Attention

Almost half of the drilling in the U.S. onshore now is being done on multi-well pads, further moving attention from the rig and well count and more to horizontal footage drilled and the number of fractured stages per well, Halliburton Co. CEO Dave Lesar said Monday.

Apache Corp., which now claims to be the second biggest North American onshore operator, reported a 45% increase in total liquids output year/year in the United States and Canada, driven by a revamped drilling program in the legacy Permian and Anadarko basins.

There are three major plays that have the full attention of Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s (Oxy) strategy to significantly grow its U.S. drilling operations — California, the Permian Basin and the Bakken — and they each have their different timetables and challenges, said Oxy CEO Stephen Chazen.

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) did not give sufficient attention to the potential environmental impact from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) when it issued oil/gas leases for 2,500 acres two years ago, a judge in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, in San Jose ruled on Monday.

Compressed natural gas (CNG) continued to gain more attention in the transportation fleet, fuel and vehicle sectors, gaining more acceptance as shown in reports in California and Maryland so far this month.

Compressed natural gas (CNG) continues to gain attention in the transportation fleet, fuel and vehicle sectors, as well as more integration in the states.

Denver-based exploration and production (E&P) independent Venoco Inc. drew attention in a recent financial commentary citing the renewed oil/gas production in formerly depleted fields in and around Los Angeles as proof that E&P activity can coexist in heavily populated urban areas (see Daily GPI, July 8).

As the federal government and industry players pay more attention to the issue, cyber security problems lurk for the oil and natural gas industry, and greater levels of risk assessment and a “new way of thinking” about information security are needed, according to a global survey released Monday by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

After a string of modest but attention-getting spills over the past 18 months, the government in the home base of the Canadian oil and gas industry has launched a review of pipeline safety standards.