Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve

Here’s the very latest on the 4mmtpa Black Mountain frac sand plant that is scheduled to start up this month. 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 …

A couple weeks into 2018, the hottest basin in the US is already pulling out ahead as the leader in horizontal rig count growth. This is a trend likely to continue as this play further separates itself from the pack as the hottest play in the US this year. So …

Ironically, all the recent talk of restraint by tight oil operators is a contributing factor to the recent crude oil price rally. In turn, rising oil prices will put to the test this newfound US operator resolve to reign in the willy nilly spending of prior upcycles. With WTI an …

Late Friday afternoon, Vista Proppants and Logistics formally announced their intent to go public. The Vista S-1 is packed with interesting revelations. If you don’t have several hours to pore over its 278 pages, here are our CliffsNotes: There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full …

We’ve got videos of West Texas sandstorms this week as well as thoughts on what the wind gusts mean for in basin frac sand. Spoiler alert – this is a significant and underappreciated risk and we explain why in this update… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to …

Since New Year’s Day, ~40 fresh IR decks have hit the wires from the O&G industry… and that doesn’t even include downstream or midstream. The presentation dump came ahead of the year’s first significant O&G investor conference this week. We have cherry-picked the following datapoints with 2018 implications from public …

In the chart below, we’ve attempted to quantify a relatively opaque, highly competitive, and rapidly evolving last mile market segment – well-site frac sand handling and storage. As completion intensity exploded over the past few years, frac sand handling at the well-site just before it enters the blender and is …

News of another Permian frac sand plant is starting to make the rounds this week. We had a chance to catch up with the company’s president by phone to hear exclusive details about the growth plans. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To …

  In this update we take a look at market share among the leading land drilling contractors. Starting with winners and losers from 2017, we then look at present share and future market share strategies for the group. In what may be a flattish rig count environment in 2018, the …

After recent requests from subscribers, we’ve refreshed several different looks at the West Texas frac sand scene. Subscribers are able to download maps in pdf form. 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 …

Well, the new year isn’t wasting any time pushing a steady stream of oilfield datapoints across our desk. Although we could easily write a full update on each of these, some of these items fall outside our typical research update scope. So we bundled the quick hits that we found …

A year from now, 20 new Permian frac sand mines could be operational if all build-out plans unfold as expected. Many risks linger in this story, particularly surety of supply at the wellhead and downhole performance. But let’s imagine for a moment a future world where the West Texas frac sand …

We have seen some recent market commentary interpreting a lackluster Permian rig count response to the 4Q17 oil price rally as evidence of a change in E&P behavior or appetite for Permian development. We do not believe this interpretation is accurate.  In this update, see what we believe are the real …

The OneStim JV between Schlumberger and Weatherford contemplated in March of 2017 has broken apart. Instead, Weatherford sold off its idled pressure pumping business to Schlumberger. What does this mean for the players and the market? We have some thoughts here… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to …

The explosion of new industrial (silica) sand mining and processing operations in west Texas suggests the need for a review of one of the oldest known occupational diseases, silicosis, and the strategies that sand mining and processing operations can adopt to prevent the development of silicosis among their respective employees. …

We believe the following 20 questions encapsulate the transcendent themes facing the US oilfield service market during 2018. These are not in any particular order. We have included plenty of context and background for each question, but we stopped short of answering them. As the new year begins, so much can still …

Infill Thinking Holiday Cheer For Christmas 2017: http://www.infillthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Twas-the-Frac-Before-Christmas.mp3 Lyrics: ‘Twas the frac before Christmas, when all around the well Not a frac hand was stirring, or even a DSL; The frac sand was late, stored at transload with care, In hopes that a pneumatic trailer soon would be there. The …

On Wednesday afternoon this week, we had a chance to touch base with ProFrac executives to learn about their ambitious 2018 growth plan. Infill Thinking spoke by phone with Ladd Wilks and Matt Wilks – Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of ProFrac, respectively. Here’s what we learned… There’s a …

This year, we’ve found it helpful to keep an eye on the frac spread count (FSC) maintained by Primary Vision, Inc. So we called our friend Matt Johnson, a principal at the data firm that maintains the FSC, to learn more about how this metric came to be and the methodology behind …

Subscribers will relive a lively year of action by seeing the top research updates Infill Thinking published this year. We also revisit the amazing guest posts shared by 21 contributing subscribers this year. Our readers are the smartest in the business! There’s a lot more to this story… Login to …

Just a heads up that a new thread has been started by William Edwards over in the Infill Thinking discussion forum. In the thread, William thinks about how a recent change in the Cushing WTI specs will impact Canadian prices and ultimately world crude oil prices. Spoiler alert – it’s not …

Big news in the Permian Basin local sands story from a player that has remained under the radar. This will have everyone talking today… 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 …

As the year draws to a close, here’s a look around the nation at the hottest onshore drilling basins and how they stack up this year on activity growth. Also included is a discussion of how the actual overall trend in US drilling compares to expectations a year ago and …

Well, after all the outcry leading up to mandate day, did anyone really expect a smooth start? On Monday December 18, soft enforcement of the new electronic logging device (ELD) rules began. We discuss what happened when shifts began in this new era and what it may mean for the …

In July, we wrote about the risk of hidden delays for trucks carrying locally sourced frac sand from new plants direct to wells, noting that some challenges are impossible to understand by simply looking at a map. These are things like stop lights, rail crossings, road quality, school zones, left …

Water sourcing comes up often in our conversations with all sorts of different Permian Basin oilfield participants these days. Extreme thirst is the tight oil industry’s open secret – sourcing is more opaque than supply chain elements like rigs, horsepower, pipe and sand. We quantify surging water use in West …

Experienced E&P strategist Paul Sparks has been thinking about the future of what today is a highly fragmented E&P industry. As the US unconventional business matures, will it always be run by 50+ public Independents and hundreds of smaller privates? Or is mass consolidation the future? History and some of …

50% of the 70 industry respondents to our recent 2018 outlook survey predicted that the US frac spread count would return to the prior cyclical high (450) next year. In our analysis of the survey results, we noted that this development would require material frac horsepower newbuild orders to be placed. …

2017 was Infill Thinking’s first full year in business. Readership growth this year has far exceeded my initial expectations, and the Infill Thinking team is honored and grateful to have earned your trust in our market intel. This year, we turned down multiple requests from oilfield companies interested in advertising …

Unimin and Fairmount Santrol have decided to combine in a merger expected to close mid-2018. The deal will create the largest frac sand supplier in the US. The merger of these two sand bellwethers has been rumored “seriously” since October and “casually” since well before that. In fact, back in …

Since April, the geo-transformation of the frac sand business has accelerated. In the following charts, we’ve taken our previously published rigs vs. mines cartographical analysis a step further. In the slideshow below, we’ve included a map of historical frac sand supply sources, the new map with three West Texas in-basin …

On Wednesday, the fierce competition that has characterized the Permian Basin frac sand rush all year will be put on hold for a couple hours. We have exclusive details on why and what’s going on in this update…   There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the …

For more than two years, the North American Energy industry has struggled with low prices. Companies have idled workers and equipment, squeezed vendors, and taken additional cost cutting measures. But our problem isn’t oil prices. Rather, it’s the self-inflicted costs.   There’s a lot more to this story… Login to …

On Tuesday, we warned that by taking their foot of the capex gas pedal at this point in the cycle, the Independents risk ceding share in shale development to the Majors. On Wednesday, Chevron’s 2018 budget release confirmed that this indeed will happen if actions follow words. There’s a lot …

During recent conversations with several Permian Basin industry contacts, we caught wind that a new fresh water entrant is marketing third party fresh water via pipeline to the new construction frac sand mines going in around Kermit. We did a bit more digging and then called the company and received …

We believe the recent surge of returns-focus rhetoric from E&Ps is having a considerable impact on consensus expectations for US shale E&P spending. This was evident in our recent survey, where participants expressed a bullish view on y/y oil price trends yet waxed conservative on the spending outlook. In this …

For this update, Lonquist & Co. has shared some independently collected West Texas frac sand sample data with Infill Thinking. The results establish some third-party benchmarks for locally-sourced Permian proppant specs. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our …

As E&P spending continues to recover, land driller spending looks poised to embark on a fourth straight year of decline. Precision Drilling released their 2018 capex program on Monday. We analyze the numbers in this update… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To …

Last week, we asked readers to answer 13 questions about the outlook for 2018. The focus of our survey was key trends and themes in the US onshore business. Participation was strong, with a diverse mix of respondents – all of whom are well informed on Lower 48 trends. In …

Since 2013, the offshore drillers have underperformed six other upstream sectors we track by an average of 70%. In this update we look beyond the market cap dislocation at a key hire and recent IPO filings. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To …

Each Friday in the last month of each quarter, we pass our keyboard to an Infill Thinking subscriber to weigh in from their field. In October, two ENGOs provided a notice to the Comptrollers office of their intent to petition the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list the dunes …

Three Permian Basin mines are producing frac sand today.  Over the next four months, six more plants are planned to begin commercial production in the Basin. Will all go according to plan? And who will win the race to be the next plant online? We have field-level updates on all …

We poll subscribers on key questions about the 2018 oilfield service outlook. Our Q&A will reveal consensus among some of the industry’s smartest minds about 2018 trends, themes, and debates. To participate and view the results, please login or subscribe. At Infill Thinking, we are very aware of what our …

In our weekly rig count update this week, we take a look at how frac sand volume per rig has trended the past few years. Plotting the sand/rig ratio reveals a rapid sea change in the Lower 48 oilfield service value chain.   There’s a lot more to this story… …

If oil drivers are leaving for sand in larger numbers now, that would suggest that frac sand hauling rates may have reached a tipping point that converts drivers. We examine the differences in hauling oil vs. sand both pay and scope and discuss a potential tipping point that could have …

High winds ripped through the West Texas dune strip during the past couple days, reminding us of fugitive dust and inventory erosion risks. West Texas poses a unique environmental challenge that the frac sand mining industry has never had to deal with at scale before. We believe wind will be …

Helmerich & Payne closed out C3Q17 earnings season for the land drillers late-last week. Here are the three statements that we found most interesting… 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 …

There’s a new reader-submitted post in our thinking aloud forum, please visit the thread here to read and discuss how (and potentially why) the oil price rally is masking some important disconnects. Emerging discounts are impacting tight oil producers who sell product based of WTI benchmarks, but it may not …

This is the kind of update we hate to write. Every O&G company we know goes to great lengths avoid fatal accidents. Few industries emphasize safety as much as O&G. But in a physical business like this, occupational hazards are very real. Our coverage will serve two purposes and two …

Infill Thinking visited the third Permian Basin frac sand mine to come online back when it was under construction in August. With the plant coming online last week, we share exclusive details from our time on site with management as well as the very latest on the startup from our …