On May 5th, the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) released a temporary exception for oil and gas storage wells: “16 Texas Administrative Code § 3.95: An exception authorizing underground hydrocarbon storage facility located in a geological formation other than an underground salt formation.” This eases regulations for operators looking to permit a storage well, technically aRead more
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EnergyMakers Advisory Group has long been cautioning stakeholders not to be too quick to indict disposal wells for Delaware, Texas area seismicity. Other factors may also be at play in the region. While SWD disposal has proven to be causal to induced seismicity in many areas including Arkansas, Colorado, parts of Texas, and broadly inRead more
When it rains, it pours! By now you have likely heard of the 5.0 earthquake detected in Culberson county, 175 miles W of El Paso, about 26 miles West of Mentone, Texas. I checked on the population of Mentone – the last update was in 2010 with a reported population of 19, which at the time wasRead more
Last year saw a major turnaround in publicly listed E&P companies’ free cash flow fortunes to levels not seen since before the mid-decade downturn. According to energy analyst Rystad Energy, free cash flow for E&P firms reached nearly $300 billion in 2018, marking a return to so-called “super profits” for industry majors. Free cash flowRead more
The number of seismic activities that can be physically felt—those which are magnitude 2.8 (M-2.8) or greater—fell from a monthly average of 162 in June 2015 to just 25 in June 2018. At the same time, oil production grew by 20 percent and injection rates into disposal wells dropped. Recent data from the USRead more
News wires were abuzz last week with the announcement that the US had become a net oil exporter for the first time in nearly 75 years. This is major news, but does it truly mark a milestone toward the country’s goal of energy independence? And is the claim even true in the first place? USRead more
A new report by the US Geological Survey (USGS) states that the Delaware Basin’s Wolfcamp shale and Bone Springs Formation hold the largest potential oil and gas resources ever discovered. The regions may hold as much as 46.3 billion barrels of oil, 281 trillion cubic feet of gas and 20 billion barrels of NGL. Read more
According to research at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, decades of anthropogenic activities (mining, groundwater extraction, hydrocarbon production), together with naturally occurring settlement due to sediment loading and glacial isostatic adjustments, have destabilized a 4,000-square mile swath of West Texas—leading to an increased rate of sinkhole formation and expansion. Whereas the naturally occurring subsidence onRead more