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Page added on July 27, 2018
Texas to ‘Shatter’ Oil Production Records with Fewer Rigs and Workers
Six months ago, Texas was on the cusp of breaking oil production records. In June, crude oil production reached 4.3 million barrels per day, putting Texas on track to “shatter” the previous record of 1.263 billion barrels in 1972.
“We’re going to blow that record out of the water,” Karr Ingham, Texas oil economist and creator of the Texas Petro Index (TPI), said during a mid-year briefing in Houston July 26. “Both crude and natural gas production will easily set new annual production records in 2018.”
Ingham called the natural gas production “extraordinary” considering about 92 percent of the active rigs in Texas are drilling for crude oil. He said natural gas production growth is largely accidental, produced from wells that are drilled to produce crude oil.
“Over 35 percent of Texas natural gas production is classified by the Railroad Commission as ‘casinghead gas’ or gas associated with crude oil production,” he said. “Natural gas production growth is not the current goal of Texas oil and gas producers and continued production expansion is pushing prices lower, especially in the Permian where the takeaway capacity for that gas is increasingly insufficient.”
Texas Leads the Way
At mid-year 2018 (end of June), the Texas upstream oil and gas industry had added 47,000 jobs after losing more than 115,000 during the downturn. The Texas Workforce Commission reports that Texas added 4,800 upstream jobs in June alone. Additionally, 80 rigs have been added since the beginning of the year and the statewide monthly average rig count in June was 534. Still, the employment numbers and rig count are not at the levels seen during the peak in November 2014.
“It simply takes fewer rigs and fewer people to produce ever higher amounts of crude oil and natural gas,” Ingham said. He refers to the efficiencies achieved by producers, service companies and drilling companies as “stunning” and said those efficiencies were partly born from necessity due to the severity of the downturn.
“Texas continues to dominate the upstream energy landscape in 2018,” said Ingham.
At the midpoint of 2018, Texas contributed 40 percent of U.S. crude oil production and 30 percent of natural gas production. More than 50 percent of working rigs in the U.S. are in Texas and nearly 54 percent of all U.S. direct upstream oil and gas jobs are in Texas.
7 Comments on "Texas to ‘Shatter’ Oil Production Records with Fewer Rigs and Workers"
GregT on Fri, 27th Jul 2018 4:30 pm
“Texas to ‘Shatter’ Oil Production Records with Fewer Rigs and Workers”
Yeeee haaaaw!
Maybe now would be a good time for Texas to pay attention to climate change induced drought, and water insecurity, instead of shitting in it’s own bed.
Duncan Idaho on Fri, 27th Jul 2018 8:52 pm
Maybe now would be a good time for Texas to pay attention to climate change induced drought, and water insecurity, instead of shitting in it’s own bed.
Its Texas– just look at Houston, etc.
Nightmare, deregulated mess, the symbol of decay and greed.
twocats on Fri, 27th Jul 2018 10:07 pm
an industry rag pitching an industry association’s elevator pitch of “for the love of god and our greed give us money – lots of money.”
rockman on Sat, 28th Jul 2018 2:59 pm
twocats – And all financially supported by you and all the o6her fossil fuel consumers. On behalf of the industry…THANK YOU!
Mitch Covell on Sat, 28th Jul 2018 4:21 pm
I would like to agree with your statement Rockman, while speaking from a different perspective. This civilization would not survive a cessation, or even a large and sudden curtailment, of the production of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are essential to the production of too many important products.
However, the large scale use of fossil carbon and hydrocarbons as fuels has a limited future. There is much discussion (and even acrimonious argument) about what factor(s) will be most important in the elimination of the large scale use of fossil fuels as fuels, but not much debate about the eventual end.
The choices of consumers have a large part in determining the trajectory of fossil fuel production and use. You could stop participating in the production of fossil fuels and somebody else would step in and take your place. Without intelligent choices, based on the acceptance of a responsibility for future generations, then it is unlikely that we will be able to navigate the increasingly narrow path that leads to the preservation of some part of our civilization.
MASTERMIND on Sat, 28th Jul 2018 4:24 pm
Texas shale oil reminds me of non fat yogurt..
print baby print on Sun, 29th Jul 2018 5:27 am
This is the new story which will cacofony from now one I have a feeling. They have to justify fewer rigs