Benchmarking Performance Among Wyoming’s Rocky Mountain Basins
In 2023, there was a significant uptick in the amount of Wyoming land leased by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In the second quarter of 2023 alone, the BLM leased over 250,000 acres, more than the entirety of 2022 and 2024 combined. That was then followed by 2 additional lease sales in Q3 and Q4 2023 for a total of over 350,000 acres. While many of those leased parcels are located in the Powder River Basin, there are also a significant number of parcels located in other Rocky Mountain basins like the Bighorn, Wind River, Green River, Great Divide, Fossil, and Washakie basins (Figure 1). A few weeks ago we wrote a Weekly Spotlight benchmarking the Paradox Basin to other nearby Rocky Mountain basins, and in light of the abnormally large 2023 Wyoming BLM lease sale this is a good opportunity to perform a similar benchmark of less developed basins and see if there are any that are primed for new exploration and development using TGS Well Data Analytics.
Figure 1. BLM Wyoming 2023 Parcels
Figure 2 shows the overall production and type curves by basin for each of the TGS basins included in the BLM 2023 lease sales. This results in a few interesting conclusions: The Powder River and Bighorn basins are the largest aggregate oil producers, while the Green River is the largest aggregate gas producer. But on a per-well basis, the Fossil Basin has the strongest performance for both oil and gas, followed by Bighorn, Wind River, and then Powder River for oil. However, this is comparing nearly a century of vintage wells. For a better comparison next we’ll narrow this down to recently completed wells to see how these basins might actually perform with current completion and development techniques.
Figure 2. WY Basin Benchmarking – All
Figure 3 shows the same comparisons from 2010 onwards. Probably unsurprisingly, for newer wells, the Powder River Basin performs best for oil and Green River performs best for gas on an aggregate and individual well type-curve basis. However, some other interesting factors to consider include wells from the Bighorn and Wind River basins with strong oil profiles with very low decline rates and wells from the Great Divide, Washakie, and Wind River basins with strong gas profiles with low decline rates. Although this analysis barely scratches the surface, this type of quick, performant benchmarking at scale, as well as much deeper analysis, can be performed seamlessly on any area of interest using TGS Well Data Analytics.
Figure 3. WY Basin Benchmarking – Post 2010
For more information about TGS Well Data Analytics or to schedule a demo, contact us at WDPSales@tgs.com.
