Hmm. Where have I seen this data before? Oh right! Here. Almost have all of Mike's slides! Glad people are starting to notice. Cheers all

Thanks HIH; this fella is smart and I enjoy his writing. I am pleased he mentioned my name.

Your kind, thank you.

This Novi article, written by Bloomberg, has received 90 likes on LinkedIn so I guess all people can see is the squiggly line going up to monster level and ignore the actual volumes of increases.

They are also ignoring the fact that upstream employment is going down. Very serious, that, and, along with older hands leaving the industry forever, concerning. There is no career stability anymore in our industry, it has been shattered from over production, volatile prices and now automated rigs that can do almost anything with 1/3 rd the hands.

I am clearly past the cynical old bastard stage or living on another planet when it comes to this shale stuff.

Hi Mike.

Likely I've beat this horse to death before but who knows, maybe there's someone new reading today.

Volatility and abnormal market inputs (ZIRP for example) gut the experience and knowledge reserves of any industry but this industry gets jacked with quite a lot. It is frustrating to attempt to explain to people why younger and less costly employees are not a true replacement for older hands. It is frustrating to lose supporting service and supply people that make our worlds go around because they can't take the uncertainties and don't own the assets like us. This is not being said by an older hand with a mouth to feed as much as an older hand that just about cannot stand watching the wheel get reinvented by worms at best, and knowledge and skills get lost forever at worst.

Don't apologize for being past the cynical old bastard stage as many are there having watched the oilfield change in what seem like quantum leaps since slickwater fracs ushered in the last 25+ years of distortion. "Get off my lawn!" is a fitting metaphor.

Nobody nor no entity exists in a vacuum. Ever.

Your absolutely right about career stability. My outfit is full of silver hair. I had enough of the patch and wandered off in other pursuits few times, but then I find myself right back. I think I must be daft. Then I cash a cheque I can only find in the patch, and low and behold I can stomach some more. That said, it's getting really hard to get young hands on the tools. They don't want a career with long stretches of unemployment every time some state actor wants to dump oil on the market. It's going to be hell to hire an oilfield service in near future. Longer the stretch, the worse the lot rot in the laydown yard. Lots of this iron won't be worth salvage soon, and there won't be anyone that knows what to do with it anyway.

I can't count the thousands of hours I've spent in the last 15 years writing comments in response to the quad O's or other fed and state regulations. I'll keep doing it because Trump or no Trump, the onslaught isn't going away. The bureaucrats are burrowed too deep and they and most of the population are clueless about energy density, the impossible cost of electricity storage, and the uses of oil and gas as feedstock. It's comfy to ban fracking when you're back in your warm office after having visited the salad bar for lunch. But the regulators won't give a damn about my kimrays when the city dwellers are cold, hungry and angry. Not a matter of if. Just curious when.

Thanks Arthur.

One of the primary reasons that I am here reading and writing is because the rest of the world, even here in the middle of the giant Hugoton Field, people, even in the industry, have no idea what is going on and how personal the repercussions are for owners and operators. It is great to chat with yet another gentleman on the front lines. There are so many ways that this overreach and otherwise negligent conservation effort will hit the average citizen really hard with no idea what set their problems in motion. But one thing is sure to happen; once price and availability go sideways Big Oil (which somehow includes us) will get the blame.

Regarding the momentum and/or inertia of the federal bureaucracy, remember the one not-so-small victory that we had under Trump the first time was a rational approach to navigable waters/waters of the state where water filled hoof prints were no longer a part of the calculus. To the man on the street that sounds like hyperbole but you know that to be true if you had SPCC training and the attendant visceral response.

I could not possibly thank Mike enough for giving us this gathering place.

Agreed...and no denying it would get better under Trump. Trump's team implemented a stripper well exception to the quad O's that Biden's team undid right away. I'm sure Trump will unwind some of the punishment. And yes, glad I found this site. Interesting to see the similarities elsewhere in the country.

Arthur,

The collateral damage, not discounting resource waste, is pissing away the assets that belong to the mineral owners. This is akin to breaking their piggy banks. So much for fiduciary responsibility of the lessee.

Personally, I refuse to do that to my mineral owners.

Arthur,

I commented above before I scrolled down and read your excellent read of the situation. It's late.

Conventional operators have had to learn to adapt which is like treading water in the ocean. However; I think we are approaching a tipping point where the guys with the small, low decline gas wells may reap their reward. The crack driven demand from export facilities to data centers will have to be fed from somewhere and why shouldn't it be us? Those operators not servicing debt may make the cut.

Good to see another producer with dirty hands on here. You have street creds as they say.

Well, from just a Landman's perspective, it's more than the lateral lengths. The steep terrain and topographic features here give longer laterals some credibility. Locations are expensive and there are few roads to service them.

What really needs scrutiny is the distance between lateral legs, which SWN said need to be 1,000 feet. I think EQT prefers 1,500 feet, while other operators argue 1,250 feet. These distances are for the Marcellus, which is similar to the Utica/Point Pleasant.

The attached hearing pertains to CNX in the Point Pleasant Fm., which is considered a "Deep Well" and required a spacing exception hearing to comply with the 3,000 foot state required spacing. https://ogcc.wv.gov/Docket/Docket/279-272.pdf. See pages 75 and 76 for maps of the area under discussion.