TBE, I did a research project on this issue about six months ago, and there basically were only one or two services firms I could find that had any fracking experience in Australia. The best developed of these was then purchased by a US services company. So there is basically a complete lack of native Australian firms servicing the fracking industry. That's probably an opportunity for drillers to pay attention to.
So given this deficit, it strikes me as strange that so many of these Australian gas juniors don't make the provision of outside fracking services part of their farm in deal. If you are going to farm in with Conoco, wouldn't it be the most natural thing in the world to say to them: "we want you to bring in your best fracking team from the US and dedicate them to this project and we co-manage that resource for three years together." In other words, shouldn't the provisioning of the human resource be central the farmin agreement?
Instead, what I see happening is that too many of these farmins are simple financial arrangements. The Australian firms then turn around and get completely ripped off by foreign fracking services providers / drillers. I mean spending $20M on a single well in some cases is an extraordinary waste of money.
I think there needs to be a rethink in future deals about what is important in the farmin. Maybe take less cash and more expertise provided by the partner?
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