Permian News

Flaring and venting in the Permian Basin has stabilized in the range of 600 million to 650 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd), according to Rystad Energy’s preliminary data for the third quarter of 2019.Venting is gas release without combustion, whereas flaring is the burning of excess capacity. In New Mexico, vented and flared gas is reported separately and our research indicates that, on average, 5% to 15% of total flared and vented production stream is vented.In particular, reported data from recent quarters shows a significant decrease in the frequency of venting relative to flaring, with only 8% of waste gas being vented. In the case of Texas…

Frac water demand is expected to increase 30% by 2022, with 53% of that increase taking place in the Permian Basin, said Rystad Energy in its recently released “Water Management Report”.The increase in water demand is mostly driven by increases in forecasted completions activity, and the continued trend towards longer laterals.Rystad Energy expects frac water demand across the US to hit 4.9 billion barrels in 2019, with 2.28 billion barrels taking place in the Permian Basin.Rystad Energy normally defines spare capacity as a country’s underutilized capacity, including any current outages.

Natural gas flaring in the Permian dropped in the first quarter of 2019 – the first drop in one-and-a-half years, according to energy research firm Rystad Energy.Rystad Energy has been closely monitoring the level of natural gas flaring in the Permian since 2017. "Our previous quarterly estimate suggested that basin-wide gas flaring reached record-high levels of beyond 660 million cubic feet per day (MMcfd) in the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019," it said.However, just released final data for the first quarter of 2019 have led to a downward revision of our previous flaring estimate by 7%, to 613 MMcfd.“This is the first time that has happened over the past 1.5 years.