>> Halliburton is in the process of hiring more than 500 workers for its Permian Basin operations, according to Todd Cage, regional manager. Meanwhile, the company has three facilities planned to come online next year at its Odessa campus, focusing on artificial lift, completion tools and sperry directional drilling.
Brady-based Loadcraft Industries built this mobile trailer-mounted rig in 2007 for drillers of natural gas who operated in Louisiana and Arkansas. But four-years ago, with a West Texas boom underway, the rig, 1,100 horsepower fueled by diesel, moved here to refocus on oily vertical wells. “I’ve operated top drives bigger than this,” said Scott Peterson, the tool pusher of No. 647, speaking in his Louisiana drawl about his more than 30-year-career including work offshore in the North Sea.
It’s indicating a problem in the transportation system where all these producers in West Texas from Midland out to Pecos are bringing in tremendous amounts of crude production and yet the infrastructure is not there to get it out of here to the refineries that need it and can process it. The peak $21 blowout figure was reached by the end of the day Tuesday.
Summit officials say raising private money is now next to impossible for the multi-billion-dollar carbon capture and sequestration project. Summit CEO Jason Crew said the DOE’s stance is “certainly ... a big headwind for us.”. Company officials are pushing back on both decisions in hope that DOE officials will reverse course.
Sondra Eoff says it’s “a huge risk,” for her and her husband, Toby Eoff, but one they say they believe will pay off for Odessa. The Eoffs are finalizing a deal with the city to take on about 60 percent of the cost of a $77 million downtown hotel and convention center in hopes it will act as a catalyst for the revitalization of Odessa’s downtown.
For McDonald, a Crane native in his 40s, the position was the culmination of a career in the oil patch. He was a company man for about three-and-a-half years, and it was a good job, he said — his pay came out to about a quarter million dollars a year, and he worked two weeks on, two weeks off, meaning plenty of time for family and vacations for the kids.
The contestants go through a casting crew. While the West Texas investors do invest, there is a little more vetting and outside help than the show suggests. And the “club” house is really a building in Stanton where Gilliam says he has never set foot inside. But here is where Gilliam says it gets weird: Seeing the same desperation back home in Odessa and Midland that he saw in many of those contestants.
Diego Estrada finally lost his job as a wireline operator in March. For months, the 35year-old said he watched his hours dwindle, chipping away at earnings beyond what he ever made as a construction worker in El Paso. In 2014, he said he made $88,000. But as oil companies shed rigs and completed fewer and fewer wells as the New Year began, Estrada saw his earnings drop to the minimum his job at Vaughn Energy Services promised.
Officials with the oil company, speaking at a “valve turning” ceremony at the city’s Bob Derrington Water Reclamation Plant at 9600 S. County Road 1325, said it’s too early to say how much of the city’s water they will use this year. Company officials are still preparing a budget for the coming year, expected to outline spending plans in February.
On Thursday, the groundwater district canceled its March 15 meeting, citing little work that required board action. The owner of the water is Fort Stockton Holdings, owned by the family of Midland oilman Clayton Williams. Today, the family uses that water, from the Leon-Belding field, to irrigate agriculture.
Pioneer officials want a deferment of a year or two until oil prices rebound, Morton said. The 10-year deal with the oil company signed last year secured a take-or-pay arrangement for the waste water that is expected to net the city about $100 million. City leaders are planning to use that money to develop new drinking water sources amid depleting supplies.
In recent weeks, Deming had changed the locks, said her father, Jon Nielsen, who is also a retired Odessa policeman. She was seeking counseling from Safe Place of the Permian Basin. And she was preparing to seek a protective order against the man, 38-year-old Brandon Leyva, who she had dated for less than a year.
Six-months into the year, Odessans collectively started to spend less money than they did in 2014. It was just one of the mounting signals of a deepening downturn, according to a report released Wednesday by the Amarillo economist Karr Ingham, who studies the area for the Odessa Chamber of Commerce.
The Permian Basin lost another 19 rigs count this week, inching closer to half the rig count it had before the oil plummet that began in November. That left 292 rigs running in the region as declining oil and gas activity squeezes companies and contributes to what oil executives, outside analysts and local employment officials estimate to be thousands of ongoing layoffs.
Compared to other oil provinces in the country, the Permian Basin is relatively resilient. Ditto the big oil companies in the region such as Concho and Diamondback and Apache, who have performed better than many of their peers who focus elsewhere. The economist Ray Perryman, who called the bust of the 1980s, says he doesn’t like to apply that term — bust — to today’s downturn.
But some companies buck that trend and they share a common trait — they focus on the Permian Basin, where they lay claim to prized sweet spots, and all issued equity this year. “None of them are laying off,” said Steve Pruett, CEO of Elevation Resources in Midland, who pointed to four companies in particular.
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Corey Paul
City government and business reporter at the Odessa American newspaper.