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Posted on 10/26/2026 7:20:13 AM PDT by eastexsteve
In my part of Texas, oil, gas, and timber drives the economy. I made an observation in a family meeting yesterday that it's really starting to break loose here. The local RV parks that are usually empty during the week, are filling up with oilfield workers. The oil and gas personnel that I know who are involved in site prep are working overtime. My son-in-law is one, and he is now working 36 hour shifts.
I've been holding off doing a thinning cutting on one of my timber tracts because the price has been so low. But, last week my timber manager came to me and told me it was time to cut, as the prices were up 30% over what they were in the summer. Not just for the sawlogs, but the mills are crying for sweetgum. This is normally non-marketable timber, except when the oil companies are looking to buy it for what they call "derrick flooring." Right now the mills can't get enough of it to meet the demand. And, a lot of timber is coming in to the mills from clearing off drilling locations.
To those of you who are starting to lose faith in Trumps' promise for lower gas prices, I can only say one thing. Hang on, it's coming. And, it looks like a big one.
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I would like to thin it a little to open up the canopy to make a few meadows for the benefit of wildlife and am curious if it would be worth the effort.
The peak price of diesel under Biden was $5.816 or $6.61 in today’s dollars.
Today, it’s $6.3492, so it’s $0.24 cheaper today.
How many panicked news stories about the price were there under Biden?
Give you a hint: FEW TO NONE.
You’re being used.
There is no question oil prices justify more drilling at current price levels. I would make several observations. Current day drilling in East Texas is generally focused on the Haynesville Shale formation, which is 100% natural gas. That will have no effect on gasoline or diesel prices. Second, as one commenter above pointed out, it is a midstream/refinery issue, not a crude oil production issue. The US is currently producing at an all time high in terms of volumes of crude oil, but this seems to be having little to no effect on gas prices. Third, even if every available rig were drilling in oil basins and the US raised production volumes by 1 million barrels per day, that would have a negligible effect on the overall market. The global market for crude oil is just too big, and the price is generally determined by commodity traders who are trading on anticipated trends, not by current production levels. A report of successful negotiations to remove all Hormuz blockages would drop crude prices twice as much as an increase in US production. Even more effective would be a repeal of the punitive gasoline and fuel taxes that artificially inflate the price at the pump.
Enjoy your royalty and oil production income, but it is only very indirectly related to the price at the pump. I am in the oil and gas business and I love these current commodity prices, but it is a complete fallacy to believe they will result in production increases that will significantly reduce retail gasoline and fuel prices.
Thank you for your input!
Now is NOT the time to panic.
Now is THE time to start paying down debt and making wise decisions.
Credit is drying up due to excessive spending on credit cards for vacations and “Things”.
I started working on this two years ago and should be back to stable in 3 months.
Well it just started last night.
Good for him. Our wheat crop this year sold at only mediocre prices.
As soon as this election is over the price of gas will go down. It will no longer be needed as a weapon against Trump and the America he loves.
There’s literally so much wrong with your statement I don’t even know where to start.
WTI is $102. It’s not high.
This is 100% a refinery problem. It has nothing to do with Iran.
It is a small percentage of the timber harvested that goes into any/all matting applications.
It becomes a feast or famine type of product. Either the drilling industry can not get enough OR nobody is drilling and demand drops to almost nothing. Companies making mats come and go. Meaning, they go from buying almost nothing to huge quantities. Then when the price of oil drops to under $55/barrel(or whatever the current price is) they ALL stop drilling and nobody needs mats.
The company I sold was down in Fruitland, ID. He was big during the Great Recession when oil went to $150. In Fruitland there was a big temporary labor pool he could draw from. Pay them for a job and then lay them off. All through a temp agency. The same people pick produce.
He has been out of business for years.
I remember a lumber trader who went from one of the top in the company to losing everything because he had a million dollars worth of mats on the ground in Edmonton.
When the price of oil dropped and he couldn’t sell them. He no longer works for the company.
Mats are typically bought new and then sold for a salvage(used) value at the end of the job. They do have a value and can be used again multiple times. Oak lasts longer than Doug Fir. Douglas Fir last longer than Hemlock.
An Access Mat is three layers of 2x8’s. 14’ on the top and bottom and 8’ in the middle. The middle layer is perpendicular to the top and bottom. Just like plywood or OSB. There are 160 +/- bolts holding them together. An electric drill used to last the company I sold two weeks before it died. Rigid drills lasted the longest.
There are also Rig Mats. They are made of Douglas Fir/Larch 6” thick timbers. The mat is 20’ long with a steel welded frame around. They last a long time.
The other major mat use are Crane mats. They are made of 12 x12-16’s. Douglas Fir is typically used. They bolt 4 together making a 4’x16’ mat. These are used to drive an Excavator and then a Crane on to install buried pipelines. hence the name.
When a several hundred mile pipeline is built they use hundreds of truckloads. Staged at various places along the pipelines length.
Crane mats are also used when your excavator needs to cross dunes to repair seawalls or anything else along the ocean.
I have seen them used at the mouth of the Merrimack River where it flows into the ocean. They had to build a road to get out onto the beach to repair winter storm damage.
Crane mats get used over and over again. There are companies that recondition them. However, the money is not made in selling new ones. The most money is made buying them back after the job is done for pennies on the dollar and then reselling them again. Similar to car dealers make more money on used cars than new.
I have a sister company that specializes in buying and selling mats. My knowledge is from selling one customer twenty years ago. He was my biggest customer for a couple years. Then nothing.
Your area still has a lot of single family house construction. However, the multifamily(apartments) has dropped to almost zero.
The problem is there is no alternative to I90.
There is only ONE highway to go east and west on. It can take well over an hour to go from Spokane airport to Coeur d’Alene now depending on traffic.
I have a customer who lives in Rathdrum and works in Airway Heights. He leaves everyday at 3:30
Make sure everyone of them votes, or they’ll be packing it up again.
The Sacketts bought land by Priest Lake. A road separated their land from the lake, but a culvert connected their wet depression areas to the lake and the EPA called that culvert and their wet patch "navigable waters"! It was obscene.
That’s not correct about multi-family projects. They are about as numerous as single-home subdivision projects. I’ve seen lots of investment and construction in my lifetime, but never a boom as big as this one. You’ve seen our area grow on your visits here.
Anybody who has been here for any time is upset about it all. My family arrived in the 1920s (Bonner County to Latah County), then moved to Kootenai County in 1966. We started visiting grandparents in Kootenai County in ‘66. We bought in Hayden almost ten years ago now.
That’s what happens when the nation’s population doubles in 50 years and people are hungry for good governance, low crime and freedom. Earlier today, a new crime survey was released and Idaho scored near the bottom in crime (i.e., good — low crime). It correlates to the survey of gun ownership rates in states that came out a week ago. Surprise!
That sounds good, but we won’t get lower gas/diesel prices until we build more refineries.
Oh my God! You do realize that Biden was kicked out of office basically. I think you were asleep at the wheel or something. You don’t think he was punished for those gas prices and other stuff. Trump won because prices were too expensive on everything. I think you were not paying attention.
Oh! So you’re saying that it was a coincidence that the price of gas went up significantly the day after we went into Iran? That timing sucked. I’m amazed at how coordinated that was.
Oh, I don’t think it was coincidental at all.
But there is no cause and effect.
What about that storm that went through Clovis and flooded them?
Bingo. They also put it on the pad so that they can walk the rig to drill multiple wells off of the same pad.
“Gas was NOT reasonable in 2025 and has not been “reasonable” since TRUMP’s first term”
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SO reasonable, I bought it to clean my oil-base paint brushes...!
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