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Kiplinger has pegged San Antonio as one of "8 Cities With Surprising Job Growth". The city has a population of just over 2 million and is expected to add 150,000 new jobs between now and 2015. The financial magazine was sure to note Eagle Ford Jobs were helping lead employment growth.
....the city is the hub of Central Texas' energy sector, especially its fast-growing natural gas segment. Major employers poised to expand include Valero, NuStar and Tesoro.
Read more at kiplinger.com
The Oil and Gas Industry has seen a tremendous increase in productivity over the last three years and a subsequent increase in trucking driving hiring and activity. Companies have hired thousands of new employees and have yet to slow down. Truck drivers are keeping highways busy from Laredo and Carrizo Springs all the way to San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston. Along with rapid production and workforce growth, there has been an increase in all types of accidents and work injuries, many fatigue-related.
As the oil and gas industry gains momentum, there are an increasing number of industrial trucks and 18 wheelers on the highways. Truck drivers suffering from sleep deprivation are a well-known danger on the road and a risk for an increased number of injuries and accidents. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic.
“Sleep is increasingly recognized as important to public health, with sleep insufficiency linked to motor vehicle crashes, industrial disasters, and medical and other occupational errors. Unintentionally falling asleep, nodding off while driving, and having difficulty performing daily tasks because of sleepiness all may contribute to these hazardous outcomes,” states a CDC article entitled Insufficient Sleep Is a Public Health Epidemic.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report, Drowsy Driving and Automobile Crashes, states that “Sleepiness causes auto crashes because it impairs performance and can ultimately lead to the inability to resist falling asleep at the wheel. Critical aspects of driving impairment associated with sleepiness are reaction time, vigilance, attention, and information processing.”
Amber Stanford an attorney at The Nations Law Firm states that “in recent times, there have been more than 300 oil and gas workers killed in highway related accidents, in large part due to the oil field industry exemptions from highway safety rules. "These exemptions allowed truck drivers to work extended hours, but it is being abused by some employers now pressuring their employees to drive after shifts that frequently extend beyond 20 hours.” The lawyer goes on to comment that “The most unfortunate part is that these accidents are only expected to increase over the upcoming years as more than 200,000 new oil and gas wells are expected to be drilled nationwide. This will include between 500 and 1,500 truck trips per well, far more than what is currently required due to new drilling techniques. Although the wells will create many new jobs and economic benefits, it is coming at a deadly cost.”
Just because drivers are on an oilfield site does not make them any less vulnerable to the effects of fatigue and potential accidents. Yes, exemptions from federal hours of service regulations exist for oilfield service workers, but that doesn’t mean they have to be taken, much less abused. Sure, it’s tempting to both drivers and employers to use the exemptions to increase productivity and profitability. However once the cost to driver health and safety is factored in, burning the candle at both ends looks less like a viable standard operating procedure.
Del Mar College along with Texas A&M, Port of Corpus Christi, Work Source Solutions, Eagle Ford Shale Consortium, and the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce have teamed up to address this and many other related issues. On September 27th & 28th at the Solomon Ortiz Convention Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, Del Mar College will host the Eagle Ford Shale Conference. The conference will concentrate on topics such as:
Visit the Eagle Ford Shale Conferences and Events page for more information.
The Eagle Ford Shale drilling rig count held flat at 278 this past week. Activity began approaching current levels in March and the region hasn't experienced a big change in either direction over the past ten weeks. That's good news in the face of falling oil prices. We've touched on this before, but it is worth mentioning again. If there is going to be an impact from the oil price decline over the past four to five weeks, we will not know for a couple of months. The rig count normally lags commodity price indicators by roughly three months.
Talisman Energy is up for review this week. Talisman is the operating partner in a JV with Statoil in the Eagle Ford Shale. The company entered the play through the acquisition of Common Resource's acreage in May of 2010. Talisman entered a joint venture with Statoil shortly thereafter. The partners have made subsequent acquisitions and Talisman now controls over 85,000 net acres across the play. The majority of the partnership's activity targets the Eagle Ford in Karnes, La Salle, and McMullen counties along the liquids-rich/gas-condensate portion of the play. The company has 12 rigs running as of June 2012, with seven targeting gas and five targeting oil. Drilling activity is up from ten rigs at the end of 2011.
The natural gas directed rig count (Smithbits) rose to 72 this past week. Karnes, Live Oak, and Webb counties are the only counties with more than ten rigs targeting natural gas. Henry Hub futures prices traded up over 10% on Thursday after bullish natural gas storage data was published by the EIA. Prices were still trading up around $2.46/mmbtu on Friday afternoon. Oil prices remained flat again this week. WTI was trading at $84.00/bbl. During the past week, oil directed activity decreased by one rig to 205.
256 horizontal rigs are running in the region and one water well is being drilled in McMullen County. Karnes County leads development with 40 rigs and La Salle has 35 rigs. Dimmit (32), McMullen (30), Gonzales (23), Webb (23), DeWitt (22), Live Oak (14) and Atascosa (10) make up the top Eagle Ford counties.
News items this week included:
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The Eagle Ford Shale Rig Count is an index of the total number of oil & gas drilling rigs running across a 30 county area in South Texas. The South Texas rigs referred to in this article are for ALL drilling reported by SmithBits and not solely wells targeting the Eagle Ford formation. All land rigs and onshore rig data shown here are based upon industry estimates provided by the Baker Hughes Rig Count and/or Smith Service Co's (Schlumberger) Smith Rig Count.
Eagle Ford Oil and Gas Corporation is acquiring an 85% working interest in 3,684 acres in Frio County, TX. With a price tag of $6.26 million ($2,000/acre), the company is adding exploration potential in the Austin Chalk, Eagle Ford, and Buda Lime oil plays, as well as the deeper condensate rich Pearsall Shale. Company data suggests wells in the area will produce EUR's of 350,000-500,000 bbls, with initial production rates of 400-1,000 b/d.
Enterprise Product Partner's Eagle Ford crude oil system began accepting deliveries on June 7, 2012. The 147 mile, 24-inch pipeline from Wilson County, TX, to Sealy, TX, has capacity to move 350,000 barrels per day of crude. In Sealy, the pipeline and storage facility links into the company's Rancho Pipeline, which ties directly into the Gulf Coast Refinery Complex and the Enterprise Crude Houston (ECHO) oil terminal. The ECHO terminal is being expanded to store six million barrels of crude and will provide direct access to ~4 mmbbls/d of refining capacity.
Phase II of the Eagle Ford Crude Oil System will extend the pipeline 80 miles further to Gardendale in La Salle County. The second phase has an expected completion of Q1 2013.
Read more at enterpriseproducts.com
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