Q&A: Increasing Upstream Activity Onshore US amid a Lower Oil Price

Rigzone: Do you believe that onshore exploration requires its own regulatory capacity? Or can offshore drilling regulations be more or less applied to the onshore oil and gas exploration industry?

Snead: I think those are two different animals and I think you’re going to have to have separate regulations for those but I’m not involved in making the regulations and we don’t do any offshore oil and gas business ourselves so I’m really only familiar with the onshore oil and gas regulations in the United States, but I think those are two different animals.

Rigzone: In your particular experience, what is the best way of gaining public support for onshore drilling operations?

Snead: I think if the electricity went out for a couple of weeks, people would want to see all the onshore drilling they could have.

Rigzone: What are some of the main trends we can expect to see in the U.S. onshore exploration sector in 2016? Is there any new technology being deployed or any emerging exploration regions in the country for example?

Snead: As far as new technology is concerned, they’re continuing to refine the fracking process and wastewater and disposal processes and I think you’re going to see some new developments in technology in those areas. There’s a lot of different basins that are being looked at, and different things are being tried in different basins, but in most cases it’s the basins where oil has already been discovered where [the most success is seen]. The Bakken [for example] … was a very old field that had been around for a number of years, but had only been explored with conventional technology. Once horizontal drilling and fracking [became popular] then they were able to unlock that production that was there in the Bakken shale and [now] you’re seeing some of that same technology being applied to the Mississippi limestone and some other areas. Now there’s kind of an emerging trend in east Texas which combines the Woodbine and the Eagleford and they’re calling it the Eaglebine play. You’re going to continue to see areas that have already produced oil and gas that are going to be looked at with a new eye now that technology is continuing to emerge to [better] extract [oil].

To find out more about Magnolia Petroleum’s plans in 2016, listen below.

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