Barnett Shale

Rigs looking for natural gas at 10-year low

U.S. drilling rigs seeking natural gas slipped 18 this week to 618, lowest since April 19, 2002, according to Baker Hughes Inc. of Houston. The Reuters report is here.

-- Jim Fuquay

U.S. rigs down 29, Barnett inches up 1

Active U.S. rigs for crude oil and natural gas fell by 29 this week to 1,950, according to oilfield services company Baker Hughes. There were 1,322 rigs looking for oil, down seven,  and 624 for natural gas, down 25. Four were listed as miscellaneous. A year ago there were 1,772 active rigs. In North Texas’ Barnett Shale, there were 53 active rigs, up one from a week ago.Tarrant County led with 12 rigs, followed by Wise with eight; Parker with six, and Johnson and Jack counties, with five each.

— Jim Fuquay

 

Union Drilling

 Union Drilling, based in Fort Worth, said Monday it earned $600,000 on revenues of $66.7 million in the third quarter, compared to a net loss of $4.4 million on revenues of $52 million in the same period a year ago. The most recent quarter included an $800,000, non-cash charge related to the pending sale of six drilling rigs.

Union said it plans to sell 31 rigs, which it said are smaller, older rigs in its fleet. As of Sept. 30 it had 51 rigs, not counting the rigs scheduled for sale in December. The company said it kept its rigs busy 59.4 percent of the time in the third quarter, compared to 54 percent the previous quarter and 53 percent a year earlier.

-- Jim Fuquay

Diesel use in fracturing comes under fire

Three Democratic U.S. representatives complained that drillers are using diesel in hydraulic fracturing operations, which they called a violation of federal clean water regulations.

Texas, where North Texas' Barnett Shale is the nation's No. 1 natural gas source and the Eagle Ford Shale in South and Central Texas is a growing resource, accounted for half of the total. Companies also used at least 1 million gallons of diesel-containing fluids in Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, Louisiana and Colorado, the lawmakers said.

Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, told the Star-Telegram on Monday, "I don't think [diesel] is used at all in the Barnett Shale" in fracturing fluids.

You can read the Star-Telegram's complete report here.

The Houston Chronicle also has a report that goes into considerable detail. It's available here.

-- Jim Fuquay

Barnett rig count inches up second week

The number of rigs working in the Barnett Shale increased, just barely, for the second consecutive week, while the U.S. rig count continued to slide. In North Texas, 83 rigs were active, up one from a week earlier and up six from two weeks ago. Tarrant County increased its standing as the busiest county, with 33 rigs compared with Johnson County’s 17. Nationally, the rig count fell by 20 in the past week to 955, barely half of the year-ago total. Of those, 742 were exploring for natural gas and 202 for oil, with another 11 unclassified, Houston-based Baker Hughes said Friday. The U.S. count is down 53 percent since the end of August as weak energy demand has hampered oil-field activity. Texas, with 378 rigs, was down six.

-- Jim Fuquay

New drilling technologies boost returns on wells

Here's Jim Fuquay's Sunday story on new drilling technologies. This is the top of the story:

Spend a few million bucks putting together a lease, drilling a well and coaxing it to give up some of the natural gas locked up in the Barnett Shale, and what do you get? Maybe 20 percent to 30 percent of the gas that’s there.

Not good enough, producers say. They’re developing new techniques and technologies to boost that to 50 percent or more, and if they succeed, it could be the answer to what one petroleum engineer calls "the $100 billion question."

Horizontal drilling — turning a steel drill pipe 90 degrees from vertical to horizontal — is what made the shale happen. But that’s yesterday’s news.

Today, producers are making horizontal runs, called laterals, up to twice the industry’s more typical 3,000 feet. They are also making more fractures along those laterals and fracturing two adjacent wells at the same time in an effort to crack the hard shale like a windshield after a North Texas hailstorm. They are squeezing in an extra well bore between two existing wells, boosting recovery while using the existing drilling site, an increasingly scarce commodity as drilling moves into urban areas.

-- Scott

(Photo: archive at drill site in Weatherford)

From property taxes to injection wells

Here's an archive of recent Barnett Shale stories that appeared in the Star-Telegram:

• Gas drilling isn't likely to push property taxes up much
• Development offers a lesson in low-impact drilling
• Well plan injects pressure into waste water dispute
• On pipelines, city's hands tied
• Burns, Rangel will compete in council runoff
• Speedway Motorsports says it won't share its gas
• FW Council extends moratorium on saltwater injection wells
• Explaining Barnett Shale equipment
• East Side neighborhood group, driller, spar over drill sites
• Audit takes Texas Railroad Commission to task over well inspections
• City residents voice drilling concerns
• Mayor Moncrief says oil, gas income is not a conflict
• City has sharp eye on water disposal
• DFW council member Davis urges restrictions on drilling
• Chesapeake committed to Barnett Shale drilling
• Gas deals' fine print can be costly

-- Scott