2023. In the NorthEast producers were choking back more production and delaying more TIL wells than we had expected.
The Permian
In the Permian, it appears that the Permian Highway expansion of 0.55 Bcf/d came online in November-2023, earlier than expected. Kinder Morgan had said publicly in their 3rd quarter 2023 earnings report that the expansion was expected to come online December 1, 2023. The early Permian Highway expansion has occurred simultaneously with a sudden growth in Permian-NM frac crews from a low of 25 crews up to 35 frac crews. This combined with recent producer efficiency gains, which were discussed in detail in our recent producer efficiency webinar, have contributed to outsized production growth.
Early results from our Short Term Forecast for Permian-NM, which will officially be released this month, confirm this strong production growth. In fact, it is likely that pipe scrapes will need to be revised upward, up to 0.50 bcf/d higher at this months quarterly production webinar.
The Long Term Production Forecast
While we will not officially update our long term production forecast until the webinar later this month, we now expect the 105 bcf/d of Lower 48 dry gas production to persist into December-2023 barring any freeze-offs. The production should drop off to 104 Bcf/d on average into January-2024 and February-2024 due to the high probability of freeze-offs during the peak winter months. Production should then hit new highs in March-2024 through April-2024 at around 106 bcf/d. May-2024 and June-2024 should see a production decline of around 1 Bcf/d due to the heavy maintenance that occurs during these shoulder season months. July-2024 through August-2024 should see a return to 106 bcf/d, then drop off again in September-2024 through October-2024 for the fall maintenance season. November-2024 should be the peak production month in 2024 at around 107 bcf/d. We will have the update and revisions on long term production by sub-region this month when the long-term natural gas production model is updated.
Join us Friday 11/17 at 9am CST for a client-only webinar unveiling our new data dashboard as well as additional data features.
