Introduction One way of developing deeper insight into the rapid growth in U.S. oil and natural gas production over the past few years, driven by technological innovation in drilling and production, is to probe how U.S. oil and natural gas wells have changed. This report looks at the distribution of wells by size and technology to understand these trends. U.S. oil production reached 10.04 million barrels per day (b/d) in December 2017 and 10.96 million b/d in July 2018, and U.S. natural gas gross withdrawals reached 96.97 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in December 2017 and 100.24 Bcf/d in July 2018. At the same time, the number of U.S. producing wells increased from 735,000 in 2000 to a high of 1,039,000 wells in 2014, and declined to 991,000 wells in 2017—likely because of lower oil prices and lags in data reporting for the most recent years (Figure 1). […]