Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve

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 …

This week, Offshore Technology Conference attendance fell for a third straight year. Higher oil prices and the US onshore recovery didn’t buoy turnout. That said, attendance might have slipped more without the draw of US onshore technology exhibits at the event. We’ve got stats charts and anecdotes from the conference in this …

As usual, NOV’s earnings call last week provided detailed color on the oilfield supply chain. CEO Clay Williams always does a good job of taking listeners inside his manufacturing shops around the oil patch. If there is iron in the oilfield, there’s a good chance at least some part of …

Infill Thinking members are already up to speed on the first two frac sand mine facilities planned in the Permian Basin (Hi-Crush’s Kermit site and Black Mountain’s first Winkler County mine). Although other specific sites have yet to be announced, it’s no surprise they are in the works. Today, we identified two more …

If deepwater rig demand were to begin its ascent today, it would be met with a glut of rigs that would render the impact on dayrates, and indeed contractor bottom lines, relatively impotent. If more rigs aren’t removed from the structural oversupply before demand moves higher, drilling contractors are at risk …

A quick update here (including our first visual) on the new Permian Basin frac sand mine that started it all. On Monday evening the new facility’s owner provided an update on the new mine’s construction progress. As part of that, the company shared the very first peek at what they’ve been building …

Most industry observers now accept that the oilfield is on a path towards digitization, big data, machine learning, more integration, and automation. Instinctually, most of these same observers would probably not pick land contract drilling as a segment to lead the charge. But it has become increasingly clear to us that …

Can lower quality, logistically advantage frac sand deposits take on and potentially displace Northern White supply railed into the hottest completions markets? This question has quickly rocketed up the controversy leader-board, becoming one of the most hotly contested debates in the entire upstream industry today. As the first industry publication …

A portfolio manager I worked for in a prior life always said “focus on process not outcome.” It’s a helpful way of approaching problem solving and decision making by shutting out the distraction of daily progress toward goal. At the end of the day, outcome is all that really matters to stakeholders …

With 27 oilfield earnings reports this week, including a dozen conference calls on Thursday alone, C-suites across the patch opened the information flood gates. We continue to pore over transcripts and 10-Qs. For this update, we are driving right on past the usual suspects. Laterals are getting longer, sand’s expensive and …

On ExxonMobil’s conference call Friday, we will be listening for talking points on two key development areas in particular: the Permian Basin and the deepwater Liza development offshore Guyana. The Liza development is especially important as it is one of the first major deepwater projects that is moving forward since the …

This week, we put the oil market’s biggest open question to oil traders on Twitter. What will OPEC do in exactly one month when the group meets to decide whether to extend the production quotas implemented in November 2016? We polled the most influential oil trading group on Twitter (#OOTT) on …

US Silica hosted a positive call to kick off 1Q17 earnings season for the frac sand industry this morning. The outlook provided was bullish for both demand and pricing. The company’s commentary on the emerging Permian local sands market both validated our own thesis and introduced cautionary notes into the …

So far in the upcycle, the well cost inflation discussion has largely focused on hydraulic fracturing pricing (both HHP / stage pricing and consumables). Rightly so, as leading edge price per stage has essentially doubled year-over-year. Prices for surface casing and tubing (collectively OCTG) are rising cyclically as well and the market is …

With all the talk of local sands in recent weeks, we thought it’d be worthwhile to map rigs vs. mines. Shown on our map in this update is the dispersion of the US horizontal rig count plotted against the percentage of US frac sand capacity arising from a half dozen …

If you ever want to nerd-out, visit Core Lab’s Houston facility. After a tour, you’ll understand why “lab” is part of their name. This is the highest-IQ company in oilfield service. They are also closer to operators’ rock than any other service firm. Core Lab is not a pressure pumping …

With Schlumberger’s earnings call this morning, oilfield earnings season is officially underway. CEO Paal Kibsgaard addressed several of the themes we expect to dominate the conversation this earnings season including US price increases and activity strength and maybe over-exuberance, sluggish international conditions, aggressive frac reactivation, new business models in offshore drilling, …

After announcing the acquisition of a San Antonio sand mine on Monday, Emerge Energy Services hosted a conference call on Wednesday to discuss the deal and future plans for the site. If you need to get up to speed on the transaction and our initial take, please refer to this …

Earnings season begins Friday morning. Here’s our cheat sheet of just the most important themes and trends to listen for as management teams discuss the outlook. We’ve broken down the cheat sheet by US onshore E&P, majors, completion service providers, frac sand miners, onshore drilling, offshore drilling, and diversified oilfield services, …

  This update started with three qualitative observations we wrote about over the past several days. These sent us back into the spreadsheets for today’s piece. We sliced and diced drilling data to expound on Haynesville green shoots, a Delaware Basin push, and frac sand valuation commentaries. There’s a lot more …

Alongside Emerge Energy Services’ Eagle Ford sand mine announcement on Monday, the company also gave us the first peek at actual 1Q17 sand demand. 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 …

Back in early-March, we wrote to subscribers that a frac sand miner was evaluating a deposit outside San Antonio to serve the Eagle Ford (see point 1 here), something we picked up on the sidelines of the industry’s leading conference. This morning, Emerge Energy Services announced they’ve closed an Eagle Ford …

It won’t come as a surprise to most of our readers that a slew of O&G IPOs are coming to market. Instead of rubbing our hands together with excitement, perhaps we should be wringing them in worry. We are now monitoring about 20 US onshore oilfield IPO deals collectively sized at …

Infill Thinking’s subscriber base increased seven-fold during the first three months of 2017. If you are reading this, you have some fast growing company! You also have some high-IQ company. Our trusted research updates are now helping many high-ranking oilfield executives to make better business decisions and stay ahead of trends. …

In this update, we provide a round up of Wall Street frac sand demand projections for 2017 and 2018 and discuss how the forecasts have evolved dramatically over the past 4-6 weeks. We also discuss whether the leading edge estimates are even possible for the industry to deliver on. There’s …

The latest EOG Resources well in the Delaware basin is turning heads after a big IP24. It also has implications for frac sand consumption. We’ve got all the details for you in this update (take out our free 30-day trial below to read). There’s a lot more to this story… …

Drilling permit data from March showed increased operator appetite for drilling and more room to run for the rig count. We share a chart capturing the trend and break down the permit data into actionable analysis on hot spots and top operators. There’s a lot more to this story… Login …

Along with many others in the industry, we actively monitor the Haynes & Boone Spring borrowing base re-determination survey each year. Released this week, the law firm’s latest survey suggests that bankers have shrugged off the capital destruction left by the downturn’s 120 O&G bankruptcies. There’s a lot more to this …

The conversation about frac sand this year has largely revolved around access to it. Topics of debate have fallen into three buckets: i) inflation, ii) logistics, and iii) whether the mines will be able to meet (or overshoot) the rising call on supply. But skyrocketing sand pumped per well has an …

Thanks in part to the renewed exploration push in the UK, Transocean just announced two new contracts for the Transocean Spitsbergen (a 2009-built UDW HDHE semi) for Statoil drilling programs. The dayrate is near break-even, but that’s the least interesting thing about these contract awards… Digging deeper, a $27mm difference in the contract …

Last November before the OPEC meeting, we published a 2017 US land rig count forecast, which called for about 825 US land rigs working at year-end 2017. At the time, our forecast called for sharper growth during 1H17 than consensus expectations, with the pace of activity gains leveling off during 2H17. In this …

Last week, we presented our business outlook for the oilfield to kick off the day at the WorkforceNEXT energy conference in Houston. This gathering is the largest for HR executives in the O&G industry each year. And attendance this year was a record high – a sign of the times. …

Current members login here to read full story… West Texas Ranchers in Winkler County know the name Black Mountain Sand well. Now, operators in the Permian are getting to know the name Black Mountain Sand. Soon everyone that cares about frac sand will know the name. The company is working on the …

Schlumberger’s position and perspective on the North American market might best be described as a love-hate relationship. Endorsing the Lower 48 onshore outlook is simply not in Schlumberger’s DNA. Even as the company describes challenges that may make the North American E&P model unsustainable, it can’t resist getting bigger in …

US tight oil activity continues to recover in a global vacuum. Since the US rig count bottomed in May 2016, international onshore drilling is essentially flat and offshore activity is down 14%. How much longer will this be the case? We share some important charts and describe how the outlook has …

Note: Each Friday in March, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. We hope you enjoy the thoughts these hand-picked contributors have to share. This week, Doug Sheridan shares some unique perspective on Weatherford’s legacy problem and potential opportunity. There’s a …

Nabors released an operational update Monday morning, disclosing how the rapid US rig count growth trajectory during the first quarter is impacting their business. Like Halliburton, Nabors is incurring unexpected costs associated with the outsized growth relative to prior expectations. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …

Friday was a potentially transformative day for the US frac business. Not to be outdone by Halliburton’s big news Friday morning, Schlumberger and Weatherford dropped their own bombshell Friday evening. Schlumberger and Weatherford are combining their hydraulic fracturing businesses into a OneStim JV, which will be 70% owned by Schlumberger. …

In the recent past, US and Saudi drilling programs have exhibited an inverse relationship. The Saudis ramped aggressively into the downturn, and maintained elevated drilling levels while the US rig count crashed. Now as the US is ramping aggressively, the Saudis have toned things down a bit. Feature image credit: Instagram user …

Halliburton took an unusual step on Friday morning, hosting a conference call before the quarter ended to provide an operational update. On the call, Big Red put all other US pumpers on notice: the US is their turf and they won’t give it up easy. The company has executed a strategic pivot from …

There is a dark side to the booming Permian Basin frac market. This week, we followed a lead into the underbelly of the Permian Basin oilfield, investigating chatter we are now hearing about frac sand heists at transload terminals. We have now confirmed with multiple industry sources that recent thefts of …

Note: Each Friday in March, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. We hope you enjoy the thoughts these hand-picked contributors have to share. This week, former sell-side analyst Jeffrey Spittel joined us with a terrific look at the division in …

One of our takeaways from the Petroleum Connection’s frac sand conference in Houston earlier this month was the threat of cheap, quick supply coming online from brownfield capacity expansion. Over the past several weeks, this threat has fed investor concerns that looming supply growth will soften the frac sand market which …

Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure Inc. filed for a $100mm IPO late last week. Solaris is one of the frac sand last mile logistics companies highlighted in our deep dive report, which identified the company as a likely candidate to go public this year. Unlike some other new last mile solutions focused …

As Upstreamonline first reported and we discussed last week, Norwegian startup Borr Drilling has been sniffing around Transocean’s jackup fleet. On Monday, Borr Drilling put out a press release confirming the reports. The company says it has signed an LOI with Transocean for the purchase of 15 jackups. Transocean has not released …

In our previous weekly rig count update, we noted that Permian growth has been slowing and provided some thinking as to why. This week, Lower 48 drilling surged, printing its best weekly gain since January. But the Permian was notably absent from the party. We’ve got charts, stats and analysis on …

Earlier this week, we published an in-depth look at Encana’s Davidson pad in the Permian. 64 wells are planned at this site, making it the largest full-scale development in the Permian. We believe that reader response to a report like this can often be more compelling than the report itself, for …

Note: Each Friday in March, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. We hope you enjoy the thoughts these hand-picked contributors have to share.     There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read …