Recently in Upstream Category

It wasn't so long ago that upstream companies were stampeding to buy natural gas properties. For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it seemed like every CEO's wish list included stakes in what was fondly called the "North American gas fairway" stretching from New Mexico to the Canadian Arctic.

A lot of the frenzy stemmed from what was then a growing gap between North American gas demand and the ability of industry to deliver the goods. Companies were reviving long-dormant LNG plants and planning dozens of new ones. Gas was a trendy commodity, and corporate presentations routinely included maps sporting company logos of the western North American gassy continental corridor that proudly boasted their regional holdings.

Lost in the financial chaos of the 2009 downcycle is the emergence of what appears to be a fundamental change in the way the industry deploys rigs for land drilling in North America. That change will result in a need for fewer rigs once the industry shakes off the recession and returns to work, according to a handful of analysts, led by Jim Crandell at Barclays Capital.

The bi-annual North American Prospect Expo may not be as well-known as some other energy gatherings, but it has been well-attended since starting up in 1993 and has served as a pretty reliable gauge of industry's health.

The most recent NAPE last week showed, perhaps not unexpectedly, that the industry's pulse is a little weak and its temperature a bit short of the normal 98.6 degrees, but its overall vital signs still appear robust.

Hey -- who says you can't go home?

Bon Jovi had a hit song contradicting Thomas Wolfe's iconic warning by screaming that question. Now, it seems, Occidental Petroleum's Ray Irani would join Bon Jovi's chorus after announcing yet another impressive discovery right there in his own backyard.

One of the most promising natural gas shale plays in the US has high well rates, lots of potential and some of industry's biggest players digging into it. And yet few in the energy patch outside of Wall Street write about it.   

Ever since shale bull Petrohawk Energy announced its success in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas last year, operators have quietly amassed acreage there and turned up early drilling successes. But some of that lustre has paled among the bigger news of slashed E&P budgets and lower quarterly earnings.

US President Barack Obama's 6-hour trip to Ottawa on Thursday, while brief and lacking in the pomp and circumstance normally associated with presidential trips abroad, will arguably be one of the most important of the early period of his presidency.

Canada is the largest trading partner of the US, particularly in the energy and transportation industries. So how the two countries work out some particularly difficult issues running the gamut from the so-called "smart grid" technology in the power sector to carbon sequestration and cap-and-trade will have dramatic impacts in both countries for years to come.

During the Cold War era, PBS producer Hedrick Smith, then a New York Times reporter in Moscow, wrote a book called The Russians. In it he described the chronic scarcity of everyday goods in that country in the Soviet era, and the long waiting lines when items became available. Frequently, Smith said, when Russian citizens saw a line forming, they queued up--often before they even knew what was on sale--just in case the item turned out to be something they needed.

Feeling a rising unease over near-term commodity and financial markets, E&P operators have reined in capital spending and scaled back rig counts amid plunging commodity prices and credit fountains that are fast drying up.

We're talking a late 2008 scenario, right? Yes and no. These events are in the present, but the above statement could also describe in some parts late 2007, late 2006, late 2001 and going back further, the late 1990s.

This year's 36th annual Howard Weil Energy Conference in New Orleans helped underscore the industry's fickle nature as 2007 buzz phrase "MLP" vanished into the graveyard of cliches only to be replaced by a crazyquilt of shale play mania.

At a time when it seems everyone in industry is hunting for the US' next big exploitation play, the Haynesville shale in north Louisiana debuted on the energy stage early last month during conference calls by small operators Goodrich Petroleum and Petrohawk Energy. But the play really captured rave reviews when shale slugger Chesapeake Energy revealed its presence there a couple of weeks later.

Chesapeake said it already believed it had 7.5 Tcfe of Haynesville reserve potential across its net 200,000 acres, but estimated up to 20 Tcfe with anticipated company acreage increases to 500,000 net acres. Those kind of numbers, coupled with whatever Petrohawk and Goodrich acreage might hold, potentially class the Haynesville in almost the same league as the Barnett Shale, whose estimated 29 to 39 Tcfe (3 Tcfe of which have already been produced) have ranked it among the US' biggest gas fields.