Longer laterals, more perforated interval, bigger frac's, different proppant, AI generated, autonomous, on the fly frac changes...it's still all about the rock, the carbonates, the mudstone. And the good stuff is gone.

Below, realized production data from the Texas Railroad Commission. New well productivity is declining, terminal decline rates for legacy production is exponentially increasing, costs are going up, product prices are going down.

For me this chart above is one of the most enlightening I've worked on for several years. It is from Novi and represents Cumulative Oil vs. Time for all Permian Basin tight oil wells drilled since 2010, to July 2025. It is not necessary to normalize lateral lengths in this chart because laterals are categorized by length, right hand column. 

There is an implied correlation between lateral lengths and the age, or maturity of the play. In the beginning wells were less than a mile long,…

No, it's not.

Too many focus on earnings reports from significant upstream shale players, pure or not, and fixate on EPS. For 3Q many tight oil players "appeared" healthy even though product prices were down. That's because production for the quarter was way up. Only the oily illiterate think increased production in the tight oil business is good when the sector is burning through its remaining Tier 1 and 2 level drilling inventories like the goal was to Drain America First. At $56 WTI net at the well head. Doomberg is like that. With regard to oil and gas economics he's (it?) is lost in the barnyard.

ROACE is a good tool, a good measuring stick for financial performance. Its single digits for the last two quarters of 2025 and... just wait. Impairments are coming, big time.

If Novi suggests ROACE for 3Q was 9% I can just about guarantee…

Here is a Novi chart for all HZ tight oil wells drilled in the Permian Basin from 2016 to July 2025. These well profiles (by year) are normalized for lateral lengths. At month 24 for 2023 wells the cumprod. is 218K BO. 2024 and 2025 wells are on a definite path for lower cumprod. than 2023 wells.

These reported barrels of oil are gross to the 100%. The working interest, the people that have to pay the bills only receive, on average 77.5% of this gross production. So, for 2023 a typical Permian Basin operator drilling HZ wells has netted only 169,000 BO in 2 years.

Between the two sub-basins in the Permian I am pretty much 100% certain that a typical 19,500 ft. TMD HZ well is going to cost $10 MM, at least, in today's environment, and that does not include land costs that a lot of companies…

The barrage of utter BS coming from the "C suites" of oil and gas companies during the current downturn in prices had me thinking... Why do they do this? Why do they spew this garbage to any and every market news outlet they can? I think I have the answer. Stay with me for a bit.

In 2005, "Thank You for Smoking" was released on the big screen. It was/is a satirical comedy about a Lobbyist/PR Man/Chief Spokesman for "Big Tobacco" named Nick Nalyor. It aslo briefly loops in similar advocated for the gun and alcohol industry, All three together jokingly refer to themselves as the MOD (merchants of death) Squad. It's a pretty good movie if you've got a few hours to kill.

Nick is smooth, I mean real smooth. The kind of guy that could steal your wife away from you at your wedding and make you fee…