Liberty Resources: fracking expertise
I post a lot of stories every day, and don't always get a chance to read everything I link. I finally got back to this story. If you have time to read only one story today, this is the story (at the link below) that I would read. My notes are from the first part of the linked article; much more at the link.
I'll know you've read the linked article if you can tell me what the breakeven price for a Bakken well is ($/bbl). I think newbies will be surprised.
The "nut" of the problem/solution:
While we have great confidence in our ability to design fracture treatments for the Bakken, execution represents a potential problem. The rapid growth in demand for hydraulic fracturing services has led to three things: 1) constricted availability of supply to get wells fractured; 2) high prices for fracturing services; and 3) relatively low service quality. Based on our background in oilfield service and supply, we decided to form a company that could supply these services in a timely fashion with high quality and reliability. In March of this year, we formed Liberty Oilfield Services, which recently began fracturing operations in Williston. Liberty Oilfield Services will be the fracturing entity for the majority of our development. We have had great early success in building the team for this company, starting with hiring two individuals we knew well as our service leadership: our business manager for Liberty Oilfield Services has a PhD in hydraulic fracturing, and our operations manager has a distinguished career in operational excellence.Link to article.
I blogged about this the other day. I said I would get back to the article if I had time. Here are some data points from the first part of the article. Go to the link for a whole more.
- Chris Wright wanted to start a new company: felt he could assemble a team with expertise in fracking
- CEO feels that fracking will be the discriminator in the Bakken (cost and effectiveness)
- Mark Pearson: former president and CEO of CARBO Ceramics, the world's largest manufacturer of proppants
- Paul Vitek: was CFO for CARBO Ceramics for more than 20 years
- Liberty Resources is a portfolio company of Riverstone Holdings: had the resources necessary for the Bakken -- moving too rapidly to rely only on funding from individual investors
- first land acquisitions with Zavanna, LLC
- improved Zavanna's well performance by a factor of 2 or 3 times
- Liberty Resources now has nearly 44,000 net acres in the central basin of the Bakken -- all of this since founding the company in September, 2011
- who is the operator of these wells? 2 Liberty Resources wells; 2 Zavanna wells; controls drilling and fracturing of all four wells; 20% of our development is non-operated
