Permian Basin is providing most of the growth in numbers of hydraulic fracturing crews returning to work in U.S. Houston investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. said the number of active frac crews grew by 6.8 percent in July to nearly 100 (more than 300 in July 2019). Permian Basin accounted for 10 of the crews returning to work, according to Tudor, and now has 43 percent of active frac crews in U.S. There are 26 percent in Marcellus, 9 percent in Eagle Ford and 8 percent in Haynesville. Tudor analyst George O’Leary said, “We firmly expect the Permian will drive the majority of the incremental frac demand through the end of 2020.”
Argus Media said the crews returning to work “are likely to be working on recently drilled wells or working through a swollen inventory of drilled but uncompleted wells… The potential for U.S. shale output to recover quickly remains because so much infrastructure already is in place, and producers are deeply invested in the sector. The Permian Basin alone contains nearly 3,500 DUC wells.”