Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve

E&P transcripts we’ve seen from recent investor conferences have been pretty upbeat all things considered. Why? Oil prices are sub-$45 and under pressure. Well, shale has some tricks up its sleeve that allow it to keep going, and we break them down here. There’s a lot more to this story… …

Back on June 12 US Silica announced their entrance into the Permian Basin frac sand mining space. This week, new details have emerged… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. …

A quick update on Hi-Crush’s new Permian mine here – specifically a picture shared with us taken from just outside their facility a few days ago. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must …

For this update we took a quick look at month-to-date horizontal drilling permitting activity in the Permian Basin. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. If you are new to …

Each Friday in June, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. We have handpicked these experts in their fields to share insights on key oilfield trends and debates. In today’s piece, online marketplace RigUp offers cost and market transparency on the Lower …

Reacting to the crude price blood bath on their screens, dozens of Wall Street research shops are blasting bearish notes to institutional investor clients as we write. There is a common thread in every one of these notes that we’ve seen. Wall Street analysts blame relentless US tight oil producers …

Infill Thinking’s Follow The Leaders series distills key unconventional E&P strategies into real-time, digestible updates. The goal? Uncover future business opportunities and risks. Today we take a look at a new value creation strategy outlined by the leader in natural gas. The meaning of value creation in shale gas has changed. There’s a lot …

Yesterday morning, EQT consolidated the Marcellus Shale by acquiring Rice Energy for $6.7bn in a deal that creates the largest natural gas producer (>3Bcfpd) in the US.  The deal is expected to close in 4Q17. The combination and new strategic direction for the combined operator has material implications for the …

Over the past several weeks, we have spoken with many industry contacts close to the Permian Basin frac sand mining scene. Our channel checks have revealed insights on geology, plant progress, challenges, tone shift, and contracting activity. In a two part series starting last week and concluding today, we are …

Everything seems lined up for an incredible 2H17 for US completion service providers. Everything except for oil prices. In a week of rampant pessimism, our obligatory negative post introduces several new developments you won’t read about anywhere else including what one of the biggest pressure pumpers in the market is telling …

The big data hype machine can be powerful, and it’s tempting to believe that building and maintaining an effective analytic capability is effortless, with limitless benefits. Today, every company in the oilfield is in the midst of a tech / big data / automation overhaul. In this guest post, Steve …

Over the past several weeks, we have spoken with many industry contacts close to the Permian Basin frac sand mining scene. Our channel checks have revealed insights on geology, plant progress, challenges, and contracting activity. In a two part series starting today and concluding next week, we are chronicling some …

We don’t take the EIA data on completions and DUCs (drilled but uncompleted wells) at face value. But we do look at their work for directional trends on DUCs, which can be a good leading indicator for trends in frac horsepower demand. In this update, you’ll find our analysis of this week’s …

On Monday after the close, US Silica announced that they will built a 4mmtpa plant “equidistant to the hearts of both the Delaware and Midland Basins.” We break down what you need to know and provide context on this announcement. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the …

Last week, the US land rig count breached 900 (stands at 902). We are now at the level Halliburton famously pronounced “the new equilibrium” one year ago. We address what this means for completions, frac horsepower, and US oil production in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the …

Each Friday in June, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. This week, Ron Davis weighs on on a classic business conundrum in deepwater. The drilling contractors have, in an effort to downplay the daunting oversupply (and possibly drive down distressed …

A dramatic run up in the Saudi Arabian rig count preceded the OPEC November 2014 decision to become a price taker and defend market share. This of course triggered the biggest collapse in US drilling history. The decision to extend OPEC quotas in May was in fact predicted by just …

Mammoth Energy Services announced Thursday that it has signed a three-year take or pay deal to provide Wisconsin frac sand to an undisclosed pressure pumper. The contract contemplates annual volumes of 720,000 tons comprised of several different grades including 20/40, 30/50, and 40/70. We have thoughts on pricing relative to recent benchmarks, what …

Is frac sand replacing rigs? It would appear so in the US onshore recovery. As unconventional drilling and completion science evolves, the industry’s surface footprint per barrel of oil produced is shrinking. A growing sub-surface footprint (which we can measure with sand) is replacing the surface sprawl. With the US onshore …

There is a new discussion topic posted in our Thinking Aloud forum today. In it we have seeded the conversation on: E&P outspending (capex vs. cash flow) behavior historically, Considerations for how much of the US onshore rig count surge is self-funded, and Thoughts on how long outspending by US …

In the Permian Basin, horizontal drilling activity is up 101 rigs so far this year. This is more than 2x the next fastest growing play (Eagle Ford +41). In this week’s Infill Thinking rig count update, we get granular on Permian growth. We’ve ranked the counties across the Permian’s basin trifecta …

Is it counterintuitive to view a court ruling against an industry participant’s expansion plans as a good thing? Yes. However, in a niche where oversupply fears have crushed the stocks of publicly traded incumbents, maybe a legal governor on the expansion plans of the few can serve the greater good. …

Each Friday in June, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. We have handpicked these experts in their fields to share insights on key oilfield trends and debates. Writing in from the east coast of Canada, Jonathan Dunnett kicks off our Fridays …

Over the past two weeks, three different EOG execs spoke at three different investor conferences. Reviewing their commentary and separating signal from noise, here’s the latest on this E&P leader’s field tactics and development strategy. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update …

Here is the latest data-point in the emerging Permian Basin frac sand mine build-out. Who filed the permit, when, where, and what’s next in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must …

Tuesday was a day of dichotomy for the notion of operational scale in offshore drilling. Even as one drilling contractor paid penance for scale bought long ago, two others ignited the next round of consolidation, extolling the virtues of operational scale in this disaggregated sector. Taken together, these two news items …

Over the next nine months, Permian Basin frac sand miners will need to hire hundreds of workers to staff up the new mines they have planned. With the Permian Basin oilfield labor market already white hot and all the new hires slated for a sparsely populated area, where will the …

As an Infill Thinking subscriber, you have some very good company. Executives, analysts, traders, salesmen, investors, academics, attorneys, regulators, and engineers from all across the oilfield now take Infill Thinking. We are humbled by the brain power of the folks we write for. That’s why we decided to do something …

  The first chapter in the Permian Basin frac sand mining story was the land grab (who was buying what where) and debate on viability. The 2H17 chapter will be execution, lab results, construction progress, and sales (whose construction is on time, whose deposit is better). One of the best datapoints to …

Today we are kicking off a new series, Follow The Leaders, in which we’ll be distilling real-time conceptual shifts discussed by leading unconventional E&Ps into quick, digestible updates. The purpose of this new series is to document only the most important big picture thinking, science, and experiments the US tight oil leaders are exploring …

Newly minted Halliburton CEO Jeff Miller spoke earlier this morning at the UBS conference in Austin, TX. Although he’s no stranger to the investment community, this was his first presentation since being named Dave Lesar’s successor. In a wide-ranging “fireside chat,” Jeff shared market insight on frac sand availability, logistics, completions …

Helmerich & Payne, the clear first mover in the last rig technology cycle, has been more “middle of the pack” this time. Until now. This week, H&P bought their way into the high tech drilling conversation with the acquisition of MOTIVE Drilling Technologies. The last time H&P press released an …

Emerge Energy Services has been in the news quite a bit recently after hosting their earnings call earlier this month and making an Eagle Ford mine acquisition a few weeks before that. After all their recent disclosures, there wasn’t a whole lot of “new news” made at their analyst day last …

We celebrate the recovery’s one-year anniversary by comparing how this recovery compares to others, revisiting our 2017 rig count forecast, and detailing rig count by region across the US. feature image photo credit: @jasplund91 There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update …

Hard to believe, but there are only six weeks left in the first half of the year. And what a first half it has been for the Permian Basin frac sand story. This year, the Permian Basin sand land grab burst on the scene like TNT, capturing the entire industry’s attention and …

On Wednesday this week, Halliburton announced that COO Jeff Miller will replace outgoing CEO Dave Lesar. In early March, Weatherford announced the hiring of then Halliburton CFO Mark McCollum as their new CEO. These two announcements may be more related than first meets the eye. There’s a lot more to …

  In a feature story on Bloomberg News Thursday morning, several research updates issued by Infill Thinking recently are featured prominently. Check out Joe Carroll’s latest must-read below… Fracking Crew Shortage May Push Oil’s Biggest Bubble Into 2018 Shale explorers pushing to expand oil production are struggling to find enough fracking crews …

Black Mountain’s message to the market has been that they would build one 4mmtpa frac sand plant in the Permian first with more facilities on their extensive 26,000 acre footprint to follow at future dates. We’ve recently heard some chatter about the company shifting to a two site initial roll …

A round up of various talking points and trends in the US frac market as it stands today including comments on pricing, utilization, availability, contracting activity, and completion size trends. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our …

Although the drilling rig itself is only about 10% of total onshore well costs these days, it has become the epicenter of the industry’s latest technology craze: automation, digitization, and big data. As market leaders embark on a new technology cycle, drilling days/well are poised to keep trending down. One day …

About a month ago, we noticed a material spike in permitting activity for horizontal wells in the Permian Basin. Based on historical data, the March spike suggested that the Permian horizontal rig count could increase further 25%. We look at what’s happened since then, and update our permitting analysis for April data in this …

Two months ago, we published an in-depth report on Encana’s 64-well monster pad, Davidson, in the Permian Basin. At the time, 19 new wells were being drilled on the pad. Those wells have now been completed. In this update, we explore the very latest details on their production, status, and Encana’s large …

The oilfield service IPO surge this year has been met with a hostile energy tape. Over the past week, two oilfield service IPOs attempted to cross the finish line: Liberty Oilfield Services and Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure. Both were met with pushback. But Solaris got done and Liberty didn’t. Here’s why and what it …

1Q17 reporting season is drawing to a close. Over the past week, we heard from two more frac sand miners: Smart Sand Inc. and Emerge Energy Services. To cap off earnings season, we went back through our conference call notes from these two producers and pulled out the eight most important points …

Smart Sand Inc., the newly public Northern White producer (February IPO), announced another Oakdale plant expansion on Thursday. This is the second expansion announced already this year and the latest example of the kind of brownfield expansion that is conspiring with regional sands to make operators happy and sand investors nervous. …

We actively monitor spending patterns for approximately 50 public independent operators. With virtually all of their 1Q17 results disclosed over the past week or two, we can now report some detailed insights on what their spending during the first quarter of the year means for the rest of 2017. There’s a lot …

In a piece several weeks ago, we detailed how Range Resource handled material frac interference in their Terryville field (see point 5). Since then most of the E&P universe has reported earnings. On conference calls, we heard more concern related to frac communication, and learned more about how E&Ps are dealing with it. …

We have uncovered two more future frac sand mines in the heart of the Permian. These sites take our “confirmed planned site” count up to 6 in the area – a figure that could easily be 10 by the end of May. Although the market is aware that Permian sand mines …

Last week after scouring air permit data, we identified a new sand mine site in Culberson County Texas In conversations with readers offline, the potential mine’s location has come up several times as a sticking point. Could this sand be stranded if indeed it is pointed at the frac industry? (questions …

The impact of in-basin sand on the US supply stack is not only the key debate in the silica industry today. It is the single most important debate in the entire US oilfield at present. Today, three-fourths of US frac sand is sourced north of the Mason-Dixon line, but there are …