Doing More With Less Amidst Supply Chain Woes
When supply chains run smoothly, the economies they support do too. However when even the smallest disruption occurs, supply chains can quickly turn into the equivalent of a daisy chain — where one event sets off a cascading impact down the entire logistics value chain.
“(The supply chain issues) These are a typical thing over my whole career,” RMI Supply president Mark Workman said. “And during COVID we would be told day in and out that our order was going out today, when the reality was the supplier was just telling me what I wanted to hear.”
Workman, who worked in trucking and logistic prior to oil and gas, said the supply chain issues can become very real and very quick.
“Things become constant after a while, like not having enough drivers or enough trucks,” Workman said. “We learned to adjust to the marketplace and now our company has streamlined our processes from 15 people down to three.”
Workman added that streamlining certain portions of his business rippled into other areas too, which resulted in a huge savings of time and money.
“We can now unload a whole truckload of product for the oil field, label it and get it ready to go on a truck that same day,” Workman said. “In fact, we can now do all that in about two hours.”
RMI Supply is a leading provider of specialty oilfield chemicals focusing on delivering environmentally-friendly products to the market combined with a fast and responsive service.
Click here for RMI Supply’s website and more information.
In other supply chain news, retail experts fear that this is what could happen up and down the East Coast as businesses and shippers try to manage the fallout from the March 26 collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge as a result of a cargo ship collision.
According to Maryland Governor Wes Moore port is responsible for over 51 million tons of foreign cargo. That's the largest in the country. For everybody who was buying cars, everybody who was buying farm equipment, we're the largest port in country that does that. So, this is not just impacting Maryland.”
The OilMan Magazine Interview: Cole Thompson, Author of Chocolate Lizards
“I used to be in the oil business. I’ve been teaching college English now for about 20 years. I got lucky and got a full time job at McMurry University here in Abilene as a creative writing teacher. It’s exciting and it fits better with my true self.
My father, John R. Thompson, graduated from Oklahoma University with a petroleum engineering degree in 1951 and went to work for Schlumberger. They moved him to Abilene in 1952, and my parents settled here. My dad worked for Schlumberger logging wells and he was a salesman, then he decided he would become an independent operator in the ‘60s by the time I was born. He was a very active independent operator from the late ‘60s into the 2000s. It’s funny; he’s 95 and we’re about to drill a well here in a few weeks.
When I was a kid, I would go out with him to one of the rigs to look at the log or do whatever aspect of the process he was involved in. My father was also part owner in a supply store called BT Supply here in Abilene and I worked there when I was 16, so I was raised in the oil field and I got to know all those characters.
My dad always has these stories…There’s one about some guy out in Albany about 40 miles from Abilene. He needed to log his well with Schlumberger. This was in the ‘60s and he went to the payphone in Albany and called the Abilene operator. He said, “I need the phone number for Schlumberger.” She said, “Can you spell that?” He said, “Lady, I could walk to Abilene before I could spell that!”
Click here for entire interview
Pumped Up: Oil, Gas Prices Rising Ahead of Summer
Don't look now, but just in time for the spring and summer driving season, oil and gas prices are on the rise again. Crude oil is now at its highest level of the year, surpassing $85 a barrel. In fact, the price of oil has gone up so much, the White House abruptly canceled plans to buy back millions of barrels to refill the depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). As for gas prices, the average for regular unleaded is now $3.17 per gallon in Texas, and $3.57 nationwide, both slightly higher than a year ago.
Karr Ingham, economist with the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, says it's no surprise that gas prices are following the rise in crude prices. "We can always hope we're wrong about this, but it wouldn't surprise me to see gasoline prices going up further from where they are now heading into summer, and they've already gone up some," he tells KTRH.
The rise in crude oil comes amidst continued geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, OPEC production cuts, and increased demand. "There is growing demand globally for crude oil and petroleum products that come from it," says Ingham. "We know this, and we need to respond to that."
How exactly to respond is the question facing the Biden administration. Leading up to the 2022 election, Biden drained hundreds of millions of barrels from the SPR in an attempt to keep pump prices down. With this year's election just months away, Biden could face pressure to at least temporarily ease some restrictions to move prices lower. "It was foolhardy for (Biden) to drain the reserves in 2022, but it would be even worse to try that now," says Ingham. "I don't know what he can do, other than what he should have been doing all along, and that is simply turning oil and gas companies in Texas loose to do what they do best."
China: Gov Sets Up National Oil, Gas Pipe Firm in Drive to “Boost Competition”
China announced on Monday, December 9, the establishment of a national oil and gas pipeline company in a move intended to boost competition, the Xinhua state news agency reported.
The long-awaited state pipeline company aims to provide other investors fair market access to infrastructure that is mainly controlled by China’s three national oil companies, Xinhua stated.
“The new company will separate [oil and gas] transportation, production and sales, and open [transportation] to third-party entities, which will benefit market competition,” stated Xinhua, citing an unidentified official at the newly launched pipeline company.
The new entity is expected to manage most of the country’s pipeline infrastructure, controlled by energy giants China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), Sinopec, and CNOOC, and some underground natural gas storage, as well as a few liquefied natural gas terminals.
Understanding the New EPA Fees for Oil and Gas Companies
Oil and gas companies will soon be required to pay annual fees to the federal government based on their methane emissions. These fees, which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) expects will exceed $2 billion over the next decade, are driven by Congressional directives in the Clean Air Act, but the specifics are currently being worked out by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Background
Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, amending the Clean Air Act to direct the EPA to collect a “waste emissions charge” on oil and gas operators whose annual methane emissions from a facility exceed 25,000 metric tons of CO2e. Emissions for comparison to that threshold will be reported on an operator’s annual Subpart W greenhouse gas emissions reports. In general, 2024 emissions that exceed the threshold will be assessed at a rate of $900 per metric ton, with the rate increasing to $1,200 per metric ton and $1,500 per metric ton in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
EPA’s Proposed Rule
Although Congress prescribed the general framework for the waste emissions charge in the Clean Air Act, EPA is currently hammering out the specifics via rulemaking. For example, Congress provided three fee exemptions in the Clean Air Act, but EPA’s rule proposal significantly narrows them, as follows:
Biden Has Prioritized Grifters' Offshore Wind Profits Over the Whales
Right Whales are being threatened by the Biden Administration’s fast-track plans to hurriedly place 30,000 MW of wind power generation off the Eastern coast, and doing so without the proper sort of environmental impact assessment they might otherwise perform for, say, offshore oil.
The collective decision by our outfits to take the issue of whale protection to Court came after two years of futile attempts to get the Biden Administration to listen. Offshore wind development threatens the nearly extinct North Atlantic Right Whale in various ways, and the government refuses to investigate.
The two agencies that share responsibility for making sure wind development does not harm whales include the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which oversees building wind facilities, and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS or NOAA Fisheries), which enforces the various laws to protect whales. Neither seems intent on doing its job.
In issuing its “biological opinion” last September, for instance, NMFS only examined the impact that each of these projects, individually and in isolation, would have on the North Atlantic Right Whale. The agency did not, as it should have, issue a comprehensive and cumulative analysis examining the combined harm that all the projects, together, would inflict on the whales during their annual migration path.
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