Permian Wells Are 77% Longer Than a Decade Ago. That Is How Output Nearly Quadrupled Without More Drilling.

The Permian Basin is producing almost four times as much as it did a decade ago without drilling meaningfully more wells. The Energy Information Administration published the mechanism on August 19: the wells got longer.

The length numbers

EIA, drawing on Enverus data, tracks the horizontal section of the well — the lateral, which is the part that actually contacts the reservoir.

• Average lateral length: 6,149 feet in 2015, 10,867 feet in 2025 — a 77% increase.
• Short-reach wells under 5,000 feet: 43% of completions in 2015, 4% in 2025.
• Super-laterals over 15,000 feet: essentially none before 2020, 15% of new completions in 2025.
• New horizontal completions: roughly 6,000 a year since 2022, broadly flat.
• Regional output: 2.9 million BOE/d in 2015 to 11.2 million BOE/d in 2025, up 284%.

EIA’s framing of why operators do this is a cost argument rather than a geology argument: longer laterals contact significantly more reservoir rock per well, which maximises production while keeping well counts, and therefore overhead costs, down.

Why a rig count tells you less than it used to

The count of active rigs and the count of completed wells are the oldest shorthand in North American oil and gas. Both are counts of holes. Neither measures feet of reservoir contacted. When the average well grows by 77% and the share above 15,000 feet goes from nothing to 15%, a flat completion count is consistent with substantial production growth — which is exactly what the Permian recorded.

The gas that comes with it

Most Permian gas is associated gas: it arrives because someone was drilling for oil. That links Permian gas volumes to crude economics rather than to gas prices. In a separate August 12 analysis, EIA forecast U.S. marketed natural gas production averaging 122.5 Bcf/d in 2026, ahead of the 118.5 Bcf/d record set in 2025, with first-half 2026 already at 121.3 Bcf/d — 4%, or 4.6 Bcf/d, above the same period of 2025.

• Permian natural gas production forecast at 29.2 Bcf/d, about 6% above 2025.
• EIA cites crude prices rising from $65 a barrel in 2025 to $84 a barrel through July 2026 as support for that drilling.
• Haynesville, where operators drill for gas rather than oil, is forecast up 9% and responds to gas prices instead.
• The United States has been the world’s largest natural gas producer since 2009.

What to watch

Whether the super-lateral share keeps climbing past 15% of completions, and whether average lateral length is approaching a technical ceiling. If length stops growing while completion counts stay flat, Permian production growth has to come from somewhere else.