Category: Shale Oil

Roughnecks in a man camp before their shift outside Watford City, N.D. Photographer: Bryan Denton/Corbis At the peak of the fracking boom a few years ago, Jeff Myers converted his South Texas hunting camp into rental oilfield housing. Little wonder: The industry had an almost insatiable hunger for the grunt laborers—the roughnecks—to work the fields, and employers were happy to spend whatever it took to house and feed them. Today that boomtown demand—and $100-per-barrel prices—is a bittersweet memory, and occupancy at Myers’s once-packed Double C Resort has dropped to 10 percent as job cuts take hold. “There aren’t going to be any winners down here,” he says. “Everybody’s going to have to adjust.” America’s oilfield “man camps”—as the industry calls them—are turning into ghost towns as drillers cut back the free housing, food, and air travel once used to lure shale boom workers. The mini-settlements that sprang up throughout drilling […]

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February saw North Dakota’s second consecutive month to have a declining number in oil production, dropping roughly one percent from the previous month. PHOTO: OVERLAND AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY February was North Dakota’s second consecutive month to see a decline in oil production. While it wasn’t a significant production decline—dropping roughly one percent to 1.17 million barrels of oil per day (bopd)—it was the first time since December 2010/January 2011 that the state saw back-to-back production declines, said Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, during his April Director’s Cut. Along with production decline, rig counts in the Bakken continued to remain low in comparison to the same time one year prior. Drilling rig count dropped 27 from January to February, 25 more from February to March, and has since fallen 17 more from March to today. The number of well completions dropped from 63 in January […]

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Gas capture efforts and low oil prices lead to a decline in oil production in North Dakota, state data show. Photo by Steve Oehlenschlager/Shutterstock BISMARCK, N.D., April 15 (UPI) — Oil production in North Dakota has declined 4 percent since a record was set in December, largely because of lower oil prices, state data show. The North Dakota Industrial Commission said oil production in February, the last full month for which data are available, was 1.17 million barrels per day, a 1.1 percent decline from January and a 4 percent decline from December. December’s oil production of 1.2 million bpd was the all-time high. NDIC Director Lynn Helms said a weak crude oil market and state targets aimed at reducing the amount of gas burned off during oil production was to blame for the decline . "Oil price is by far the biggest driver behind the slow-down, with operators […]

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North Dakota Oil, Gas Production Declines Continue thumbnail For the first time in more than four years, oil/natural gas production in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale play declined for two consecutive months, but the state’s chief regulator said Tuesday he expects things to turn around when June statistics are released. In the meantime, further monthly declines of 1-2% are expected. In the latest report from Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), January-February production continued downward, following all-time record levels reached in December. February is the most recent month for which DMR has complete statistics. Oil production in February dropped to 32.9 million bbl (1.17 million b/d), compared to 36.9 million bbl (1.19 million b/d) in January, following the December all-time peak total of 1.22 million b/d. Natural gas production in February was 41.2 Bcf (1.47 Bcf/d), compared to 45.6 Bcf (1.47 Bcf/d) in January, following an […]

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ENLARGE Chris Sabulsky lost his fracking job in Texas in February. ‘What we have to do is rebudget ourselves, re-educate ourselves, reinvent ourselves,” he says. Photo: Jeff Swensen for The Wall Street for The Wall Street Journal Like many other oil-field workers, Chris Sabulsky spent years working a schedule known as “14 on, 14 off:” two weeks at an oil or gas well somewhere followed by another 14 days at home in East Texas, fishing for bass and crappie. But now Mr. Sabulsky, 48 years old, is spending his days sending out résumés, calling acquaintances to see if they know of job openings, and pondering his future. His job managing hydraulic-fracturing, or fracking, operations at well sites evaporated in February after the oil-price plunge last year. Fracking, which uses water, chemicals and sand to free oil and gas from shale formations, has been a crucial factor in the U.S. […]

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WILLISTON, N.D. (Reuters) – North Dakota’s oil production slid for the second month in a row in February as falling crude prices zapped producers’ incentives to keep the spigots fully open, according to data released on Tuesday by the state’s Department of Mineral Resources. Even more ominous for the No. 2 U.S. oil producer: While the number of producing wells in the state’s four most prolific counties jumped during February, the amount of oil output dropped in each of them. Shale, the major source of the state’s oil, is a notoriously fickle rock, and new wells must be constantly tapped to maintain output. But producers have been loath in recent months to launch the same number of wells they did last year, with many preferring (or being forced to) scale back spending amidst a more than 50 percent drop in oil prices since last summer. [ID:nL3N0WJ598] That’s a sign, […]

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Bakken Production Will Decline in May For the first time since the Energy Information Administration (EIA) began tracking drilling productivity, the agency reported on Monday that oil and gas production will decrease for the Bakken and other shale formations across the country. Shale production has been a major player in boosting US output to more that 4 million bpd and has played a key role in the collapse of oil prices worldwide in 2014. Production from the Bakken formation has increased 28% year-over-year despite declining rig counts across the area. The EIA estimates that the Bakken will experience a decline of 23,000 barrels of oil a day to 1.3 million in May. Natural gas will also decline by 21 million cubit feet per day. Speaking with Bloomberg, Carl Larry, head of oil and gas for Frost & Sullivan LP  said, “We’re going off an inevitable cliff because of the […]

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The NDIC Bakken Production Data and the NDIC North Dakota Production Data is in. Production in the Bakken was down 11,941 barrels per day and production in all North Dakota was down 14,104 bpd. The numbers for January were revised slightly. January Bakken was down 35,064 from December and all North Dakota was down 36,331 bpd from December. Bakken BPD As I have pointed out before, the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report , for some unknown reason, estimates the last six or seven months, when the actual data is available. In the above chart they estimate from October on. This throws their current numbers way off.  The DPR data includes the Montana Bakken therefore their numbers will naturally be higher than the North Dakota data. Bakken Eventual Of course the EIA DPR will eventually bring their numbers into what North Dakota is reporting. The above is what the eventual Drilling […]

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The NDIC Bakken Production Data and the NDIC North Dakota Production Data is in. Production in the Bakken was down 11,941 barrels per day and production in all North Dakota was down 14,104 bpd. The numbers for January were revised slightly. January Bakken was down 35,064 from December and all North Dakota was down 36,331 bpd from December. Bakken BPD As I have pointed out before, the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report , for some unknown reason, estimates the last six or seven months, when the actual data is available. In the above chart they estimate from October on. This throws their current numbers way off.  The DPR data includes the Montana Bakken therefore their numbers will naturally be higher than the North Dakota data. Bakken Eventual Of course the EIA DPR will eventually bring their numbers into what North Dakota is reporting. The above is what the eventual Drilling […]

Click here to view full article at peakoilbarrel.com

HOUSTON, Apr. 13 US oil producers operating in the Eagle Ford shale in South Texas built an inventory of nearly 1,400 drilled but uncompleted (DUC) wells, said an analysis from IHS, which noted that the most promising of these wells belong to a few operators. The IHS Energy Analysis of Drilled, but Uncompleted Wells in the Eagle Ford Shale indicates DUCs can be converted to producing assets for 65% of the cost of a new drill, significantly lowering the economics when evaluated against remaining costs. Nearly 40% of the 1,400 DUCs are considered to have break-even costs below $30/bbl and belong to a few operators, including BHP Billiton, Chesapeake Energy Corp., Anadarko Petroleum Corp., EOG Resources Inc., ConocoPhillips, and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. Meanwhile, 33 other operators account for the rest of the Eagle Ford DUCs. “In this low oil-price environment, operators in the Eagle Ford and other US […]

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