By James Mahony
Despite a modest rise in the forecast well count, analysts said 2012 would be a year of robust drilling activity, members of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada (PSAC) heard yesterday.
The prediction came in response to yesterday's Canadian Drilling Activity Forecast, in which PSAC estimated Canada would see 15,100 wells drilled next year, up 10 per cent from the estimated 13,700 wells the association expects this year (DOB, Nov. 3, 2011).
Next year's figure is a far cry from the peak year of 2005, when the industry drilled nearly 25,000 wells. Yet, the 2012 figure is well ahead of 2009, when about 8,405 wells were drilled Canada-wide. Results were released before PSAC members gathered in Calgary for the association's annual general meeting.
While PSAC's forecast well count does not represent a big jump, one analyst addressing yesterday's audience said there's reason for optimism going forward. In particular, Jeff Martin ofPeters & Co. Limited cited this year's Crown land sales in Alberta as a good indicator of what's to come, in terms of drilling and oilfield service activity.
By October, Alberta producers and land agents had bid over $3 billion for petroleum and natural gas rights on Crown lands, and the figure is well ahead of the full-year figure for 2010.
While land sales don't represent an "immediate push to the drillbit, they're a pretty good indicator of future expectations," he told the group. "What's most encouraging about the [$3 billion figure] is the number of big companies that are coming back into the basin to spend money...."
Yet, from the oilfield service side, an even better reason for optimism is steepening decline rates in Western Canada, he said. With the steady shift to resource plays, the change in production decline rates has been "huge," he said, noting that, a decade ago, the average Canadian producer he covered might have had a base decline rate of about 22 per cent. Today, by contrast, the rate is closer to 30 per cent, he said.
Steepening declines are especially notable in some western Canadian natural gas plays, where the median first-year decline rate averages around 73 per cent, according to Peters & Co. figures. PSAC predicted the number of gas wells drilled in Western Canada next year would drop by six per cent.
"The E&P companies are on crack and they just have to keep drilling," he said. "There is no choice. You have to grow. This is why you're seeing capital budgets over the last few days bigger than what you might think. It's because they have to keep drilling."
Despite Martin's upbeat outlook, his firm is forecasting Canada's well count in 2012 will reach just 13,000, versus the 15,100 forecast by PSAC. Others addressing the group also had more modest expectations, with theCanadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) also predicting 13,000 wells country-wide next year.
On the capital spending side, CAPP predicted the domestic oil industry -- from conventional to oilsands -- would spend $55 billion next year, up just $1 billion from estimated 2011 figures. At the same time, David Pryce, CAPP's vice-president of operations, said the lion's share of spending would be in Alberta.
Apart from $20 billion in oilsands investment, Western Canada will see about $33 billion in industry spending next year. CAPP forecasts Alberta will see $22 billion of that, roughly the same forecast to be spent here this year, while $5 billion and $6 billion are forecast to be spent in Saskatchewan and British Columbia, respectively, in 2012. Both figures represent flat spending from CAPP's estimates for this year.
Like others speaking yesterday, Pryce warned of an emerging worker shortage that CAPP predicts will worsen before it gets better. While the association also offered low-growth estimates of how many workers the industry would need over the next decade, it predicted in its growth scenario that the figure could rise to 220,000 by 2017, from about 180,000 workers needed next year.
During a press conference earlier yesterday, Mark Salkeld, PSAC president and chief executive, noted that, as the well count changes, so does the well profile, and Western Canada's wells are becoming longer on average, and more costly. Next year, PSAC predicted that more than half (about 55 per cent) of all wells would be horizontal.
With the shift to horizontal drilling, much of it oil-focused, average well length is also increasing. In 2012, PSAC predicts the average well in Western Canada will be 1,825 metres, up from 1,525 metres per well in 2009. In just three years, the average well has grown 20 per cent longer. If the year 2007 is used for comparison, the gap is wider, since wells in that year averaged only 1,212 metres long. In contrast, the average well length forecast for 2012 is 50 per cent longer.
"The wells are getting [longer] because of the horizontal legs," out-going PSAC chairman Brian Coston said.
Workforce issues were not far from the minds of PSAC executives who spoke to reporters yesterday. For incoming PSAC chairman Mike Edmonds, the departure of equipment and crews from the industry since 2009 is something that is still having an effect, as oilfield service companies scramble for workers.
"Our sector continues to deal with the fallout from a few years ago, when we saw an exodus of workers out of our range, and they haven't returned," he said. As well, some of the equipment that has been shifted to other jurisdictions has not returned. "We expect the registered rig count to be flat, and there's no expectation in the near future that that equipment is going to return."
Asked why some workers who left the service sector did not return, Coston noted that Canadian expertise is valued around the world. "People have taken opportunities overseas and in the U.S. to ply their wares and that's taken away a significant number of our people," he said. In the U.S., he said the rig count is currently somewhere near 2,000.