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Oil production from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shale plays look like they’ve peaked and other shale plays may not be far behind. Oil production from seven major U.S. shale plays is expected to fall by a total of 86,000 barrels a day in June, according to a monthly report from the Energy Information Administration released Monday. The previous report released a month ago also showed a forecast for a fall of 57,000 barrels a day in May. Oil output at the Eagle Ford shale play in South Texas is forecast to see the biggest decline, down 47,000 barrels a...

Oil producer EOG Resources Inc has the lion’s share of an estimated 900 North Dakota wells waiting to be fracked, according to state data, showing that even major oil titans are mothballing operations while they hope for a rebound in oil prices. For months the conventional wisdom in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation had been that smaller producers with weak cash flow comprised the bulk of that estimate. While the estimate had been published monthly, it was not clear until a Tuesday update from the state’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) who was dominating the list. Oilfield service companies have...

The shale oil bonanza that made millionaires from Texas to North Dakota is slowing down for the first time in years, a sign that painful industry cutbacks are starting to have an impact. The nation’s oil production is set to slip this month by 57,000 barrels a day as natural declines in older shale wells outpace gains from newly drilled wells, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its monthly drilling report on Monday. More than 70,000 barrels of oil a day are expected to be lost from April to May in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, South Texas’ Eagle Ford...

he State Oil and Gas Division has taken action against five oil companies that are flaring more gas than is allowed under the state’s new gas flaring order and policies. Starting this month, the companies were ordered to choke down production to 100 barrels per day on certain wells or face potential daily penalties. Division spokeswoman Alison Ritter said this is the highest number of companies and the most wells to be placed under restriction since a flaring order went into effect, calling for companies to capture 77 percent of produced gas by start of January this year. The companies...

Energy: New federal regulations on fracking on public land ignore a study documenting that methane found in well water is unrelated to the location of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells. When the Obama administration recently released its new regulations on fracking — regulations that it said were needed to keep up with the advance and success of the decades-old technology to meet public safety needs — the Independent Petroleum Association of America and Western Energy Alliance immediately filed suit, saying that the new regs were based on "unsubstantiated concerns" that lacked any scientific basis. "Hydraulic fracturing has been conducted...

Following a spate of explosive accidents involving North Dakota crude, the state on Wednesday began requiring companies to remove certain liquids and gases from oil before it's loaded onto rail cars -- a move industry and state regulators believe will make for safer shipments. The rules, developed over the past year, require all crude from the oil patch to be treated by heat or by pressure to reduce its volatility before being loaded onto train cars. "North Dakota's crude oil conditioning order is based on sound science and represents an important step in the ongoing work to ensure that oil-by-rail...

I’m tossing you a softball. Now think carefully. The choices are: A. Zero B. Zero C. Zero D. Zero I know Americans are math challenged and need a calculator to subtract 10 from 20, but I think even a CNBC bimbo or Princeton economic professor could get this one right. Last year there was much banter from the Wall Street shysters and Bakkan shale oil experts about the true breakeven price for shale oil not being $80 (which is the truth) but actually being as low as $58 a barrel. They were spreading this lie in order to keep idiot...

EIA's most recent Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) indicates a change in the crude oil production growth patterns in three key oil producing regions: the Eagle Ford, Niobrara, and Bakken. The DPR estimates, which were issued on March 9 and cover the months of March and April, include the first projected declines in crude oil production in these regions since publication of the DPR began in October 2013. However, with production gains continuing in other regions, particularly the Permian, overall crude oil production in regions tracked by the DPR rose slightly in March to 5.6 million barrels per day. Total production...

We keep waiting for the bust, the gigantic rollover of oil companies that just plain collapse under their own weight and the $50 price that you get for West Texas Intermediate. It hasn't happened. We keep waiting for the junk bond market that is riddled with $200 billion in oil and gas paper to be crushed by defaults and restructurings. It hasn't been. In fact, the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bd, the high-yield exchange-traded fund that includes a lot of this suspect paper, is pretty much unchanged for the last three years and has enjoyed a sustained rally...

Fiery explosions from North DakotaÂ’s Bakken oil in recent weeks are raising questions about the safety of the light, sweet crude, even with new oil conditioning standards to take effect April 1, at the same time that a major North American railroad is questioning whether it even wants to be in the crude transport business (see story below). But North DakotaÂ’s top industry regulator says the new standards are only one part of the solution to eliminate rail car explosions, so heÂ’s urging the federal government to hurry with its new rail safety rules. In December, the North Dakota Industrial...

The U.S. shale boom may finally be slowing down, according to projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Oil production from the six largest shale plays in the U.S. will hit 5.6 million barrels per day in April, an increase of less than 300 barrels per day over March, the EIA said in its monthly drilling productivity report on Monday. The increase would be the smallest since February 2011. If the EIA’s projection holds, April’s production would be a drastic decrease from a record-breaking surge in 2014; in 10 of the last 16 months, U.S. oil production gained at least...

Despite falling oil prices, production cutbacks and persistent safety concerns, rail officials plan to continue shipping millions of gallons of volatile crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota through Texas, according to updated records provided by state officials on Wednesday. Average weekly volumes reflect little change from a first batch of disclosures released last week. Those disclosures, dated last summer, provided a limited view of forecasted shipments. Volumes in Harris County remain the highest, an average topping out at six million gallons a week. Federal emergency orders — approved last spring after a series of fiery derailments involving...

I have been supplied an Excel spreadsheet of all North Dakota wells back to 2006, thanks to Enno Peters and Dennis Coyne. I only used the data back to 2007 however. This is a wealth of information if we want to know how many wells came on line in a given month, we simply count them. We are given the monthly production data for each month. And since we have the monthly production data we can very easily figure the decline rate of each well, or any group of wells for any month or year. A note on the data....

Energy: Three million gallons of Bakken crude burning in rural West Virginia after an oil train derails in a snowstorm ought to underscore the environmental safety of replacing rail cars with the Keystone XL pipeline. One of the reasons President Obama says he'll veto the Keystone pipeline bill that, as a result of last November's GOP electoral gusher, has found its way to his desk is that it will only carry Canadian crude to foreign markets and is not worth jeopardizing the environment. Two things are wrong with that argument. The first is that Keystone XL will also bring Bakken...

Stimulus: Obama says jobs from the Keystone project aren't permanent and it's just one pipeline that will move foreign oil to foreign markets. But fixing the bridge he once used as a prop didn't create permanent jobs either. 'Let's set our sights above a single pipeline," the leader of the party of infrastructure told Congress in the State of the Union. But this Congress has 80 more Republicans than when he took office, and on Thursday the Senate rejected his admonition by a 62-36 vote. Eight Democrats crossed the aisle after a series of amendment votes, a process that had...

Energy Policy: In spite of dramatically lower methane emissions from fracking, according to the EPA's own data, the agency wants to impose draconian regulations on the oil and gas industry similar to those on coal. The new rules that the White House announced on Wednesday aim to cut oil emissions of methane, a target of environmental groups, by 45% below 2012 levels, despite the fact that the emissions already show a sharp decline even as shale oil and gas production has skyrocketed. This war-on-shale action mirrors the administration's war on coal, with EPA rules impossible to meet economically and sometimes...

en Chorn had a good vacation in Minnesota last month, making it to a Vikings game, a hockey game in Duluth and getting engaged. But while he was gone, the price of oil hit him personally. “While on vacation, I got a call from someone who’s covering for me and said, ‘Hey your rig’s being laid down,’” said Chorn, who does geology work on rigs for Sunburst Consulting. He’s had a slow six weeks since then. The oil price drop will impact fringe regions in the Bakken the most, experts said, because the oil there costs more to extract. “I...

North Dakota is poised to impose the strictest oil standards in its history on Tuesday, requiring every barrel of crude to be filtered for dangerous types of natural gas in an effort to make crude-by-rail transport safer. The new requirements come as federal, state and local officials grapple with how best to ensure the safe transport of North Dakota's crude oil, which has been linked to a string of fiery crude-by-rail explosions, including one last year in Quebec that killed 47 people. Governor Jack Dalrymple and the two other members of the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) are taking the...

U.S. crude oil production will rise 115,000 barrels of oil per day in January, according to Energy Information Administration data released Monday. Next month’s total will be nearly 2,000 bpd more than December’s rise. Drilling efficiencies in the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian Basin shale plays account for most of the production increase. EIA data showed that rigs in these plays will get about 50 bpd more than they did last month, good for a total increase of 103,000 bpd. The Permian Basin is still the largest U.S. shale play, increasing to 1.87 million bpd. The Eagle Fored is second...

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Reported income by all North Dakotans has more than doubled to a record $30.4 billion since the infancy of the state's oil boom in 2006, tax return filings show. Tax Department figures released to the Associated Press show the number of taxpayers in the state has jumped 37 percent since the state's oil bonanza began, from 339,000 in 2006 to 466,000 in 2013. Slightly more than 440,000 tax returns were filed in 2012. Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger said the increase in income and the number of taxpayers contributes heavily to the state's robust economy. "More people are...