Dear Facility Engineers (with honorable mention to midstream companies),

I know you don’t get a lot of attention unless you are being yelled at when you are late. I promise I won’t yell.

I do have a question though: why are we building facilities with 4000 bbls of storage when a well will be producing 300 bbl/d (or less) within a year and your water BETTER BE PIPED somewhere day one?? Seriously. Trucking water is the biggest waste of money in industry. It is absolutely asinine. No water should ever go on a truck. EVER! Ok I yelled. I’m sorry.

We have challenged our team at FME to go “tankless” or as tankless as possible and build facilities for the 30 year life of a well instead of IP rates – which as we all know – don’t correlate to EUR and doesn’t actually impact the ROR after accounting for the increased costs incurred (right, production engineers?)

The name of the game is profitability. That means lowering controllable costs – equipment, maintenance, emissions and all that means less steel.

Finally. Midstream companies – the age of the “growth basin” is over. Build efficient systems instead of twinning pipelines that don’t need to be twinned. I’m telling you – profitability over growth. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.