Eagle Ford:
the condensate riding with the gas was worth more than the gas

Mustang Draw Production runs 30 compressors in the condensate window of the Eagle Ford, in Karnes County. Each moves about 1,200 Mcf a day. In September the fleet ran 94%, and the operations meeting priced the deferred gas at $2.60 an Mcf and moved on.

That number left out the most valuable thing in the pipe.

Gas is only half the bill

When a compressor in a liquids-rich area goes down, the condensate that would have dropped out of that gas stops too. At a yield of 60 barrels per million cubic feet, it adds up fast:

The condensate was worth more than the gas. Pricing the downtime as gas alone would have captured $168,480 of a $432,864 month.

We had been pricing our downtime like a dry-gas operator.— the operations manager, in our scenario

Use your own yield

Condensate yield varies across the play, from near zero in the dry gas window to well over 100 bbl/MMcf in the richest areas. It also shifts as wells decline. Use the yield from your own sales statements, not a basin average.

The rule of thumb that stuck

At these numbers, one unit down for one day costs about $8,016. Mustang Draw put that figure on the whiteboard in the field office. It changed how fast the after-hours callouts got made.