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Plunging oil prices led to a drastic drop in drilling rigs working in most places in the world, with a notable exception. Baker Hughes’ widely watched weekly report on drilling rigs shows activity has remained steady in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.

Petroleum engineers have sophisticated, precise equations to help predict and control what flows out of wells. But when it comes to the number of trained engineers in the world, guesswork is required.

Those who track drilling and fracturing equipment are apt to mention zombies. That is the living-dead machinery still counted as available to work, but more likely now to be used for spare parts or scrapped.

During a protracted period of depressed prices in E&P, the customer focus for service companies and suppliers shifts to finding ways to reduce the cost of producing a barrel of oil.

Pressure is growing this year for exploration and production (E&P) companies to “face the reality of a prolonged period of low prices,” said Alan Cunningham, technical director for Gaffney, Cline & Associates.

The impact on workers from the global downturn is so large it is difficult to track. At the high end of the job loss estimates is John Graves, owner of Graves & Co., who estimated the number of jobs lost in the oil and gas industry at more than 250,000 at year end, and rising.

Each of the 25 onshore blocks offered to private companies in Mexico’s December auction were awarded, almost all of which went to Mexican companies.

The inventor of a new water-based drilling fluid believes the chemical process involved with his technology opens up natural fractures as drilling takes place to increase production in shale formations.

The US Department of Justice and the Alaska Department of Law recently closed federal and legal actions against ExxonMobil Corp. and its corporate predecessors involving the 1989 crude oil spill from the Exxon Valdez oil tanker.

This article describes how the use of a biological EOR technique that applied produced water for reservoir flooding in a mature field led to rapid and substantial increases in oil production.