U.S. shale oil growth slows as price crash idles drilling rigs

DAN MURTAUGH

HOUSTON (Bloomberg) -- The biggest slowdown in oil drilling on record is showing signs of reining in the U.S. shale boom.

U.S. shale oil output is expected to post the slowest growth in more than four years in April, the Energy Information Administration said Monday. That follows a 41% plunge since December in the number of drilling rigs seeking oil.

A slowdown in U.S. output would come at the same time that refineries are expected to return from seasonal maintenance and bring relief to an oil market that has seen prices decline more than 50% since June. Companies had 444.4 MMbbl of oil in storage in the U.S. as of Feb. 27, the most in weekly records dating back to 1982.

“You have refineries coming back out of maintenance, and production getting cut back,” said Carl Larry, head of oil and gas for Frost & Sullivan LP in Houston. “Everything could come together where, all of a sudden, everyone thought there was plenty of supply and there’s not.”

Oil production from six major U.S. shale plays will be 5.6 MMbpd in April, an increase of 298 over March, according to the EIA’s estimate. It’s the smallest projected increase since February 2011.

Permian Rising

Output from the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, the second-largest oil region in the U.S., is expected to drop by 10,000 bopd. Production in the Bakken region of North Dakota is expected to decline 8,000 bopd. It’s the first month that both regions are forecast to have shrinking production since January 2009.

Production in the Permian basin of West Texas and New Mexico, the largest U.S. oil region, will rise by 21,000 bopd to 1.98 MMbopd.

Refineries processed 15.1 MMbpd of crude the week of Feb. 27. Last year, crude demand rose from 15 MMbpd in the middle of March to 16.6 MMbpd in July. Refineries typically shut units for planned maintenance in the late winter and early spring to be able to run at full capacity during the summer driving season.

The EIA’s oil-production estimates are based on the number of drilling rigs in different plays and calculations of how productive each piece of equipment is. The number of rigs drilling for oil fell to 922 on Friday, according to oilfield service company Baker Hughes Inc. Oil rigs in the U.S. peaked in October at 1,609.