It will take them the rest of the year to complete these.
I have been wondering about the impact of all these wells delayed completion.
When the price of oil does climb, it will allow more oil to come onto the market sooner, than needing to start drilling first.
On the completion price, while rates may drop down now. It seems to me any jump in oil price is quickly going to leave us short on hydro frac equipment and crews and send that service price soaring even higher than before.
I understand the same delay of completion is becoming common in the Eagle Ford as well.
oil producers have stashed crude in about 4,000 drilled but uncompleted wells...
Halliburton exec says U.S. will provide biggest upside in recovery
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2015/04/20/halliburton-posts-643-million-loss-on-oil-slump/
The president of Halliburton says even though his firm’s North American margins are being squeezed by the oil slump today, the region will likely return faster than any other when crude prices rise again.
“One way to look at it is the U.S. unconventional business is now the lowest-cost, fastest-to-market incremental barrel of oil available in the world today,” said Jeff Miller, president of Halliburton, in a quarterly conference call with investors Monday.
He said oil producers have stashed crude in about 4,000 drilled but uncompleted wells, and once prices go back up, there could be a surge of completion work for oil field service companies like Halliburton. He said producers haven’t shared when they might unleash the oil.
Miller called the U.S. shale business the most adaptable in the world, one that could boost Halliburton’s bottom line significantly during a recovery. Halliburton is the largest hydraulic fracturing firm in the United States.
For now, U.S. oil companies have bolstered efforts to perform second rounds of hydraulic fracturing on old wells to get extract more oil – a process called re-fracturing. Producers with access to capital markets have been more willing to experiment with the procedure than others, he said.
Last week, Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard said the re-fracturing business had the potential to bring on billions in revenue over time, and work on thousands of aging shale wells.
The Houston oil field services firm posted net loss of $643 million in the first-quarter as drilling rigs continued to go silent in North American oil fields and producers asked for pricing concessions for tools and services.
It absorbed $823 million in asset impairments and other charges as the energy slump forced it to write down the value of its oil equipment and record severance costs related to layoffs.
In a written statement, CEO Dave Lesar warned the industry will continue to face challenges in coming quarters and said it’s unclear how long the downturn will last. He noted U.S. drilling activity has fallen by 50 percent since its 2014 peak in November.
“We expect to continue to see pricing pressure for our services until the rig count stabilizes,” he said.
In the call, Miller added historically it has taken three quarters for a rig count to move from peak to trough.
Halliburton’s net loss amounted to an earnings-per-share loss of 76 cents a share, compared to its profit of $622 million, or 73 cents a share, in the first quarter of 2014. Revenue dipped from $7.3 billion to $7.1 billion over the same period.
The company previously disclosed it has planned to cut up to 6,400 jobs because of the downturn, but it did not update that figure Monday.
Halliburton executives said they aren’t cutting into the company’s service delivery platform – such as rail – as deeply as they would in an oil slump because they’re anticipating the massive merger with Baker Hughes later this year, which could lead to higher volumes of input on its infrastructure system.
Halliburton had announced earlier this month it will sell off three drilling units in preparation for the Baker Hughes merger, but the executive leading the integration of the two firms said they will likely need to divest more businesses.
The three units it plans to market make a combined $3.5 billion in revenue, said Mark McCollum, Halliburton’s chief integration officer.