Booming

With oil production booming in the Permian Basin of West Texas, projects are being developed to serve producers wanting to get their oil to Houston. But going west on a converted portion of Kinder Morgan’s El Paso Natural Gas (EPNG) system could one day be an option, too.

Inflated by production from the nation’s burgeoning shale plays, total gross withdrawals of domestic natural gas jumped to 28.58 Tcf in 2011, a 6.5% increase from 26.84 Tcf in 2010, and are on pace to easily surpass those numbers again this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Monthly Energy Review for September.

The number of operating unconventional rigs increased by seven (1%) in the week ending Sept. 14 but was down significantly (140 rigs, or 14%) compared to last year, according to NGI’s Shale Daily Unconventional Rig Count.

Increasing crude oil supplies from shale plays coupled with Canadian oilsands imports will challenge the U.S. refining system in ways the industry had not anticipated, according to a new study from Turner, Mason & Co. (TMC).

While natural gas production is booming in Pennsylvania, applications to drill unconventional wells in the state appear to have fallen off a cliff in the last three months while the number of wells spudded has been slowly declining for almost a year, indicating producers in the Marcellus and Utica shales have gotten the gas glut message.

While natural gas production is booming in Pennsylvania, applications to drill unconventional wells in the state appear to have fallen off a cliff in the last three months while the number of wells spudded has been slowly declining for almost a year, indicating producers in the Marcellus and Utica Shales have gotten the gas glut message.

Driven primarily by continuing record oil production from the Bakken Shale formation, North Dakota’s economy is booming and is on target to produce more than $3.5 billion in tax revenues by the end of the state’s current two-year (2011-2013) fiscal year budget period, according to the state tax commissioner.

In North Dakota where a quarter of the booming oil production in the Bakken Shale play is moved by rail car or truck — not pipeline — North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple Thursday urged the oil and gas industry to beef up the pipeline network in his state to keep up with rapidly growing production. Dalrymple spoke to more than 100 industry and government representatives at the state’s annual pipeline summit in Bismarck.

Naggingly low natural gas prices apparently haven’t dimmed prospects in the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana, where the booming play is driving a surge in hiring, housing starts, infrastructure projects and more.