Internet Oil Drum

Oil Crude Futures hit a two month high Wednesday. Investors see signs that riskier assets such as oil will be in higher demand if the economy grows stronger.

Signs for Houston’s economy also got a boost this week with news luxury home sales were up sharply in February. Some analysts see this as the beginning of consumers feeling good about economy again.

The U.S. natural gas boom has been the focus of almost every company in the oil and gas industry lately. The Marcellus, Barnett, Haynesville, Woodford, and most recently Eagle Ford have become household names on the news. But is the increasing supply just a temporary treasure? An analysis by independent consultant Michael Lynch warns that the good times may be short-lived!

Click to see the analysis at http://www.glgroup.com/News/Shale-gas-has-already-changed-U.S.-markets-with-more-to-come-47054.html

With the healhcare debate overwhelming everything else in Washington cap and trade seems all but dead.   Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) have introduced CLEAR Act. The bills sponsors claim 80% of energy consumers will see no increase in their net cost for energy.

The website Reason.com has an indepth look.

The bill will still face an uphill battle to become law as the November Election gets closer.

The key difference in the Clear bill and Waxman-Markey one passed by the House of Representatives last June is the CLEAR bill woud largely avoid picking winners and losers among technologies, special interest groups, or industries by not deciding who gets how many carbon credits.

While it may seem Cap and Trade has been killed by the Health Care battle with Republicans and Democrats woring togather to propose alternatives some sort of carbon reduction bill may yet happen in 2010.

I found this Fox News Video of Magnum Hunter CEO Gary Evans that aired a week ago. He weighs in on the state of the oil industry and how the focus of the industry is completely done an about-face from the mid 1980s and ’90s when companies were searching elsewhere for oil to coming back to the US due to the natural gas boom. “We’re seeing all these foreign entities coming to the United States trying to get a foothold in North America because we have now got gas reserves that we thought were going to be depleting in maybe 40 years,” he said. “Our country really needs to come back and look at home grown natural gas and how we can extract that out of the ground and use it for our own economy rather than importing crude oil for all over the world.”

Click on the link: http://www.foxbusiness.com/search-results/m/29111925/exploring-oil-and-gas-production.htm

I found it very informative and thought I would pass it to you. Please feel free to comment about the video on my blog.

Unless your head has been buried in the sand you are well aware that the shale plays are hot. The names Marcellus, Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Haynesville in our industry perk up ears and warm hearts like ‘tweens reading “Twilight” and “Harry Potter” books. The difference between the two is that “Twilight” and “Harry Potter” books are readily available at your nearest bookstore or on every Web site that is able to sell the books.

While your children read what they enjoy, why don’t you? We have five playbooks so far that you can buy that give you all the information you need on those particular shales: Arkoma, Horn River and Muskwa, Marcellus, Bakken, and Barnett.

To purchase any of these playbooks, visit the Hart Store by clicking here. There’s a great selection to look through, from playbook with map to a PDF version of the playbooks. It’s like Christmas all over again! Below is a summary on each one.

Arkoma Basin Shales Playbook: A treasure trove of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas lies within western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma’s Fayetteville, Woodford and Caney shales. Operators are busy honing sophisticated horizontal drilling and completion technologies to extract this wealth from the Arkoma Basin’s rich, black shales.

Bakken Shale Playbook: Activity in the Bakken Shale Play, both oil and gas, is exploding. New operators enter the area daily. New technology hits the ground or subsurface regularly. New offtake systems are designed and installed to meet burgeoning production. Tax structures change often as do local and regional regulations. All this happens as the play continues to expand. Too much to get your hands around? Not if you have a copy of Hart’s Bakken Shale Play Book, the definitive reference book for information about this important play.

Barnett Shale Playbook: North Texas’ Barnett shale is the granddaddy of modern shale plays. During the past decade, activity has exploded to encompass all or parts of 20 counties. Today, more than 12,000 Barnett shale wells produce 5 billion cubic feet of gas per day, and nearly three-fourths of these wells are horizontal. Success has been so robust that Barnett gas is now approaching 10% of U.S. domestic supply. Despite the intensive drilling programs of the past several years, great volumes of gas still remain to be extracted from the Barnett reservoir. Efforts in this leading shale play have shifted to controlling costs and improving recovery of in-place gas.

Haynesville Shale Playbook: East Texas and North Louisiana have served up another tantalizing reservoir in the superb Haynesville shale. The Jurassic Haynesville is a wonder, displaying every desirable characteristic of a prime shale reservoir. Well results are excellent, economics are compelling and excitement continues to grow! The Haynesville Shale has been estimated to be the largest natural gas field in the 48 states with an estimated 250 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. This play has the attention of the entire industry, the investment community, E&P companies, service companies, and pipeline companies. The demand for additional information on the Haynesville is clearly evident on the search engines of our websites.

Horn River and Muskwa Shales Playbook: Far northeastern British Columbia’s Horn River basin is home to tremendous, very thick Middle Devonian shales. These shales–Muskwa, Otter Park, Klua and Evie-are in the earliest stages of development in a region that has no conventional oil and gas production. Yet, the basin is on the brink of becoming a major unconventional field that will have a long-term impact on continental natural-gas supply.

Marcellus Shale Playbook: The Appalachian Basin’s Marcellus shale holds the promise to become a top producing shale reservoir. It covers a vast area-many times larger than any other shale play–and exhibits excellent reservoir qualities. Recent strong well results show that the Marcellus is living up to its promise, and its location in the core of North America’s premium natural-gas markets gives it leverage over more distant supplies. Find out the latest in this inclusive compilation. Includes two-page map in the publication.

And just to give you something to look forward to:

Upcoming - Granite Wash Playbook: Operators are applying both horizontal and vertical wells to produce reserves from this longtime target that occupies a swath 160 miles long and 30 miles wide in the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma. The Granite Wash is an extraordinary reservoir, prone to extreme variations in thickness, grain size, pore-size distribution, number of prospective intervals and gas/oil ratio. Economic rates are achieved by multistage, slickwater fracture treatments and close attention to costs.

Are they available online? Sure! You have to be a member of our Unconventional Gas Center to get them. Visit www.ugcenter.com and see what it has to offer and take the Virtual Tour.

Happy Shopping!

This weekend Sunday has a whole new meaning. For the first time since August 2009 there are no football games on. And to top it all off, it’s Valentine’s Day - a holiday created by Hallmark to show those you love how much you love them. But what if you don’t want to go out or you’re single or just plain ‘ol not interested in the whole red-heart hoopla? You already know there’s nothing worth watching on TV on weekends so, there’s always the computer. It’s a PERFECT time to catch up on your E&P webinars.

The following list is our recent and upcoming complimentary webinars. Enjoy!

Storm Clouds Ahead: The Longer-Term Forecast For The Weather-Related Impact On Natural Gas
Overview: During this webinar, Dr. Michael Ferrari, industry-recognized vice president of applied technology and commodity research for Weather Trends International, will review the short-term U.S. weather pattern, then move into a seasonal outlook, highlighting those periods in which gas demand is likely to be high or low. In addition, it will be made clear why the Weather Trends forecast is different from many of other winter outlooks, and how this fits in the context of today’s commodity markets—and producers’ hedging decision making.Also included in this broadcast will be a demonstration of the ability to use data from multiple sources in an interactive, visual presentation that improves the process of extracting understanding and insight in complex and dynamic energy markets.

Using Digital Oilfield Information For Asset Improvement
What You Will Learn:
–A framework—including assessment, business-case development and implementation stages—that assures full benefits are realized from Digital Oilfield projects.
–Commercially available tools and methodologies that can improve time-to-benefit for Digital Oilfield investments.
–Empowered collaboration among diverse disciplines as a means to improved decision making—including for production forecasting, vendor-performance evaluation and the integration of field data.
–Real-life scenarios for production engineers, operations managers and financial analysts, focused on field operations and asset management.

How BP Derives Business Benefit From Technology-Driven Initiatives
What You Will Learn:
– Achieving real-time collaboration across multiple disciplines.
– Workflow as a ruling management concept.
– Getting closer to “closed-loop control” in the upstream.
– The growing impact of analytics and modeling.

Also make sure to sign up for our upcoming free webinars:

The View from the Corner Suite: Leslie Haines Talks With El Paso Corp.’s Doug Foshee
Overview: Continuing “The View from the Corner Suite” webinar series launched in 2009 by Oil and Gas Investor and SAP, editor-in-chief Leslie Haines talks live with Doug Foshee, chairman, president and chief executive officer of oil and gas producer and pipeline operator El Paso Corp. at 10 a.m. CST, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010. Attendees in the approx. 55-minute live webinar program may submit questions at any time during the program for Foshee to address.

Oil-Prone Shales: Their Nature, Location, Production Potential
What You Will Learn:
–The three main types of shale-oil systems, which has the best potential for production, and why.
–Regional prospectivity of the main types of shale-oil systems.
–Why the Bakken play works—and works so well.
–The nuts and bolts of the Bakken petroleum system, and how this translates to analogous plays.

Have a wonderful weekend!

A poll on our home page shows that the Eagle Ford shale is surpassing the Marcellus as what will be the hot shale in 2010. According to Google Analytics, Eagle Ford is currently just shy of the Marcellus as the most visited home page in our Unconventional Gas Center site (ugcenter.com).

What’s so attractive about it? Find out at http://www.ugcenter.com/Shales/US/EagleFord/. This link has all the latest information on the Eagle Ford, including Activity Highlights, topical webinars, shale players, feature stories and more!

You can listen to a webinar about the Eagle Ford right now by clicking here.

And right now if you subscribe to the Unconventional Gas Center you receive DVD of Hart’s 2009 Developing Unconventional Gas Conference ($597 value). Click here to subscribe to UGCenter.com; existing subscribers click here to renew. For more information contact Attrice Hunt at 713-260-6437 or email her at ahunt@hartenergy.com. To take a 3-minute tour of the site, click here.

Disagree with the E&P poll? Let me know what you think by commenting!

As I’m sure you already know, on Jan. 12, 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. Disaster relief efforts were underway when this morning, while getting ready for work, I heard on the news that Haiti was rocked by another major earthquake. The area was already devastated before this morning’s quake. Help is GREATLY needed.

I was told to donate by texting “HAITI” to “90999.” I was told that a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross in my name to help with relief efforts, charged to my wireless bill. This is a great idea. However, my cell phone has not been able to get through the system. So I did some research to find the best way to donate to the cause.

Here are some suggested Web sites:

• American Red Cross
• NetHope
• Save the Children
• World Vision International
• Care
• MercyCorps
• Unicef

Please remember to (a) donate generously and (b) donate wisely. Check on the charitable organization and make sure they are a legit charity. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has a list of accountability standards to look for:
- how they govern their organization;
- how they spend their money;
- the truthfulness of their representations;
- and their willingness to disclose basic information to the public.

You can always check on a charity’s legitimacy through the BBB at http://www.bbb.org/us/.

If your company donates or has an event for Haiti, please let E&P know so we can cover the story on www.epmag.com.

For those of you who have a hard time explaining to people why the shale plays are so hot right now, here’s a great link to send them. It is a Fox News clip called “Shale Gold Rush.” It’s a great clip to share with your family since the explanation is pretty basic. I enjoy sharing what I do with my family and friends and hope you do, too.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/3960671/shale-gold-rush

If the video doesn’t work, here is the print article:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581996,00.html

Don’t forget you can always subscribe to ugcenter.com for the latest information on unconventional gas. For a quick tour of the site, click visit http://www.ugcenter.com/onlinetour/.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! I wanted to alert you to a documentary about the Haynesville shale and how it is affecting families in Louisiana! It’s available on DVD through www.gohaynesvilleshale.com.

You can view the movie trailer at http://www.gohaynesvilleshale.com/forum/topics/haynesville-the-movie-now.

The movie, “Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for Energy,” focuses on the lives of three individuals caught up in the natural gas boom. “I truly believe that this movie can effect change in this nation’s energy policy,” said Keith Mauck, publisher of GoHaynesvilleShale.com.  “This documentary gets to the heart of what is at stake - us. That is, those citizens and families who are poised to propel this nation into energy independence. This movie is a must see for those involved at all levels of the oil and gas industry and for anyone who desires to see this nation achieve energy independence.”