Oil production begins to recover in Texas

The Texas oil patch is slowly restarting wells after the deep freeze that swept through the region shut a record amount of US crude output, Report informs, citing Bloomberg.

Marathon Oil Corp., Devon Energy Corp., and Verdun Oil Co LLC have begun using restored power from local grids or generators to restart output across the Eagle Ford shale basin that was halted by the frigid weather,” Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter.

The companies began work to resume operations late Wednesday.

According to the Bloomberg article, nobody can say precisely how long it will take to restore all the lost supply. But oil traders and executives have said they hope most of the production lost will return within days as temperatures rise and power becomes available.

However, Citigroup Inc. estimates that as much as 1 million barrels a day of Permian Basin oil output could remain offline over the next ten days.

The extreme weather across parts of the country that began last week halted more than 4 million barrels a day of domestic oil production in the US as cold temperatures suspended power and operations at shale fields.

Before the cold blast, the US was pumping about 11 million barrels a day, according to government data. Supply from Texas accounted for around 40% of that volume.