Drilling ///
Maersk Drilling has been awarded a contract from Spirit Energy for the harsh-environment jack-up rig Maersk Resolve to drill one development well at Grove North East in the UK North Sea.
Following successful six-month operational trials on Stena Spey and Stena Carron rigs, IDS will deploy its data driven TourNet Pro drilling contractor reporting service and drilling performance monitoring service, Anova DPM, across Stena Drilling’s fleet in Q1 2021.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said that recent crude price increases and rig additions will help production in the Lower 48 states begin to rise in the second quarter of this year, with total output nearing 11.5 MMbpd in 2022.
The expandable drilling liner enabled the operator to kick-off much deeper in the well, eliminating the need to drill a section of the wellbore and install a tie back. The system was fully expanded within six hours and the entire project was completed in less than 40 hours.
The agreement will see Toolserv AS exclusively managing supply, sales and rental of Paradigm Drilling products and services in the country with the outlook to expand to other countries as business and demand grows.
Francis Besnard, Alexandre Jourde, Schlumberger
Well construction can benefit from available intelligent technologies, taking AI capabilities close to the action, where it encodes knowledge and captures learnings to improve drilling efficiency.
Leonardo Correa, National Oilwell Varco; Robert Van Kuilenburg, Noble Corporation
A partnership between a drilling contractor and an OFS provider is taking MPD systems, which are fully owned and operated by the drilling contractor, to the next level with unique, integrated capabilities.
“I have a hard time seeing the need for U.S. producers over the next several years to get back to double-digit growth,” Devon Energy CEO Rick Muncrief said in an interview. “For this management team, if we really think about 2021, let’s keep it flat.”
“I really don’t see much increase in the Permian basin or the U.S. shale over the next several years,” said Scott Sheffield, chief executive officer of Pioneer Natural Resources Co.
The Bureau of Land Management was set to begin opening sealed bids for 10-year leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain Wednesday afternoon, less than a day after a federal judge rejected environmental groups’ pleas to halt the auction.
Market conditions that might have triggered U.S. oil explorers to raise output and grab market share in recent years are, this time around, more an opportunity for them to pay down debt or boost dividends.
The decision is a victory for the administration, which has been racing to issue oil leases in the refuge’s coastal plain before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
The BLM New Mexico State Office will be offering 37 parcels covering 6,850.72 acres, while , the Texas General Land Office will offer 66 tracts covering 22,500.607 net mineral acres in 16 different counties in January.
This deal, plus more to be announced, target drilling 23 wells in nine regions in the Mediterranean and three regions in the Red Sea, with a minimum total investment seen at $1.4 billion.
The number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. closed out 2020 at 267, according to Baker Hughes Co. data released December 30th. It’s the lowest end-of-year figure since 2005, when drilling and fracking breakthroughs perfected in natural gas regions like North Texas’s Barnett shale were just beginning to be deployed.
World Oil editors discuss The North Face doubling down on its principled stand against well-paying American jobs, Russia wants to see OPEC+ production rise in February, and U.S. land regulators shrink Alaskan oil lease acreage.
The Nordic government beat back a lawsuit by environmental groups in the country’s Supreme Court, which ruled on Tuesday the authorities had acted lawfully by awarding exploration licenses in the Barents Sea to companies including Equinor ASA, Aker BP ASA and Lundin Petroleum AB.
David Blackmon, Contributing Editor
While the various and constantly evolving Biden/Harris promises to ban hydraulic fracturing—at one level or another—dominated the narrative during the general election campaign, the approach they will choose to take on a range of oil and gas issues, now that they are in a position of power, will come into sharp relief.
Diamondback said it agreed to purchase closely held Guidon Operating LLC. That cash-and-stock deal values Guidon, which was co-founded in 2016 by funds managed with Blackstone Group, at about $862 million.
Diamondback Energy and QEP Resources have entered into a definitive agreement under which Diamondback will acquire QEP in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $2.2 billion, including QEP’s net debt of $1.6 billion as of September 30, 2020.