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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on April 19, 2025 at 1:42

The article needs a disclaimer as to Louisiana gas rigs.  This is a good lesson in how national energy media is often written by those with little industry background who are just stating statistics without understanding them.

Probably 27 of the 32 rigs operating in Louisiana are in the Haynesville Play.  Of those 27 a few are single unit wells while the majority or drilling Horizontal Cross (HC) wells that are 10,000' to 15,000' laterals.  With the advent of long lateral HC wells, which happened years ago,  27 wells today would be drilling what it would take 60+ rigs to drill just three or four years ago.  If not for the Haynesville Shale, the Louisiana rig count would be single digits.  The reason for this is that Louisiana is reaching the end of economic oil.  The reported state volumes of oil have been in decline for 25+ years and at the current rate of decline would reach theoretical zero around the end of this decade.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on April 24, 2025 at 2:37

Oil companies expected a big business boom under Trump. Now they're worried

April 24, 2025  npr.org  Kirk Siegler

FARMINGTON, N.M. — The San Juan Basin, in the northwestern part of the state, is one of the oldest federal lands drilling areas in the U.S. It's a huge swath of barren, brown high desert that first started booming in the 1950s.

Today, some 40,000 wells pockmark the rolling hills of the Four Corners region, several thousand of them still reliably pump up light sweet crude oil and natural gas through the old iconic pumpjacks.

But this historic and remote drilling region has struggled for the last decade or more.

"It used to be an epicenter," says Sean Dugan, the third-generation president of Dugan Production, a family drilling business in the boom-and-bust town of Farmington. "When the majors left, they took all their rigs with them."

He's talking about the major international companies like Chevron and BP that started pulling out of the basin after the 2008 financial crisis, namely when natural gas prices slumped.

Many left for shale drilling areas like the Bakken in North Dakota or the Permian Basin in southern New Mexico and Texas where drilling on private land was more productive, lucrative and economical.

Today it's only the smaller independents like Dugan still hanging on. But he sees potential for another boom out here.

"Oh yeah, we've got a lot of tricks up our sleeves," says the cheerful and charismatic Dugan. "The basin has a lot to give. We've barely begun to tap its potential."

Local drillers say more than half the natural gas reserves in this region have yet to be tapped. And the hope is all the new computer data centers being built in places like Phoenix will want cheaper gas-powered electricity.

But watching a group of roughnecks on a rig in grubby overalls moving huge, long steel pipes, Dugan's smile begins to fade to a smirk.

"Your polypipe, which is what these pipelines are made out of now. That all comes from the Asian markets," Dugan says.

Dugan says the cost of doing business out here was already expensive and President Trump's trade war is making it worse.

Trump's trade war is causing anxiety in the oil patch

Many oil and gas company executives, particularly the larger ones, initially celebrated Trump's return to the White House. But lately, that optimism for higher oil company profits appears to have faded amid growing fears of a recession.

"You know, drill baby drill and lower oil prices are not simpatico," says George Sharpe, investment manager for Merrion Oil and Gas, one of the San Juan Basin's oldest drillers.

In other words, Sharpe says, if Trump tanks the economy and oil prices hover at or below the cost of production, you can remove all the regulatory barriers you want, but companies will be wary of drilling new wells.

"I think the whole tariff thing is going to backfire on Trump," Sharpe says.

Dugan says he wakes up every morning and checks the news on tariffs. He used to spend about $80,000 on a load of pipes that come from South Korea. Now, he figures it could be up to $120,000. His company was one of the few locally to avoid mass layoffs at the start of the pandemic in 2020 when oil prices tanked.

Today Dugan says he wants to plan for ten years out. But he doesn't even know what's going to happen tomorrow.

"It just kneecaps ya when all this uncertainty and volatility is in the air," Dugan says.

President Trump lost New Mexico handily in the presidential election last year, but he did rack up big wins in rural counties like this. In interviews with local industry and community leaders, it's clear there is still plenty of hope that the Trump administration's newer, revised slogan of "build baby build" will make it easier to get a new gas pipeline built between the San Juan Basin and Mexico.

"There is optimism in the air. Our workers welcome energy policies that put American energy first," Farmington Mayor Nate Duckett said, noting in an email that his town was built on top of one of the richest gas and coal fields in the U.S.

Boom and bust energy towns are in limbo

On the day President Trump issued four new executive orders to revive America's coal industry, local environmentalist Dave Fosdeck was driving his four-wheel drive truck to the top of a hogback for what turned out to be a bit of an apocalyptic view.

"Here we are up on top," Fosdeck said, hopping out for a 360 view. "Four Corners power plant about 11 o'clock there, and San Juan Generating station up to our left at 9 o'clock."

There was the enormous San Juan coal plant — currently being dismantled — a hulking gash of twisted metal and steel glaring in the desert sun. The Four Corners plant on the Navajo Nation is supposed to be decommissioned in 2031, but Trump has promised to stop coal plants from closing.

"It's about supply and demand and also the cost of producing in this remote region compared to like, Texas or Louisiana," Fosdeck says.

But people here are tired of seeing Farmington in the headlines as a town that's losing population.

"There's opportunity, but, ugh, it's hard," Fosdeck says. "It's hard to find an area like this that has been so dependent on oil and gas trying to transition to something else."

Farmington has tried to diversify by promoting tourism and outdoor recreation on all the federal public lands in the region. But those jobs don't pay nearly as much. With virtually no new drilling here for now, most of the oilfield work is in servicing existing wells, or decommissioning them, to prevent the leaking of methane.

Alex Prieto is supervising a crew that's laying production pipe into a shuttered well, before they'll pump cement and cap it.

He's grateful for the job in a time when so much feels uncertain.

"I love it, just keeping my head busy," Prieto says. "I provide for my family which is the most important thing."

It also means he doesn't have to travel to other oil patches out of state for work.

"As long as we're working we're happy. The oil field is the main thing out here," Prieto says.

But no one seems to be preparing for a lot of new hiring here at this point, despite promises of a new oil and gas boom on federal land.

This is the latest report in an occasional NPR National Desk series examining how President Trump's early actions are playing out across America.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on April 24, 2025 at 3:21

China says no tariff negotiations underway, contradicting Trump

China claimed it is not actively engaged in the negotiating process over tariffs with the U.S., contradicting President Trump, who expressed confidence he can strike a new trade deal with Beijing. Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yadong said Thursday that any “claims about the progress of China-U.S. trade negotiations are groundless as trying to catch the wind and have no factual basis.”

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on April 24, 2025 at 3:50

Five cards China holds in a trade war with the US

Koh Ewe  BBC News

A trade war between the world's two biggest economies is now in full swing.

Chinese exports to the US face up to 245% tariffs, and Beijing has hit back with a 125% levy on American imports. Consumers, businesses and markets are braced for more uncertainty as fears of a global recession have heightened.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's government has repeatedly said it is open to dialogue, but warned that, if necessary, it would "fight to the end".

Here's a look at what Beijing has in its arsenal to counter US President Donald Trump's tariffs.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kxe1m1y26o

China can take the pain

China has been investing in the future

Lessons from Trump 1.0

China now knows when Trump will blink

A chokehold on rare earths

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