The unconventional oil and gas industry relies heavily on publicly available production data for environmental impact assessments, economic evaluations, and regulatory decision-making. However, a comprehensive analysis across over 10,000 tight oil wells in four states reveals alarming discrepancies between public and proprietary water production data that fundamentally undermine the reliability of models used for critical industry and policy decisions. These findings challenge the validity of numerous published forecasts and highlight the urgent need for improved data collection and reporting standards.

This blog post is based on the technical paper “The Reliability of Public Water Production Data for Tight Oil Wells”, co-authored by Frank Male¹˒², Ian Duncan², and Kiran Sathaye. The paper was presented at URTeC 2025. Download the full paper here.