The Eagle Ford in South Texas is big news, even in California.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-oil-boom-20140216,0,7621618.story#axzz2tdDZOvWY
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Carrizo Springs Makes the LA Times
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The Durability of the Internal Combustion Engine
In the later chapters of The Quest, Daniel Yergin summarizes the history of the internal combustion engine. He begins by recounting a meeting of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison at a convention in August 1896, at which they sat together. Ford had just built his first gasoline-powered “quadricycle.” He sketched out his design to Edison. Edison told him that the problem with electric-powered vehicles is that they “must keep near a power station.” Edison told Ford to stick with the internal combustion engine.
The internal combustion engine was invented by Nikolaus Otto. His “Otto cycle” engine, developed in 1876, is still recognizable in our engines today: valves, a crankshaft, spark plugs, and a single cylinder. Otto teamed with Karl Benz to produce automobiles, and Gottlieb Daimler was in close competition. (In the twentieth century, the two companies merged, though Benz and Daimler never met each other.) By the 1890’s Daimler was distributing his cars in America.
Germany competed with France — with the French engineers Armand Peugeot and Louis Renault — for supremacy in the development of the automobile. Britain was initially left behind because its railway industry, fearing competition, got Parliament to pass the Red Flag Acts that limited “road locomotives” to four miles an hour in the country and two miles an hour in cities — as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons.
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Julia Crawford Continues Fight Against Keystone XL Pipeline
Julia Trigg-Crawford, a landowner in Lamar County, has asked the Texas Supreme Court to hear her case arguing that TransCanada has no right to condemn her property for the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Crawford Family Farm Partnership v. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P., No. 13-0866. Although other segments of the pipeline await federal approval, the segment from Oklahoma across Texas has now been completed and is in operation. Crawford lost her case in the trial court and the Texarkana Court of Appeals, 409 S.W.3d 908, and has asked the Supreme Court to review the case. The Supreme Court asked TransCanada to reply to Crawford’s petition, and Texarkana filed its reply on February 6.
Crawford’s argument is that Texas law does not grant eminent domain powers to interstate pipelines. TransCanada argues that Crawford’s appeal presents the same issues as Rhinoceros Ventures Group, Inc. v. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, L.P., 388 S.W.3d 305 (Tex. App.–Beaumont 2012, pet. denied), which the Supreme Court declined to review.
Crawford has become a symbol of opposition to the Keystone pipeline, drawing national attention to her cause.
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Texas’ Remarkable Rise in Oil Production
Here is a graph from the Energy Information Administration showing the Texas crude miracle:
Texas now produces 36% of US oil production. The graph below is from a Reuters article, showing the resultant drop in US crude imports:
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Rig Technology Changes the Landscape
The New York Times reported recently that the number of mobile or “walking” drilling rigs in operation now exceeds the number of conventional rigs, by 650 to 500. “Pad drilling” — the drilling of multiple wells from a single pad site — has now become the norm in unconventional plays, and these walking rigs make drilling from a single pad site more economical and efficient. Moving a rig to a new location now takes a matter of hours instead of days. The new rigs cost up to $20 million. The increased effeciency of these rigs has actually reduced the rig count while increasing the number of wells drilled, and has caused the Energy Information Administration to develop a new rig-efficiency measure. The combination of walking rigs and multi-well drillsites results in significant reductions in drilling costs. Continental Resources, the largest player in the Bakken, says it now can drill 14 wells from a single pad.
EIA’s new Drilling Productivity Report shows how the new technology has affected production in the major shale plays. Here is its graph for the Eagle Ford:
Here is an annual comparison for several shale plays:
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A Good Video Explaining Horizontal Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing
From Northern Oil and Gas:
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News of Interest
Recent news relating to oil and gas exploration and development in Texas:
Dune Sagebrush Lizard — Good article on efforts of industry and State regulators to avoid problems raised by possible listing of the Dune Sagebrush Lizard under the Endangered Species Act. Here is a map of the lizard’s habitat – right in the middle of the Permian Basin.
Earthquakes in the Oil Patch — Earthquakes in and around Azle, in the Barnett Shale, have caused quite a stir. Here’s a good article from the San Antonio News. Everyone seems to agree that the quakes are caused by injection wells, except the Texas Railroad Commission, which until recently called the connection “hypothetical”. After one of the Commissioners, David Porter, faced angry homeowners at a town hall meeting in Azle, he called for the RRC to hire its own seismologist. Azle residents are planning a bus trip to Austin to attend the next RRC conference in protest.
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Klotzmans Appeal RRC EOG Allocation Well Ruling
The Klotzman mineral owners have appealed the Texas Railroad Commission’s order granting EOG a permit to drill an “allocation well” on their land. A copy of the petition can be viewed here: Klotzman Petition.pdf. Our firm represents the Klotzmans. For my previous posts about allocation wells and the Klotzman case, search for “allocation well” in the site’s search engine.
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Springer Ranch, Ltd. v. Jones – Interesting Case on Horizontal Wells
The San Antonio Court of Appeals recently decided a case illustrating the new kinds of issues that can arise from the drilling of horizontal wells.
In Springer Ranch v. Jones, Alice Burkholder owned a ranch, 8,545 acres in La Salle and Webb Counties. She signed a single oil and gas lease on the ranch in 1956 that has been maintained by produciton. When she died, Alice left the ranch to her husband for life, and thereafter in three separate tracts to her three children. In effect, by her will she partitioned the ranch, surface and minerals, into three tracts, subject to the oil and gas lease. Alice’s husband died in 1990, and thereafter the three children signed a contract agreeing on how royalties on production from the lease should be divided among them. The contract provided that all royalties under the lease “shall be paid to the owner of the surface estate on which such well or wells are situated, without reference to any production unit on which such well or wells are located.”
The lessee drilled a horizontal well located partly on one of the ranch tracts, now owned by Springer Ranch, and partly under a different tract now owned by Rosalie Sullivan. The surface location of the well was on the Springer Ranch tract. Springer Ranch argued that, because the surface location was “situated on” its property, it should receive all royalties from the well. Rosalie Sullivan argued that royalties from the well should be allocated between the two tracts based on each tract’s part of the productive lateral of the well. The trial court agreed with Ms. Sullivan, and the court of appeals affirmed. It construed the parties’ agreement to to allocate royalties on the basis of the percentage of the productive interval of the wellbore on each party’s tract, not on the basis of the well’s surface location.
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The Texas Miracle
Data from the Energy Information Administration shows that Texas’ oil production is now the highest it’s been in thirty years. Texas crude production is now approaching 3 million barrels/day, a rate not seen since the 1960’s.
Below are EIA graphs showing production of oil from the Eagle Ford and the Permian Basin. It appears that Eagle Ford production rates will soon surpass production from the Permian.
EIA also calculates changes in the initial productivity of new wells in each field, a measure of the improved efficiency of rigs in the field. The graphs below show that new wells in the Eagle Ford are improving substantially; not so in the Permian. IP rates of Eagle Ford wells are now substantially higher than in the Permian.