Devon Business Practices

[RedDollar]

No it won’t. The Marcellus and Haynesville have more prolific wells than Oklahoma. Any increase in nat gas prices will quickly be brought down by the fact we have at minimum 300+ years of gas supply at current production.

Yep, I've made that bet and lost. I thought years ago that demand for nat gas would eventually catch up with supply, especially with the increase of exports. So I bought nat gas producer stocks and lost my arss.

But it never happens.

They're giving NG away in the Permian. And flaring in the Bakken so they can produce oil.

The USA is blessed with an incredible amount of nat gas.

[mugofbeer]

Yep, I've made that bet and lost. I thought years ago that demand for nat gas would eventually catch up with supply, especially with the increase of exports. So I bought nat gas producer stocks and lost my arss.

But it never happens.

They're giving NG away in the Permian. And flaring in the Bakken so they can produce oil.

The USA is blessed with an incredible amount of nat gas.

New Permian pipelines to the Gulf will, hopefully, stop that flaring.

[gopokes88]

It’ll stop the flaring but the simple economic problem remains

We can EASILY match any increase in demand in a matter of months.

[Johnb911]

I agree with Mr. Blue Sky that, real science or not, the FIGHT against climate change IS ramping up, and can have tremendous influence on the local energy companies. However, the technology to go all-green isn't there yet either. my hope is that we can transition a lot of energy use (especially transportation) to nat gas in the near term till other means of power generation catch up, and price of NG recovers substantially. It's a hope anyway.

[PhiAlpha]

That comment simply shows you are living on an island.
Forget the dynamics of the science, you are denying what's happening - on a global scale - to fight climate change. You can pretend the climate change is not real, but you can't pretend that, right or wrong, the serious steps to stop it is very real indeed. You might try getting off the island (and the fossil fuels echo chamber) and start thinking of a very different future. Laugh it off at your own expense. Not climate change per se, but the future of what's coming sooner rather than later to fight it -- real or not -- and it's not a pretty picture for the islands that want to pretend it's 1954.

Natural Gas is the primary reason the US has been able to comply with the reduced emission levels we imposed on ourselves. Nearly every study has shown that the climate alarmists’ freakout about methane leakage was overblown and operators have significantly reduced the a lot of the leakage that was occurring after new regulations went into place.

[gopokes88]

Stack and eagle ford business units are being combined. People are being let go, don’t think it will be big enough they have to disclose it though.

So instead of having one set of engineers for stack and one for eagle ford, they merge them together and share.

Their eagle ford acreage is mostly drilled up, and they aren’t running a rig in the stack in 2020.

It is not easy in the energy business right now. This isn’t a Devon alone problem. Shale has turned everything upside down.

[chuck5815]

How big of a Reduction are we talking about?

[The Shadow]

Yep, I've made that bet and lost. I thought years ago that demand for nat gas would eventually catch up with supply, especially with the increase of exports. So I bought nat gas producer stocks and lost my arss.

But it never happens.

They're giving NG away in the Permian. And flaring in the Bakken so they can produce oil.

The USA is blessed with an incredible amount of nat gas.

...and nat gas production in the Permian is expected to grow and grow.

[PhiAlpha]

Stack and eagle ford business units are being combined. People are being let go, don’t think it will be big enough they have to disclose it though.

So instead of having one set of engineers for stack and one for eagle ford, they merge them together and share.

Their eagle ford acreage is mostly drilled up, and they aren’t running a rig in the stack in 2020.

It is not easy in the energy business right now. This isn’t a Devon alone problem. Shale has turned everything upside down.

I can confirm. Sucks.

[pw405]

Seems like the whole industry is bracing for impact right now. Can't give any details, but Devon is not unique in this situation. I think the shale producers feel that if we hit a recession in the next 6-12 months, they'll be out of business. I mean, I guess they could all be out of business Come January 2021 depending on election outcome.

[chuck5815]

Pretty confident that Oklahoma and Texas would secede if the US managed to ban fracking.

[pw405]

Not to get too far off topic here, perhaps we should discuss in Oil Prices thread, BUT... I agree, even if Warren or Bernie win, "banning fracking day 1" is just a campaign fantasy. Even though I earn my paycheck from fossil fuels, I'm a firm believer in global warming and I realize our industry won't last forever. That said... if they "ban fracking day 1", US oil production will fall by millions of bbls a day within 9 months.

A massive supply disruption such as this would cause a massive price spike at the pumps. Furthermore, our dependency on foreign oil will SKYROCKET. We would need to un-sanction Iran to help get their bbls back in the market.

Then, what do you do with the employees of the industry? How to address the stock and bond holders? Will it be illegal to sell frac equipment in bk liquidations? Will un-drilled leases be of any value?

Alternatives are certainly going to be the norm at some point, but not yet. A rapid change to outright ban fracking will have dire consequences and the "national security" argument will outweigh the desire to reduce co2 IMHO.

[PhiAlpha]

Not to get too far off topic here, perhaps we should discuss in Oil Prices thread, BUT... I agree, even if Warren or Bernie win, "banning fracking day 1" is just a campaign fantasy. Even though I earn my paycheck from fossil fuels, I'm a firm believer in global warming and I realize our industry won't last forever. That said... if they "ban fracking day 1", US oil production will fall by millions of bbls a day within 9 months.

A massive supply disruption such as this would cause a massive price spike at the pumps. Furthermore, our dependency on foreign oil will SKYROCKET. We would need to un-sanction Iran to help get their bbls back in the market.

Then, what do you do with the employees of the industry? How to address the stock and bond holders? Will it be illegal to sell frac equipment in bk liquidations? Will un-drilled leases be of any value?

Alternatives are certainly going to be the norm at some point, but not yet. A rapid change to outright ban fracking will have dire consequences and the "national security" argument will outweigh the desire to reduce co2 IMHO.

Seeing as how the vast majority of drilling activity occurs on private minerals...it would by nearly impossible to ban fracking altogether. If that were even attempted, the constitutionality of such a measure would be challenged by millions of private mineral owners and every producing state in the union (except maybe California). Even banning it on federal lands would be near impossible without congressional approval and even then would be difficult since that would directly condemn private lands intermixed with federal acreage and open the federal government up to lawsuits by operators for loss of reserves and breach of contract.

Aside from all of the economic impacts that would result from such an action (spikes in commodity prices, loss of jobs, etc) it's also pretty comical that they are, at least in word, willing to ban fracking and jeopardize the billions of dollars the federal government receives every year from lease sales, rentals, and the 12.5% of all oil and gas production on federal lands...especially given all the fact that they also claim to want to make health care and higher education free.

If Obama was any indication...they will campaign on banning fracking, etc to get elected, knowing full well that they can't actually do it, and none of their base will care because they are too ignorant (in many cases willfully ignorant) to realize that it's nearly impossible and will never happen. No one is going to regulate an energy transition into reality... throughout history it has never happened that way. Renewable technology must become more efficient, equally reliable, and less expensive than oil and natural gas for that to happen. That isn't just isn't the case yet.

[gopokes88]

Warren has absolutely no authority to ban fracking whatsoever. None. 0. Nada.

[gopokes88]

Seems like the whole industry is bracing for impact right now. Can't give any details, but Devon is not unique in this situation. I think the shale producers feel that if we hit a recession in the next 6-12 months, they'll be out of business. I mean, I guess they could all be out of business Come January 2021 depending on election outcome.

From everything I read,

Shale model just doesn’t make sense, isn’t economical and everyone is just waiting for the world to end. Another bankruptcy, M&A, share price crash is coming. The declines are too steep and the reservoir depleted to quickly with denser DSU

[C_M_25]

From everything I read,

Shale model just doesn’t make sense, isn’t economical and everyone is just waiting for the world to end. Another bankruptcy, M&A, share price crash is coming. The declines are too steep and the reservoir depleted to quickly with denser DSU

Shale oil is economical otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing Exxon running 40 rigs in the Permian. The problem with shale oil is if a company doesn’t have conventional assets with low decline production, then you have to continually drill to offset the declines.

The main problems we have in the industry is that there are too many companies. We need fewer companies drilling wells. The only way this industry “heals” is by consolidation. Less companies = fewer wells being drilled. The big question, for this forum, is whether Devon survives. I feel like this company has set itself up to survive, but they’ll need to be aggressive and not get taken over.

[C_M_25]

Obviously, the climate is a major focus right now, but you can’t just shut this industry down right now. We don’t have the green energy technology to completely offset the electrical generation capacity that natural gas is supplying.

I could see a world where there is much less demand for oil products, ie gasoline, plastics, etc, but this industry isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

[gopokes88]

Layoffs were done today. ~50

[chuck5815]

Layoffs were done today. ~50

Did they layoff any VPs or just the folks who touch assets and do the actual work?

[thunderbird]

Did they layoff any VPs or just the folks who touch assets and do the actual work?

That round was 2-3 weeks ago.

[BoulderSooner]

paper says layoff was 40 people

[OkiePoke]

Encana is establishing a domicile in the US. Would be a great get for OKC. I wonder if they are considering DVN.

[gopokes88]

Encana is establishing a domicile in the US. Would be a great get for OKC. I wonder if they are considering DVN.

It’s Denver. Everyone but the C-suite and Canadian asset engineers already works in Denver. They’re slowly closing the Houston office NFX has as well.

[OkiePoke]

It’s Denver. Everyone but the C-suite and Canadian asset engineers already works in Denver. They’re slowly closing the Houston office NFX has as well.

Thanks

[PhiAlpha]

Thanks

Encana does have an office in downtown OKC. It’s just really small.