U.S. Energy Information Administration this week lowered its forecast for Brent crude oil spot price for 2024 to $74 per barrel – down 8.3 percent from its April 11 forecast of $81.  Also Tuesday in its Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA lowered the forecast price for 2023 to $79 from $85 last month.  Price fell at […]

Midland-based ProPetro Holding said last week its seventh Tier IV dual-fuel frac fleet is expected to begin operations in 2023Q2.  The company plans to retire about 140,000 hydraulic horsepower of Tier II conventional diesel frac equipment during 2023.  ProPetro now operates six Tier IV dual-fuel frac fleets.  And two of the four electric frac fleets […]

Houston-based Targa Resources said last week it plans to construct a new fractionation Train 10 (120 thousand barrels per day) in Mont Belvieu to handle continued supply growth from its Permian Basin gathering and processing systems and third parties.  And Targa also said May 4 that it is ordering long-lead-time items for another gas plant […]

Dorf Ketal, one of the world’s leading specialty products and services companies, recently acquired Clariant’s North American Land Oil, including a manufacturing facility in Midland.  After the combination of the two companies, Dorf Ketal launched DK Energy Services.  The transaction of $14.5 million includes 180 employees in North America, technology portfolio of 40 patent families, […]

Enverus Intelligence Research said last week the deal value of U.S. merger and acquisition activity in Q1 was down about 20 percent from the Q1 average since 2016 and was an outlier in deal targets and types for upstream transactions.  Andrew Dittmar, director at Enverus, said May 2, “Rather than public E&Ps focusing on buying […]

Permian Basin, Texas and U.S. recorded declines in counts of active drilling rigs for the past week, according to the May 5 report from Baker Hughes.  Permian was down 5 rigs to 356 (335 year ago), Texas was down 9 rigs to 368 (344 year ago) and U.S. was down 7 rigs to 748 (705 […]

Houston-based Callon Petroleum said last week it is acquiring Percussion Petroleum Operating’s 18,000 net acres in Loving, Ward and Winkler counties in west Texas and divesting its assets in Eagle Ford Shale in south Texas to focus on Permian Basin.  The Percussion deal is a cash-and-stock transaction valued at $475 million ($265 million cash).  Callon […]

A survey conducted for the New Mexico Produced Water Research Consortium at the state fair last year revealed that a majority of qualified respondents approved of the use of recycled produced water.  Results of the random survey were reported by Deborah Dixon of the consortium at a recent meeting of the New Mexico Desalination Association.  […]

A new report from Wood Mackenzie said countries in Latin America will need to expand imports of natural gas over the next decade.  In the report, “Natural Gas Resources in Latin America,” WoodMac forecasts gas demand in the region to grow at an average rate of 1.4 percent per year over the next decade and […]

Dallas-based Matador Resources said last week it drilled a pilot project of two wells on its Wolf acreage in Loving County using a “horseshoe” design.  Matador drilled a two-mile lateral on a section only large enough for a traditional one-mile lateral.  The U-shaped lateral drills out part of the wellbore, makes a 180-degree turn, and […]