Some of the best wells here in the Permian Basin that three years ago required an oil price of over $60<br />a barrel for an operator to break even now need about $35, well below the current price of about $53.<br />“Pretty soon every rig will have one worker and a robot.”<br />Oil and gas workers have traditionally had some of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs — just the type<br />that President Trump has vowed to preserve and bring back.<br />Pioneer Natural Resources, one of the most productive West Texas producers, has slashed the number of days to drill and complete wells so drastically<br />that it has been able to cut costs by 25 percent in wells completed since early 2015.<br />Several thousand workers have come back to work in recent months as the price of oil has begun to rise again, but energy experts say<br />that between a third and a half of the workers who lost their jobs are not returning.<br />In less than two years, he has helped rewrite computer software to instruct workers on the best designs<br />for hydraulic fracturing, optimizing the amounts of fluids, sand and chemicals pumped into the wells.<br />Now, connected by computers to technicians in the field, he is monitoring the production of 950 wells, instantly checking the maintenance history<br />and production trends of every well with the click of a mouse.
