Infill Thinking Lifting the O&G knowledge curve

In this update, two quick charts to illustrate relative Wall Street sentiment divergence across the oilfield value chain. It’s been a rough year for O&G stocks in general, with the OSX index underperforming the S&P 500 by 42% year-to-date. But to really understand how Wall Street views the oilfield value …

In an unusual step, Baker Hughes declared Friday that an update on South Texas rig count was impossible to capture last week due to Hurricane Harvey. New drilling permits show the impact though… and we quantify that in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s catastrophic impact on Gulf Coast communities and enterprise, attention now turns to recovery timetables and rebuilding. At this point, quantifying the upstream onshore impact is still an exercise in speculation. So in this update, we share detailed questions folks who want to understand the …

In this Friday guest post, Susan Murphy (Publisher and Editor in Chief of The OCTG Situation Report®) provides some clear thinking on the Section 232 trade investigation. Section 232 is a controversial import swing factor injecting uncertainty in the OCTG sub-sector. We asked Susan to share her latest thoughts on status, …

Impressions, takeaways, and observations from a morning spent with Black Mountain Sand in West Texas touring their new sand plants Vest and El Dorado. A slideshow of construction pictures is included in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this …

Over in our Thinking Aloud Forum, there is a new discussion topic on Hurricane Harvey’s onshore upstream impact. Most of the attention in the wake of the storm will focus on downstream, commodity prices, and offshore impacts. In the thread we provide a list of useful references on these areas …

As expected, the Lower 48 rig count recovery is losing steam during 3Q17. Here’s 3 charts and thoughts on what it means for completions… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a …

Infill Thinking staff spent a full week in the Permian Basin in August 2017, touring facilities and visiting with contacts and management teams. We’ve collected 43 “quick hits” – crowd sourced datapoints and general market observations. Our time in the Permian was spent on the completions supply chain, particularly around …

Some Infill Thinking readers may have known the High Roller name even before the company became a player in the Permian Basin sand rush. High Roller is the parent company of a diverse mix of oilfield businesses including waste water hauling, SWDs, sand transloading, and man camps. The firm is …

Tomorrow another new area sand producer will host a job fair in Odessa. We expect there will be quite a few more of these job fairs at area hotels before year-end. See what some local mines are doing to recruit staff and also the competition and challenges for talent that …

This update is Infill Thinking’s fourth and final installment of crowd sourced datapoints and firsthand observations from our Permian visit last week. Most of our field trips in the Permian this time were focused on the new sand mining efforts around Kermit and logistics/storage from transload to wellsite. Subscribers have …

The US onshore rig market continues to consolidate not because of M&A but thanks to the dominance of horizontal drilling and rig specification escalation. In the four charts below, we share a time series of market share charts for Nabors Industries, Patterson-UTI, Helmerich & Payne and Precision Drilling. There’s a …

Since the Texas Comptroller’s letter singled out sand producers last week, West Texas miners have been inundated with questions. Investors and customers alike are becoming more concerned than ever about the trend’s exposure to Dune Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) habitat. We provide highlights from one company’s response supplemented with our firsthand knowledge from a …

In this update, more from our recent trip behind the scenes in the Permian Basin frac sand mining build-out including contract price datapoints, lizard talk, a mine location identified, and trucking observations and deductions. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this …

Crowd sourced datapoints and firsthand observations from our Permian visit this week are being shared in a series of “quick hits.” These bullet point lists include field-level market intelligence on wellsite trends, the frac sand mining rush, and the Permian oilfield at large. There’s a lot more to this story… …

This week we miled up the rental car, dirtied up the steel toes, and took it all in out in the Permian Basin. General market observations from our Permian visit will be provided via several installments of these “quick hit” pieces as we process and compile what we’ve learned. Our …

The letter’s rhetoric will almost certainly cause some market observers to start taking the under on how much Permian sand is actually going to make it out of local mines. It will almost certainly be looked back on as a starting point for more formal environmental opposition. We summarize the …

Over the past two weeks, we’ve begun to hear sand buyers express their take on the Permian Basin frac sand mining rush for the first time. What they are saying and our analysis of implications in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  …

In The News: Marfa Public Radio Interview Infill Thinking founder Joseph Triepke was recently interviewed by Marfa Public Radio for a feature piece on the West Texas frac sand mining rush. The piece was published on Monday August 14, 2017. Listen below, or check out the full piece here. https://www.infillthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/FRAC-SAND-feature-generic-final-WEB.mp3 …

In this update, we have added a dozen companies to the debate card we published two weeks ago and also included the relevant excerpts of their commentary. You can see the old table below. Please login or subscribe to see the new table… There’s a lot more to this story… …

Preferred Sands filed for IPO on Thursday. As Infill Thinking readers already know, Preferred has two in-basin mines under development in the Permian Basin and one in the Eagle Ford. Besides what is arguably the coolest team picture to ever grace any SEC filing, the company included quite a bit of …

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and no one in the oilfield understands necessity better than the operators themselves. Today, tight oil is at the technological forefront of the oil and gas industry. Exploiting low permeability, heterogeneous rock at $50 oil makes invention and innovation a requisite not …

We fully expected Smart Sand to announce their entrance into the Permian sand rush today. They did not because of the Dune Sagebrush Lizard. What they said and our thoughts on what this means for the in-basin sand story in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login …

We updated our table of planned frac sand mining facilities in the Permian after several readers asked for the latest file this week. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. …

In our latest US onshore rig count forecast (updated in April), we estimated that active drilling rigs would peak at 950 units this year. As we stand today with 934 rigs turning to the right, our prediction leaves only ~16 rig additions left until hitting a US drilling plateau in …

A year from now on the Kermit blacktop, it will be 110° Fahrenheit with a 90% chance of gridlock. We believe competitive advantage will increasingly be tied to location and logistics as in-basin mines battle for market share. In this update, we rank each of the hopeful new mines based …

We believe that our readers’ response to news can often be more compelling than the report itself, for our readership comprises some of the industry’s brightest minds, including folks who are working on (or buying from) similar initiatives in the field. See what your fellow Infill Thinkers are saying about …

If 2H17 shale capex were on the operating table, our diagnosis would be that the patient’s vitals are stable and within normal limits. But as the old newspaper saying goes: “if it bleeds it leads,” so many reports continue to chose fear over reality. We dig into the numbers to …

There is a new discussion topic over in our Thinking Aloud forum this morning It revolves around the apparent return of some optimism in the offshore drilling sector, particularly deepwater. Is this compressed business finally on the verge of a turn or is it still too early to be cautiously …

This news elevates the West Texas frac sand mining rush into a whole new stratosphere. It just went from something frac sand specialists were very focused on to something everyone will be focused on. The little sand dune mining story just went mainstream folks. At Infill Thinking, we’ve been covering …

On Wednesday evening, Infill Thinking spoke by phone with David Durrett, Managing Director of Permian sand mine startup Aequor. What we learned about his new West Texas sand mine project – Burro Minerals – surprised us. And it will surprise the market as well. There’s a lot more to this …

There’s been some talk in the market this week that sand customers might be skeptical of inking deals with startup sand producers. But what we heard from one E&P on Wednesday suggests just the opposite… Black Mountain has at least one long-term deal in the bag and probably more that …

Infill Thinking reader Ron Davis wrote in with a great excerpt on the offshore drilling outlook. As we start to think more about a potential inflection point in deepwater, we felt the thoughts he shared were worth printing in full… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …

US Silica’s 2Q17 conference call ushered in earnings season for Big Sand Tuesday morning, and the call certainly brought the fireworks. Here are the key points US Silica made Tuesday that we found most interesting, accompanied by our take: There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the …

The combination of greater per rig retrofit investments and expanding inventory of upgrade candidates is the equivalent of newbuilding without building new. This kind of spending invites a whole crowd of previously shunned rigs into the exclusive super-spec club. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full …

Read what our local sources say about the very latest on Permian Basin frac sand development in this exclusive update. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. If you are …

Earlier this week, first Halliburton and then Anadarko roiled the water by challenging the multi-year trend of more frac sand pumped per well. What was surprising about the remarks was that they pointed to not just plateauing in the trend but a reversal. Following their remarks on inflection, some other companies have …

Contrary to the click bait proliferating on other media platforms, US oil producers are not slashing 2017 tight oil investment programs as a result of recent crude oil price volatility. Anadarko’s US onshore investment revision, which became the poster child for so called shale budget cuts this week, is grossly misunderstood. Not only …

As the list of “haves” grows longer, now seems like a good time to ask this question: who hasn’t joined in the rush and why not? Our inverted Permian mine list may actually be more interesting at this juncture than widely known announced facilities. There’s a lot more to this story… …

The latest details on the latest new entrant to the Permian sand mining rush… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. If you are new to Infill Thinking, or your …

The discussion around plateauing (wait… make that falling) frac sand/well is heating up. What’s new and what we think about it here. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. If …

Halliburton and Schlumberger have given two distinctly different outlooks on US rig count direction for the next three to six months over the past two business days. Interestingly, their arguments have departed from their normal advocacy tendencies. See how and who we agree more with in this update. There’s a …

Halliburton’s frac sand statements overshadowed some really important Lower 48 market updates yesterday. Here are the key non-sand points that caught our attention: There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. …

The Permian Basin frac sand story is receiving attention from the local press out in West Texas. Some interesting incremental color emerged… feature image photo credit: Hi Crush’s Kermit site on Sunday July 24, 2017 front page of Odessa American There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …

It’s a sign of the times. Frac sand controversy on Halliburton’s earnings conference call Monday overshadowed everything else, including some interesting points on pressure pumping dynamics, rig count brake tapping, international service pricing trends, and higher wages. We’ll address Big Red’s “non-sand” comments in a separate update later today. These …

An infill Thinking prediction was confirmed this morning as the Permian Basin sand rush continues to heat up… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this update and receive our research newsletters, you must be a member. If you are new to …

Schlumberger kicked off oilfield service earnings this morning. Everything you need to know about the tone they set is right here. Also, don’t miss the biggest takeaways of the day where Schlumberger’s CEO said… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full update…  To read this …

Today we are kicking off a two part series addressing the trucking needs for yet-to-be-produced Permian Basin frac sand. In this installment, we have maps of the mines vs. major trucking routes to well sites. We have also recorded some thoughts on the hidden logistics challenges that no one is …

The Wall Street Journal knows how to title a hit piece. After their article saying EnerVest is worthless, the company is scrambling to reassure its fearful supply chain. See who works for the operator and read EnerVest’s crisis management response in this update. There’s a lot more to this story… …

We take a look at drilling permit demand in the hottest oilfield in the world. What does it mean for what comes next? Also, our regular weekly tables and charts derived by applying a little infill thinking and elbow grease to Baker Hughes rig count data. There’s a lot more …