Tag Archives: trends

With oil prices falling, it is worth noting what historical oil price / rig count relationships suggest about future drilling activity. In this update, we examine the oilfield reaction times that can be expected when oil prices move. There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see the full …

For this update we took a quick look at month-to-date horizontal drilling permitting activity in the Permian Basin. 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 …

Is frac sand replacing rigs? It would appear so in the US onshore recovery. As unconventional drilling and completion science evolves, the industry’s surface footprint per barrel of oil produced is shrinking. A growing sub-surface footprint (which we can measure with sand) is replacing the surface sprawl. With the US onshore …

In the Permian Basin, horizontal drilling activity is up 101 rigs so far this year. This is more than 2x the next fastest growing play (Eagle Ford +41). In this week’s Infill Thinking rig count update, we get granular on Permian growth. We’ve ranked the counties across the Permian’s basin trifecta …

Emerge Energy Services has been in the news quite a bit recently after hosting their earnings call earlier this month and making an Eagle Ford mine acquisition a few weeks before that. After all their recent disclosures, there wasn’t a whole lot of “new news” made at their analyst day last …

Although the drilling rig itself is only about 10% of total onshore well costs these days, it has become the epicenter of the industry’s latest technology craze: automation, digitization, and big data. As market leaders embark on a new technology cycle, drilling days/well are poised to keep trending down. One day …

Last week after scouring air permit data, we identified a new sand mine site in Culberson County Texas In conversations with readers offline, the potential mine’s location has come up several times as a sticking point. Could this sand be stranded if indeed it is pointed at the frac industry? (questions …

This week, Offshore Technology Conference attendance fell for a third straight year. Higher oil prices and the US onshore recovery didn’t buoy turnout. That said, attendance might have slipped more without the draw of US onshore technology exhibits at the event. We’ve got stats charts and anecdotes from the conference in this …

Most industry observers now accept that the oilfield is on a path towards digitization, big data, machine learning, more integration, and automation. Instinctually, most of these same observers would probably not pick land contract drilling as a segment to lead the charge. But it has become increasingly clear to us that …

US Silica hosted a positive call to kick off 1Q17 earnings season for the frac sand industry this morning. The outlook provided was bullish for both demand and pricing. The company’s commentary on the emerging Permian local sands market both validated our own thesis and introduced cautionary notes into the …