March 15, 2023
[00:00:00.490] – Kurt Mire
Today is March 15, 2023. Let’s review some oil industry news. In the United States. West Texas Intermediate Oil is selling for $68.60 a barrel. It’s down significantly from yesterday. US. Natural gas is $2.47 per mmb. Two, it’s down slightly, but over the last few months, it’s down several dollars. North Sea. Brent crude is selling for $74.58 per barrel. It’s also down significantly. All right, what about drilling activity in the United States, the rig count is 746 rigs drilling. It’s down three from last week. We’ve been seeing a slow decline in drilling activity in the United States. In Canada, we have 223 rigs running, and that’s also down significantly from last week. But the international rig count is 915 rigs drilling, and that’s up significantly from January. So we got a mixed bag on activity, but in the United States, it’s down. All right, before we get into the news, I wanted to talk about a frac operation. So here’s a picture of a frac operation in progress with a lot of equipment here in blue, all the high pressure pumps that you need. But this is being done on a well pad. So why do we call this a well pad?
[00:01:30.180] – Kurt Mire
It’s because we have multiple wells, all drilled in the same area to conserve on surface disruption. So there’s well number one. There’s well number two, well number three, well number four. And the fifth well over to the right is the actual well that the pumping operation is going on. So this is how you do it. It takes a lot of equipment to fracture, stimulate the wells so they’ll produce oil and gas. All right, so what happens after the frac well? You clean up all the equipment, put the wells on production, and this is kind of what it looks like. You have a good, clean location. All the wells are in the same area. So you don’t have to have multiple disruption to the surface. You just have one area for all the wells. So that’s how it looks.
[00:02:20.030] – Kurt Mire
All right. In news.
[00:02:21.680] – Kurt Mire
So some big news from the Biden administration because they approved a controversial oil project in Alaska. So here’s a picture of a remote area in Alaska where they want to drill for oil. And it’s part of the National Petroleum Reserve. It’s owned by the United States, and it’s an area that has oil in it that’s used to be saved for emergencies or a war comes up. And this particular field that they want to develop in this large area has 600 million barrels of oil. But a lot of climate groups and some Native Alaskans are opposed to it because of climate issues. But some folks are saying this is a victory for Alaska and the bipartisan congressional delegation who hailed this venture as much needed source of revenue and jobs for this remote region. And even a Democratic congressman from Alaska said she just really wished to thank the President for approving this project because it’s important to Alaskans. In other news, the International Energy Agency is predicting that global oil demand will outstrip supply in late 2023. So we’ve seen oil price go down early in this year, but in the last part of the year, they’re predicting prices to go up because of supply not meeting demand.
[00:03:47.110] – Kurt Mire
And they expect oil demand to hit 102,000,000 barrels per day by the end of the year. And that’s due to rebounding air traffic, people going on vacation, vacation, and Chinese economy recovering. So in the last two quarters, they estimate that oil demand is going to surge by over 3 million barrels per day. So this is big news for all demand.
[00:04:13.970] – Kurt Mire
All right.
[00:04:14.530] – Kurt Mire
So I encourage you to support the oil and gas industry because it provides you with cheap, reliable energy that powers your modern lifestyle.
[00:04:25.080] – Kurt Mire
Thanks. Bye.