Investment would fund drilling and completion of 41,000 new wells in West Texas
A new report shows that West Texas’ Permian Basin will continue to post the biggest oil production gains of any U.S. shale field in October. The Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas will also continue to grow.
The Permian Basin will need $310 billion over the next five years in order to continue to grow and potentially add 3 million barrels of oil production by 2023.
The investments would fund the drilling and completion of up to 41,000 new oil wells in the West Texas region, according to a new report by the consulting firm Arthur D. Little.
The Permian, which is the top oil producing field in the United States, is producing more than 3.4 million barrels of oil a day. Growth of 3 million barrels a day by 2023 would put it near 6.5 million barrels a day, a production level above Canada, Iran and Iraq.
The Permian has faced continuing constraints on its growth as pipelines out of the region fill and companies struggle to hire enough workers for the labor-heavy jobs in the field, from drilling rigs to transport trucks.
The analysts at Arthur D. Little suggest oil and gas companies in the Permian collaborate more on their operations in order to reduce the impact on the already strained infrastructure in West Texas. They pointed to Pioneer Natural Resources’ effort to work with other companies to pool power generation resources as an example of such needed collaboration, but said more will need to be done.
