U.S. “stripper well” operators, the nation’s smallest oil producers seen as most likely to succumb to the crude price slump, are hanging in tough, reducing the chances of near-term production cuts needed to rebalance the domestic oil market.
The conventional wisdom is that “strippers” would be the first to fold in the face of oil’s slide below $40 given their tiny size – some may pump as little as few hundred dollars’ worth of oil a day – limited access to capital and high costs compared with bigger, more efficient shale producers.
Yet interviews with executives and experts show those smallest, often family-owned, businesses are also among the most resourceful, keeping the oil flowing even as prices near 11-year lows and a growing number of their wells lose money.
While hopes for a rebound are fading, “strippers” are doing everything they can to keep their “nodding donkey” pumps working so they can hold on to land leases that give them access to oil reserves.
“The small operators of the stripper wells are pretty resilient,” says Mike Cantrell, head of the National Stripper Well Association. “They’ve always made it through and will still make it through.”
Stripper wells pump no more than 15 barrels of oil per day but together over 400,000 wells scattered across the nation’s oilfields produce over a tenth of U.S. oil output, enough to affect the market supply-demand balance and prices.
Drawing analogies to the 1980s oil slump, some analysts had warned that half of stripper wells could shut if crude prices held below $40 a barrel, helping ease the supply glut and possibly underpinning the prices.
The tenacity of the stripper well producers is challenging that view.
