150
39
th
Annual Report
employer. The company has been the largest US oil and gas investor
the past five years
i
.
According to the EIA, the US oil and condensate production hit its
highest level for the last fifteen years in September 2012 recording
6.5 million barrels per day. The last time the US produced 6.5 million
barrels per day or more of crude oil was in January 1998. Since
September 2011, US production has increased by more than 900
thousand barrels per day. Most of that increase is due to production
from oil- bearing rocks with very low permeability through the use
of horizontal drilling technology combined with hydraulic fracturing.
The states with the largest increases are Texas and North Dakota.
From September 2011 to September 2012, Texas production
increased by more than 500 thousand barrels per day, and North
Dakota production increased by more than 250 thousand barrels per
day. Texas’s increase in production is largely from the Eagle Ford
shale formation in South Texas and the Permian Basin in West Texas.
North Dakota’s increase in oil production comes from the Bakken
shale formation in the Williston Basin.
Major oil exploration and production developments in the
Arab countries and the world are summarized below.
1- 1 Seismic Surveys:
Unfortunately, IHS is no longer producing the monthly reports
about the worldwide seismic crew numbers, the last available set
of figures dates back to January 2012. Obviously, comparing one-
month- count with an annual average is not among the best practices,
however, it could be generally said that the number of crews working
on seismic surveys worldwide decreased from 363 crew/ month in
2011, to 355 crew/ month in Jan. 2012. The gap becomes wider when
i
Oil and Gas Journal, 27/3/2012
