Category: Shale Oil

Overview To see how tightly they can pack wells in North Dakota’s Bakken oil play, Continental Resources is now running several pilot projects. In releasing some preliminary results from one pilot, Continental was upbeat. But rather than taking the company’s word for how that project is going, I took a close look at the production data available from North Dakota—and it looks to me like the results are actually bad news. Published 23 hours ago The first company to go big in the North Dakota’s Bakken oil boom was Continental Resources—as they call themselves, “America’s Oil Champion”—and they’ve long been on the optimistic side about the Bakken’s long-run potential. The company’s founder and CEO, Harold Hamm, has argued that the play could ultimately yield 24 billion barrels of oil. Continental’s president bumped that number higher in a March 2014 talk, saying the Bakken could yield 32 billion barrels . […]

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Hess To Form MLP For North Dakota Oil, Gas Transport Assets John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own LONDON, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Doubts about the sustainability of the North American oil and gas boom centre on rapidly declining output from many shale wells after they are initially drilled. Shale sceptics point to the need to drill an ever-increasing number of new holes just to replace the declining output from existing wells, let alone expand production. At some point it will become impossible to keep up, they argue. The problem has been likened to the Red Queen’s Race in Lewis Carroll’s "Through the Looking-Glass" where the chess piece warns Alice that "it takes all the running you can do, just to keep in the same place". Geologists have worried about the problem of replacing declining output from old wells for more than a […]

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A Texas energy regulator said it was reviewing industry practices for hydraulic fracturing brought into question after a series of seismic events in the state. The city of Azle, which lies in the area of the Barnett shale natural gas field, has reported nearly two dozen tremors since November. A regional profile from the U.S. Geological Survey says so-called induced earthquakes , those caused by injecting fluid underground for the purpose of extracting oil or natural, may be at play in parts of Texas. Ramona Nye, a spokeswoman for the Texas Railroad Commission, told energy news website Rigzone the agency was serving as the facilitator in talks between those in the industry and researchers from Southern Methodist University. "[They] are the ones directly investigating whether there is a link between North Texas Azle area oil and gas disposal wells and seismic events in that area," she said Wednesday. The […]

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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook August 2014 and IntercontinentalExchange Note: The difference between U.S. liquid fuels and crude oil production represents production of hydrocarbon gas liquids, biofuels, and refinery processing gain. Non-OPEC supply disruptions include both crude oil and liquid fuels, while OPEC disruptions include only crude oil. Growth in oil production and supply disruptions represents changes since January 2011. Record-setting liquid fuels production growth in the United States has more than offset the rise in unplanned global supply disruptions over the past few years, although differences in quality and location suggest that the substitution may not be exactly 1-for-1. U.S. liquid fuels production, which includes crude oil, hydrocarbon gas liquids, biofuels, and refinery processing gain, grew by more than 4.0 million barrels per day (bbl/d) from January 2011 to July 2014, of which 3.0 million bbl/d was crude oil production growth. During that same period, […]

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Conoco Phillips Bakken Acreage Map Conoco Phillips Bakken Acreage Map | Click to Enlarge Liquids production volumes from Conoco Phillips’ (COP) Lower 48 assets increased by 22% year-over-year thanks largely to the Eagle Ford and the Bakken, company officials reported in their second quarter 2014 report at the end of July. COP production grew by 38% year-over-year to 208,000 boe/d in the Eagle Ford Shale and Bakken Shale plays combined. That’s ~39% of the company’s total production for its Lower 48 asset portfolio. In the Bakken alone, production grew 19% quarter-on-quarter from 43,000 boe/d to 51,000 boe/d. However, company officials expect for the rate of growth to slow in both plays in the second half of the year due to multi-pad drilling effects and weather-related issues in the fourth quarter. Read more :  Conoco Phillips’ Bakken Ford Production Up 80% in Q4 2013 to 43,000 boe/d Conoco’s EVP, Exploration and […]

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A fight over fracking is looming in Texas . Another stand-off is shaping up in Colorado . Yet drillers’ reactions couldn’t be more different. In Texas, drillers are doing their noisy in-your-face fracking as usual. Meanwhile, on a small farm about an hour from the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the oil industry is giving fracking a makeover, cutting back on rumbling trucks and tamping down on pollution. Oil companies in Colorado are responding to a rising tide of resentment as local communities and environmental activists vie to impose measures to ban fracking or restrict drilling. A series of ballot initiatives and other grass roots opposition around the country is seen as threatening the booming shale industry, even in oil-friendly Texas, where the U.S. energy renaissance began. If those initiatives “continue to proliferate then companies lose access to those resources,” said David B. Spence, professor of law, politics and regulation at the […]

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Hess To Form MLP For North Dakota Oil, Gas Transport Assets STAVANGER, Norway, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Norwegian energy firm Statoil will only slightly raise its U.S. shale oil and gas output in the near term due to spending curbs, well below a potential for a 50 percent surge, the firm said on Monday. Statoil, which produces around a tenth of its oil and gas from its U.S. shale operations in the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Marcellus formations, has even cut back investments in the area, as shale projects are competing for capital within the company, said Torstein Hole, Statoil’s chief for U.S. onshore activities. Statoil abandoned its 2020 production target earlier this year and cut its capital spending budget, arguing that it needs to save cash and return more to shareholders after a decade of ramping up spending. The firm increased shale production to around 210,000 barrels of […]

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Wildfire growth in Permian Basin crude output is outpacing the building of infrastructure to move the oil out of West Texas and eastern New Mexico to Gulf Coast refineries or the oil hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, causing a glut of crude in the region that will depress crude prices until the beginning of 2015, according to an analyst. Platts unit Bentek Energy projects August Permian crude production at 1.7 million b/d, with current pipeline capacity out of the region at 1.27 million b/d. Rail will play a negligible role in moving crude in the Permian, expected to carry only 627,000 b/d in 2015, Bentek data shows. "WTI Midland/Cushing differentials should revert to historical levels in early 2015 with completion of Plains’ Sunrise pipeline," John Mayes, director of special studies at Turner, Mason, told attendees in Houston at last week’s RBN Energy/Turner Mason conference called "Surviving the Flood." Demand for […]

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DMR: North Dakota Hits Record Oil & Gas Production – June 2014 Bakken Oil Well Bakken Oil Well | Click to Enlarge The  Bakken-Three Forks rig count  decreased by one to 191 rigs running across our coverage area by the end of last week. The NDIC notes 193 rigs are active in North Dakota, but around 19 of those are in the process of moving in and rigging up. In recent Bakken news, North Dakota hit nearly 1.1-million b/d oil in June 2014, setting a new record, according to the Department of Mineral Resources’ (DMR) August Director’s Cut . During the same month, North Dakota also had record monthly gas production (1,253,154 mcf/d), and the highest recorded number of producing wells (11,079). Read more : North Dakota Hits Record Oil & Gas Production – June 2014 The U.S. rig count decreased by 17 to 1,896 rigs running by the end […]

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A grassroots group in North Carolina said it plans to hold rallies Monday to protest hydraulic fracturing legislation pending in the state’s government. Advocacy group Frack Free N.C. said a public meeting Monday before the state Mining and Energy Commission is a "critical opportunity" to weigh in on draft legislation covering hydraulic fracturing , the controversial drilling practice dubbed fracking. Gov. Pat McCrory in June signed the so-called Energy Modernization Act, a bill the grassroots group said could result in $1 million in fracking contracts in the state by lifting a fracking moratorium. "Rather than tamping down resistance to hydraulic fracturing, the state’s newest legislation on fracking Senate Bill 786, dubbed the Energy Modernization Act, has only strengthened it and increased the controversy across the state," the advocacy group said. Fracking critics say some of the chemicals used in the process are a threat to groundwater supplies. The process, […]

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