Posted on 08/17/2015 3:52:22 PM PDT by bestintxas
The lowest crude prices in six years might not be enough to put the brakes on the U.S. energy renaissance.
Some parts of North Dakota’s Bakken shale play are profitable at less than $30 a barrel as companies tap bigger wells and benefit from lower drilling costs, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis. That’s less than half the level of some estimates when the oil rout began last year.
The lower bar for profitability is one reason why U.S. oil production has remained near a 40-year high even as crude prices fell more than 50 percent over the past year to the lowest level since March 2009.
“One of the explanations for why production hasn’t fallen off is that the cost has gone down so much,” David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates LLC, an energy consulting firm in Irvine, California, said by phone. “The marginal cost to produce has shrunk pretty dramatically with the drop in prices. The efficient drillers are now able to take advantage.”
West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery fell to $42.23 a barrel Thursday, the lowest settlement since March 2009. In North Dakota, where producers have to offer discounts to account for extra transportation costs, the price of Bakken oil was to $30.80 Wednesday, according to Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
(Excerpt) Read more at expressnews.com ...
Live from the Permian Basin
By Pendejo Grande on December 2, 2013
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Because I live in an oilfield community and because I don’t rely on the oilfield to put food on the table, I found this book extremely interesting. I’m an educator who has at times supplemented my income by working summers and weekends in the oilfield. Since I had to have a Commercial Drivers Licence to drive a bus as a part of my real job, it wasn’t much of a stretch to get a tractor/trailer and tanker endorsement and haul water into and out of the oilfield. I’ve even hauled water to frac jobs. I’ve hauled water away from frac jobs. Thankfully I wasn’t around much during frac jobs as they are incredibly noisy. This gives me a little different perspective maybe than the avg reader.
I’ve heard of Chesapeake and Sandridge. Actually know some people who work for them. It was incredibly interesting to learn how those two companies came in to being. Judging from the book I’d say that Awbrey McClendon and Tom Ward are borderline crooked, but my limited experience in the oilfield tells me that that’s pretty normal behavior at the top of the ladder. There couldn’t be as many crooked people at the bottom of the ladder if it didn’t get a little crooked as you went up. I’ve heard of EOG and XTO and Devon. I know some people who work for them as well, so it was interesting to see how they fit into the picture.
I would’ve liked to have been a fly on the wall when Harold Hamm met with Obama in the WH. I’d like to think that Obama wouldn’t have the gall to tell Hamm, “You didn’t build that.” but I’d proably be wrong. Oil and Water to the extreme.
My only complaint about the book is that I think it’s very difficult for east coast writers to fully understand Texas and Oklahoma culture. Zuckerman missed a f
In this case refineries just decided to increase their own profits 1200%, I have a problem with that.
Not a common way for even CA to act.
Granting your statement at face value I must ask so what? When did making a profit, even outlandish profits, become a problem? It’s why people invest their money in refineries dspite them not being a very good investment. But by your statement you are loading up on refinerier shares?
I hope they make a mint and attract an big pile of fresh investment.
none of these have anything to do to the thread.
Why are you introducing unrelated threads to this?
” Judging from the book I’d say that Awbrey McClendon and Tom Ward are borderline crooked, but my limited experience in the oilfield tells me that that’s pretty normal behavior at the top of the ladder. “
Aubrey is a shyster who was always one step ahead of his shenanigans catching up with him until Chesapeake finally ditched him.
You are putting way too many oil people into the same bucket, as I worked there for over 40 years and know overwhelmingly the majority of folks are good.
I doubt that the guy who said that CA's refineries were increasing profits 1200 percent used that same meme (or even had fully accurate data. But if you look at it as "CA's refineries were making 10 cents a gallon profit, but are now making $1.30 per gallon profit", then the profit went up by 1200 percent...
That said, I have no idea of what the real story is - just that the math could very well logically be used to support it.
All that I know is I spent $2.93 for Premium when crude is at $40 or so bucks a barrel and I spent $3.00 when oil was at $70 per barrel. So some gouging and colluding here, that’s just a fact. I understand they are stockpiling greenbacks, but with a limited refinery capacity, a handful of companies are doing old school late 19th century colluding here. I think there is too much fellating of oil and gas business on FR. They have not saved our economy as promised, growth is still anemic. Just made a few 1000 more millionaires and gave a small percentage of overall some blue collar guys jobs to a selected few.
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