OGJ's top tweets of 2014

Feb. 9, 2015
One of the most important concepts for any decent writer to master is this: Know your audience. Luckily for those reporting on news and technology for Oil & Gas Journal, this concept is a relative no-brainer.

One of the most important concepts for any decent writer to master is this: Know your audience. Luckily for those reporting on news and technology for Oil & Gas Journal, this concept is a relative no-brainer. Petroleum engineers, geophysicists, and oil and gas company executives are among those best served by the content of this publication.

However, since news stories originate as online articles that are then strategically dispersed through various social media channels, OGJ editors have the added advantage of tallying exactly which stories captured the most interest among an even broader targeted audience. By compiling a list of the top 10 retweeted OGJ news stories for 2014, more can be learned about even the most well-known audience.

This isn't the first time such a list was compiled for this space. At yearend 2012, a list of the top 10 OGJ Online stories, based on page views and average time spent on story pages, was published for all of 2012 (OGJ, Dec. 17, 2012, p. 18). Then, at yearend 2013, a similar top 10 list was published that contained the most-viewed articles via promotion on Twitter (OGJ, Nov. 18, 2013, p. 16). This year, the top 10 list was compiled based on the number of times a news story's tweet was retweeted or otherwise acted upon by OGJ's followers.

Like past years' lists, 2014's offerings spans the breadth of OGJ's coverage of the industry. The grouping contains stories about world oil prices, increasing US oil and gas reserves, gasoline prices, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, international pipeline and offshore drilling projects, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, and merger and acquisition activity.

View the Top Tweets of 2014

The list

That said, the top 10 OGJ news story tweets posted during the 2014 calendar year receiving the most retweets or interaction via Twitter (@OGJOnline), in reverse order, are as follows:

10. Nov. 12: OPEC's actions bring huge uncertainty on crude oil price forecast, EIA says. (As world crude oil prices continued to decline as 2014 drew to a close, all eyes fell on OPEC members for signs of action-or inaction, as the case may be.)

9. Aug. 26: Shell makes another deepwater gas discovery offshore Malaysia with Marjoram-1. (Shell made the list three times: Once here and at No. 2 for its work offshore Malaysia; and again at No. 5 for its Prelude floating LNG project.)

8. Oct. 1: Gazprom, Turkey agree to expand Blue Stream capacity to 19 billion cu m/year. (Russia was another hotbed of activity during 2014, making headlines with news about civil unrest as much as with its continuing gas projects.)

7. Dec. 16: Spain's Repsol to acquire Canada's Talisman in $13 billion deal. (Although not the largest acquisition for the year, Repsol's acquisition of Talisman is reminiscent of CNOOC Ltd.'s acquisition of Nexen Inc. in 2012.)

6. Dec. 4: US proved oil reserves up 9% to 36.5 billion bbl, natural gas reserves up 10% to 354 tcf. (Rising US oil and gas reserves continued to be at the forefront of industry's supply-demand dialogue.)

5. Aug. 15: Piece of 100-m high turret for Shell Prelude floating LNG plant departs Dubai. (This particular tweet was no doubt popular due to its captivating photo.)

4. Nov. 26: US gasoline prices lowest heading into Thanksgiving holiday since 2009. (And gasoline prices just continued to fall…)

3. Oct. 30: Fracing, horizontal drilling produced 48% of US oil in 2013, says ICF International study. (Surprisingly, a tweet about hydraulic fracturing only made the list once-but it was high on the list.)

2. Oct. 8: Shell starts oil production from Gumusut-Kakap off Malaysia, output to reach 135,000 b/d. (See No. 9.)

1. Nov. 17: Halliburton, Baker Hughes agree to merge in deal totaling $34.6 billion in equity value. (This deal, although not too surprising, draws its significance from being the potential start of a trend that could repeat itself-perhaps more than once-in 2015.)

Knowing your audience

As OGJ's Twitter followership closes in on the 100k milestone, probably sometime by the end of the first quarter, OGJ editors will continue to gauge the changing interests of this expanding audience.

After all, knowing the needs of this audience-sometimes before they even know themselves-will be key to topping their must-read lists for years to come.