Oil and Gas Well Statistics for Kansas

Updated: May 29, 2013

New Wells Drilled 2010 2011 2012 2013
New oil wells drilled 1,947 2,845 3,561 394
New gas wells drilled 299 332 162 15
Dry holes drilled 738 837 956 170
Service wells drilled 433 665 1,049 199
Suspended wells drilled        
Total New Wells
Drilled
3,436 4,697 5,777 783
Total New Footage
Drilled
10,428,555 12,494,375 15,470,806 2,144,085
Coalbed methane
well permits issued
83 94 8 0
Coalbed methane
wells drilled
83 107 9 0
Horizontal
wells permitted
23 76 298 115
Horizontal
wells drilled
10 51 236 33
  Number of wells
(as of update date)
Total Producing oil wells 63,537
Total Producing gas wells 24,798
Total Producing coalbed methane wells 6,422
Total SWD or INJ wells 5,211
Total EOR wells 5,749

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.

Line chart showing completed each year by type of well since 2000.

Line chart wells permitted each month in 2012 and 2013.

Line chart wells spudded each month in 2012 and 2013.

Line chart wells permitted each month in 2011 and 2012.

Line chart wells spudded each month in 2011 and 2012.

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. Workovers are not included in CBM counts.

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.