Ohio finally released 2012 Utica Shale production numbers for oil and gas yesterday. It’s tough to summarize those numbers in a simple statement, but if we had to, we’d say “disappointing.” The total production numbers are quite a bit lower than we had expected–12.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas & NGLs produced for the year, and almost 636,000 barrels of oil, from 87 producing wells. The question is, why was it not more? The short answer, we believe, is “lack of infrastructure.” It was not from “lack of performance” by the wells themselves, some of which turned in very good numbers.
MDN has embedded a copy of the numbers below as reported by the ODNR (with two extra rows in the data provided by MDN). We’ll report what the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources said about the numbers, what others have had to say, and then give you our take on the numbers. Buckle up!
