Reuters U.S. Silica Holdings Inc said on Friday it had cut about 230 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, as demand for its frac sand comes under pressure from oil and gas producers reducing drilling in the backdrop of volatile prices. The job cuts included employees impacted by idling of its two mines in Utica, Illinois and Tyler, Texas,
Source: Reuters The companies that provide sand for hydraulic fracturing operations are the latest casualties of shale industry cutbacks as low oil prices and demands for higher investor returns stunt drilling activity. Two years ago, U.S. sand companies were racing to open West Texas mines to capitalize on a boom in oil and gas drilling, with more than 20 popping
Source: Reuters LONDON (Reuters) – Shares in British shale gas explorers fell on Monday morning after the government announced at the weekend that it is imposing a moratorium on fracking. On Saturday the government said that the gas extraction technique risked causing too much disruption to local communities through earth tremors. Fracking, which involves extracting gas from rocks by breaking
Source: Reuters (Reuters) – U.S. Silica Holdings shares plunged 33% after the frac sand miner said it expects demand to slow in the fourth quarter and reported a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss on Tuesday, weighed down by lower prices. Prices for the proppant used to crack the ground and extract oil have dropped in North America as oil producers drill and
Pittsburgh Business Times Range Resources Corp. is close to taking the next step into an electric hydraulic fracturing fleet, a cheaper and more environmentally friendly system that is starting to gain traction in the natural gas industry. “We see exciting potential with this technology,” said Range Resources COO Dennis Degner during the company’s third-quarter conference call with financial analysts. Range
Source: Houston Chronicle A new study from the University of Texas at Austin is blaming hydraulic fracturing activity on some earthquakes in the Permian Basin of West Texas. In a study released Tuesday afternoon, scientists with the TexNet Seismic Monitoring Program reported that some earthquakes in Reeves, Pecos and Culberson counties may be caused by hydraulic fracturing, a process of injecting water,
From Reuters At a dusty drilling site east of San Antonio, shale producer EOG Resources Inc recently completed its latest well using a new technology developed by a small services firm that promises to slash the cost of each by $200,000. The technology, called electric fracking and powered by natural gas from EOG’s own wells instead of costly diesel fuel,
From Reuters In west Texas, the center of the U.S. oil boom, about 3,800 students at Permian High School are crammed into a campus designed for 2,500, with 20 portable buildings to help with the overflow. School officials had expected enrollment to fall after the last oil price crash, starting in 2014, but it kept rising – one sign of
From Reuters Weaker second-quarter refining and chemicals profits offset surging U.S. shale production at U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N), the two reported on Friday. Exxon’s topped analysts’ reduced estimates for the quarter but net fell 21% from a year earlier, its third quarter in a row of weaker year-over-year profit, despite a near doubling
By Tyler Losier, Energy Reporter, Oil & Gas 360 Occidental Petroleum and Ecopetrol S.A. form joint venture in the Midland Basin Occidental Petroleum Corporation (stock ticker: OXY), the fourth largest public E&P by market capitalization, has formed a joint venture (JV) with Colombia-based Ecopetrol S.A. (stock ticker: EC) to develop 97,000 net acres of Occidental’s Midland Basin properties, subject to
From Reuters Occidental Petroleum Corp, which is battling activist investor Carl Icahn over its $38 billion purchase of Anadarko Petroleum, reported a 14% fall in core profit on Wednesday, as higher crude prices and volumes were offset by adjustments to derivatives contracts and lower natural gas prices. Core income fell to $729 million, or 97 cents per share, in the
From Reuters Seven years ago, Diamondback Energy Inc went public with a modest parcel of drillable land in the Permian Basin of West Texas. Like dozens of other Permian startups, the firm then pursued a classic wildcatter’s strategy – borrowing to buy up acreage, acquire competitors and quickly boost output in the booming shale field. Today, Diamondback (FANG.O) is the
