Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Nine (9) New Permits, North Dakota, August 11, 2015

Active rigs:


8/11/201508/11/201408/11/201308/11/201208/11/2011
Active Rigs70194184199192

Wells coming off the confidential list Wednesday:
  • 29434, SI/NC, BR, Kings Canyon 3-1-27MTFH, Camel Butte, no production data, low background gas readings; inside the drilling target: 100%, 9,716 feet (never went below the target zone); 
  • 30379, SI/NC, Statoil, Folvag 5-8 7H, Stony Creek, no production data,
  • 30385, SI/NC, EOG, Fertile 67-0410H, Parshall, no production data,
Note: I track the Kings Canyon wells here.

#29434, the Kings Canyon 3-1-27MTFH, is an important well from standpoint of understanding "legal" names of BR Kings Canyon wells in Camel Butte.
At that link I suggested that the "M" in MTF stood for "middle Three Forks," a new term for me. In the old days, it was simply the upper Three Forks that was targeted whenever we saw "TF" in the legal name. Shortly thereafter, operators starting talking about the four benches in the Three Forks, and the "upper TF" became TF1, the first bench. Now, we see "middle Three Forks. In the application, this is identified as Three Forks B2 (second bench). From the well file, for #29434, "the Middle Three Forks Formation [in this location] is a 20-foot-thick zone (~ 52' below the base of the Lower Bakken Shale)." Later in the report, the target zone lithology was said to have been taken 13 - 30' below the base of the Lower Bakken Shale. Another interesting note: this is a 2560-acre stand-up drilling unit; this well is sited in the northernmost section 339 feet from the north line, and then runs south, as a long lateral. Formation tops:
  • KOP: 10,400'
  • Carrington State: 10,766'
  • Scallion: 10,772'
  • Upper Bakken Shale: 10,789'
  • Middle Bakken: 10,819'
  • Lower Bakken Shale: 10.885'
  • Upper Three Forks: 10,936'
Nine (9) new permits --
  • Operators: CLR (6), Whiting (3)
  • Permits: Chimney Butte (Dunn), Banks (McKenzie)
  • Comments: the CLR permits are for a 6-well pad; see graphic
Then (10) producing wells completed:
  • 26220, 2,806, BR, Harley 41-2TFH, Blue Buttes, ICO, t7/15; cum --
  • 28196, 722, SM Energy, Phylis 14X-12H, Poe, t71/5; cum --
  • 28197, 981, SM Energy, Luke 14-12H, Poe, t7/15; cum --
  • 28198, 806, SM Energy, Jesse 14X-12H, Nameless, t7/15; cum --
  • 28709, 2,485, BR, Harley 11-2TFH-R, Blue Buttes, ICO, t7/15; cum --
  • 29175, 545, XTO, Granli 34X-20H, Arnegard, t6/15; cum --
  • 29427, 2,766, BR, Teton 2-8-10MBH, Camel Butte, four sections,  t7/15; cum --
  • 29429, 2,124, BR, Teton 5-8-10MBH, Camel Butte, four sections, t7/15; cum --
  • 29461, 2,926, BR, RemingTeton 8-8-10MBH ULW, Blue Buttes, 4 sections, t7/15 cum --
  • 29487, 3,231, Statoil, Bures 20-29 3H, Alger, t7/15; cum -- 
CLR's proposed Mittelstadt / Jensen 6-well pad:


Core And Sample Library of North Dakota -- August 11, 2015

Complete name: The Wilson M. Laird Core and Sample Library, located at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.

ND DMR article at this link.

Whatever Happened To Nick Collins, Science Correspondent For The Telegraph? -- August 11, 2015

OPEC surprised by shale tenacity. Reuters is reporting:
OPEC on Tuesday raised its forecast of oil supplies from non-member countries in 2015, a sign that crude's price collapse is taking longer than expected to hit U.S. shale drillers and other competing sources.
In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) forecast no extra demand for its crude oil this year despite faster global growth in consumption, because of higher-than-expected production from the United States and other countries outside the group.
In contrast, the U.S. government on Tuesday lowered both its 2015 and 2016 U.S. oil production forecasts, signalling that the 60-percent rout in benchmark prices since last summer may finally be weighing on shale output.
The U.S. 2015 crude oil production growth forecast was cut by 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 650,000 bpd from the previous report, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's short-term energy outlook. Meanwhile, it expanded the production decline forecast for 2016 by 400,000 bpd from a 150,000 bpd decline previously.
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Polar Bear Reprieve

Flashback, from November 8, 2011 -- The (London) Telegraph, as reported by Nick Collins:
Prof Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, said the ice that forms over the Arctic sea is shrinking so rapidly that it could vanish altogether in as little as four years' time.
Although it would reappear again every winter, its absence during the peak of summer would rob polar bears of their summer hunting ground and threaten them with extinction.
The mass of ice between northern Russia, Canada and Greenland waxes and wanes with the seasons, currently reaching a minimum size of about four million square kilometres.
Most models, including the latest estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), track the decline in the area covered by ice in recent years to predict the rate at which it will deteriorate.
But citing research compiled by Dr Wieslaw Maslowski, a researcher from the American Naval Postgraduate School, last year Prof Wadhams said such predictions failed to spot how quickly climate change is causing the ice to thin. 
Flash forward to today: from StevenGoddard --  Hudson Bay sea ice extent 4th highest on record. Meanwhile, the Arctic Basin has been covered with clouds and cold air for weeks, and melting has essentially stopped there.

Canadian Coast Guard is reporting "unusual presence of sea ice" int he Hudson.

Whatever happened to Nick Collins, Science Correspondent for The [London] Telegraph?

Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott, The Statler Bros

And Then There Were Fifteen -- August 11, 2015

Tweeting now: Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry reportedly stops paying all of his campaign staff as fundraising dries up - @washingtonpost.

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Obama's Big Dig In Massachussetts

Forbes is reporting:
The Associated Press has reported that the U.S. Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas to the Massachusetts Health Connector (the state’s insurance exchange). The subpoenas cover the period during which the website experienced major technical problems and mismanagement as the state transferred to an Obamacare (ACA) exchange under former Governor Deval Patrick (D-MA).
This action preceded a June Boston Globe report that the Connector has been covering 6,000 enrollees on both Medicaid and the exchange, and will spend another $47 million to address some of the remaining technical issues.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board is now calling this entire debacle, “Obamacare’s Big Dig.” This boondoggle is costing taxpayers almost $1 billion.
This story is important for these reasons: this is being reported by a) Forbes; b) the AP; and, the Boston Globe. That's across the entire political spectrum, from very conservative to very liberal. Many low-paid "navigators" are going to spill the beans. 

And This Is Why It's Called Intermittent Energy -- August 11, 2015

An "intermittent energy" graph:

The Obama administration is reporting that a drop in average wind speeds in the western United States during early 2015 led to reduced generation from wind plants in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Lots of gobbledygook at the the link, but the graph pretty much tells me all I need to now.

But close reading of the article suggests that it's much more than just the wind speeds. One wonders about the state of these older wind farms.

Also, this is a chance for folks to re-acquaint themselves with "capacity factor," something I just blogged about a few days ago.

By the way, wind data has only been collected for a few years. I doubt anyone really knows the "normal wind" pattern in the western US. Perhaps this is normal, and the last five years have been a bit better vis a vis wind.

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Speaking of Wind -- From The Field Of Dreams

A reader gives an update of the new MDU wind farm going up in North Dakota, some data points:
  • Thunder Spirit Wind, 43 turbines, 107.5 MW
  • to be completed in December, 2015
  • progress of project can be seen from US Highway 12, approximately two (2) miles east of Hettinger, ND
  • blades and rotors were arriving on August 4 (2015)
  • convoys of turbine towers headed toward this project on August 10 (2015)
  • using only two small cranes; no tall cranes on this plateau; no tower assemblies erected
The reader thinks it unlikely the project will be completed on schedule. And, of course, the completion date is the beginning of North Dakota's infamous winters. Fortunately the "North Dakota winters" have been tamed by Algore Global Warming. 

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If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em
The Apple Page

Macrumors is reporting:  RiteAid reverses course, will accept Apple Pay.
Rite Aid today announced that its 4,600 stores across the United States will begin accepting Apple Pay and Google Wallet starting August 15, nearly one year after the drugstore chain and CVS infamously disabled support for the iPhone-based mobile payments service nationwide. Rite Aid will also support Google's forthcoming Android Pay service when available. 
Rite Aid and CVS spurred a controversy last year after disabling Apple Pay and Google Wallet as payment methods last year, likely because both are members of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium, which has its own mobile payments service called CurrentC. MCX launched in August 2012 with a three-year exclusivity period for all members, which ends this month.
This tells me CurrentC is toast. CurrentC had a 3-year exclusivity period. I had completely forgotten about CurretnC. And that's why Apple doesn't worry one way or the other about the success/failure of the Apple Watch -- look at all the free advertising Apple got with that controversial launch.

And, as usual, the comments over at Macrumors are always the best, mostly from Apple haters.

Has CurrentC even been launched yet? Nope: in "the coming weeks," just when the three-year exclusivity pact ends, CurrentC will be launched. Some say "DOA." Others say,  "dead by January 1, 2016."

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The Literature Page

I'm re-reading Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno, c. 2014. If one is interested in JD Salinger this has to be one of the best biographies of him. The "stuff" he experienced before he was 30 years old is indescribable. Shields and Salerno went to the original sources to get the story.

His relationship with Jean Miller, whom he met when she was fourteen (14) years old is a must-read. One wonders about her parents. The story is told in three or four pages but is worth the price of the book, and well worth the time spent reading the book. It is incredible that another life-altering experience for Salinger was not even mentioned in the wiki post. One wonders if there is a reason that story is not there.

As usual, it took a English newspaper, The (London) Daily Mail to tell the story.

From the linked article:
Their 700-page Salinger biography has new information well beyond any possible posthumous fiction.
Nine years in the making and thoroughly documented, Salinger features many rare photographs and letters, unprecedented detail about the author's World War II years and brief first marriage, and a revelatory interview with the former teenage girl, Jean Miller, who inspired his classic story For Esme - With Love and Squalor.
It also has an account of how Salinger, who supposedly shunned Hollywood for much of his life, nearly agreed to allow Esme to be adapted into a feature film.
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A Note to the Granddaughters

In preparation for my wife returning to Texas from her summer vacation in southern California, I spent some time sprucing up the apartment. There are two "things" that show their age in an apartment: the carpet and the stove top drip pans. I can't do much about the carpet except vacuum; it's in great shape except for worn spots where most used.

The stove's drip pans get really bad over time. My daughter said a Brillo pad would work well, but I don't think so, and even if it did, it would have taken a lot of elbow grease and time. And they would not have looked all that new when all was said and done.

So ... off to Wal-Mart. I did not bring the old drip pans with me. I assumed they were all the same. Nope. At least four common types: Type A, Type B, Type C, and Type D, each with two different sizes.

Back home to bring the old drip pans in to compare. Type C.

Wal-Mart had the other three types but not Type C. But it makes sense. So ... off to Target.

Target had Type C, but just barely. I took the last set.

May has not yet noticed the "new" stove top. We'll see how long it takes.

But it was well worth it. Makes the apartment look new.

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Baltimore and Ferguson

Among all public high school students, Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest graduation rate (93 percent), followed by Whites (85 percent), Hispanics (76 percent), and American Indians/Alaska Natives and Blacks (68 percent each).  -- google search

Tuesday, August 11, 2015 -- Perseid Meteor Shower Starts To Peak Tonight; Propane Ships; Jumping Ship

Active rigs:


8/11/201508/11/201408/11/201308/11/201208/11/2011
Active Rigs70194184199192

RBN Energy: the propane market and the LPG flotilla just over the horizon.
U.S. production of propane from gas processing has more than doubled since 2010 and now exceeds 1.1 MMb/d.  Together with another 300 Mb/d from refineries, that is far more propane than the U.S can use.  Consequently, U.S. exports of propane have been booming, reaching more than 700 Mb/d in July. 
But that has not been enough exports to keep propane inventories from filling to the brim, now up to more than 90 million barrels, about 10 million barrels over the five year high.  About the only thing that has been holding back even more exports is shipping costs.   The cost of ships that move most of the propane to overseas markets, called Very Large Gas Carriers, or VLGCs (gas meaning LPG, not natural gas), have been high since U.S. exports started ramping up and then blasted to the moon this summer in response to huge export volumes and logistical tangles in global markets. 
But that’s all about to come to an end.  There is a flotilla of new LPG vessels that were ordered many months ago that are scheduled to hit the market in 2015 and 2016.   In today’s blog we review how U.S. LPG exports are likely to respond to the coming massive increase in VLGC shipping capacity.
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Speaking of Ships

FuelFix reports that Kinder Morgan adds to its Jones Act fleet
Midstream giant Kinder Morgan said Monday it will add four new tankers to its Jones Act-eligible fleet in a $568 million deal with Philly Tankers LLC.
The ships are slated to be delivered between late 2016 and 2017. The first two tankers scheduled for delivery are already under long-term contract with an unnamed oil company, and Kinder Morgan said it expects to have contracts for the second two ships inked by early 2016.
The Jones Act requires waterborne cargo shipped between domestic ports to be delivered on ships built in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens and crewed by U.S. citizens. The limitations have helped to support an industry of maritime shippers dedicated to moving goods along U.S. coasts.
Kinder Morgan entered the Jones Act shipping business with a $960 million deal for five ships in January 2014. The company mostly ships petroleum products, and operates its ships by contracting them out to other companies in long-term deals.
The four additional ships will bring Kinder Morgan’s Jones Act tanker fleet to a total 16 ships when they’re all completed in late 2017. The Houston-based company has seven tankers already in service and five tankers in various stages of construction or design, Kinder Morgan said Monday.
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Jumping Off A Sinking Ship

A contributor over at Seeking Alpha notes that another high-level executive jumps ship over at Tesla:
[Tesla's VP of Service} Guillen told the automaker run by Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk on Aug. 4 that he would be taking the leave, according to a regulatory filing, which didn't disclose his reason. Two days later, the board determined that Guillen was no longer an officer required to report ownership under Section 16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the filing said. He had exercised 19,250 options from April 15 through July 15, according to previous filings.
In other words, he started cashing out earlier this year, knowing that the end was coming, one way or the other.