Oily Stuff

2019 was going to be THE year, once again, the shale industry starting raking in the  free cash flow.

So far, not so good for 2019 earnings, at least from early reporters like Hess, Murphy, CNX, Nobel, Antero, Marathon  Laredo, SM, Cimarex, Diamondback, Concho and Devo...

Click on this image and watch in real time how gas flaring has grown in Texas and North Dakota from January 1, 2018 to February 15, 2020

You can tinker with the Sky Truth satellite image, above, all you want and zero in on any area in the world you wish. If you chose th...

Oklahoma City; 1939. Beer was 10 cents and a ham and cheese sandwich was 15 cents. I reckon there were some brawls at this joint on a Saturday night. 

Oklahoma City Oil Field was discovered south of town in 1928, in the Arbuckle dolomite. A few years later some really n...

I suspect everyone has already seen this little film of oilfield vehicles and oilfield roads in the 1920's; if you have just skip it and move on to the little story about the brief, young life of Chigger Brown from Cisco, Texas. Otherwise it sort of sets the stage for...

In honor of Whiting Petroleum, one of the original Big Four in the Williston Basin hitting $2.54 today, down from a high of  $370 in 2014, we offer up this image of how carefully they used other people's money to grow their shale oil "manufacturing machine." Chesapeake...

The EIA is clearly charged with making stuff  up to keep the price of oil as low as possible, including reporting fake barrels in US stockpiles and over exaggerating future production rates.  Low oil prices, of course, are NOT in the best interest of unconventional wel...

DICTIONARY

hand

/hand/

noun

1.

the end part of a person's arm beyond the wrist, including the palm, fingers, and thumb.

"he was leading her by the hand"

2. 

[oilfield worker]; a term of endearment in the oil industry used out of respect for others, as in "he's a good floor han...

If you are a natural gas producer this cartoon does not need an explanation. The Williston Basin in North Dakota and the Delaware Basin in West Texas are quickly turning from oil to gas resource plays; gas prices at the WAHA Hub in W. Texas are now 50 cents an MMBTU an...

Click to enlarge 

There are still some pretty good down hole hands around the oilfield, many of them, however, getting old and tired...like me. Most of those hands can fix and fish a lot of shit down there where's it dark, and hard to see. 

Then there are problems that r...

This is really cool stuff. 

In 1947 Superior Oil Company of California (founded in 1921, later Mobil Oil) undertook a rank wildcat in  Sublette County, Wyoming, near Pinedale and in the Green River Basin along  Pacific Creek; the well took  two years to TD....

This is from the Haynes and Boone Law Firm's E&P Bankruptcy Report for January 2020 where over 650 oil and natural gas producers, and their lenders, estimated where drilling and completion capital was going to come from in 2020. The survey, by the way, was taken when o...

This one was actually one of mine, a plugging job for Conoco, that  told me the well had bridge plugs in it and all I needed to do was spot balanced cement plugs between columns of 9.3 mud. Bull shit. When this thing came to see us it about hair lipped us. It blew, har...

 Please click to enlarge

The internet has made oil analysts and "experts' out of just about everybody. Folks that just five years ago never thought twice about oil economics, decline rates and depletion are all eaten up with it now, like a video game.  

Rule 1 to an...

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Less than 1% of America's population is fortunate enough to have mineral interest under America's shale basins and they have racked up over a half  trillion dollars of free royalty income and lease bonuses since 1993 and the onslaught of shale gas in the Fort Worth Bas...