Oil and Gas Well Statistics for Kansas

Tables updated: July 3, 2024

View 2013-2016
View 2017-2020

  2021 2022 2023 2024
Wells permitted 1,290 1,685 1,368 522
New oil wells drilled 633 872 629 179
New gas wells drilled 68 80 18 3
Dry holes drilled 236 334 290 44
Service wells drilled 298 466 510 142
Suspended wells drilled        
Total New Wells
Drilled
1,240 1,764 1,450 370
Total New Footage
Drilled
3,466,965 4,794,866 3,746,454 925,957
Coalbed methane
well permits issued
3 0 1 0
Coalbed methane
wells drilled
3 0 1 0
Horizontal
wells permitted
4 12 10 11
Horizontal
wells drilled
8 14 10 7
  Number of wells
(as of update date)
Total Producing oil wells 68,385
Total Producing gas wells 24,110
Total Producing coalbed methane wells 4,129
Total SWD or INJ wells 5,347
Total EOR wells 9,294
Records in our Master List 502,414
Total Count of Wells 457,526

Intents vs Crude Oil Price
Chart showing new well intents vs the price of oil.
Sources: CHS Inc. Energy-Refinery Supply price list, and KGS

Monthly Natural Gas Price
Chart showing average monthly natural gas price.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Line chart showing wells (permitted, spudded, plugged) since 2000.

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

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.

"Records in our Master List" is a count of every Kansas record in our list of wells; can include highway test holes where core or cuttings were taken, water wells where electric logs were run, and so on. "Total Count of Wells" is a count of records where they do not appear to be workovers and the type of well is related to the oil and gas industry.