Member Info for oldscouser

U.S. Shale Is Facing Higher Costs and Slowing Productivity

• U.S. shale production has slipped from its late-2024 peak as rising costs and slowing productivity erode growth momentum.

• Technology gains like longer laterals and advanced fracking have delivered efficiencies but are no longer offsetting higher development costs.

• Market oversupply from OPEC+ weighs on prices now, but tightening shale economics may drive a rebound in oil prices in the near future.

Despite providing most of the growth in global supply over the last decade or so, U.S. shale producers are subject to the effects of the whims of OPEC+, and Saudi Arabia in particular. Their decision to rapidly unwind previous output cuts has put over 2 mm BOPD on the market in a very short period, and resulted in a global stock build that's just knocked the stuffing out of oil prices.

There are a lot of factors influencing shale output as we race toward the latter third of 2025. It is undeniable that we have seen a leveling off and perhaps a decline in oil output as noted in the Weekly Field Production of Crude Oil published by the EIA.

What can’t be disputed is that the relentless growth in U.S. daily production has come to an end.

Something that isn’t discussed a lot and is, very simply, costs are rising for the biggest contributor to U.S. liquids production, viz shale, and well productivity is declining.

The complete article is well worth a read:

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Shale-Is-Facing-Higher-Costs-and-Slowing-Productivity.html

Re voting on HL platform.

Log on to HL and go to "My accounts"

Scroll down the page to "Shareholder meetings" (in black type)

Click on the link "View shareholder meetings"

This will take you to a list of current shareholder meetings. Click on the action link and you will find the resolutions you can vote on. On my page RKH was listed twice with the same resolutions?? I just repeated my voting on each link.

Conditional placing and open offer circular

https://rockhopperexploration.co.uk/investors/shareholder-documents/2025-capital-raising/

Up to 13,968,301 open offer shares

Hello ZYX.

The lowest threshold for TR-1 notification is 3%. As we have some 640 million shares issued at the moment, then 3% would be approaching 20 million shares. The new placing and warrants will of course add 200 million(?) to the share issue. If you are worried about TR-1 then I take my hat off to you.

atb OS

Thank you p777 for the link - all very good reading.

My only query would be on the Navitas market cap given as $0.5B. With a market cap of ILS 10.8B I think it should read $3B.

Hello all. What I remeber from the chat all those years ago was one of the 'oilies' said that they had to use a 'pill' to control the well. And afterwards I am sure that RKH advised that the BOP was removed from the Erik R for repair.

Anyway, I have dug out from my saved files the following assessment of that first drill into Isobel-Elaine; the pdf is here:

https://pdflink.to/63c9e661/

Although there is no author's name I am sure it was provided by Marlonmonkey. The author writes “Complex as whole mapped to have gross Pmean resources of 510mmbbls (range 80 – 1424mmbbls). Which is the P90 to P10 values, (yes that’s up to a whopping 1.4 billion barrels recoverable,

providing no oil water contact is found)".

The author (MM?) addresses the effect of the OWC depth and discusses the likely range of P90 to P10 reserves on page 6.

The second drill of Isobel deep was down dip and stepped out from the first well and encountered no OWC. This why MM wrote: " No oil water Contact...480m column. With oil down to 2861m TVDSS, and assuming the fans are in communication (highly likely), it moves our sump down 110m from the P10 assumed in the original DES CPR. P10 assumed OWC at 2750m...we can now assume with some safety 2861m. This would move our sump into a much smaller area and make all the fans much bigger. I will call this a 1 billion barrel discovery.

To my mind Isobel is the real 'prize' in the NFB.

atb oldscouser

And this from KPLER about US shale production:

Kpler cuts 2025 crude forecast

Kpler has lowered its US crude supply forecast by 120,000 to 170,000 barrels a day for the rest of 2025 and into 2026, as weaker prices threaten to slow shale production. Brent is now expected to average $60 to $65 a barrel from the fourth quarter onwards.

With WTI, the main US benchmark crude, now near breakeven levels for new wells, producers are likely to cut back drilling. US #shale is quick to react to price changes, and lower margins are prompting caution.

The drop in prices follows OPEC+ increasing supply to regain market share, putting pressure on US output. Kpler now expects US #crude production to peak in 2025 and gradually decline after that.

It does appear that an oil price of less than $60/bbl will lead to production cutbacks, that will in turn (DV) lead to a higher oil price. We need Mystic Meg to look into her crystal ball and forecast the oil price 2 years hence.

Rolf1001

It looks like the recent low oil price of circa $60/bbl is now causing shale oil producers to cut back on operations.

"We Are At A Tipping Point":

Shale Giant Diamonback Says US Oil Output Has Peaked, Slashes CapEx Amid OPEC Price War.

The OPEC price war has made landfall in the US.

Following our report earlier that Saudi Arabia has declared a new price war on OPEC+ quota-busters such as Kazakhstan, and non OPEC+ members such as US shale producers, today after the close Diamondback Energy, the largest independent oil producer in the Permian Basin, made a historic pronouncement today when it said that production has likely peaked in America’s prolific shale fields (something we also mentioned earlier in the day) and will decline in the months and years ahead after crude prices plummeted.

Separately, the Texas company trimmed its own full-year production forecast Monday, and said that it expects onshore oil rigs across the entire US industry to drop by almost 10% by the end of the second quarter and fall further in the months after.

“This will have a meaningful impact on our industry and our country,” Diamondback Chief Executive Officer Travis Stice wrote. “We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production.”

Full article is here:

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/we-are-tipping-point-shale-giant-diamonback-says-us-oil-output-has-peaked-slashes-capex

The latest NSAI report is dated 23 March 2025. It can be found on the Navitas website via the Invester Relations page. On this page you will find a section called Immediate Reports in which is list Sea Lion NSAI Report dated 31-12-2024. The link actually takes you to the March 2025 report. The March report now shows that Sea Lion field devellopment comprises 5 phases (up from 3 phases in December) and 61 wells (up from 35 wells).

Table 2 presents best estimates (2C) for cash flow, costs and taxes for Navitas for the first 15 years of the Sea Lion project. First oil is in year 3. Divide Navitas working interest revenue by NAV WI (0.65) and POO ($75.19) to get annual oil produced. Over 13 years of production this sums to 421 million barrels. Similarly, for the net operating expenses, divide by NAV WI to get annual field operating expenses and sum to get $3,934 million over 13 years. This suggests an average of $9.3 per barrel.

Well then, I guess it's good to know that according to the latest NSAI report the average field operating expenses over the first 13 years of operation is about $10 per barrel.