Since inception, hydraulic fracturing and shale exploitation have been fraught with controversy. Initial opposition mostly came from the far left and environmentalists. So called “fracktivists” include bands of protesters, lobbyists pushing for regulation, and filmmakers documenting mythical terrors. These outsiders have presented challenges for the industry ranging from mild annoyances to outright banishment …
Read More »Could Today’s Land Drilling Leader Become Tomorrow’s Laggard?
Helmerich & Payne’s FlexRig3s have made the company the best-in-class US land driller for a decade. Ask any analyst who the best land driller with the best fleet is and they’ll say H&P almost unanimously. But will that always be the case? Now for the first time in a decade, management is having …
Read More »Introducing Infill Thinking’s 2017 US Land Rig Forecast
Last week, we rolled out an installment in our Thinking Ahead series taking a forward look at US production and estimating 2017 production levels. We’ve also been paying attention to operator commentary on 2017 drilling programs and capex. In this post, we add it all up and put our necks on the …
Read More »The APEX Predator & Weekly Rig Count Trends
There were a lot of smart things about the Nabors analyst day last week. One of those was the timing. Nabors was smart to host its event after most of the other contract drillers hosted their earnings conference calls in the weeks leading up to the event – the timing …
Read More »Campaign Speech… Of The Drilling Variety
Our regular weekly analysis of Baker Hughes rig count statistics is below, but first some campaign speech. This weekend, we are taking a break from the political rhetoric to look at drilling campaigns. For the first time in two years, the US Independents are flexing up their drilling programs. …
Read More »EOG And Continental Are Aggressively Completing Their DUCs Now
Leading Independent E&Ps like EOG Resources and Continental Resources are moving quickly now to complete their excess drilled but uncompleted (DUC) well inventories. The recent increase in oil prices into the $45 – $50 range was the signal to complete ’em if you got ’em. In this update we review the specifics …
Read More »Alpine Lows: Controversy And Growth For Apache’s New Permian Leviathan
Shares of Apache sank 7% Thursday, closing at their lowest level since the Alpine High wet gas discovery was announced in early-September. The transformational Reeves County discovery has made Apache the darling of investors for the past several months. Here’s what’s new… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …
Read More »The Two Main Reasons Why A US Land Rig Fleet Renovation Has Begun
Although it may seem early to some, another fleet improvement cycle is underway for the US land rig fleet. We covered the specific upgrade programs of several leading land drillers last week in this post. It’s a relatively humble reconstruction cycle financially speaking, involving more discrete equipment upgrades than overhauls or …
Read More »8 Interesting Things We Learned In The Past 24 Hours
It’s been a busy 24 hours. Since Wednesday morning, a dozen upstream management teams have provided business outlooks via quarterly conference calls. While drinking from this information firehose, we’ve been logging the highlights. In this post, we dissect the eight most interesting things we took away for the oilfield business at …
Read More »Weatherford Does Not Share Baker’s Frac Philosophy
As Baker prepares to exit the horsepower game, Weatherford is in no hurry to send frac packing. After reactivating 3 spreads between September to December, the company will end the year at 90% marketed utilization. Weatherford is not selling its million horsepower fleet, at least not any time soon. There’s a lot more to this story… …
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