EIA Credits Longer Wells for Boost to Permian Crude Oil & Natural Gas Production

Editor’s Note: A version of the following was first published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Well operators in the Permian region of western Texas and eastern New Mexico are getting more oil and gas out of the ground by drilling longer, horizontal wells and increasingly incorporating so-called super-lateral wells that exceed 15,000 feet. 

The Permian region in western Texas and eastern New Mexico is one of the most prolific unconventional oil- and natural gas-producing regions in the world. Longer lateral wells allow operators to contact significantly more reservoir rock with each well, maximizing production while keeping well counts, and therefore overhead costs, down. In 2015, short-reach wells measuring less than 5,000 feet were common; they made up 43% of the wells completed in 2015. By 2025, they accounted for just 4% of horizontal wells. 

As the short-reach well share plummeted, the share of new wells classified as mid-length laterals, those wells measuring between 5,000 feet and 15,000 feet, grew from 57% of completions in 2015 to a peak of 90% in 2021, before settling at 81% in 2025. The slight reduction in the share of mid-length lateral wells in the past five years came amid the emergence of super-laterals; ultra-long wells exceeding 15,000 feet. Virtually nonexistent before 2020, these wells, more than three miles long, accounted for 15% of all new Permian well completions in 2025. 

While the number of new wells being drilled has remained relatively stable, hydrocarbon production in the region has grown rapidly over the past decade, rising from 2.9 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (BOE/d) in 2015 to 11.2 million BOE/d in 2025—a 284% increase. Outside of the unprecedented market disruptions in 2020 and 2021—when negative oil prices and uncertainty surrounding the COVID pandemic severely curtailed activity—new horizontal well completions in the Permian have consistently hovered around 6,000 per year since 2022. 

Meanwhile, the average lateral length of a new horizontal Permian well increased 77% in the last decade, rising from 6,149 feet in 2015 to 10,867 feet in 2025, based on data from Enverus.