Infill Thoughts

Note: Each Friday in March, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. We hope you enjoy the thoughts these hand-picked contributors have to share. Here is this week’s story… Why am I sitting in a hotel in Midland? It seems a …

Depending on the oilfield service or product line, we’ve heard of price increases of anywhere from 5% to 40% pushed through just in the past few months alone. As service companies look for new angles to justify higher list prices, they are increasingly pointing a finger at the labor pool. …

Supply chain inflation is a trending topic in O&G. One of the biggest debates in the oilfield today centers around the sustainability of the cost reductions E&Ps achieved during the downturn. How much was lasting process change and innovation vs. temporary supply chain price concessions? E&Ps will be far more …

Just a few months ago, US land rig management teams were still touting their long-term contracts as an asset. Highlighting backlog and term duration is a defensive posture contractors assume when operators have pricing power. Rig count can rise. Dayrates can trough. But until management teams start talking about spot …

This week, Infill Thinking attended and participated in the frac sand industry conference hosted by the Petroleum Connection. With a strong agenda, the conference attracted 150 attendees including some of the industry’s biggest executives. In this update, we are sharing some of our takeaways that confirm well established trends and consensus …

At this point, we see field development as a marketplace in the very early stages of turning around. As for a broader recovery in the deepwater markets, it’s not even the first inning yet. It’s more like the stretching routine before pre-game warm ups. There’s going to be a game, but …

The US onshore rig count increased 3 rigs to 733 running last week. The US land rig count is now up 359 rigs from the May 2016 bottom. Much of these gains have come from the Permian, where growth is being driven by horizontal drilling in both the Midland Basin and the Delaware …

After the market closed Thursday evening, Hi-Crush Partners quietly dropped the equivalent of an atom bomb on the frac sand business. In a busy press release that disclosed two other deals, Hi-Crush described in muted tones plans to build the industry’s first frac sand mine in the Permian Basin. This is …

ConocoPhillips is baffled by recent dayrate hikes by the US land drillers. And they aren’t the only operators that feel this way  we take a look at what ConocoPhillips’ CEO had to say about it and explore why the operators shouldn’t feel too bad about a few grand a day …

Next Monday at the Petroleum Club in Houston, the who’s who of the frac sand business will come together for the 2nd Annual Frac Sand Industry Update Conference. In a sign of the times, the event was oversubscribed so the venue has been expanded. By way of disclosure, we do not …