There’s this guy, Adam Conover, who creates videos “ruining” everything you think is great.  It’s called Adam Ruins Everything.  He’s kind of like the Freakonomics of YouTube and TruTV.  I don’t agree with everything he says, and you can’t cover most subjects properly in the amount of time that a typical YouTube video lasts.  However, he’s entertaining and makes a good point most of the time.

His latest video explains why electric cars aren’t as eco-friendly as everyone thinks.  It’s part of a larger episode about “going green“.

He makes the argument that the strategy of both driving less and driving your current car into the ground is actually more eco-friendly than buying a new car, so long as your current car is reasonably efficient.  I’m glad to know that I’ve been eco-friendly all my life.

So keep driving your non-gas-guzzling normal car for as long as you can.  Don’t make the jump to electric unless you have to buy a new car anyways, or your old car is laying down a cloud of smoke everywhere it goes.

Of course, buying a car that runs on compressed natural gas (when your old car quits) would be even better for West Virginia royalty and mineral owners.  If only we could get more CNG filling stations around.

Drilco, a West Virginia company, is asking for accredited investors to buy in to its drilling program.  We usually wouldn’t post about this kind of stuff, but it is a company from West Virginia doing work in West Virginia and we really kind of like all aspects of the oil and gas industry, so here it is.

The offer says that they hold 15,000 acres in seven West Virginia counties, suggesting that they will be working in all seven counties.  As you dig into the paperwork a little farther, however, you see that they are going to be working on the Ritchie/Gilmer county border, and that they already operate 200 wells in that area.  They don’t even name the other five counties (although we skimmed a lot of the document, we think we read everything that would discuss locations).  They probably mention the other five counties just in case they run into insurmountable difficulties in the projected project area and have to make a move elsewhere.

They say that they will be drilling to the Big Injun, Mississippian, Berea, Devonian, and Marcellus (which is a part of the Devonian).  Other companies are drilling horizontals to the Big Injun, Mississippian, and Berea, looking for oil.  The Devonian is going to be a gas play.  Drilling horizontals in search of oil seems like a good idea, but will run into challenges with fracking as old, unrecorded wells could sap off frack energy.

They say they will be drilling ten vertical and ten horizontal wells.  The vertical wells will be more exploratory than anything.

They also say that their horizontals will be between 2,400 feet and 3,500 feet.  This suggests two things.  One, they don’t have the technology that other companies do to extend their laterals out over 6,000 feet.  Two, they are hemmed in by leases owned by other companies, or the formations they will be drilling to are perforated by old vertical wells that would prevent efficient fracking.

It’s an interesting look into the world of high finance and oil and gas development.

EDIT:  Just to be clear, we aren’t endorsing Drilco, suggesting that anybody invest with them, or anything like that.  We just thought it was interesting to see what the financing side of oil and gas development looked like, and that other people might be interested, too.

This isn’t quite on on point for this web site, but it’s pretty interesting anyways.  I am a bit of an oil and gas geek.  The technology and the industry are fascinating.  It’s one of the reasons I choose to do oil and gas law.  I don’t work for the industry.  I work exclusively for mineral and surface owners.  But I still find the industry as a whole to be awesome in the real sense of the word.

This is an older video, produced in 2013, but the dimensions of a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) haven’t changed.  Watching it will give you an idea of the scale of the industry.

Then this very short video shows the VLCC activity for August 2011.  It demonstrates that we use a lot of oil.  The amount is mind boggling.

This is one of the best articles I’ve read this April 1st.

West Virginia considers panhandle sales to balance budget

So, it pays to be in the oil and gas business.  It also pays to build a business using the correct principles.

Hilcorp Energy, a Houston energy exploration firm, is giving its employees a $100,000 Christmas bonus.  That’s $100,000 each.  The bonus was based on the company reaching a five-year goal, and was prorated based off the amount of that five years each employee was with the company.  So if you were with the company the entire five years, you got the $100,000, if you were with the company for 2.5 years, you got $50,000.  Not too shabby.

It’s really interesting to see that they are giving that bonus in the current oil and gas climate.  It can’t be easy to write checks for a grand total of over $138 million right now.  It’s nice to see that the company owners have the integrity to do the right thing.