Painfully Slow -- Exxon's Development In The Permian -- January 30, 2018

Updates

January 31, 2018: see update here. 

Original Post

It has been reported multiple places that ExxonMobil will increase daily production in the Permian significantly. 

Somehow, I wasn't paying attention -- not until I saw the Financial Times headline regarding this story:  Exxon plans fivefold rise in Permian Basin shale oil production.

It's being reported that Exxon will increase production to 500,000 bopd by 2025.  I assume "fivefold" means that currently Exxon is producing a paltry 100,000 bopd. Let's see: ... .... look ... look some more ... nope, no mention of how much Exxon is producing now, but fivefold suggests 100,000 bopd currently ....

How much did Exxon pay to get into the Permian? I don't know how much Exxon's entire holdings but from the linked article:

Exxon has been building up its position in the Permian Basin with a series of acquisitions, including a deal a year ago to buy drilling rights on 250,000 acres from the Bass family for up to $6.6bn. 

I'm not going to go through the numbers but it certainly seems that operators in the Bakken got to 500,000 bopd and then 1 million bopd a lot faster than seven years.

For a company like Exxon, going from 100,000 bopd to 500,000 bopd in seven years in a basin as good as the Permian seems painfully slow based on what I saw in the Bakken.

But readers know I am incredibly biased about the Bakken.

Idle chatter.

Having said that, this has to be incredibly bad news for Saudi Arabia. One company, Exxon in this case, will be producing almost half what the Bakken is producing. And that's just one operator.

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Pennsylvania Apparently Loves The Production/Extraction/Tax Revenue

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania is taking steps to speed up the granting of oil and gas permits. The state of New York still bans fracking.

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Pfizer: Making America Great Again

On the day/night that President Trump gives his first SOTU address, Pfizer announces that it will increase CAPEX manufacturing by $5 billion in the US, specifically citing the new tax law. The drugmaker will pay a tax of $15 billion on overseas profits over the next eight years. It's too bad we don't have a fair and balanced mainstream media to really talk about all these investments in a fair and balanced manner.