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For the past several years, the Permian Basin remained an area where vertical drilling was still the principle method of extraction, even as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing become ubiquitous in the Eagle Ford Shale, the Bakken, and other shale plays in the United States. However, horizontal drilling is on the rise in the Permian Basin, as well, according to new data by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Horizontal drilling began to increase in the Permian Basin early in 2013, the EIA said. By the end of 2013, oil extraction in the Permian accounted for half of the total increase...

The great hype surrounding the advent of a shale gas bonanza in California may turn out to be just that: hype. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) - the statistical arm of the Department of Energy - has downgraded its estimate of the total amount of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale by a whopping 96 percent. Its previous estimate pegged the recoverable resource in California's shale formation at 13.7 billion barrels but it now only thinks that there are 600 million barrels available. The estimate is expected to be made public in June. The sharply downgraded numbers come amid...

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California's vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national "black gold mine" of petroleum. Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled layers of subterranean rock spread across much of Central California, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The new estimate, expected to be released publicly next month, is a blow to the nation's oil future and to projections that an oil boom would bring as many...

OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla el-Badri said oil supplies from North America “will play an important role in the coming few years,” but he cast doubt on their sustainability over the long term. Speaking May 15 in Moscow, el-Badri acknowledged that oil supply from producers outside of OPEC are expected to increase by more than 4 million barrels per day (bpd) between 2013 and 2018, with much of that coming from North America. But he cautioned that the addition of non-OPEC oil supplies to the global market “should be viewed as a periodic shift." "Tight oil adds depth and diversity to the...

Oil production will continue to soar in the six major U.S. shale plays, with more barrels pumped per rig, according to federal projections released Monday. Total oil production in the six regions is expected to grow to 4.43 million barrels per day in June, an increase of 75,000 barrels per day compared to May, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The federal agency expects oil rigs will produce an average of 271 barrels per day each, an increase of one barrel over May. The projection reflects the growing efficiency of rigs since the U.S. energy boom began. In June...

The economy has been underperforming for over five years now. It's easy to worry that this unsettling trend might go on forever. Well, don't worry. Because shale gas will probably change everything. Last year, the U.S. bested Russia to become the world's biggest exporter of natural gas, thanks largely to shale gas. President Obama celebrated the moment by saying that the United States is the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas." It later turned out that the United States is also the Saudi Arabia of...oil, with its oil production scheduled to overtake Saudi Arabia's by 2015. That's next year. It's unclear...

South Texas communities seem to have come to the same conclusion: The Eagle Ford is here and they’ll be dealing with it for the long term. Although no one anticipated the oil boom or was able to plan for it, communities have started devoting more money to long-term planning. McMullen County Judge James Teal joked this week at the Eagle Ford Consortium’s annual conference that if he had known the Eagle Ford would have been so big, he would have “probably kept my job in oil and gas.” But given the historic boom-bust cycle in Texas, Teal and other officials...

he economy is tough, especially if you have a liberal arts degree, writes Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel. While liberal arts majors are forced to take low-paying jobs, pipeline welders are making six figures thanks to the country’s oil and gas boom. “Too many young people have four-year liberal-arts degrees, are thousands of dollars in debt and find themselves serving coffee at Starbucks or working part-time at the mall,” Mandel wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “Many of them would have been better off with a two-year skilled-trade or technical education that provides the skills to secure a well-paying job.”“A good...

EU energy commissioner Günther Oettinger has urged Germany to make use of shale gas options and added that the he saw no danger of Europe’s access to Russian gas falling victim to possible economic sanctions in the standoff over Ukraine. […] “I am against scaling back or even cutting our gas links with Russia in the coming years,” the commissioner said. “But we must pursue our strategy of diversification. […] I would also urgently press Germany to make use of the shale gas option and allow fracking projects.” …

SHAFTER, Calif. — A bustling city is sprouting on five acres here, carved out of a vast almond grove. Tanker trucks and heavy equipment come and go, a row of office trailers runs the length of the site and an imposing 150-foot drilling rig illuminated by football-field-like lights rises over the trees. It's all been hustled into service to solve a tantalizing riddle: how to tap into the largest oil shale reservoir in the United States. Across the southern San Joaquin Valley, oil exploration sites have popped up in agricultural fields and on government land, driven by the hope that...

Despite major accidents in the past year, U.S. oil companies must keep using the nation’s railroads to move crude to markets while they build a much more extensive pipeline network, an energy economics professor said Tuesday. Oil refineries on the East Coast have virtually no access to the light, sweet crude extracted in Texas’ surging oil fields because there are no pipelines to carry the oil there. It is generally too expensive to ship the crude from the Gulf Coast to buyers in the northeastern U.S. because of quirks in century-old laws, forcing refineries in New Jersey to buy oil...

Production from the Eagle Ford unconventional oil play in South Texas is expected to keep growing through 2014 and to break the 1.5 million barrel per day (bpd) mark in 2015, an analyst told attendees at the Platts’ North America Crude Conference in Houston Feb. 27-28. Between now and the end of 2018, 4.4 million barrels of crude are expected to be produced in North America, said Suzanne Minter, manager of crude and natural gas analysis with Bentek Energy. In 2013, 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude production was grown; crude production this year will exceed that number,...

Shell will slash spending and staff in its oil and gas field operations in the Americas, CEO Ben van Beurden told investors Thursday, largely in response to disappointing results in U.S. shale plays. Shell announced that it will reduce spending in its upstream Americas unit by 20 percent this year. In a presentation released Thursday, the company said it also is planning a 30 percent cut in company and contractor staff in its North American, onshore portfolio. About 400 Shell positions will be eliminated from the unit. Kayla Macke, a spokesperson for Shell Oil Co., the Dutch oil giant’s U.S....

The productivity of oil and natural gas wells is steadily increasing in many basins across the United States because of the increasing precision and efficiency of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in oil and natural gas extraction. Many resource-producing basins are experiencing an increasing yield over time in either oil (Bakken, Eagle Ford, Niobrara) or natural gas (Marcellus, Haynesville). The geology of each oil and natural gas resource play is diverse, and individual rig or well performance can vary dramatically. However, drilling activity in U.S. shale plays is now generally producing greater quantities of oil and/or natural gas than in...

The hand-wringing over what to do to help Ukraine has had a very positive impact on the U.S. oil and gas industry. Politicians like Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are seizing on the crisis to call for a lifting of the ban on U.S. oil exports — the better to counterbalance Russia’s petro-influence. While the Wall Street Journal this morning wrote that western politicians are working on a variety of options to help “loosen Russia’s energy stranglehold on Ukraine” including “larger exports of U.S.-made natural gas.” Nevermind that the U.S. currently exports no natural gas in the form of LNG because...

The U.S. has more responses to Vladimir Putin's adventure in the Crimea than the no-options caucus suggests, including a few that weren't possible even a few years ago. Namely, a President with a keener strategic mind would unleash North American oil and gas on the world. The Putin regime controls the taps for as much as a third of Europe's natural gas imports, including half of Ukraine's and 39% of Germany's. The European Union is less dependent now on the trans-Ukraine pipeline system than it was when Russia choked back supply in 2006 and 2009, but the U.S. oil and...

A common criticism of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is that it wastes water. Los Angeles just became the largest U.S. city to vote to ban fracking. One of the main justifications was water conservation during the current California drought. L.A. Councilmember Mike Bonin said that fracking “uses excessive amounts of water in a drought.” Some lawmakers are even pushing for a statewide ban. However, as the following table shows, fracking uses much less water than other energy sources. To produce one million British Thermal Units (MMBtu) of energy, natural gas from fracking uses an average of 1.25 gallons of water. Biofuels...

Relying on shale gas would be a “very expensive” solution to meeting the world’s growing demand for energy, the chief executive of BHP Billiton, the mining, oil and gas group, has said. Andrew Mackenzie, who took over at BHP last year, also called for a price to be put on greenhouse gas emissions to address the threat of global warming, and said the mining industry needed to do more to develop technology to capture and store carbon dioxide. Speaking to the Financial Times in Houston, Mr Mackenzie said it was “completely impractical” to suggest that shale gas could be the...

GILLSBURG, Miss. (AP) — Residents living above an oil-rich shale formation that stretches across southwest Mississippi and Louisiana have been waiting on a boom for years. A steady trickle of drilling is already boosting the rural region's economy, and spending by two oil companies could make 2014 the year that many other locals finally cash in on the oil far beneath their feet. Already, Max Lawson has spent hours watching the round-the-clock work of shoving pipe into the ground in his back pasture. The process began two years ago when Encana Corp. built a big gravel pad, but didn't take...

Since 2010, the phrase "rising service intensity" of unconventional drilling and completions has become a household term. What this refers to is the fact that more stages per well and longer horizontal laterals demand more of oil service contractors than ever before. More proppant, more frac fluid, more horsepower, more water, more infrastructure, more transportation, etc. Several other associated trends include more wells drilled per rig and rising service company revenues per rig. A phrase you don't hear as often is "rising labor intensity" of unconventional drilling and completions. But we would argue that this is just as important. Just...