IN THE OIL PATCH

It's a six letter word and it begins with the letter b and ends with the letter l.

Okay, here's a hint--energy, as in oil drillers. That's an appropriate description in the eyes of many as another drilling company files for bankruptcy in Texas as a reult of the drop in oil prices. As noted by a story posted on fuelfix.com/blog/2016/01/02/swift-energy-becomes-40th-north-american-driller-in-bankruptcy That's brutal.

HOUSTON – Swift Energy Co. has become the latest U.S. shale driller to succumb to the brutal downturn in crude prices, seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Houston driller filed paperwork on Thursday to become the 40th North American oil producer prodded into bankruptcy court as crude exporters Russia and Saudi Arabia keep prices depressed by pumping crude all-out, jockeying for a bigger corner of the global oil market. It was the 20th driller headquartered in Texas to file for bankruptcy in the past year.

Swift Energy, founded in 1979 by Aubrey Earl Swift, had trimmed 60 percent of its capital budget, cut 20 percent of its workforce and reduced its office space to cope with the 68-percent slide in U.S. crude prices over the past 19 months. But like several small rivals, Swift is running out of financial levers to pull.

“The recent collapse in oil prices is among the most severe on record,” Dean Swick, Swift’s chief restructuring officer and a restructuring consultant at Alvarez & Marsal, said in court filings. “Independent exploration and production companies like Swift have been particularly hard hit because they rely primarily on sales of oil and gas to generate revenue.”

In a restructuring deal subject to bankruptcy court approval, Swift has agreed with its creditors to convert its senior debt to equity. Company officials were not immediately available for comment on Saturday.

And here's piece from just four years earlier: stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2011/11/29/by-the-numbers-drilling-in-texas/       

PHOTO BY MIRA OBERMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

County Sheriff Gary Painter stands next to a pump jack outside of Midland, Texas in 2008

Are you curious how many new wells went into the ground over the last year in Texas? How much oil and gas was taken out of it? New numbers from the Railroad Commission of Texas, which oversees drilling in the state, were released today:

• More Permits, More Wells. The commission approved 1,771 drilling permits last month, compared to 1,515 last October. That includes “1,567 permits to drill new oil and gas wells, 57 to re-enter existing well bores, and 147 for re-completions,” according to a commission press release.
• Oil Production is Up. The daily average for oil production in Texas was 1.01 million barrels a day for September. For the month, 30.33 million barrels of crude oil were produced, compared with 28.15 million barrels of crude the September before.