Monthly spud activity – Whitecap achieves Montney spud target ahead of time, while Canadian Natural Resources was most active in the Clearwater – BOE Intel

With commodity prices remaining at levels that generate attractive returns for most companies, albeit with significant volatility as always, spuds have continued at a steady pace over the last number of months.

This report looks at spuds over the last 30 days in Canada. During that period, there were 432 spuds.

The most active companies over that period include:

• Cenovus – 45
• Canadian Natural Resources – 41
• Tourmaline – 34
• Baytex Energy – 26
• Spur Petroleum – 16

Figure 1 – Most spuds by company (last 30 days)

The most targeted formations were:

• Montney – 73
• Clearwater – 67
• Viking – 28
• Spirit River – 25
• Waseca – 23
• McMurray – 23

While users can head straight to BOE Intel and check out all of the spuds for themselves, we thought it would be worthwhile to highlight some spuds that we found interesting.

Notable Montney spuds from the last 30 days:

• Tourmaline had the most Montney spuds with 15, followed by ARC Resources with 9. Despite no new well licences in over 5 months, Ovintiv had 8. Paramount Resources also had 8, while NuVista (6), Whitecap (5), Shell (5) and Vermilion (5) were also active in the Montney.
• Logan Energy had its first Montney spud on its Simonette block on October 28. The company’s first 3 spuds since acquiring assets from Spartan Delta via spin-out were at Gordondale (referred to in Logan presentation as Pouce Coupe). Post publishing note: there is some spud activity on Logan land licensed to Spartan Delta. To get a full understanding of Logan drilling activity, view the company’s Q3 report which was just released.
• Whitecap has now achieved 15 Montney spuds in the back half of 2023. Recall back in its Q2 announcement, the company had targeted 15 Montney wells planned for H2 2023, so that plan looks to be complete with a month still to go until year-end.

Other notable spuds and formations from the last 30 days:

• CNRL had the most Clearwater spuds with 20, followed by Spur with 16 and Tamarack with 10. It should be mentioned that Baytex also had 11 Clearwater spuds, although the company tends to licence those wells under Spirit River or Wilrich formations.
• The Duvernay has seen a pickup in licensing activity in the last few months which may foreshadow some increased spud activity going forward. In the last 30 days, Paramount (5) and Chevron (5) had the most Duvernay spuds.
• Viking spud activity was led by Baytex (9), Karve (7) and Teine (7).

For access to all of the latest licence/spud activity, as well as detailed asset transfer maps and company intel, contact us here for a BOE Intel demo.