Friday Morning News, Views, And Links -- Part I

Active rigs: 187 (steady)

RBN Energy: This is part 2 (I believe) of a continuing series on the economics dry natural gas wells in the Haynesville. I now know what a reservoir engineer does:

But producers have to make those estimates on a regular basis to understand the rate of return they will achieve on each well. That task falls to reservoir engineers whose job it is to estimate well production, production decline and EUR. Typically, reservoir engineers use complex geophysical models to arrive at these estimates. Analysts and investors are also interested to understand production estimates but, due to their limited access to data, they tend to adopt a more rule of thumb approach to modeling. We describe four methods here that are commonly used to estimate production.

Mixed news for investors; a bad omen, being reported by Reuters/Rigzone:

Oil and gas firms are cutting back on investments to try and improve profits and save cash for dividends, perhaps signalling an end to a decade-long boom in capital spending.
Companies seeking to bring oil fields into production have splashed out on new drilling, equipment or pipelines, supported by rising oil prices.

But suppliers and analysts expect investment growth to slow sharply this year and in 2014, in line with a projected fall in oil prices. The spending boom has squeezed budgets and forced companies to sell assets and issue debt to pay dividends.

Onshore spending will be hurt the most, including the saturated U.S. shale segment. New ultradeep markets, such as Brazil, West Africa and Mexico, will still flourish, however, as they offer the rare opportunities for big finds.

"Oil firms have a dilemma: They still need to grow their production, which is virtually flat and even declining, so they have to spend but will have to become much more selective," Magnus Lundetrae, the chief financial officer of Seadrill , the world's biggest offshore rig operator said.

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