David Howald, director of exploitation of Flywheel Energy, said that the costs of control, new technologies and the economy of industry are at the heart of his business investing massively in the Fayetteville shale game.
The natural gas game formerly moving in the north of Arkansas has been sleeping from the new drilling activity since 2018. The flight steering wheel based in Oklahoma City has been consolidating its position in Arkansas for a few years to pick up Southwestern positions Energy, XTO and others. He announced last week He would add at least three new platforms and invest 25 to 30 million dollars again drilling in Arkansas.
Howald said that the company has refined its effectiveness because it attracts investors despite the prices of natural gas which are not close to the historic summits. The Henry HUB price for natural gas was $ 4.13 per million BTU in January, the highest price of January since $ 4.38 in 2022. However, the January price is much lower than $ 13.42 In October 2005 during the natural gas drilling boom which sparked an initial activity in La Fayetteville. Shale.
“We had historical wells that had not been completely completed. A few years ago, we arrived, have finished some of them, ended them, have tried new technologies to see what new technologies that have been developed in recent years would look like this rock, “said Howald . “One of the things that these results have shown us is that there are still opportunities there. He was only waiting for the right time, the right capital investors who might think of raising a platform, and in particular of the right regulatory company, and a political environment for drilling. »»
New technologies allow natural gas drivers to get more shale layers where carbon has been captured for centuries. Howald compared the rocks to the “sponges” and said that he thought that the economy works for drilling at current price levels.
Howald thinks that the energy policies of the new Trump administration combined with the Arkansas trade environment is ripe for promising yields.
“The economy in the Fayetteville shale is decent enough to operate a platform,” he said. “Arkansas, at the state level, was a fantastic place to do business, but you have this federal risk. Now that you see a federal administration which is extremely focused on companies with common sense energy policies at the federal level, and you have heads of state who are exactly the same wavelength, it was really in some Look for all our investors needed to work. »»
However, he warned the expectations that Fayetteville’s shale game could undergo another boom like Arkansas saw in the middle of the 2000s.
“No, this is the one we want to be quite clear. It is a very different commercial model when you are in the mature stages of the room. At first, you have to start nothing. You must drill at a rate that strengthens actual production. But once you have a large production base, which Fayetteville has always, I think that many people are surprised to hear how much the active produced compared to other basins. It’s a lot of gas, but it’s down, “he said.
“Now, that’s what we are looking for the profile. You know, we do not try more than two to three years to double or triple the amount of gas produced there. We are trying to find a gas level that we can keep almost at the same level for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. It is therefore a different objective. This requires much more discipline, but we think we have the exact team for this type of approach. … Even running one or two platforms, you are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars entering the state, entering the basin. These are direct jobs which are jobs based on Arkansas and this establishes the conditions for reliable and affordable energy. »»
You can watch Howald’s full interview in the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA3-3B1JD4M