{"id":27901,"date":"2017-11-13T06:53:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-13T11:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27901"},"modified":"2017-11-13T06:53:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T11:53:39","slug":"is-peak-permian-only-3-years-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27901","title":{"rendered":"Is Peak Permian Only 3 Years Away?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Peak Permian Only 3 Years Away?<\/a><\/h3>\n\"Midland\"<\/picture>\n
\n

The world\u2019s hottest shale basin, the Permian, is leading the second U.S. wave of tight oil production growth and will continue to do so for years to come, all analysts say.<\/p>\n

However, signs have started to emerge that the relentless intensification of drilling leads to diminishing returns, Simon Flowers, Chairman and Chief Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said in an article<\/a> this week. Pumping twice as much sand as usual into Permian wells and drilling longer laterals doesn\u2019t deliver commensurate volumes of oil, Flowers notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrilling costs rise exponentially with depth, and there\u2019s a suspicion that longer wells are hitting a cost efficiency ceiling,\u201d WoodMac\u2019s chief analyst writes.<\/p>\n

Moreover, after the early production-exuberance stage, drillers are now much more focused on delivering profits and higher profit margins. They now favor quality over quantity, and value over volumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMight the Permian be reaching the limits of well size and design? Maybe\u2014as Star Trek\u2019s Scotty might observe of an underwhelming high intensity completion \u2018you cannae change the laws of physics, Jim\u2019,\u201d Flowers says. But WoodMac suggests that drillers could \u2018change the laws of physics\u2019 and that these signs of setbacks may actually be growing pains.<\/p>\n

The energy consultancy\u2019s Director of L48 Research, Rob Clarke, argues that there are two basic and very sound reasons that the fading lateral drilling and proppant metrics might be just growing pains. One is much more advanced proppant placement, and the other is the oil majors\u2019 move into the Permian, set to change things.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, pinpoint frac technology can place the proppant exactly where it\u2019s wanted. Science is also being applied to identify the most effective proppant grain size and shape as well as drill bit design and fluid chemistry, all with the aim of boosting EUR,\u201d according to WoodMac.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Peak Permian Only 3 Years Away? The world\u2019s hottest shale basin, the Permian, is leading the second U.S. wave of tight oil production growth and will continue to do so for years to come, all analysts say. However, signs have started to emerge that the relentless intensification of drilling leads to diminishing returns, Simon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6010,5332,617,16988,16989,16990,827,1474,13720],"class_list":["post-27901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-nick-cunningham","tag-oilprice-com","tag-peak-oil","tag-peak-permian","tag-permian-shale","tag-simon-flowers","tag-united-states","tag-us-oil-production","tag-wood-mackenzie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27902,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27901\/revisions\/27902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}