In an unexpected announcement Monday evening, Weatherford welcomed of Mark McCollum, Halliburton’s CFO, as its new permanent CEO and director. For Weatherford, choosing between interim CEO Krishna Shivram and McCollum was a win/win. Shivram impressed everyone during his stint at the helm, but McCollum is the stronger candidate. So when the board realized …

Depending on the oilfield service or product line, we’ve heard of price increases of anywhere from 5% to 40% pushed through just in the past few months alone. As service companies look for new angles to justify higher list prices, they are increasingly pointing a finger at the labor pool. …

Supply chain inflation is a trending topic in O&G. One of the biggest debates in the oilfield today centers around the sustainability of the cost reductions E&Ps achieved during the downturn. How much was lasting process change and innovation vs. temporary supply chain price concessions? E&Ps will be far more …

Just a few months ago, US land rig management teams were still touting their long-term contracts as an asset. Highlighting backlog and term duration is a defensive posture contractors assume when operators have pricing power. Rig count can rise. Dayrates can trough. But until management teams start talking about spot …

This week, Infill Thinking attended and participated in the frac sand industry conference hosted by the Petroleum Connection. With a strong agenda, the conference attracted 150 attendees including some of the industry’s biggest executives. In this update, we are sharing some of our takeaways that confirm well established trends and consensus …

At this point, we see field development as a marketplace in the very early stages of turning around. As for a broader recovery in the deepwater markets, it’s not even the first inning yet. It’s more like the stretching routine before pre-game warm ups. There’s going to be a game, but …

On Tuesday morning, we extended an open invitation to all Infill Thinking readers: come by the Starbucks on Post Oak near the Galleria in Houston and have a coffee on Infill Thinking’s tab. We were on location writing the next big Infill Thinking story and enjoyed meeting with a great group of …

The US onshore rig count increased 3 rigs to 733 running last week. The US land rig count is now up 359 rigs from the May 2016 bottom. Much of these gains have come from the Permian, where growth is being driven by horizontal drilling in both the Midland Basin and the Delaware …

If you are subscribing, we are buying… your Starbucks drink of choice! We will be available to meet with readers and talk oilfield trends over coffee next Tuesday in Houston. Here are the details: When: Tuesday, February 28 from 7am to 10am Where: Houston Galleria area Starbucks located at Post Oak and …

After the market closed Thursday evening, Hi-Crush Partners quietly dropped the equivalent of an atom bomb on the frac sand business. In a busy press release that disclosed two other deals, Hi-Crush described in muted tones plans to build the industry’s first frac sand mine in the Permian Basin. This is …