Oil and Gas Well Statistics for Kansas

Updated: May 19, 2012

New Wells Drilled 2009 2010 2011 2012
New oil wells drilled 1,389 1,924 2,593 464
New gas wells drilled 236 279 293 16
Dry holes drilled 522 724 741 117
Service wells drilled 329 432 621 174
Suspended wells drilled        
Total New Wells
Drilled
2,503 3,373 4,266 772
Total New Footage
Drilled
7,400,876 10,225,434 11,344,470 1,889,334
Coalbed methane
well permits issued
73 49 38 0
Coalbed methane
wells drilled
124 63 57 7
Horizontal
wells permitted
8 23 76 81
Horizontal
wells drilled
6 10 39 22
  Number of wells
(as of update date)
Total Producing oil wells 60,284
Total Producing gas wells 24,763
Total Producing coalbed methane wells 5,402
Total SWD or INJ wells 5,010
Total EOR wells 4,796

Horizontal wells in Kansas permitted in blue, drilled in red

Bar chart showing wells (permitted, spudded, plugged) lately.

Line chart showing wells (permitted, spudded, plugged) since 2000.

Notes on methods

Oil wells are those with a well status of "OIL", "O&G", "OIL-P&A", or "O&G-P&A". Gas wells are those with a well status of "GAS", "CBM", "GAS-P&A", "CBM-P&A". The "-P&A" flag means the well was completed successfully but has since been plugged. Service wells are those with a well status of "CATH," "EOR," "SWD," or "WATER."

Dry holes are those with a well status of "D&A".

Permitted coalbed methane wells are those for which we have a permit date within the desired year. Wells drilled may have been permitted in a previous year. Expired permits will often be changed from "CBM" to "LOC" at some point.

We have no information in our database on how an oil well is producing (flowing or artificial lift).

Total wells producing is calculated by adding all the wells with valid completion dates or spud dates and no plugging dates. Only wells with no workover code are counted, but a certain percentage of older wells are plugged but do not have a plugging date.

Horizontal wells listed are based on a digit present in second place of the workover code (i.e. '-0100','-0101','-0200', etc.). As with the other searches, a well is listed as drilled once we have a spud date in the database. Sometimes the status will be upgraded to drilled or completed before we have the date available.