Texas producing more oil with fewer people, rigs

[thackney]

Texas producing more oil with fewer people, rigs
https://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/Texas-producing-more-oil-with-fewer-people-rigs-12825205.php
April 11, 2018

Both Texas and the nation are producing more oil than nearly ever, but they're doing so with far fewer workers and drilling rigs.

Texas is producing more oil now than at any point in 2014 when oil was last priced above $100 a barrel, and the industry is doing so with more than 25 percent fewer people and almost half the rigs, according to the Texas Petro Index calculated by economist Karr Ingham.

Today's rigs are more automated and each of them are able to drill more wells from single locations, as well as produce more oil per well by drilling longer horizontal laterals and using hydraulic fracturing, called fracking, to unlock the petroleum from shale rocks.

"The implications are striking: record crude oil and natural gas production at significantly lower prices, rig counts, and number of industry workers," Ingham said. "It means that fewer employees are needed to produce more crude oil in Texas and the U.S. than has ever been produced."...

[thackney]

Crude Oil Production
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_m.htm

[Smokin Joe]

The key is drilling efficiency. What we drilled in a good day in 1970 is now considered to be a mediocre hour's worth. COmputers have enabled the collection and documentation of massive amounts of data as well, and MWD/LWD tools have reduced the time to take a directional survey in a directional/horizontal hole to the time it takes to cycle the pumps on the rig. Add to that the well pad concept, cutting the time it takes to put a rig on the next wellhead and the 4 wells a year (15,000 ft.) in the Williston Basin for a rig have been reduced, time wise, to taking 4-6 weeks, and go deeper.

The Pad concept reduced rig moves (dismantling and trucking to a new site) by 3/4--which cut demand for personnel. That one rig can drill eight to ten times as far in the same time as conventional rigs, which reduces the number of rigs needed (and crews and service personnel to the tune of roughly 50 per rig) by as much as 80 percent. Fewer people getting more done.