Diamondback Energy

E&Ps and oilfield service companies are constantly chasing the latest techniques to extract oil and gas faster and easier. Hydraulic fracturing was, of course, a game-changer, but now producers are using simultaneous fracking and even triple fracking, relatively newer approaches that use more resources but boost efficiency. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll break down these strategies, explore when they make sense for operators, and highlight the biggest challenges. 

It would be tough to find a large U.S. E&P with a clearer, more consistent geographic focus than Diamondback Energy. Over the past four years, the Permian-centric producer has closed on four 10-figure deals — total value $13.7 billion — that together have added more than 200,000 net acres in the nation’s leading shale/tight-oil play. Just this month, Diamondback went to the Permian well yet again, this time with a $1.6 billion deal to acquire FireBird Energy, a privately held Midland Basin producer that has been on a Permian buying spree of its own. When the deal closes later this year, Diamondback’s total production in the Midland and Delaware basins will approach 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (Mboe/d), or more than 100x what it was producing 10 years ago when the company had just gone public. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the company’s latest acquisition and its rapid rise to Permian prominence.

Persistent natural gas takeaway constraints out of the associated gas-rich Permian have pushed Waha Hub prices to between $1 and $9/MMBtu below the Henry Hub benchmark for most of 2019. Concerns about gas flaring have flared. Tanker trucks transporting diesel fuel to drilling and completion operations in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico are clogging the region’s roads. And diesel’s not cheap, especially if you’re using thousands of gallons of it a day. With Permian wells producing far more natural gas than takeaway pipelines can handle, and with gas essentially free for the taking, is this the year when electric fracs — hydraulic fracturing powered by very locally sourced gas — gain a foothold in the U.S.’s hottest shale play? Today, we look at the economic and other forces at play in the e-frac debate.