HUTCHINSON, Kan.— Like most of southern Kansas, Reno County saw a big increase in oil and gas production in 
2013 from the previous year.
According to numbers released from the Kansas Geological Survey, oil production in Reno County increased from 458-thousand barrels in 2012, to more than 568 thousand barrels in 2013. Even with that increase in production and the horizontal drilling boom, the number of producing wells in Reno County increased by just six, to 110. It’s still well below the numbers during the 1995 oil boom, when 480 wells produced more than 700 thousand barrels of oil.
Gas production also increased even as overall production in Kansas declined. Reno County produced 92.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas in 2013 compared with 90.8 billion cubic feet in 2012.
Gas production in Kansas fell in 2013 to 295 billion cubic feet, compared with 299 billion in 2012.