shale

The latest updates on the North American shale sector’s efforts to consolidate and restructure.

Shale producers proved they could pump out record volumes of oil by drilling horizontal wells and then fracturing them intensively. Now the industry needs to find buyers for many wells and acreage with hard-to-determine values.

The all-cash deal bucks a recent trend of international oil companies divesting of Canadian assets and adds 15,000 B/D of production to the buyer’s total.

A company built with a plan to quickly profit from the shale boom began a slow decline when oil prices sank to $50/bbl. Others could be following it to bankruptcy court this year.

Judgment day may finally have arrived for weak players in the shale business. Deloitte ranks nearly half of the companies as extraneous. What happens next?

The legacy service provider operates in every major shale basin in the US and Canada. In court filings, it says it will seek additional funding to sell its equipment and wind down operations.

Why stimulate horizontal wells one by one when they can be done two at a time? The largest pressure-pumping company in the business says it might even be possible to complete three wells at once.

As wells across the US shale sector are brought back onto production, they may want to do so strategically to learn about the connectivity of their wells. One challenge will be in selecting a model that delivers the most insight.

The development marks the second-largest shale producer to file for Chapter 11 since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that sent crude prices reeling.

Greg Leveille said he is optimistic that the shale sector will be able to bounce back from its second downturn in 5 years. The trick this time, he says, will be not just investing in new digital technologies but putting them to work.