Category: Shale Oil

WEATHERFORD, Texas Oil field work was coming in fast when GoFrac doubled its workforce and equipment fleet at the beginning of last year, just one of hundreds of small oil service companies thriving on the revival of U.S. drilling. Founded in November 2011 with a loan of around $35 million, the Fort Worth, Texas-based company was by 2014 making nearly that much in monthly revenues, providing the crews and machinery needed by companies including ExxonMobil ( XOM.N ) to frack oil and gas wells from North Dakota to Texas. Executives flew to meetings across the country in a Falcon 50 private jet, and entertained customers at their suite at the Texas Rangers baseball stadium in Arlington. The firm would soon move into a 22,000-square-foot office on the 12th floor of Burnett Plaza, one of Fort Worth’s most prestigious office buildings. Eighteen months on, however, without work and unable to […]

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Rig activity in North Dakota slowing down, though state’s government said diversity if key component of economic momentum. File Photo by UPI/Shutterstock/Lilac Mountain. BISMARCK, N.D., June 16 (UPI) — As the state’s governor boasts of strong economic growth in 2014, North Dakota data show activity in the exploration and production sector is in decline. State data for Tuesday show the number of rigs actively exploring for or producing oil and natural gas in North Dakota is 76, an increase of a single rig above the lowest count recorded since 2009. The number of rigs deployed in North Dakota is down nearly 60 percent from last year and 64 percent, or 138 rigs, below the historic peak reached in 2012. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis last week reported gross domestic product in North Dakota increased 6.3 percent last year, beating out all other U.S. states. Gov. Jack Dalrymple said […]

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« ExxonMobil brings Kearl oil sands expansion online ahead of schedule; overall capacity doubling to 220K barrels per day | Main | AeroVironment and Recargo introduce Pay With PlugShare for West Coast Electric Highway’s fast charging network » By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com The fallout of the collapse in oil prices has a lot of side effects apart from the decline of rig counts and oil flows. Oil production in North Dakota has exploded over the last five years, from negligible levels before 2010 to well over a million barrels per day, making North Dakota the second largest oil producing state in the country. But the bust is leaving towns like Williston, North Dakota stretched extremely thin as it tries to deal with the aftermath. Williston is coping with $300 million in debt after having leveraged itself to buildup infrastructure to deal with the swelling of people and equipment […]

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HOUSTON/NEW YORK Steep downward revisions to oil and gas reserves at the end of this year are likely to increase scrutiny of how energy companies tally future barrels – a process that has become more opaque with the rise of shale drilling. The revisions due in December will reflect a deep plunge in crude prices and should not come as a surprise for investors who have been pouring billions of dollars into U.S. oil companies betting that crude prices will recover. But investors may not fully appreciate other risks stemming from the wide variety of methods companies use to estimate and vet their reserves, or economically-recoverable oil and gas. Reserves have long underpinned company stock prices. Reserve growth is used at companies, including ConocoPhillips as a component of the chief executive’s compensation. Yet there is plenty of uncertainty in the industry as measuring unconventional resources such as shale oil […]

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Stabilizing crude oil prices and falling drilling costs could soon boost US production by hundreds of thousands of barrels per day, an upstream oil and gas economist with the US Energy Information Administration, said Monday. "We’re starting to see a turn in production," Grant Nulle said during a panel discussion at EIA’s annual conference. "Conditions are conducive for this to happen." While recent EIA data has shown production declines at existing wells have outpaced production from new wells, a rebound is likely as operators focus on the most efficient wells and look to increase well completions amid falling costs and continued availability of capital, Nulle said. In a recent survey of 85,000 wells drilled between 2012 and 2014, initial production rates have roughly doubled, he said. Article continues below… Every Monday, Capitol Hill newshounds Herman Wang and Brian Scheid analyze, dissect and debate the key US oil policy issues […]

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North Dakota Seeks Injunction North Dakota officials are warning that a new federal fracking rule will likely cost the state $300 a year in income and 1,900 jobs. In March,the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized new rules to regulate hydraulic oil and gas fracturing on public lands. Several states have filed suit, arguing that the new rules supersede the state’s authority and “ invade ” the jurisdiction of the state regulatory bodies. Related: Federal Fracking Regulations Challenged The ruling is particularly significant to North Dakota because of it vast public lands. It is estimated that BLM has an interest in about a third of the drilling units in North Dakota that were acquired the mineral rights on defaulted farms during the the Great Depression. Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources believes that the ruling will cause companies to leave North Dakota, which could cost the […]

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A new report showing the U.S. overtaking Russia as the leading producer of oil and gas in the world should put to rest any doubt that the fracking revolution that has occurred in the U.S. is for real, or as BP’s chief economist put it, “profound.” And now with the recent Environmental Protection Agency report on the impacts of fracking on drinking water being touted by the American Petroleum Institute as proof that fracking is safe, the industry’s insatiable greed got another boost. More recently, the Harvard Business School has also joined in the discussion calling for the end of the ban on exporting U.S. crude oil and warning about the implications of missing the “opportunity” offered by fracking. So with all of this momentum, what does ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson think should be next? Less regulation. As previously mentioned on DeSmog , at this year’s CERAweek conference Tillerson […]

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Even with turbulent and unsettled conditions in the global energy markets last year, the U.S. shale industry scaled new heights, lifting the country to No. 1 among global natural gas and oil producers, BP plc reported Wednesday. The oil major’s 64th annual Statistical Review of World Energy , one of the most respected energy forecasts by private or public economists, found that the unconventional growth in North America is surpassing all expectations. Chief economist Spencer Dale discussed the findings during a webcast and highlighted events expected to shape the global energy landscape over the next few decades. In a word, it’s shale — oil and gas. No. 1 is the continuing "shale revolution" in the United States, Dale said. The revised data in this year’s review suggest that the United States overtook Russia in 2013 to become the world’s largest producer of gas and oil. "We are truly witnessing […]

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