Rigs

Energy commodity prices aren’t cooperating in any arena at the moment, but ConocoPhillips is confident that diverting its natural gas rigs to more liquids targets in North America is the right path forward, CEO Ryan Lance said last week.

Energy commodity prices aren’t cooperating in any arena at the moment, but ConocoPhillips is confident that diverting its natural gas rigs to more liquids targets in North America is the right path forward, CEO Ryan Lance said Wednesday.

Schlumberger Ltd. executives said Friday the move by North American land rigs and service capacity from natural gas fields to liquids-rich basins has accelerated, but the pricing weakness first experienced in the gas fields also has begun to shift to liquids plays.

It may take some time before fewer drilling rigs and curtailed output make a dent in domestic onshore natural gas production. Dry gas production skyrocketed 11.6% in January from a year earlier to 2,047 Bcf gross, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said.

Tulsa-based midstream company Caballo Energy LLC is targeting the Mississippi Lime of Oklahoma and Kansas, and the Cana Woodford Shale with its acquisition of Eagle Chief Midstream LLC, which owns a gas gathering and processing system in northwestern Oklahoma.

Walter H. Helmerich III, chairman of Tulsa-based Helmerich & Payne Inc., the largest active provider of land drilling rigs in the United States, died Tuesday. Helmerich joined the company that his father co-founded in 1950 and became president in 1960. He led the company as CEO for 22 years until 1989 when his son Hans was named CEO. Helmerich is survived by his wife, Peggy, his five sons and 12 grandchildren. Services are to be held Friday at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that although natural gas production in North Dakota has more than doubled since 2005, so far more than 35% of that production for 2011 has been flared or otherwise not marketed because of insufficient infrastructure in the Bakken Shale.

U.S. shale natural gas production today is half the size of the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) business, which doesn’t bode well for those with designs on imports but is a positive for proposed export facilities, the Houston-based chief of Gazprom Marketing & Trading USA (GM&T) said Monday.

Louisiana has joined other states in requiring the disclosure of the contents of fluids used for hydraulic fracturing (fracking). The rule was proposed earlier this year.