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 …
Read More »Oilfield Technologification Starts With A Spud. How & Why Land Drillers Have Gone All Apple On Us
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 …
Read More »Rigs vs. Sand Mines [Map]
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 …
Read More »The US Onshore Rig Count Is Now Eclipsing Most Year-End Estimates, And It’s Barely 2Q
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 …
Read More »How Much Longer Will This Be An Unfair Recovery? The International Outlook Is Being Walked Back.
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 …
Read More »As The Sharpest US Drilling Recovery Ever Continues, The Permian Is Being Left Out Now
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 …
Read More »Breakneck Permian Rig Count Growth Is Cooling Off Now
Unconventional drilling in the Permian’s Midland and Delaware Basins has been increasing at a breakneck pace since 4Q16. Horizontal rigs going back to work on Midland and Delaware formations alone account for 1/3rd of the total increase in Lower 48 rig count since September 30, 2016. Over the past five weeks or …
Read More »As The Permian Boom Makes National News, Infill Thinking Chimes In For NPR Piece
On March 7, National Public Radio addressed the Permian Basin’s explosive growth in a broadcast airing across 900 US radio stations. Infill Thinking founder Joseph Triepke spoke with NPR for the piece, sharing industry insider perspective on West Texas drilling and frac’ing. While we gave a nod to the recovery, we …
Read More »As Wages Begin To Increase, Service Companies Have Another Reason To Raise Prices
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. …
Read More »Oilfield Inflation Is Trending. Is It Already Curbing Rig Count Growth? [2 Charts]
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 …
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