Category: Shale Oil

Andy Richter for Al Jazeera America A free meal is served Sunday nights at Banquet West, a weekly community event at First Lutheran Church in Williston, N.D., March 1, 2015. Andy Richter for Al Jazeera America Oil tankers fill up outside of Williston. Since fracking began in the Bakken Shale in the late 2000s, the city’s population has more than doubled. WILLISTON, N.D. — From an airplane at night, Williston appears an oasis of thousands of points of light on the Great Plains. Most are white or yellow, but some flicker bright orange. They are the oil drilling rig flares of the Bakken Shale formation — fires that burn night and day. But dozens of these fires have gone dark in the last eight months. Williston has been pummeled by plunging oil prices worldwide, which dropped from a $105 a barrel in February 2014 to $54 in February 2015. […]

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This is a guest post by Dennis Coyne Increased oil output in the US has kept World oil output from declining over the past few years and a major question is how long this can continue. Poor estimates by both the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) for Texas state wide crude plus condensate (C+C) output make it difficult to predict when a sustained decline in US output will begin.  About 80 to 85% of Texas (TX) C+C output is from the Permian basin and the Eagle Ford play, so estimating output from these two formations is crucial. I have used data from the production data query (PDQ) at the RRC to find the percentage of TX C+C output from the Permian (about 44% in Feb 2015) and Eagle Ford plays (40% in Feb 2015). Dean’s estimates of Texas C+C output are excellent […]

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four-hundred miles from the near overflowing tanks at the U.S. oil hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, a second glut in the Permian Basin of West Texas is pressuring oil prices once again as pipeline disruptions strand millions of barrels in the region. The Permian, the fastest-growing shale play, accounts for about a fifth of the country’s total oil production, and is expected to produce about 2 million barrels of crude a day in May. The region houses over 20 million barrels of crude storage. Stockpiles in the Permian have hit several records in the last four weeks, according to data from industry information provider Genscape. Investors have zeroed in on storage, waiting for declines in weekly inventory data to signal demand is rising or production is beginning to taper off. Stockpiles in Cushing, the delivery point for the U.S. futures contract, hit a record in the […]

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HOUSTON, Apr. 24 OGJ Staff Writer The US drilling rig count fell 22 units to 932 rigs working during the week ended Apr. 24, marking the 20 th consecutive week of declines, according to data from Baker Hughes Inc. The count has now plunged 988 units since the week ended Dec. 5 ( OGJ Online, Dec. 5, 2014 ). The total of 932 is the lowest since July 17, 2009, and 929 fewer units compared with this week a year ago. Analysts at Raymond James & Associates Inc., however, have predicted an impending trough in the count as well permitting activity picks up ( OGJ Online, Apr. 17, 2015 ). “All things considered, we believe that we are close to a bottom in the rig count, which is likely to be seen in the next couple of months,” they said earlier this week in an energy update. RJA tracks […]

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Oil needs to recover to $65 a barrel for U.S. drillers to tap a pent-up supply of oil locked in shale wells and unleash more crude on markets than is produced by Libya. Dipping into this “fracklog” would add an extra 500,000 barrels a day of oil into the market by the end of next year, Bloomberg Intelligence said in an analysis on Thursday. Producers in oil and gas fields from Texas to Pennsylvania have 4,731 idled wells at their disposal. Prices are rebounding from a six-year low after drillers idled half the nation’s oil rigs, slowing the shale boom that boosted production to the highest in four decades. The number of wells waiting to be hydraulically fractured, known as the fracklog, has ballooned as companies wait for costs to drop. That could slow the recovery as firms quickly finish wells at the first sign of higher prices. “Once […]

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Drillers in oil and gas fields from Texas to Pennsylvania have yet to turn on the spigots at 4,731 wells they’ve drilled, keeping 322,000 barrels a day underground, a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis shows. (Bloomberg) — Think the U.S. is awash in crude now? Thank the fracklog that it’s not worse. Drillers in oil and gas fields from Texas to Pennsylvania have yet to turn on the spigots at 4,731 wells they’ve drilled, keeping 322,000 barrels a day underground, a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis shows. That’s almost as much as OPEC member Libya has been pumping this year. The number of wells waiting to be hydraulically fractured, known as the fracklog, has tripled in the past year as companies delay work in order to avoid pumping more oil while prices are low. It’s kept crude off the market with storage tanks the fullest since 1930. The fracklog may slow a recovery […]

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Oil patch layoffs continue to grow, and the shale oil states represent the epicenter. G. Allen Brooks takes a look at the latest oil industry unemployment statistics. This opinion piece presents the opinions of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of Rigzone. Several recent media stories have focused on rising petroleum industry layoffs in response to the decline in global oil prices and the resulting fall in activity. Just how many people have already lost their jobs is difficult to accurately determine. Job loss estimates are being provided to the media by various personnel recruiting firms, although there are also data points available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Since oil prices began dropping last December, energy companies have announced layoffs in excess of 100,000 jobs, according to The Wall Street Journal. It references an estimate of at least 91,000 layoffs having already occurred according […]

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HOUSTON, Apr. 22 OGJ Staff Writer Leaders of prominent US shale producers came together on Apr. 21 to drive home a point that’s emerged as a primary theme during this year’s IHS CERAWeek in Houston: The urgent need to lift the export ban on US crude oil. “It’s time to give the green light to US oil exports,” stated John Hess, chief executive officer of Hess Corp. , during an upstream panel discussion alongside two other prominent US-based chief executives. Hess emphasized that the US already exports high quantities of petroleum products—3.8 million b/d in 2014 according to the US Energy Information Administration—so why not crude? “Mexico and Canada export crude,” he said. “Why not the US?” Harold Hamm, chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc. , echoed those sentiments, but thinks “it’s going to take a while to change the mindset of Americans to one of scarcity to […]

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US oil and natural gas companies have pushed down costs of fracking a shale well faster than expected, and if the trend holds up it could allow producers to keep working in oilfields. HOUSTON, April 22 (Reuters) – U.S. oil and natural gas companies have pushed down costs of fracking a shale well faster than expected, and if the trend holds up it could allow producers to keep working in oilfields that just months ago looked uncompetitive after the oil price crash. A more than 50 percent fall in the price of crude oil since June has left oil and gas producers insisting on steep price cuts from oilfield service companies that provide everything from drilling rigs to hydraulic fracturing. Oil is trading around $55 a barrel, and most U.S. shale fields are seen as having break-even costs of $40-$70 a barrel. In fourth-quarter earnings calls, operators initially were […]

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HOUSTON, April 22 (Reuters) – Norwegian oil and natural gas producer Statoil ASA has no plans to add North American drilling rigs this year, an executive told Reuters on Wednesday. "I don’t see us adding rigs this year," William Maloney, Statoil’s head of North American exploration, said in an interview on the sidelines of the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston, the world’s largest gathering of oil producers. "You don’t need as many rigs if you can drill them quicker, better, faster and safely." Pioneer Natural Resources Co Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield told Reuters on Tuesday his company may soon start adding rigs, a step that would mark the start of a reversal of a trend that has seen the U.S. oil rig rate halve since last September. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder) Copyright 2015 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions. WHAT DO YOU THINK?

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