A few weeks ago we posted Allen Gilmer’s thoughtful piece The Price Of Oil: Looking Ahead Without All The Noise. A large part of his thesis was the outsize effect that sentimentality has been having on the price of oil (a theme we have explored in a few additional posts). Also we have talked a little bit about how speculators can make money off of the volatility that this sentimentality brings.

One of the main tools we have to combat volatility is knowledge and information. Drillinginfo’s tools and analysis are dedicated to helping you weave actionable business plans out of a daunting array of real-world data. But your actions won’t happen in a pristine controlled environment – they will take place in a very gritty, very volatile, very interesting world.

I thought I would share a few of the techniques I use to keep on top of industry news, and discuss a few of today’s trends in the hopes that it may help improve your signal-to-noise ration.

Drillinginfo Index, Daily Rig Count and Top 10

Drillinginfo provides a few free tools to help you keep current.

The Drillinginfo Index

The Drillinginfo Index of New Production Capacity (NPC) compares active rigs with analogous nearest-neighbor production and determines the potential production capacity for each new well drilled onshore US. We then aggregate and slice and dice that information and provide it to you in a few handy charts – like top operators and top counties, etc.

Additionally, my compatriot Tom Morgan does a deeper analysis of the monthly NPC figures and places them into a larger context in the Perspective. Check out the March 2016  Perspective on inventory uncertainty.

I’ll be presenting a DI Solution Session on The Drillinginfo Index at our new Houston Office on April 8 (and periodically thereafter) – click here to sign up

Drillinginfo Daily Rig Count

On the DI Index homepage we also provide a daily update of geo-located and permit-corroborated US Rig Counts. Check out a few of the reasons we think you’ll find this daily count to be more useful for you.

Drillinginfo Top 10

(Almost) every week I put together a list of the top 10 news stories relevant to US onshore activity, combine it with an abstract of the most important international activity (put together by our DI International scouts), and close off with a few other interesting tidbits relevant to the industry in general. This I then deliver to the comfort of your email inbox so you may browse it at your leisure. If you would like to receive the Drillinginfo Top 10 just subscribe to our blog (there’s a box in the upper right corner).

Free Online O&G News

Oilpro.com

UPDATE: Wednesday morning Oilpro founder David Kent was arrested by the FBI for allegedly questionable business dealings. I stand by my admiration of their editorial depth.

Oilpro.com is great. At its heart it is very much an online community for folks in the industry. There are Q&As, very-timely links to all sorts of industry news, original content from community members, and excellent analysis from the Oilpro staff.  I discover new things about the industry every week, and am constantly impressed by articles by Joseph Triepke and Jeff Reed.

Last Friday, by way of example, we had this pairing of posts:

• Andy Hendricks, Patterson-UTI CEO, Talks Declining Rigs And Oil Prices On CNBC [Video]
• Helmerich & Payne Talks About The US Land Drilling Outlook

Now sure, if you had somehow stumbled across Hendricks’ video and suddenly thought “I wonder how H&P is faring?…” you could have done a google search and poked around for a while and come up with a few conclusions, but the site and staff there at Oilpro have set you up to reach your own conclusions much quicker.

Here is another recent favorite post on Oilpro, How Geologists Interpret Ancient Environments: A Philosophical Interlude.

(You can follow me at oilpro – I don’t post much, but I’m there a lot.)

Forbes.com

The Energy subsection on Forbes.com is always going to have some reliably interesting news and viewpoints. You can find top-flight analysis from staffer Christopher Hellman, regular contributors Michael Lynch and Guarav Sharma, academics like The Baker Institute for Energy Studies and The University of Houston Energy Fellows, and a large stable of industry and financial experts.

Here are a few at-a-glance examples of this weeks headlines:

• Michael Lynch’s snarkily titled Rockefellers Divest From Exxon: Planet Is Saved! attacks the “celebrity” aspects of O&G divestment, and ranges from Pontius Pilate to Michael Jackson in his explanation of how this is maybe even harmful to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Along the same topic, Jim Granato, Scott Mason and Kwok Wai Won from the Hobby Center for Public Policy, University of Houston explore the future consequences of carbon emission regulations in Bootleggers, Baptists And Regulating Carbon Emissions.
• And driving even closer to the upstream heart of the matter, Anna Mikulska, Michael Maher and Kenneth B. Medlock III at The Baker Institute push past the rhetoric of Hillary, Bernie, Hydraulic Fracturing And The Future Of US Oil And Gas Production.

(You can follow us on Forbes, also 😉 )

Bloomberg

The biggest components that set Bloomberg’s Science and Energy News Section apart are the very large staff of reporters, and the large quantity of articles that flow through. (I hate the autoplay videos soooo much, but, well….) Every article Dan Murtaugh writes is worth reading, and there are a number of other very talented reporters on the Energy and O&G beats.

The headline that is popping for me today (Monday) is Credit Suisse: The Death of Oil Demand has been Greatly Exaggerated wherein the bank predicts $50/barrel oil by May. Adding a little color to the banker’s enthusiasm, we also have Oil Enthusiasts Stay Out of Rally Led by Shrinking Bearish Bets.

This section is worth a daily visit just because the stories are coming so fast through their network that you may miss them on the front page.

fuelfix.com

Fuelfix is a Hearst newspapers property that aggregates energy news from across their chain, as well as relevant posts from Bloomberg and the A.P. This means you get quality energy reportage from such notable reporters as Collin Eaton, Jordan Blum, Matt Smith and Robert Grattan among others. Mostly these posts get filed a day or two after appearing on sister paywall publications like the Houston Chronicle or San Antonio Express-News.

Today (Monday) I see:

• Matt Smith just filed this great post on Market Currents: Eight things to consider in crude oil markets today, which I found to be very informative after my long weekend.
• Robert Grattan’s post from last week regarding As weather warms, natural gas markets are frigid reminding us of the impact of such a mild winter.
• From the A.P. we have Federal oil, gas leases stall over bird concerns in West keeping us up-to-date on the greater sage grouse situation.

Rigzone

I like Rigzone, it has a slightly more offshore/international point-of-view.

Business Journal

The Business Journal has localized sites and reporting in major cities across the U.S. I look at the Houston version all the time.

O&G News Online Behind a Paywall

It can’t all be free – these are some of the sites I subscribe to and get a lot of valuable information from.

The Houston Chronicle is the newspaper of record for the energy capital of the world.

The Wall Street Journal has a great reporting staff in the business and investing capital of the world.

The New York Times has all the news that’s fit to print.

The Economist is great. I appreciate their global point of view a lot.

Social and other Sources of Oil and Gas News

You can follow who we follow on Twitter, a lot of whom are reporters (reporters tend to be very quick about posting their articles on twitter)

Our CEO Allen Gilmer posts a lot of interesting things on his LinkedIn.

Your own network of friends can be helpful in keeping you up-to-date on news. For example, our Director of Product Marketing Martha Aviles just sent me this great link: What Low Oil Prices Really Mean.

Email lists are great because they get curated for you – you can subscribe to the drilling info list at the top of this page. I subscribe to lists at seekingalpha.com, The American Petroleum Institute,  and Energy in Depth.

Your Turn

What do you think? What sources do you turn to again and again for O&G News?

ERoach

Eric Roach is the editor of Drillinginfo's blog, which was selected as the Top Oil & Gas Industry Blog based on visibility, engagement and relevance. He also prepares a weekly newsletter of top industry news for blog subscribers, and would be grateful if you would subscribe and tell your friends. (There's a box on the upper right of the page where you can subscribe).

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