I should have made THIS the chart of the week.

I'll be done with this stuff very soon and you won't have to deal with me anymore. Above are all HZ wells drilled in the Permian Basin since the get-go of the HZ revolution, on all benches. Here we can see that in spite of super long laterals, coke-proppant, surfactants and artificial intelligence... 2026 wells are going to suck really badly, even when TRRC data gets all in.

You can poo-poo this all you want but the Permian is poopin' out.

I'm tracking some benches in the Delaware that have degraded 23% or more since 2024, some big benches in the Bone Springs. Stop and think about that for a moment. Down hole I've shown you how the upper Wolfcamp looks. It ain't good. They've drilled them too close together, sucked all the life out of them for cash flow,…

Regardless of where you look, if you are looking right and not afraid, well productivity is getting worse in the Permian. 2023 was a big year, if you recall, for the big spike in production related to falling rig count (we decided that was mostly DUCs getting completed and lumped in with productivity metrics), but 2024 and particularly 2025 have been downhill ever since. I am surprised nobody is analyzing this phenomenon more; then again, I'm not.

Here I am using Welldatabase data and have picked the most productive correlative interval in the entire Permian, both sub-basins, the Upper Wolfcamp (A & B benches), and the data set begins January 2010.

In 2025 wells took a big hit and 2026 is looking bleak at the halfway mark. Here we can see where HZ wells were drilled in 2025, what type of oil they produced, where 2025 ranks in the data…

Sometimes you just gotta draw a picture for people to grasp the significance of something.

In this visualization we see HZ tight oil production from the 3rd largest producing county in the entire Permian Basin, Midland, how fast it rose from the vertical Spraberry dust into its current HZ glory. Saudi America, Sheffield coined it.

We can see, at least I can, that each successive year of the HZ plays existence its rate of annualized decline has gotten steeper and steeper. We also see that its C+C volumes have kept growing and growing from now 9,900 HZ wells stacked in the county, in every bench that will produce, like cord wood behind the barn, many drilled as close as 330 feet apart. Parent child interference is rampant; degradation and pressure depletion are all in 4th gear.

Then we can see how fast the entire shebang would drop if no new…

This from Novi. It says exactly what you would expect it to say. The Midland Basin has peaked, well productivity is falling on all relative metrics (over-drilling= well interference =degradation =pressure depletion), but not to worry because Tier 1 level locations are only 55% taken and there is lots of running room.

Economics are half-cycle = breakeven @ $50 WTI, even discounted 25%. Spacing used in this analysis must be <500 feet on every bench, D&C costs remain the same forever and produced water disposal is not a problem. Pressure depletion never gets worse, in spite of more wells in the cores, etc. etc. Everything is good. Naturally.

Let's get updated on the Barnett, because everybody is hanging their hard hats on that to save the world.

I included Andrews, Ector and Crane Counties in this mix. As I've suggested before these wells are deep, require multiple strings of pipe,…

Novi and Enverus will have different well counts for the Permian, it's all about... definitions, what to include and what not to. We want to focus on HZ laterals in primary and secondary unconventional benches in both sub-basins.

There are 65,118 HZ wells in these two sub-basins (welldatabase.com). These are active producing wells, temporarily abandoned wells, abandoned wells awaiting P&A, DUCs, wells awaiting permit approval, wells with approved permits awaiting spudding and wells in progress. These wells currently take up space in limited remaining reservoir rock, or will when permitted wells are spud. We want to know what to expect from the remaining empty spaces; from a recovery standpoint, costs and related well economics.

The time frame for this HZ development begins 1 January 2010 and ends 1 July 2026. History is vague as to when the first HZ lateral was drilled to a source bed in the Permian but…