It is important to remember that it is only this segment of the industry operators that we are describing in the profiles below. To better categorize the marginal well operators, two further categories were partitioned for additional analysis. The second grouping was made by age of the operator completing the survey, those less than 40 years of age, those 40 to 60 years old, and those over 60 years of age. A few of the key differences based on these categories will be highlighted below. Others can be observed in the tabular data that most completely describes the results of the research.
Several conclusions stand out from the tables of data describing the survey.
Another 28 percent operate only 10 to 25 wells. 539 of the 630 operators worked oil-producing wells. The number of wells operated ranged widely from 1 to over 200 so the average number of oil wells per operator was over 17. However, the operator in the middle of the range, the median operator, worked only 9 wells. 338 of the 630 operators worked gas-producing wells.