Devon Energy announced that it has brought online a record-setting Meramec well and commenced production on several high-rate wells in the core of the over-pressured oil window of the STACK play during Q2 2017...

US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke signed a secretarial order to tackle permitting backlogs and delays, identify solutions to improve the permitting process on federal lands, and to identify solutions to improve access to additional parcels of federal land that are appropriate for mineral development. As of 31 January 2017, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had 2,802 Applications for Permit to Drill (APD) pending...

Amid low oil prices and low demand for drilling rigs around the world, drilling contractors might consider turning to geothermal drilling projects as a new field of opportunities for their under-utilized assets, suggested Ralph van Hof, CEO of Transmark Group...

The UK oil and gas industry has long been nursing its nascent unconventional and shale market, but some believe that 2017 could finally be the turning point. The work of several operators, including IGas, Cuadrilla, Third Energy and INEOS Shale, is expected to result in the drilling of several unconventional wells in the second half of the year...

Halliburton announced an agreement with GroundMetrics, a San Diego company specializing in the development of electromagnetic sensor systems, to deliver full field reservoir characterization and monitoring services...

Flanked by members of Alaska’s energy sector and elected officials at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association annual conference, US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke signed a secretarial order to jump-start Alaskan energy production in the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska (NPR-A) and update resource assessments for areas of the North Slope, including the "1002 area" of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)...

Cyber attacks on industrial control systems are on the rise, and it’s estimated that 41% of cyber attacks target the oil and gas industry. Since the publication last year of the IADC Guidelines for Assessing and Managing Cybersecurity Risks to Drilling Assets, the IADC Cybersecurity Subcommittee has been working on new guidelines around minimum cybersecurity guidelines for drilling rigs...

Process automation is an added layer on top of the control system that adds automation to the rig equipment while maintaining the driller as the process manager. Although process automation has the potential to deliver significant performance gains on drilling rigs, the industry has only just begun to scratch the surface of using such technology, Duane Cuku...

By Linda Hsieh, Managing Editor The US land rig count has doubled from its nadir last year, but land drillers must be cautious about basking in “an irrational exuberance,” Stephen Beck, Senior Director and Head of North American Oil & Gas Supply Forecasting for IHS Markit, said. Speaking at the 2017 IADC Drilling Onshore Conference on 18 May in Houston, Mr Beck noted that the industry’s excitement over increasing activity levels is overshadowing the attention that should be paid to supply impacts. “Rig count recovery has already outpaced the price of oil,” he cautioned, noting that oil prices have not grown much this year to support such an increase in the rig count. Going into the second half of 2017, ...

Big data holds significant promise for the oil and gas industry in terms of enabling better decision making, thus lowering costs. However, operators and contractors must take steps to make data more actionable and to overcome challenges relating to data quality and transformation...