Eagle Ford Shale

Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI) agreed to pay about $3 billion, including about $1 billion of assumed debt, for Hiland Partners, which has crude oil gathering and transportation pipelines, and natural gas gathering and processing systems, primarily serving the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana.

Although it will be another three weeks before Pioneer Natural Resources Co. holds its fourth quarter earnings conference call and announces a capital budget for 2015, analysts are already reading the tea leaves from a company executive and its joint venture (JV) partner in the Eagle Ford Shale over how both 4Q2014 and 2015 will shake out.

Schlumberger Ltd. is working “actively” with North American customers to lower drilling costs and to renegotiate contracts, with a big push toward technology and efficiency offerings, CEO Paal Kibsgaard said Friday.

An unprecedented level of uncertainty exists for North America’s upstream sector this year, but upside exists for operators to trim service costs, high grade their portfolios and improve efficiencies, according to Wood Mackenzie Ltd.

The United States could sustain strong economic growth, add more jobs and improve global energy security by expanding crude oil exports, ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance said Wednesday.

Production from the nation’s seven most prolific shale and tight oil regions continues to surge ever higher and is expected to reach 45.44 Bcf/d of natural gas and 5.52 b/d of oil next month, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Shale oil helped pull Texas out of the 2008-2009 national recession more quickly than other parts of the country, but during the 2016-2017 biennium, revenue from oil and gas taxes will be making a smaller contribution to state coffers than during the current biennium, according to the comptroller’s latest estimates.

Texas oil and gas interests begin a new legislative session on Tuesday following a year that saw growing resistance to fracking in some corners of the state and heightened citizen awareness of drilling and pipelines. But industry efforts to assuage citizen concerns — not to mention much-weakened commodity prices — could give oil and gas a relatively easy time of it in Austin this time around.

Matador Resources Co. said it plans to scale back its drilling program over the next few months, dropping two rigs deployed in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas but keeping three rigs in the Permian Basin in southeast New Mexico and West Texas, a familiar refrain as exploration and production (E&P) companies of all stripes continue to grapple with the collapse in world crude oil prices.