We have a new gas well (production began last April) that suddenly slowed down. There is a lot of activity going on at the site. Can anyone explain what could cause problems with well flow rate? Lots of discussion in the area about sand plugging it up and another saying during a cleaning process a piece of equipment was dropped into the well. What is happening at the Wilma Richards site in San Augustine? Very curious.
It is the nature of gas wells to produce like gangbusters at first and then production goes down to one-third or one-fourth of the original production. Contact the operator to see if there is any problem, but my guess is that there is nothing wrong with the well; it’s just the nature of gas wells.
What you may be seeing is not a drop in production but a drop in natural gas prices. Natural gas prices are one-third to one-fourth of what they were last summer.
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Yeah, any issue with the well would have happened post-November. Sometimes frac sand flows back and plugs up a lateral. Sometimes you lose a fish (coiled tubing, motor) down the hole trying to clean it out. These things happen. They are not good things. There is no evidence in the publicly available production data that anything like that happened there. If you have been out at the site and there is a lot of action going on, then you know better than anyone here.
HHub gas prices might be one-third of what they were before, but I kinda doubt anybody has been getting checks yet for those prices. December 22 HHub averaged $5.53/mcf. It’s gonna get bleak as fudge for Haynesville folks when they start getting their April checks for February pricing.
Thanks NM, that’s what I was looking for. Sounds exactly what I have been hearing. I’ve been watching the HHbub pricing and I guess if we’ve got a production flow stoppage it’s a good time, if there is such. Appreciate the details on the possible causes.
The other possible situation is a brief shut in if nearby wells are being fracked. It is to protect the producing wells nearby. I did not look the area up, but if it super active, they volumes may be lower in a particular month (or several months) if surrounding sections are hosting completion crews.
Thanks, yes this area is quite active with 3 wells underway on our side of the county.
It happened to us for a few weeks. They called it tweeking. Fixing a problem or resetting it somehow. Good luck.
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