General Category > Economy/Jobs/Business
The Trump Summer Jobs Stall. Most businesses have stopped new hiring as tariffs add costs and uncert
IsailedawayfromFR:
--- Quote from: Smokin Joe on September 10, 2025, 10:30:21 pm ---One thing the upstream part of the industry is ever seeking is a way to get the job done faster, more efficiently, and cheaper. As exploration shifts to development in any play, the number pf people needed to get the job done shrinks, the ability to drill faster and deeper increases, and more well bore gets drilled for less. We have seen it in North Dakota as the Bakken /Three Forks play has shifted to development and infill drilling. What had a two man crew on location is done now for three wells remotely. Four out of six people eliminated from their former positions as the same requirements are met more cheaply.
That is the way of the world, especially with oil hovering around $60, and it will be the way of the future.
If you do it once, they will expect it every time.
As for the rest, summer is over, at least at this latitude, so summer jobs aren't going to pick up until Spring.
--- End quote ---
absolutely amazes me how few people are now required to run a drilling rig.
And an EOG friend told me they just drilled a 14,000 ft lateral in only 2 days.
Incredible. @Smokin Joe
DB:
Technology marches on...
Smokin Joe:
--- Quote from: IsailedawayfromFR on September 12, 2025, 10:16:23 pm ---absolutely amazes me how few people are now required to run a drilling rig.
And an EOG friend told me they just drilled a 14,000 ft lateral in only 2 days.
Incredible. @Smokin Joe
--- End quote ---
Typical spud to TD up here, 21000 ft. total depth, about 10000 ft. of lateral (1280 acre spacing), with surface and intermediate casing runs is about 11 days. Usually takes 5 different bottom hole assemblies. Fastest day I have seen in the lateral was about 6500 ft., but I have heard of over 8,000 ft. in 24 hours. (I remember back when I broke out, a 300 ft. day in the Paleozoic section was considered pretty good, and the Lodgepole Fm. that took almost a week to drill in a vertical hole is now drilled in a few hours, not counting the trip for the BHA for the curve.) If we worked four 13,500' vertical Red River wells back then, we were hooked up for the year--about 300 days of work.
Now, 18 hours after the production liner goes in, the rig is over the next wellhead (if on the same pad) and picking up tools.
Try the same thing in 2005 and it would take at least three weeks, and twice as many BHAs.
Speed, tool reliability (especially MWD/survey tools), and 'walking rigs' have been a big part of the change.
Two thirds of the companies who moved rigs went the way of the dinosaurs when we developed the ability to move rigs from wellhead to wellhead on a multi-well pad without rigging them down and reassembling them, and an on-pad 'move' went from a week or more down to 18-24 hours.
That economic 'stone in the pond' had many ripples that bounced around in the patch economy--fewer people, fewer trucks, less heavy equipment and crane time, less earthwork, etc. etc. etc., and all the 'support' jobs back in town from diesel mechanics to waitresses caught a slice of that pinch.
The only saving grace is that there were more jobs on the production end.
About the only constant is change.
Bigun:
--- Quote from: IsailedawayfromFR on September 12, 2025, 10:16:23 pm ---absolutely amazes me how few people are now required to run a drilling rig.
And an EOG friend told me they just drilled a 14,000 ft lateral in only 2 days.
Incredible. @Smokin Joe
--- End quote ---
What amazes me is how clean rigs typically are now compared to yesteryear.
IsailedawayfromFR:
--- Quote from: Bigun on September 13, 2025, 08:42:23 am ---What amazes me is how clean rigs typically are now compared to yesteryear.
--- End quote ---
I got initiated with pipe dope on my first visit to a rig.
Bet it is still used a lot.
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