WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th April, 2022) US crude production from the country's seven most prolific shale basins is likely to increase by some 132,000 barrels per day in May to reach almost 8.65 million barrels daily, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Drilling Productivity Report.
If realized, the report suggests the increase could be the largest in a month for US shale since the global outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020 that led to a near six-month decimation in oil demand.
The largest increase in the shale bump is forecast in the Permian basin, a 250-mile wide and 300-mile long oil field straddling the US states of Texas and New Mexico.
The EIA forecast that Permian output could rise from an estimated 5.055 million barrels daily in April to 5.137 million in May, rising by 82,000.
The second largest gainer among US shale basins is expected to be the Eagle Ford, which is 400 miles long and 50 miles wide along the Texas Gulf Coast. Here, production is expected to rise by 26,000 barrels daily to reach 1.166 million by next month.
The number of Drilled-but-Uncompleted wells - known in industry parlance as DUCs - meanwhile fell from 4,387 in February to 4,273 in March to its lowest in over a decade. DUCs, a measure of how confident drillers are of demand in the future, have been declining since July 2020 as crude prices began recovering from the lows of the pandemic.
Global oil production has cratered this year from the Russian-Ukraine conflict and consequent Western sanctions on Moscow, while crude prices have more than doubled from the pandemic's average of $50 a barrel or lower as demand caught up to 2019 highs.
Nevertheless, US crude output has been growing only slowly as oil drillers have prioritized returning cash to shareholders rather than dramatically adding to production, abandoning drilling action reminiscent of the past that often led to price collapses.�
