County officials said they believed the new system would be cheaper, and County Judge Susan Redford said it’s turned out that way. But today, county officials face a dilemma: Do they remove the abandoned tanks, at a cost of up to $60,000 each and deal with whatever damage the tanks caused beneath the surface?
Meanwhile, the Odessa City Council is set to review plans on Aug. 23 to keep funding the program aimed at building business ties with Mexican companies after two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars spent. So far, the Mexico Initiative has not yielded the sort of new jobs and business expansions outlined as goals for the effort.
We just live on what we have just like everyone else, unfortunately. Everyone is feeling it and the city is going to feel it too.”. But as the Ector County Appraisal District prepares to send homeowners their property valuations in coming weeks, many Odessans will see that the values of their homes have not seen any significant drop.
But when the tool pusher and his crew of four hit total depth on a nearby Fasken Oil and Ranch lease this week, he wondered how many holes there would be left for him to drill. “A bunch of rigs are slowing down,” Culberston said. “Am I losing sleep over it? Regional oil prices remain stuck below $45 per barrel — less than what most Permian Basin oil companies need to break even and almost 60 percent less than the peak price of June.
The suit states James Hanks found work as a roughneck in 2013 with Patterson-UTI in Midland, working on a rig for two weeks at a time, often up to a total of 160 hours, in the booming oil patch. The drilling company, one of the nation’s largest, started stacking rigs in January as oil prices hovered below $50 per barrel, according to the suit.
This work grows increasingly scarce and competitive in the ongoing downturn. As oil companies began idling drilling rigs this year, the amount of workover rigs plummeted, too. And companies in the well servicing industry increasingly began competing for jobs at already producing wells such as applying new cement or replacing pipe, amid a glut of equipment.
These are men like Corey McMasters, a 26-year-old derrick hand who for the last three years spent weeks at a time living in Odessa and working on this CanElson drilling rig, traveling back home to family in Austin during his off days. As the reality of another price drop sets in, local producers and outside observers warn such gloomy sentiments could become more widespread, despite chatter of more drilling and continued production growth.
Here is a link to frack services website, a company based in Midland facing bankruptcy: http://www.fracspecialistsllc.com/index.html. Here is an editorial titled “Oil Service SOS” written by an analyst featured in this story: http://oilpro.com/post/19690/point-maximum-pain. Today, about half of the fracking companies who were bidding on new work in the Permian Basin at this time last year continue to do so today.
Met at 5 p.m. in a briefing session to review agenda items, discuss the I-20 corridor, a public works project and an animal control ordinance. Approved for the second and final time a request by Lacey & Absher Properties LLC to rezone from Two-Family-One to Retail on Lots 1 & 2, Block 3, Parkview Addition, southwest of the intersection of NorthWest County Road and West 13th Street.
City officials declined to release the list of properties, which state public records law allows in such real estate matters, because doing so could harm negotiations. But Gloria Hernandez, the director of Downtown Odessa, said none of the properties include businesses that are already operating in the area and that the city does not want to displace anyone.
Groundwater district officials said the board decided not to consider the application because of a lawsuit against the district by Fort Stockton Holdings is still pending in appeals court. The suit, in the Eighth Court of Appeals in El Paso, stems from the groundwater district’s denial of a similar request to export water in 2011.
They are serious and substantial challenges, wrapped in complexity and past conflict, and there are few signs of how it could play out in the coming months. So far, the city has spent no money on the deal, which City Manager Richard Morton called an opportunity to secure “a viable water source,” that could offer a sustainable supply for Odessa and for the broader region, if CRMWD should join the project.
The report, “Break-downs in Air Quality” calls on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to do more to stop the emissions by enforcing existing regulations. It also calls on state and federal authorities to build unplanned releases of air pollution into permits. The authors are the Washington-D.C.
That compromise was designed to protect long-standingregulations like those in Odessa and limit city control to above-ground activity. If the bill passes as written, Texas city governments could regulate many of the surface activities that Odessa already does: for example, they could require setbacks to mitigate drilling nuisances, permits to allow city oversight and safety measures such as coordination with fire departments.
They thrived in a domestic oil boom that has largely eluded the majors, who were late to invest. But now many plan to ramp up their Permian Basin production. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Permian Basin was recovering from a devastating bust and many believed there was no more potential for longtime producing region.
But during this downturn, the supermajors see opportunity again in the Permian Basin. Chevron, and to a lesser extent Exxon Mobil, plan to pursue aggressive drilling and completion programs this year. In the short-term, that offers some relief for the oil service companies and rig crews hammered by oil prices hovering below $50 per barrel.
Odessa American
About
Corey Paul
City government and business reporter at the Odessa American newspaper.