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Author: <span>Shiloh</span>

Oil Industry Leaders See Tough Times Ahead

By Alex Mills

 

July 2, 2020

Most oil company leaders, who traditionally are very optimistic, have a pessimistic opinion about the future, according to a recent survey by the Dallas office of the Federal Reserve System. The survey “reveals a very somber and wary mindset by U.S. producers toward the upstream oil and gas (O&G) market.”

The cause of the negative opinions begins with exceptionally low prices for crude oil and natural gas that closed at a negative $37 per barrel for oil on April 20 and natural gas prices went into negative territory on several occasions on the futures market at some locations.

Oil prices have rebounded to a positive $39 on Wednesday. Natural gas price at Henry Hub was $1.671 down from $2.240 a year ago.

However, an oversupply of petroleum products still exist, which is an indication that prices will remain soft.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported a decline of crude oil inventories of 7 million barrels this week to 533 million barrels, which was only the third week inventories have declined in the last 20 weeks. Inventories set a record the previous week at 540 million barrels….
 

Texas Oil and Gas Production Statistics for April 2020: RRC

June 26, 2020

AUSTIN –– Crude oil and natural gas production as reported to the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) for April 2020 came from 172,505 oil wells and 87,853 gas wells.

The RRC reports that from May 2019 to April 2020, total Texas reported production was 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil and 10.4 trillion cubic feet of total gas. Crude oil production reported by the RRC is limited to oil produced from oil leases and does not include condensate, which is reported separately by the RRC…..
 

Chesapeake Energy Filed for Bankruptcy Restructuring Protection Sunday

June 28, 2020

The shale drilling pioneer Chesapeake Energy lost $8.3 billion in 1Q and reported only $82 million in cash at the end of March. In a debtor agreement, Chesapeake has acquired $925 million in a revolving credit debtor-in-possession agreement to keep it going during the bankruptcy process, eliminating about $7 billion of debt along with a $600 million commitment for new equity when it emerges from the court process.

However, with about 73% of unsecured bondholders refusing to go along with the deal, a fight over recoveries is expected and could get contentious as hedge funds that accumulated positions in the bonds fight with the secured debtors
…..
 

A&M Researchers Develop Recovery Estimator For New Wells

“Shale operators need to cut costs tremendously because of low global prices of crude oil,” and a new spreadsheet analysis procedure can do that.

 

June 23, 2020

Rather than using complicated reservoir simulations, researchers at Texas A&M University say they’ve come up with a much simpler method to predict the amount of oil and gas that can be recovered from newly-drilled wells, saving time, hassle and money….