Energy deals are back in play

Fuel Fix:
The wheeling and dealing started at NAPE, the nation’s largest conference for buying and selling oil and gas land, when Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center floor opened Thursday morning.

And the land men and women — those charged with cutting oil and gas deals — walked with smiles on their faces, having, shaken the clouds of a two-year downturn out of industry skies.

There’s been more competition to buy and lease oil and gas mineral rights, said Clay Gordon, director of business development for Strata Resources, a family-owned oil and gas company based in Denver. He may have three or four competitors while bidding on any given deal this year, he said; deals last year were lucky to get one.

RELATED: NAPE attendance up; industry recovery ‘aggressive’

More companies are looking to lease 3D seismic data, a sign of renewed interest in exploration, said Mark Sweeney, a vice president at the Houston seismic library firm Seitel. “We saw a pickup in the second half of 2016,” Sweeney said.

And landowners, especially in West Texas’ Permian Basin, are feeling the love. “We’re crazy busy,” said Robert Cocanougher, a land owner in the Permian’s Delaware Basin, the hottest oilfield in the country. Cocanougher wouldn’t say how many acres his family owns — that’s a rude question among West Texas ranchers — but they have a team of at least 15 working on their leases and accompanying businesses.

You can see it all around NAPE, said Al Porretto, a geologist and consultant from New Orleans. “It looks like the money is starting to come back into the industry,” he said, looking out on a full floor at the convention. Huddles of men in suits clogged the aisles, each smiling broadly and leaning in.
...
This is a good sign for the Texas and US economy.  It is also a good sign for improved revenue to the state as a result of energy production.  This new production also means more jobs not only in the field, but also in manufacturing to deal witht eh activity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more