The Appalachian Shale Plays Have 1,383 Producing Wells with Treated Laterals over 15,000': Appalachian Basin Digest Monthly Overview Highlight

     The Appalachian Basin Monthly Digest is a huge database of oil & gas well drilling and production. It was once put out by a colleague/friend of mine before he retired and is now put out by Ayers Petroleum. It typically has a section that highlights different aspects of the data. The August edition, just released, highlights wells with treated lateral sections over 15,000 ft. When I last worked on Appalachian wells in 2022, we were typically drilling 12,000 ft laterals. Thus, there are likely also many wells in the 10,000 to 15,000 range as well. Wells with lateral sections with over 15,000 laterals, however, is a good proxy for “super-laterals.”

     It should perhaps be pointed out that with different lengths of well laterals, the old metrics such as number of total wells or production per well have less meaning than before. Better metrics include total lateral footage drilled and other per-foot or per-1000 ft metrics that better reflect the realities that footage is a better metric than number of wells, unless the number of wells is only wells of a certain lateral length.

     I believe EQT drilled the longest lateral in the continental U.S. in Appalachia, with a lateral length of 29,070 feet. There are deep Utica wells in Pennsylvania with phenomenal gas production; one I have heard of continuing to produce 42 MMDF/day even after 10 months of production. That is roughly 12.6 BCF of production in less than a year.

     As the map below shows, the longer laterals are in Ohio Utica, the Southwest PA Marcellus and Utica, and the NE PA Utica and Marcellus.

     The operators and current well-owners are led by EQT, EOG Resources, and Expand Energy, which make up slightly over half of the long laterals. Antero, Ascent Energy, and Range Resources make up another 25-30%.

      The table below shows that 64% of the wells are Marcellus wells and 35% are Utica wells. Just 7 of the wells are Burket wells. Note: I have worked on several 12,000’+ laterals in the Burket Shale. About 39% of the long laterals are in Pennsylvania, 34% in Ohio, and 27% are in West Virginia. The total number of long lateral wells in the basin is 1,383 wells.

        Below, it is shown that over 1,000 of the 1,383 long laterals have been drilled since 2022.

     Below, they note that since 2016, 14.6% of wells have been long lateral wells. After that, wells are shown by reservoir and state, and average total measured depth (TMD) by vintage. 

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Appalachian Basin Digest Monthly Overview August 2026, October 6, 2026.