Oil Futures Down Another $1.06; Update On CLR's Hartman Wells -- March 13, 2015; And A Whole Lot More -- UC Irvine, The Marcellus, The Red Queen, ObamaCare And Hobby Lobby -- And It's "Friday The Thirteenth"

For those interested, a reader has sent in a nice update on the CLR Hartman wells -- several interesting observations and questions of what might happen next. Well worth the read.

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Lead Story Over At Yahoo!Finance: The Sky Crude Is Falling

Bloomberg is reporting: Record U.S. Oil Glut May Fill Storage, Cut Prices -- The IEA boosted estimates for U.S. oil production in 2015 as cutbacks in drilling rigs have so far failed slow its output. The nation’s crude inventories are at a record 468 million barrels:

The IEA boosted estimates for U.S. oil production this year as cutbacks in drilling rigs have so far failed (sic) slow its output. Crude inventories threaten to fill tanks, with the nation’s largest oil-storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma 70 percent full, the agency said. The IEA raised its 2015 estimate of global oil demand by the most since it was introduced in July.  

The Red Queen re-visited: " ... as cutbacks in drilling rigs have so far failed (sic) slow its output."

By the way, did you all read this little note yesterday:

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that North Dakota’s proved reserves have surpassed federal offshore reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.

I assume regular readers knew that. I don't know if I did. I am pretty sure I have never posted that observation so succinctly. I read that to my wife; even she was surprised. Just for the fun of it, you might want to overlay the map of 400 square miles (20 miles by 20 miles) of the most prolific Bakken over the vast Gulf of Mexico -- another eye-opener at 6:36 a.m. on a Friday morning.

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Cool Story

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

WILLISTON — Halliburton Co., Schlumberger NV and other large energy companies were conspicuously absent from a major North Dakota job fair this week, a telling sign as employers in the No. 2 U.S. oil-producing state grapple with sliding crude prices.

Instead of roustabouts, the state’s oil industry wants pump technicians, gas-processing plant operators and truck drivers to help sustain existing production of 1.2 million barrels of oil per day — not to necessarily grow production.

“When a well is out, you still have to service it,” said Cindy Sanford of Job Service North Dakota, which helped organize the two-day job fair in Williston, capital of the state’s oil boom. (There are almost 13,000 active wells in the state.)

You know, this is a really, really cool story. If the Bakken survives, if the operators survive, this story tells me that the Bakken has reached a huge milestone: maturity. I think that's really, really cool. This will be an opportunity for some more infrastructure to be put in place.

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Birds Of A Feather

I don't know if regular readers have been following the "flag flap" at UC Irvine -- that's the university in California where the students voted to ban the US flag -- they felt the flag was not inclusive, or it was racist, or it was inflammatory, or it was something -- but whatever it was, they didn't want to see it on their campus.

If folks remember, UC Irvine appears to be one of the president's favorite schools to visit. That's the school where the press pointed out that the president got a standing ovation.

I'm curious. Was the president wearing a pin of the American flag in his lapel that day? Just asking.

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Back To The Bakken

Active rigs:

	3/13/2015	03/13/2014	03/13/2013	03/13/2012	03/13/2011
Active Rigs	111	191	186	203	173

RBN Energy: part 2 in new update on the Marcellus infrastructure --

In the past 10 years Marcellus and Utica shale drilling has transformed the U.S. Northeast from a sleepy backwater of gas production into a powerhouse that (according to the Energy Information Administration) supplied 22% of total U.S. gas production in December 2014. 

NGL production from the region is already 8% of the U.S. total and likely headed toward 20% by 2020. 

These vast shale formations cover most of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio, but it turns out that most of the production comes from only 20 or so counties across those three states.  [In comparison, most of the Bakken oil comes from four counties in western North Dakota.] Such geographic concentration has significant implications for regional infrastructure development and capacity. Today we describe where producers have found success in the region.

In Part 1 we described the huge growth in Marcellus natural gas production since 2010 and the subsequent expansion in natural gas liquids (NGL) production from Marcellus and Utica shale wet gas when drillers switched their focus to liquids in 2011.

In the five years since gas production took off in the Marcellus, gas processing capacity in the northeast has expanded nearly 13 times from 600 MMcf/d to 7,600 MMcf/d. NGL production from those plants is now over 245 Mb/d.   

Midstream companies have built gas processing infrastructure from a small group of stand-alone plants into a fully integrated system designed to operate without the luxury of significant NGL storage capacity. How that works is the subject of this blog series and the clue is in our title - “Join Together With Demand” – designing infrastructure to join supply to demand with fault tolerance as a foundation of the design. In this episode we provide an overview of the Marcellus and Utica producing regions.

And that's why New York State bans fracking: they would still be playing second fiddle to Pennsylvania -- the vast shale formation in the Marcellus is a Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and eastern Ohio "thing' -- New York? Not so much.

What an incredible story -- the Marcellus. Much, much more at the link.

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Aesop's Fable: The Fox and The Grapes

Reuters/Rigzone is reporting:

A fall in oil prices may help long-term exploitation of fossil fuels in the Arctic by averting a short-lived "gold rush" into the vulnerable icy region, Norway's Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said on Thursday.

Exploitation of oil and gas required long planning to safeguard the fragile environment, which is heating up faster than the world average because of global warming, he said.

"It is safe to assume that Arctic gas will have its day," he said in a speech at an Arctic conference, saying that burning natural gas emitted half the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide as coal.

Brende said some projections for an opening of the Arctic to shipping, oil and gas exploration and mining, had been too optimistic amid a thaw that has cut the extent of winter sea ice on the Arctic Ocean close to a record low this month. "We should be very happy that there was not a 'gold rush'," he told reporters in Oslo. "A 'gold rush is not positive, it's throwing oneself at resources at breakneck speed."

Sure.

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Missed In All The News Noise

The AP is reporting:

The Supreme Court is ordering a federal appeals court to take another look at the University of Notre Dame's lawsuit over the health overhaul law's rules on paying for contraceptives.

Notre Dame is among dozens of religious organizations that have challenged a compromise in the Affordable Care Act offered by the Obama administration to faith-based groups. The compromise attempts to create a buffer for faith-based groups that oppose birth control, while ensuring that women still can obtain contraceptives free of charge.

The federal appeals court in Chicago ruled against Notre Dame, but that occurred before the Supreme Court decided the Hobby Lobby case in favor of corporations with similar objections.

Now the appellate panel must revisit its ruling in light of the Hobby Lobby decision.