Low petroleum prices continue to pummel producers all across Oklahoma hard. Among the hardest hit are the small and marginal producers who don?t have very deep pockets when it comes to weathering the low-price storm. Many of those producers are seeing their margins squeezed so much that the only relief appears to be shutting in their wells.
Shutting in wells now that could become more profitable in the future when oil prices rise is precisely the action Tim Munson hopes his committee can help prevent. Munson is the chairman of Sustaining Oklahoma?s Energy Resources, a committee of the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board.
SOER is launching a project to help identify and fund research and development projects which could help marginal producers improve their profitability in the short run while waiting for petroleum prices to improve.
Munson says his group has launched an online survey to help identify projects that small producers might find beyond their means to afford on their own.
?What we are hoping to do is to come up with some ideas that we can fund to help provide either software or technology or somehow provide assistance to the marginal producers across the state of Oklahoma. It can be a technology solution or a hardware solution or just anything that we think can have the capability of impacting the bottom line of Oklahoma?s marginal producers.
?With product prices in the situation they are now, as low as they are now, a lot more of Oklahoma?s producers are, quote, operating marginally than ever before so we?re hoping to cast a wide net and get as much input as we can so we can identify a handful of ideas that we can put before the committee and see if we can?t get something done to help Oklahoma?s producers.?
Munson says the projects identified by the survey will be paid for out of funds SOER collects throughout the year on the production of each barrel of oil. He says the funds are a minute fraction of a penny on each barrel, but they do add up over time and will allow SOER to provide substantial assistance.
Producers can access the survey at:
Listen to Jim Aple’s interview of Tim Munson.
