US Shale Producers Promise Higher Output and Returns
U.S. shale producers are telling investors impatient for better returns that they can keep boosting oil output aggressively and do so while still making money for shareholders. Investors have pushed top U.S. shale companies to focus on returns, rather than higher output, a move that threatened to slow the breakneck growth in supply sparked by the shale revolution in the world's top oil consumer.
OPEC Should Let Price 'Rebalance' Markets
The 1980s film “WarGames” contains an important lesson for OPEC and shale producers about the futility of trying to manage the oil market. Released in 1983, the movie blended new concerns about home computers and hacking with older concerns about the accidental start of nuclear conflict and mutually assured destruction. In the film, the U.S. Air Force's new war-planning computer…
OPEC Should Let Oil Prices Rebalance the Market
The 1980s film “WarGames” contains an important lesson for OPEC and shale producers about the futility of trying to manage the oil market. Released in 1983, the movie blended new concerns about home computers and hacking with older concerns about the accidental start of nuclear conflict and mutually assured destruction. In the film, the U.S. Air Force's new war-planning computer…
US Shale Producers Say Spending Flexibility Is Key
U.S. shale oil producers plan to keep drilling new wells despite this month's crude price drop but expect to revisit spending should pricing remain below $45 a barrel for several months. "We will not drill into oblivion," Tim Dove, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources Co, told investors on Tuesday at a J.P. Morgan energy conference in New York. Pioneer, one of the biggest operators in the Permian Basin, the largest U.S.
US Shale CEO Sees Saudi Arabia Moving to Lift Oil Prices
Saudi Arabia likely will move to boost oil prices after a recent drop in order to prop its own national finances, the chief executive of U.S. shale oil producer Pioneer Natural Resources Co said on Tuesday. Oil prices have tumbled in recent weeks despite moves by Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last month to quell a global supply glut brought on in part by resurgent U.S. shale output.
Pioneer Natural CEO to retire, be replaced by operating chief
U.S. shale oil producer Pioneer Natural Resources Co said on Thursday its Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield will retire at the end of the year and be replaced by Tim Dove, the company's chief operating officer. Sheffield said he is retiring to spend time with his family. Dove joined a predecessor company to Pioneer in 1994 and has worked there ever since. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
U.S. Drillers Turn to Fracking Technology
Fifty-stage frack jobs. Fifteen-foot cluster spacing. More than 2,000 pounds of proppant concentrate per foot. Top U.S. shale producers are pushing fracking technology to new extremes to get more oil out of their wells, as they weather lower-for-longer oil prices. While the impact of the techniques may be scarcely noticeable on current U.S. output with so few wells in operation…
Pioneer Hedges and Shines in Struggling U.S. Oil Patch
During the U.S. shale boom, fortune favored the bold drillers that discovered and pumped oil fastest. Today the winners are producers like Pioneer Natural Resources who best shielded themselves from tumbling prices. Using derivative transactions known as swaps and collars, the Texas-based firm locked in a minimum price for 85 percent of this year's production. As a result, it gets…
U.S. Fracker Dilemma: Crouch or Pounce?
U.S. shale oil producers, having weathered the worst price plunge in their industry's brief history, now face a dilemma: whether to stay in a defensive crouch after slashing their rig fleets, or start drilling more wells to capture a partial recovery in prices. In a way, the conundrum is as old as the first oil well. If producers start pumping more crude, as some executives have said they might do if prices edge a bit higher…
