Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve

A new protest has begun in the trucking community. It is starting small, but it is highly visible and could spread fast to the national stage. It has big implications for the oilfield. If the movement continues to grow, it could be a near-term negative for US onshore activity levels, …

The long awaited Unimin Permian sand mine location has finally been announced. A new filing reveals one of the best kept secrets of the Permian Basin sand mine rush: where will Unimin build their plant? There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, …

Friday was a big day for Borr Drilling. First the Schlumberger deal “an industry first” and now consolidation of stranded newbuilds. Borr is fast becoming the most exciting name to watch in offshore drilling. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you …

We’ve heard from a lot of sand producers lately on the prospects of and plans for in-basin sand. More important of course is the commentary from E&P companies. We’ll be hearing a lot more from them as 3Q17 reporting season rolls around here in about three weeks.  Here’s what one …

3Q17 Highlights We shipped 27 newsletters during the third quarter. Our open rate averaged 60%. Based on analysis conducted by our email service provider, e-newsletters in our category average an open rate of 15-25%. Here is the newsletter that readers found the most intriguing: 2 New Permian Mines, M&A Mistake, …

We share a peek at trucks waiting on frac sand sent into us by a reader in the Permian Basin. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free trial has expired, renew here. (Current members login here.) Subscribers get …

Here’s what you need to know about the latest rumor moving through the Permian Basin sand mining sewing circle. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free trial has expired, renew here. (Current members login here.) Subscribers get Exclusive …

Context and thoughts on the Borr / Schlumberger announcement. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free trial has expired, renew here. (Current members login here.) Subscribers get Exclusive research update newsletters High-caliber, data-driven analysis and commentary New angles on stories …

Frac sand is a unique animal in the oilfield supply chain when it comes to price benchmarking and market making. Transparency is thin creating market inefficiencies. Unlike drilling rigs, where dayrates can be standardized and tracked consistently over time, frac sand prices are extremely difficult to track for a variety …

Here’s what you need to know about the rumors that Unimin is buying Fairmount Santrol. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free trial has expired, renew here. (Current members login here.) Subscribers get Exclusive research update newsletters High-caliber, data-driven analysis …

Want to know what a ton of frac sand is going for in the Permian spot market? Want to know what could cut 30% of trucking capacity out of the market? Want to know what has everyone in the oilfield on edge these days? Want to know what people expect …

Last quarter, RigUp contributed one of Infill Thinking’s most popular guest posts to date, sharing their views on trucking rates and demand and quantifying the addressable market for hauling for the first time. So we asked them to follow that up in this Friday guest post with a look at …

We are tracking 19 new frac sand mines worth 70mmtpa in the Permian Basin. We know where all but one of them are. We got some indication that the mystery site is moving forward this week, but we still don’t have a location… There’s a lot more to this story… …

The largest frac sand industry conference begins today (Wednesday 9/27) in Houston. And as the industry’s movers and shakers gathered over breakfast this morning, a leading sand producer dropped the news of their second planned facility in the Permian Basin derailing who knows how many conversations… Here’s our quick thoughts …

The US land rig count peaked most recently on August 4, 2017. Since then, it is down 21 rigs and down again slightly this week. Without the Permian Basin, it’d be down even more. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you …

A leading environmentalist group has issued a new report on sand production in the Permian Basin and it’s impact on the dune sagebrush lizard. The report says  sand mining is a threat to the lizard that overshadows all the rest. Login to get the details on this new development… There’s a …

Infill Thinking founder and principal research analyst Joseph Triepke will present an overview of the Permian Basin frac sand rush as part of a panel including senior executives from three Permian sand producers. The presentation will be delivered Thursday morning September 28, 2017 in Houston. In this update, subscribers may …

The local press in West Texas reports that a listing petition is to be filed imminently. This could impact both Permian E&P and frac sand producers. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free trial …

The debate around in-basin 40/70 grade frac sand quality heated up earlier this week when one Permian sand producer argued vigorously that customers will not buy local 40/70 because it is too fine and fragile. Preferred Sands, whose West Texas reserve profile is 50% 40/70, shared their response to this …

It’s not the full house cleaning analysts want to see, but the offshore drilling industry took a positive step towards healing today. More retirements is something one of our guest contributors, Ron Davis, called for in an analysis piece this summer. More retirements is what we got today…   There’s …

Historically, the sand dune fields in Winkler County Texas have primarily been used for cattle ranching. In the span of 9 months, 14 massive sand mines have been permitted in these ranchers’ backyards. Winkler ranches don’t change hands often – most have been in the same families for generations. So …

We provide experience-based insight on EOG’s latest corporate strategy move and break down how peers compare. We also discuss how this fits into current trends and why it makes sense in the new shale paradigm. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, …

The Kermit area is extremely dry, having averaged just 11 inches of precipitation per year since 2000 per NOAA records. That’s only about 1/3rd of the national average. Locals we are in contact with as well as some environmental experts we’ve spoken with recently have mentioned that it has been …

While the Lions were busy pummeling the Giants 24-10 on Monday night, Hi-Crush was hosting an analyst day (or night as it were) for investors. Over dinner at the Holiday Inn in Odessa Texas, the event showcased nine senior executives providing an in-depth overview of the company’s business and introducing …

We report breaking news from one of the new entrants in the Permian frac sand mine race. We think through some interesting angles about this new plant plan, this player’s second disclosed in the Permian Basin. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research …

In this update we examine drilling permit data for South Texas to infer how the storm and subsequent flooding has impacted drilling rig demand in the region. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free …

As the Permian frac sand mining story moves from the exploration phase to the execution phase, we thought it’d be interesting to get Tommy Mathews‘s view on the challenges and considerations that Permian miners should be thinking about as they enter production mode. The land grab is over. It’s time …

In this update we share the latest on frac sand mine openings in the Permian including an exclusive look at the very latest at the 2nd site coming online. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If …

Last week, more than 75 oilfield executive presented their outlooks at the Barclays Energy-Power conference in New York. We thumbed through all the transcripts to extract the most interesting new insights on the frac sand market. We glossed over pedestrian talking points, capturing only new and interesting stuff that we …

Solaris Oilfield Infrastructure’s shale presence is expanding rapidly. If you blink you might miss their next system deployment (most deployments are configured as silo six-packs). In this update, a look at their progress, their system up close and personal, and what’s next for this fast growing newcomer in the US …

During the third quarter, the US onshore rig count trajectory has finally leveled off. We wrote about the stall a couple weeks ago in this update.  Speaking at an investor conference last week, two leading land drillers shrugged off the industry-wide rig count stall. See what they said in the …

When I first met Todd Bush, he was laying the groundwork for the research firm he co-founded in 2012, Energent Group. Even back then when his databases and software were in their early stages of development I recall being impressed by the granularity of the charts and output he was generating. …

At this point in the cycle, what every US shale market observer wants to know is when that big wave of newbuild pressure pumping equipment orders is going to hit. Pricing has been on the rise for over a year. Re-deployments have been the supply growth story so far, but …

There’s a new discussion topic in our forum on the Eagle Ford frac sand situation post Harvey. We’ve been hearing from industry sources this week word about temporary supply chain issues in Eagle Ford frac sand. We share what we’ve learned and invite readers to weigh in. Read & Discuss …

Last week we noted that Harvey left us with more upstream questions than answers… questions we expected to begin to get answered this week at the Barclays CEO Energy-Power Conference in New York. On Tuesday afternoon, the first public O&G event since the storm commenced and most companies provided hurricane business …

In this update, two quick charts to illustrate relative Wall Street sentiment divergence across the oilfield value chain. It’s been a rough year for O&G stocks in general, with the OSX index underperforming the S&P 500 by 42% year-to-date. But to really understand how Wall Street views the oilfield value …

In an unusual step, Baker Hughes declared Friday that an update on South Texas rig count was impossible to capture last week due to Hurricane Harvey. New drilling permits show the impact though… and we quantify that in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this …

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic impact on Gulf Coast communities and enterprise, attention now turns to recovery timetables and rebuilding. At this point, quantifying the upstream onshore impact is still an exercise in speculation. So in this update, we share detailed questions folks who want to understand the …

In this Friday guest post, Susan Murphy (Publisher and Editor in Chief of The OCTG Situation Report®) provides some clear thinking on the Section 232 trade investigation. Section 232 is a controversial import swing factor injecting uncertainty in the OCTG sub-sector. We asked Susan to share her latest thoughts on status, …

Impressions, takeaways, and observations from a morning spent with Black Mountain Sand in West Texas touring their new sand plants Vest and El Dorado. A slideshow of construction pictures is included in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you …

Over in our Thinking Aloud Forum, there is a new discussion topic on Hurricane Harvey’s onshore upstream impact. Most of the attention in the wake of the storm will focus on downstream, commodity prices, and offshore impacts. In the thread we provide a list of useful references on these areas …

As expected, the Lower 48 rig count recovery is losing steam during 3Q17. Here’s 3 charts and thoughts on what it means for completions… There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a subscriber. If your free trial has expired, …

Infill Thinking staff spent a full week in the Permian Basin in August 2017, touring facilities and visiting with contacts and management teams. We’ve collected 43 “quick hits” – crowd sourced datapoints and general market observations. Our time in the Permian was spent on the completions supply chain, particularly around …

Some Infill Thinking readers may have known the High Roller name even before the company became a player in the Permian Basin sand rush. High Roller is the parent company of a diverse mix of oilfield businesses including waste water hauling, SWDs, sand transloading, and man camps. The firm is …

Tomorrow another new area sand producer will host a job fair in Odessa. We expect there will be quite a few more of these job fairs at area hotels before year-end. See what some local mines are doing to recruit staff and also the competition and challenges for talent that …

This update is Infill Thinking’s fourth and final installment of crowd sourced datapoints and firsthand observations from our Permian visit last week. Most of our field trips in the Permian this time were focused on the new sand mining efforts around Kermit and logistics/storage from transload to wellsite. Subscribers have …

The US onshore rig market continues to consolidate not because of M&A but thanks to the dominance of horizontal drilling and rig specification escalation. In the four charts below, we share a time series of market share charts for Nabors Industries, Patterson-UTI, Helmerich & Payne and Precision Drilling. There’s a …

Since the Texas Comptroller’s letter singled out sand producers last week, West Texas miners have been inundated with questions. Investors and customers alike are becoming more concerned than ever about the trend’s exposure to Dune Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) habitat. We provide highlights from one company’s response supplemented with our firsthand knowledge from a …

In this update, more from our recent trip behind the scenes in the Permian Basin frac sand mining build-out including contract price datapoints, lizard talk, a mine location identified, and trucking observations and deductions. There’s a lot more to this story… To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you …

Crowd sourced datapoints and firsthand observations from our Permian visit this week are being shared in a series of “quick hits.” These bullet point lists include field-level market intelligence on wellsite trends, the frac sand mining rush, and the Permian oilfield at large. There’s a lot more to this story… …