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 set and that permitting in these two benches has backed way off. Another Data-sell company today announced a big jump in permit applications in Upton County over in the Midland (+28%), definitely a move in lesser Tier country, maybe not goat pasture, yet, but headed that direction.

The cores are drilled up and the big benches in the cores appear to be suffering from old age. Perhaps the exodus is beginning.

I think it's a safe bet to say, after 16 1/2 years, that when the Upper Wolfcamp interval runs out of gas (to drive liquids) and New Mexico starts to roll over, that's soon to be all she wrote.

Uh-oh.