Natural Gas Frack Crews Heading to North Dakota -- Just in Time for Summer -- The Bakken, North Dakota, USA

  .... energy companies in January fracked more wells than they drilled 

for the first time in five months, 

suggesting oil output could grow even faster 

than last year's 35 percent surge as 

a year-long shortage of workers and equipment 

finally begins to subside...

Updates

March 20, 2012: we had a foreshadowing of this issue in the February 12, 2012, conference call with Halliburton. (I assume Schlumberger and Halliburton have the biggest frack operations in the Bakken; Sanjel has a huge operations complex in Williston, but there are growing frack companies building in industrial parks west of Williston). See my list of fracking companies in the Bakken.

Let me start by providing some commentary on North America. The shift from natural gas to liquids-rich plays continues and was quite apparent in the fourth quarter. The U.S. rig count grew 3% sequentially, with oil-directed rigs up 8% and natural gas rigs down 2%. The shift toward oil and liquids-rich plays are a direct result of the stability of higher -- of oil prices and higher operator returns for these resources. Completing these wells requires higher levels of service intensity due to advanced fluid and completion technologies and creates an additional opportunity for us to otherwise differentiate ourselves from the competition.

...the Rockies and the Bakken are 2 areas where we have a particularly high market share, and both markets experienced some seasonal impacts yielding inefficiencies, particularly with our commuter crews.

We have moved or are in the process of moving 8 frac fleets from primarily natural gas plays to liquids plays. This requires redeployment of people and equipment. It disrupts a very efficient operation, and as well, it is requiring us to make adjustments to our supply chain. It's important to understand that these fleets that are moving are not looking for work but in each case now are committed to an existing customer or one who we could not serve before and, in each case, has or will deplace a competitor in the liquids plays.

Original Post

Repeat: for the first time in five months, more wells were fracked than were drilled in January -- this was the middle of the winter, when fracking generally slows down.

A huge "thank you" to a reader for alerting me to this story, perhaps the biggest story of the day. Maybe the Chicago investors will actually learn something about the Bakken.

Collapsing natural gas prices have yielded an unexpected boon for North Dakota's shale oil bonanza, easing a shortage of fracking crews that had tempered the biggest U.S. oil boom in a generation.

Energy companies in the Bakken shale patch have boosted activity recently thanks to an exceptionally mild winter and an influx of oil workers trained in the specialized tasks required to prepare wells for production, principally the controversial technique of hydraulic fracturing.

This is a huge story.

Six new crews trained in "well completion" -- fracking and other work that follows drilling -- have moved into North Dakota in the past two months alone, according to the state regulator and industry sources. Back in December, the state was 10 crews short of the number needed to keep up with newly drilled wells.

It's funny how things work out. A year ago I was worried about frack crews leaving cold, austere North Dakota for the greener fields in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Who wudda guessed?

Folks, we're still in the early innings in the Bakken.