Posted on 02/18/2014 4:46:49 AM PST by thackney
Pioneer Natural Resources looks to be sitting on an unbelievable amount of oil and gas. The company now controls about 845 million barrels of oil equivalent, or BOE, proved reserves and thinks that number is only the beginning. However, on paper, its reserves are actually slowly shrinking.
Recently, the company reported its latest reserve numbers, which showed a curious negative revision to its proved reserves. The company actually axed nearly 185 million barrels of oil from its books along with another 115 billion BOE of natural gas and natural gas liquids. With oil currently selling for about $100 per barrel, that's a lot of potential future revenue that just got wiped out. It also makes one wonder how over a hundred million barrels of oil can simply vanish?
The horizontal shift Pioneer Natural Resources is one of the many energy companies in America that has made the switch from drilling vertical wells to horizontal wells. Because of this, the company isn't going to be drilling all of its planned vertical wells. It will instead eventually drill horizontal wells to tap the oil and gas located in these areas. However, because there isn't enough current data on the horizontal wells that Pioneer Natural Resources has drilled so far, it can't support the replacement of the previously booked vertical reserves with new horizontal reserves. This is how hundreds of millions of barrels of oil simply vanish, at least on paper.
This isn't an occurrence limited to Pioneer Natural Resources. Fellow Permian Basin driller Laredo Petroleum Inc also revised millions of barrels of oil off of its proved reserve estimate. Its latest proved reserve estimate shaved 18 million barrels of oil off its book. However, Laredo Petroleum had to do this because it also has removed vertical drilling locations in favor of adding higher return horizontal locations.
The great reappearing act
While these companies can't put these new reserves on the books just yet, that doesn't mean these reserves won't be added in the future. In fact, Pioneer Natural Resources expects it should be able to add more than 600 million BOE of new horizontal reserves by the end of 2016. That's on top of the 72 million BOE in new horizontal reserves the company already added this year from its horizontal development in the Permian Basin. That, however, is just the tip of the iceberg for Permian Basin drillers like Pioneer Natural Resources.
As the slide above {beelow} shows, Pioneer Natural Resources thinks that it's actually sitting on about 11 billion barrels of oil and gas. That's more than 10 times its proved reserves. The same goes for Laredo Petroleum as it sees its net resource potential being more than 10 times its current proved reserves.
It's a similar story at other Permian focused drillers. Diamondback Energy Inc , for example, has proved reserves of 63.6 million BOE. However, as it adds up the resource potential from new horizontal targets like the Wolfcamp, Spraberry, and Cline formation, it sees total horizontal resource potential of 393 million BOE. That's a pretty compelling upside for Diamondback Energy investors, and right in line with what others are seeing.
Investor takeaway
The switch from vertical to horizontal drilling in the Permian Basin is causing companies like Pioneer Natural Resources and Laredo Petroleum to shave off millions of barrels of oil reserves. However, the disappearance of those reserves is only temporary. Once these companies have more data, it's quite likely they will add back an even greater number of future reserves.
First, close the EPA and jail the Enviro-whackos wanting to prevent energy production.
This is the only thing that kept the US from having another Great Depression. Obama was foiled by the independent oil men of Texas and Oklahoma, but it will never be mentioned in the history of this horrible economy. That is a shame.
Oil reserves are just estimates. Nobody knows
for sure till AFTER the oil is pumped how much
there was. The system by it’s nature lends itself
to error, changes and fluctuations. I’m sure it
also lends itself to purposeful manipulation of
the information to allow involved parties economic
advantages. Humans are involved and humans tend
to be either incompetent, error prone or when it comes
to large sums of money greedy......greedy enough to
fabricate information.
the climate change, peak oil types use this info by the way. they point out that the wells are drying up faster then predicted....just keep that in mind...
EPA rules on power WOW, people I know who have a modern house about 2100 square feet no heat from electricity running about 500.00 a month. Unreal
“...Oil reserves are just estimates. Nobody knows
for sure till AFTER the oil is pumped how much
there was. The system by it’s nature lends itself
to error, changes and fluctuations....”
Amen, brother. I’m going thru a series of facility upgrades throughout south Texas right now. The facilities were built in 2010 based on just these types of estimates. Now, we’re finding out there is much more product than anyone ever estimated or dreamed of, and those original facilities are not large enough to handle the increase in volumes. Estimates are estimates...don’t bet the whole farm on them regardless of what business you’re in.
All I know US has increased output and yet Gasoline prices have not move much in the Country.
Thank your government for that one....BIG TIME. Look at the taxes they levy on the product. Look how they prevent additional refining capacity from being built. They ARE the problem.
As the slide above {below} shows, Pioneer Natural Resources thinks that it’s actually sitting on about 11 billion barrels of oil and gas. That’s more than 10 times its proved reserves. The same goes for Laredo Petroleum as it sees its net resource potential being more than 10 times its current proved reserves.
..............
yeah this is what happens when they optimized the manufacturing process so that one pad has 30 wells going in all directions at various levels. This is what brings down the price per barrel of oil. This is why I think the Permian production has not really begun to take off yet. But when it does, it will be impressive and really dwarf what’s going down currently in eagle ford and the baaken.
And likely too its the ten fold increase in reserves that these guys are talking about ... — is the reason you hear talk that the permian basin is second only in size to the Saudi Ghawar Field
Somewhat counter-intuitively, I suggest this is on net a good thing.
If gasoline (actually oil) prices were to drop dramatically, a lot of the drilling would quickly stop.
Horizontal drilling is a good deal more expensive and much lower prices would mean a lot of the wells being drilled would quickly be considered uneconomic. Drilling would stop. It's possible a lot of the drilling capacity would move overseas where they could still make money.
From a national security standpoint, I think adding as much production capacity as possible here is a lot more important than having gas be a dollar cheaper at the moment.
For those who want to see a 6 minute video showing how horizontal drilling and fracking is done, Northern Gas and Oil has done a great one.
It includes a visual piece on how fresh water aquifers are protected from contamination.
http://www.northernoil.com/drilling-video
Knowledge is power, keep the link and pass it on.
Gasoline is easy to ship a priced globally. Natural gas is not easy to ship and priced locally. So nat gas is cheap and gasoline is not.
There are other factors - taxes, dollar value, ethanol, state-mandated blends, etc. But, in the end, US refiners are not going to sell gas here for a dollar when they can get four dollars elsewhere.
The biggest winners in this new ‘oil boom’ is the state of Texas and the Counties that claim Property taxes on all aspects of the oil and gas products removed/recovered from their jurisdictions.
Why you might ask? Because they get a cut right off of the top on everything that the private companies, the private land owners, the private royalty owners earn/receive through their investments in this petroleum rich area of the country.
It would not matter if we found enough oil to float this country. The price for oil is determined by the commodities traders on wall street. The oil companies have nothing to do with what they get for their oil.
Yep, that is why it sometimes goes down as well as up. < /sarc>
Pricing is ultimately determined by the consumer market. If people quit buying the stuff, the futures traders would take a bath.
But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Asian consumption has been the main driver in commodities markets for the past 15 years.
You quit first. I promise to follow!!
Think about how to make it politically feasible to shut down the EPA?
The campaign would be focused.
The function of the EPA is to ensure clean air and water.
The practice has beed to pervert that charter into a mechanism to SHUT DOWN ENERGY PRODUCTION, INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION, AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION, and most elements of growth of any kind.
To help the agency focus on the narrow nature of its charter, we are cutting the budget by 90%.
Forgive me for changing the subject, because the accounting differences are important facets, but;
I was alarmed at the thought that the Dhims had found a way to crony-capitalize 185 million already extracted, already-paid-for barrels of oil from Strategic Oil Reserve holdings.
Not to be a bother (you can ignore this question) but how many barrels have we lost from there during this last Demo-Rat Admin? They always dipped into in the past, with incoming Republican Presidential Admins having to replace it.
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