..Record U.S. natgas drilling fails to hike output
By Gelu Sulugiuc
NEW YORK, Aug 10 (Reuters) - Soaring natural gas prices last year spurred record drilling, but production in the United States is only marginally rising as old fields deplete at ever-accelerating rates, analysts said Friday.
The industry will get no relief in the near term, as natural gas from new fields is years away from reaching the market.
Natural gas futures prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange surged to an all-time high above $10 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) last December.
They have since plunged more than 70 percent to below $3.00, but not before igniting unprecedented exploration and development spending in North America.
A recent survey by consulting firm Andersen of 155 of the world's biggest publicly traded oil companies found that their spending on exploration and development in North America rose by 72 percent to $36.2 billion last year.
Yet natural gas production increased by only about 1.5 percent in the United States in the past six months, according to analysts.
"That's pretty phenomenal given that we've had record gas drilling activity," said David Pursell, analyst at investment bankers Simmons & Company.
"That's showing that base gas production is declining very rapidly and it also speaks to the quality of the prospects that are being drilled."
The latest report from oil services firm Baker Hughes showed that 1,047 rigs were drilling for natural gas in the United States last week, compared to the 647 average of last year and more than double the 426 average from 1999.
'BLOWDOWNS' TO BLAME
To take immediate advantage of the high prices, many companies drilled in old fields that provided quick production. The disadvantage was that the strategy accelerated the fields' depletion rates in what drillers call "blowdowns."
That's what Exxon Mobil did at its aging Webster field in Texas.
"By blowing down this field, Exxon were able to have better production in 1999 and 2000," said Steven Pfeifer, a Merrill Lynch analyst.
"But once gas reserves at the Webster field were depleted, which is very common for a blowdown, you're at the end of the field and you're basically producing the last gas remaining," he added.
The Webster blowdown was chiefly responsible for the nine percent decline in U.S. natural gas production for Exxon Mobil in the second quarter compared to last year.
Exxon Mobil acknowledged that it will continue with enhanced recovery at some of its mature fields. "We've got other blowdown projects as well in the United States," said company spokesman Bob Davis.
But Exxon Mobil was not the only company to maximize gas production and accelerate the depletion of its reserves amid last year's record gas prices, analysts said.
And now, oil majors are finding it difficult to raise or even maintain steady gas production in the United States.
In the second quarter, Texaco Inc saw its gas production slip by eight percent, while Chevron Corp and Royal Dutch/Shell posted only marginal gains of two and one percent, respectively.
The last six months' 1.5 percent overall increase in U.S. production comes from the independents like Ocean Energy , that in the second quarter boosted its production 31 percent, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. 17 percent, and Amerada Hess Corp. 22 percent.
"Everybody's playing in the same playpen, but independents can do more with less." said Pursell from Simmons & Company.
"It's a curse of size. It's hard to grow at high percentage rates when you have a big base."
NEW RESERVES, PIPELINES NEEDED
In the long run independents cannot continue to offset the declines of the integrated companies and the industry will need new undeveloped reserves, analysts said.
"Prospect sizes get smaller and decline rates go up and it's harder to show top line volume growth," Pursell said.
The North American regions with promising gas potential are offshore eastern Canada, Alaska's North Slope and the deep-water Gulf of Mexico.
Gas from Sable Island in Canada is already flowing to northeastern United States through the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, in which Exxon has a stake. The operators plan to double the line's capacity by 2005.
Other projects however prove even more difficult to bring to the market.
In Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, about eight billion cubic feet (bcf) is re-injected into the fields every day because there is no pipeline to take it to the United States. That's the equivalent of 15 percent of current U.S. consumption.
BP , Exxon and Phillips Petroleum Co. are conducting a $90 million study on building a gas pipeline from Alaska, but the line will not come into operation until at least 2008.