By JOHN P. TRETBAR
Eagle Media
Last year the oil and gas industry set a record for mergers and acquisitions, an eye-popping $192 billion in transactions. But like a lot of records in the industry it won't last long.
With hundreds of transactions this year, the total through September is nearly $124 billion, and there are still several large deals on the table.
U.S. crude production dropped to the second best weekly tally ever.
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) U.S. crude output dropped by 19,000 barrels a day from last week's all-time high, but still stands as the second-best weekly report ever. The average is 13,585,000 barrels per day, marking only the sixth week over 13.5 million.
Commercial crude inventories dropped by more than four million barrels to just under 417 million barrels. EIA says stockpiles are down five percent from the five-year seasonal average.
EIA took delivery on 300,000 barrels for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The SPR now totals 393.3 million barrels, an increase of 40 million barrels in the last year.
The Energy Information Administration says U.S. natural gas production set a record of over 113 billion cubic feet per day last year, with five states pumping 70% of that. Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, West Virginia and New Mexico are the top producers of natural gas in this country.
EIA says natural gas consumption rose 1% to an annual high last year. Electricity generation was the chief driver of the increase. Consumption of natural gas at power plants averaged over 35 billion cubic feet per day, or about 40% of U.S. consumption.
The Kansas Rig Count from Independent Oil & Gas Service shows 25 active rigs, with nine in the eastern half of the state, which is up two, and 16 in western Kansas, which is down one. Two operators in Ellis County have suspended drilling for the holidays, and are expected to resume next week.
The year-end total for new oil and gas fields in Kansas is down by half from last year.
At its final meeting of the year, the Kansas Geological Society last week recognized and named six new oil-and-gas fields in Kansas. That brings the year-end total to 28 new fields, compared to 57 last year.
The U.S. imports more crude oil than we export, by 2.7 million barrels a day. We export more petroleum products than we import by over five million barrels a day.
Domestic crude oil imports averaged 6.5 million barrels a day in the week through December 20, down 178,000 daily barrels from the week before. That's up nearly 200,000 barrels a day from a year ago and two years ago. EIA reports four-week average imports are down more than two percent from last year, at nearly 6.6 million barrels a day.
Crude exports dropped by nearly 1.2 million barrels a day from a week ago to 3.7 million daily barrels. That's up 200,000 from last year, but down 300,000 daily barrels from two years ago. Four-week average exports are up three percent from last year.
Output in the number three crude-producing state dropped to 1.17 million barrels a day in October. Permits, completions, and rig counts are all up.
The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources reports the state had 19,334 producing wells in October, an all-time record. October's gas capture statistic dropped to 94%, meaning six percent of the natural gas produced at oil wells is either vented into the air or burned off at the well head. Natural gas production was down four percent month-over-month.
Huge production in Texas has historically been tied to huge energy employment. But those numbers are dropping.
The Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO) said its November report ends five straight months of job growth. Employment in the upstream sector, before crude gets to the refinery, slipped to 194,400, down 1,500 positions compared to October. Jobs in extraction fell by 600, while oilfield service hiring slid by 900 jobs.
A new energy watchdog in Colorado says a criminal probe may be in order after they uncovered hundreds of fraudulent pollution reports filed in the last five years by some big names in the industry.
Colorado’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission says contractors for Chevron and Occidental Petroleum submitted reports with bogus data for at least 344 oil and gas wells across the state, painting a misleading picture of their pollution levels.
According to the report, consultants for a third company also filed forms with falsified information for an unspecified number of wells. Some of the reports obscured the levels of dangerous contaminants in nearby soils, including arsenic and benzene among other pollutants.