Jordan Blum, Houston Chronicle
Published 4:18 pm, Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Some of the top producers in West Texas’ booming Permian Basin would have you believe the hype cannot be overstated.
The massive Permian shale acreage is expected to account for about 30 percent of all U.S. oil production by the end of the year and it’s easily the fastest-growing oil region in the world. The Permian, previously considered a mature area, is born again thanks to the shale techniques combining horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing, called fracking.
“What we’re staring at beneath our feet cannot be replicated anywhere else in the United States. That’s a given,” said Tim Dove, chief executive of Irving-based Pioneer Natural Resources.
“We have a golden goose right before us,” Dove said at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston.
He joked that Midland – the largest city in rural West Texas – must have negative unemployment levels now.
The Permian surge is “demonstrably different” from Texas’ earlier shale developments in East Texas’ Barnett shale and South Texas’ Eagle Ford because it’s 90,000 square miles and the shale rock can easily extend 4,000 feet underground, said Dove and Sara Ortwein, president of Exxon Mobil’s shale subsidiary, XTO Energy.
“It’s clear now that Permania – as some have called it – is really not a passing fad,” Ortwein said, adding that Exxon Mobil plans to triple its Permian production by 2025. Read more…