The Covid-19 pandemic and the low oil-price environment it has created continues to affect global energy markets and activity levels by oil and gas producers. New fracking jobs in the US are not immune to the trend and Rystad Energy expects May to be the month that such activity will hit rock bottom before a recovery begins in the third quarter of 2020. We estimate that the total number of started frac operations in the country’s Lower 48 states will end up at around 300 to 330 wells in May 2020, down from April’s 337 wells. Many companies chose to initiate complete nationwide frac holidays for the second quarter, and the remaining frac spreads were released after their last jobs were completed in April, which made the decline in started jobs particularly dramatic last month. Some activity is still going on, and we have so far identified 92 started […]