South Tx crude

I'm no expert on this but from the knowledge that I do have, I have read a ton of articles and Condensate is mentioned a lot ( which is a very light, sweeter kind of Crude ) but I've never once seen a mention of "sour" in any connection with S. TX. or Eagle Ford. Although I seem to recall one small mention of "sour Crude" out of one particular section of the Permian Basin, (West TX. for the Newbies, totally different Oil Patch than the Eagle Ford ). Hope this helps.

 

Condensate is a completely different animal. Condensate oil comes from the gas plants as far as I know. It is the oil that is light enough that it doesn't drop out of the gas during production and the extract it through condensation at the gas plant.

Just in the last week or so there was a poster that mentioned his company was hauling a lot of condensate now...said he hadn't seen any sour oil in "weeks". Which tells me that he was very used to hauling sour oil. I'm fairly sure he is in S. TX. "Rockinchair" I think was the one who posted that.

 

Here is the post from Rockinchair. Maybe get some clarification on what he considers to be h2s oil?

 

I'm not disagreeing with anyone, just here looking for information too, but it seems to me that the standard oil contract ( WTI .. for West Texas Intermediate ) indicates that most oil from the TX areas are not generally classified as "sour". " Sour" refers to the amount of sulfur in the Crude by percentage. This quote is from Wikipedia. " ..The petroleum industry generally classifies crude oil by the geographic location it is produced in (e.g. West Texas Intermediate, Brent, or Oman), its API gravity (an oil industry measure of density), and its sulfur content. Crude oil may be considered light if it has low density or heavy if it has high density; and it may be referred to as sweet if it contains relatively little sulfur or sour if it contains substantial amounts of sulfur.The geographic location is important because it affects transportation costs to the refinery. Light crude oil is more desirable than heavy oil since it produces a higher yield of petrol, while sweet oil commands a higher price than sour oil because it has fewer environmental problems and requires less refining to meet sulfur standards imposed on fuels in consuming countries. Each crude oil has unique molecular characteristics which are understood by the use ofcrude oil assay analysis in petroleum laboratories...". here's a couple of links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Classification.. and ..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Texas_Intermediate

 

Alot of the south texas oil is considered wet gas/condensate...

Last week (February 2013) EOG Resources told analysts that most Eagle Ford oil production should be classified as condensate rather than crude oil. They backed up their assertion with a chart of production quantity and API quality indicating 70 percent of production is condensate. Current forecasts indicate that translates to condensate production of over 500Mb/d in South Texas during 2013. Today we examine the evidence that EOG presented.

As we have discussed previously in RBN Energy blogs, condensate is lighter than crude oil. Whereas a conventional light sweet US crude like the US Midwest pricing benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude has an API gravity of 39 and heavy crudes like Mexican Maya have an API gravity of 20, condensates have an API gravity between 45 and 70.

And around Wyoming cheaspeake only drills for the 45 to 70 API... they love that light stuff.

 

I was meaning any oil that contains H2S (hydrogen sulfide, aka "sour gas").

Most South Texas crude oil is light, API gravity in the high 30s to mid 40s. Condensate is very light, usually high 50s to high 60s.

Condensate is gas that has condensed into liquid form. It is separated from gas at the well (gas well), but can also be loaded at gas plants, compressor stations, drips, and dehydrators. At gas wells, an H2S scavenger chemical is usually injected into the emulsion, just downstream of the wellhead. As a result, condensate typically contains no H2S.

 

Jeez, that stuff must load/unload super fast. Lowest I've loaded is 28.