Permian Basin

Pioneer Natural Resources Co. continues to work its Spraberry/Wolfcamp acreage in the Permian Basin with its latest — and most successful so far — well completion design. Meanwhile, company activity is returning to the Eagle Ford Shale.

Apache Corp. significantly increased its developments in West Texas during the first quarter, with natural gas flowing last Wednesday at the Alpine High prospect and the midstream buildout ramping up two months ahead of schedule, CEO John Christmann said Thursday.

Permian pure-play operator Parsley Energy Inc. reported a sharp increase in its quarterly production trajectory, due in large part to the integration of acreage it acquired during the first quarter, but lower lease operating expenses (LOE) and improving well results also gave it a boost.

SM Energy Co. said its three-year growth plan was ramping up quickly, with new wells performing stronger than expected, while completing an $800 million sale of noncore assets in the Eagle Ford Shale helped to reduce net debt by more than 20%.

Devon Energy Corp. expects to ramp up to 20 rigs by the end of 2017 as it focuses on oilier opportunities in the Permian Basin and Oklahoma’s STACK (aka, the Sooner Trend of the Anadarko Basin, mostly in Canadian and Kingfisher counties).

Back in the black and confident its refocused operations will stay there with a Permian Basin emphasis, Occidental Petroleum Corp. (Oxy) on Thursday detailed its deployment of various analytics to get better results out of reconfigured reserves following the sale of its South Texas assets.

The Permian Basin’s Delaware play gave a solid assist to Anadarko Petroleum Corp. volumes in the first quarter, but new regulatory scrutiny in its other big onshore play, the Denver-Julesburg Basin in Colorado, weighed on investor sentiment Wednesday.

ConocoPhillips Lower 48 unconventional production troughed a bit sooner than the company expected — during the first quarter instead of the second. And now production is up from what was only recently planned, Alan Hirshberg, executive vice president for production, drilling and projects said Tuesday.

Brazos Midstream Holdings LLC has completed multiple crude oil and gas gathering and processing projects in the southern Delaware Basin, a subbasin of the Permian Basin that is one of the most active oil- and gas-producing basins in the United States. Brazos commenced operation of a new 60 MMcf/d gas processing plant (Comanche I), several new compressor stations and 150 miles of large-diameter, low- and high-pressure gas gathering pipelines. The project also included the construction of 35 miles of crude oil gathering pipelines, two crude oil storage terminals with a combined capacity of 50,000 bbl and connections to multiple downstream crude oil pipelines. Brazos also has begun construction of a second gas processing plant (Comanche II), which will add 200 MMcf/d of capacity. Comanche II is expected to be operational during the first quarter of 2018 and will increase Brazos’ total operated processing capacity in the Delaware Basin to 260 MMcf/d.