Washington (Platts)--15Jun2015/612 pm EDT/2212 GMT

Stabilizing crude oil prices and falling drilling costs could soon boost US production by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day, an upstream oil and gas economist with the US Energy Information Administration, said Monday.

"We're starting to see a turn in production," Grant Nulle said during a panel discussion at EIA's annual conference. "Conditions are conducive for this to happen."

While recent EIA data has shown production declines at existing wells have outpaced production from new wells, a rebound is likely as operators focus on the most efficient wells and look to increase well completions amid falling costs and continued availability of capital, Nulle said.

In a recent survey of 85,000 wells drilled between 2012 and 2014, initial production rates have roughly doubled, he said.

In addition, with prices settling at $55/b-$60/b and costs falling, many of the estimated 2,000-4,000 drilled but uncompleted wells in the Bakken, Permian and Eagle Ford could come on line shortly, he said.

The economics of completing these wells has recently gone from "marginal to something that could be very attractive," Nulle said.

--Brian Scheid, brian.scheid@platts.com 
--Edited by Richard Rubin, richard.rubin@platts.com

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