Winter plugging season in the field data

Plugging is seasonal work, and everyone in the field knows the shape of the year. We pulled three winters of crew reports to quantify what operators feel in their bones: winter plugs fewer wells per crew-week, but it surfaces more discoveries. Both halves matter for planning.

The winter productivity dip

Across northern-tier states, completed plugs per crew-week fall 25–35% from December through February. The causes are unglamorous: shorter daylight, frozen access roads that either help (ice roads) or hurt (rutting on thaw days), and equipment that needs longer warm-up and more maintenance.

The dip is predictable enough to plan around, and the best operators do — scheduling heavy mobilizations for shoulder seasons and reserving winter for accessible sites near maintained roads.

Discovery season

Here is the part people miss: winter is the best discovery season in the northern states. Bare trees expose wellheads hidden all summer. Snow cover makes methane staining and dead vegetation visible from the air. Frozen ground opens terrain that is impassable bog the rest of the year.

Our data shows discovery reports running roughly 40% above baseline from January through March in states with real winters. Programs that pause fieldwork entirely in winter are leaving their cheapest discoveries on the table.

The planning implication

The efficient winter program splits crews: a reduced plugging rotation on accessible sites, plus discovery sweeps that build the spring backlog. States running this split enter April with ranked, access-checked packages ready to bid. States that hibernate enter April with planning meetings.

Concretely, for every two winter crew-weeks spent plugging, budget one for discovery and access verification. The spring queue will thank you.

What we changed in the product

The queue now carries seasonal access flags on every package — winter-accessible, shoulder-only, or summer-only — derived from road data and past crew reports. Filter your searches by the season you are bidding for, and the fit scores will stop recommending January mobilizations to sites nobody can reach until May.