Friday, November 27, 2015

Closing The Loop: Lime Rock Resources Announces Closing Its Third Acquisition In The Williston Basin -- The Russian Creek Acquisition -- November 27, 2015

Press release here, dated November 20, 2015.
Lime Rock Resources, acquirers and operators of producing oil and gas properties in the United States, today announces that it has successfully closed a third acquisition in the Williston Basin.
The Russian Creek acquisition of acreage and producing wells in the Williston is the Lime Rock Resources funds’ largest acquisition to date. The Lime Rock Resources team has begun leveraging operational synergies with its other Williston Basin properties and applying its operational expertise to the large-scale asset.
The three Williston Basin acquisitions:
  • West Stanley
  • Sanish
  • Russian Creek
The entire description of the Russian Creek acquisition:
Lime Rock Resources acquired the North Dakota and Montana oil-weighted properties in the Williston Basin in 2015 from a large, publicly traded E&P company.
The OXY USA Russian Creek acquisition back in 2010 is described at this post. It is not known if the Lime Rock Russian Creek acquisition is identical to the OXYUSA Russian Creek acquisition.

No New Permits; Eighteen Permits Renewed -- November 27, 2015

Active rigs:


11/27/201511/27/201411/27/201311/27/201211/27/2011
Active Rigs64183191185202

No new permits.

Eighteen permits renewed, including:
  • Emerald Oil, 4; two Noonan Federal permits; two D Annunzio permits, all 4 in McKenzie County
  • Oasis, 5: five Jensen permits, Williams County
  • BR, 4: Elizabeth Stroh and Cecilia Stroh wells in Dunn County
  • CLR, 3: three Omlid permits, McKenzie County
CLR canceled four permits: two Garner permits and two King permits, all in Williams County

Post-Shut-In-Production Jump -- January 29, 2017

The date-time stamp will show something from 2015 or thereabouts. I am using an old "draft" post to place this note for various reasons.

Posting this now without comment. [Note: only two days of production in November, 2016; I will come back to this well in a couple of months.]

Before choosing this well to look at, I specifically looked for an older well in the Williston area where much more activity has taken place after this well was originally completed.

20510, 705, Zavanna, Everett 1-15H, Stockyard Creek, t1/12; cum 245K 11/16;

This is the graphic for this area:


Monthly Production Data:

PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN11-201621691612648180
BAKKEN10-201631706425849181413520
BAKKEN9-2016302661277523946844638314
BAKKEN8-201631310330372845836566481255
BAKKEN7-20163119231813153336802629589
BAKKEN6-2016782881443910839781
BAKKEN5-20160000000
BAKKEN4-20160000000
BAKKEN3-20160000000
BAKKEN2-20160000000
BAKKEN1-20160000000
BAKKEN12-201515475410786814462128
BAKKEN11-20153038363521283772276514266
BAKKEN10-20153144344398350686557251942
BAKKEN9-20153049244864364986057305853
BAKKEN8-2015263587357521224637419951
BAKKEN7-20159780405104991873549
BAKKEN6-2015306569650133682418823534207
BAKKEN5-2015317706768838791290697512693
BAKKEN4-20153010108101025605148581435457
BAKKEN3-2015311195812033577416088123183308
BAKKEN2-201528106821057376021487096644789
BAKKEN1-201531100309850778513742122391041
BAKKEN12-20143113375136001108419405134625481
BAKKEN11-2014301636716217263632357722902228
BAKKEN10-201474801417613663583729692764
BAKKEN9-20140000000
BAKKEN8-201469671437789120701118
BAKKEN7-201424487548525693566605308
BAKKEN6-201412196315933609211501906
BAKKEN5-20141130001500
BAKKEN4-20141535305427249025
BAKKEN3-20141514742071145918991572103
BAKKEN2-20142857016269666072766607252
BAKKEN1-20141337092594629947204103423
BAKKEN12-20130000000
BAKKEN11-2013119361410591115094145
BAKKEN10-20133133333106156544763336678
BAKKEN9-201330303331881505352630910
BAKKEN8-201331380734482016404223891191
BAKKEN7-20131525862340148118971147526
BAKKEN6-201311123920485541853162564
BAKKEN5-20132447364140239251804081741
BAKKEN4-20130000000
BAKKEN3-20132133933344179442903794167
BAKKEN2-201376471000260101883381
BAKKEN1-2013293348342013385776532915
BAKKEN12-201231395939791284716456361066
BAKKEN11-20123039213456148372446171626
BAKKEN10-201231444452321625693835662910
BAKKEN9-201230469841711546752156101464
BAKKEN8-20123147164303159967135625626
BAKKEN7-201228618870012033949778411239
BAKKEN6-201221458344171588549432681913
BAKKEN5-2012317260705129171203686202954
BAKKEN4-2012308165845928681153169284156
BAKKEN3-2012217138640629881019687641030
BAKKEN2-201228119281177646721576192136116
BAKKEN1-20121912597122301255215977015679
BAKKEN12-20111323019187720742

EIA White Paper On Flaring In North Dakota -- November 27, 2015

This was posted by the EIA on November 13, 2015. This brings us up to date. At the link, it is easy to see the "relaxed" rules on flaring.

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AGW in Scientific American

I was surprised to see this in Scientific American.  It's another "scientific journal" that lost its way. The National Geographic, among the US glossies, is perhaps the worse when it comes to global warming hype.

From the linked article:
The climate change debate has been polarized into a simple dichotomy. Either global warming is “real, man-made and dangerous,” as Pres. Barack Obama thinks, or it’s a “hoax,” as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe thinks. But there is a third possibility: that it is real, man-made and not dangerous, at least not for a long time.
This “lukewarm” option has been boosted by recent climate research, and if it is right, current policies may do more harm than good. For example, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other bodies agree that the rush to grow biofuels, justified as a decarbonization measure, has raised food prices and contributed to rainforest destruction.
Since 2013 aid agencies such as the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank have restricted funding for building fossil-fuel plants in Asia and Africa; that has slowed progress in bringing electricity to the one billion people who live without it and the four million who die each year from the effects of cooking over wood fires.
My hunch is that the Hollywood elite are not all that worried about the millions of people who still cook over wood fires. 

Propane -- The Next Big Story -- November 27, 2015

Updates

June 22, 2017: in less than five years, the US has flipped from next importer of LPG to net exporter, and exports are surging.

Original Post

From crisis to glut in less than a year. 

John Kemp is reporting:
Liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) are the fastest-growing category of hydrocarbon exports from the United States, with volumes up almost four-fold since 2012.
Some data points:
  • US propane exports, 2012: 200,000 bbls
  • US propane exports, 2015: nearing one million bopd 
  • composition: a range of light hydrocarbons to include ethane, butane, and propane, among others; 
  • purpose: petrochemical feedstock to residential heating and cooking
  • rules: unlike crude oil, LPG is treated as a refined product and can be exported with few restrictions, a position the U.S. Department of Commerce confirmed in 2014
  • traditionally, most LPG has been marketed in neighbouring countries, including Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean
  • in 2012, neighbouring countries accounted for 55 percent of all LPG exports, rising to almost 80 percent if South America is included.
  • by 2015, however, the total share of LPG exports to other countries in the western hemisphere had dropped to just 53 percent
  • exports to Europe, Africa and especially Asia have surged and now account for nearly half of all the LPG shipped abroad
  • China has overtaken Canada and Mexico as the most important export market for U.S. LPG, taking more than 24 million barrels, almost 100,000 bpd, in the first eight months of 2015
Much more at the link.

Previous posts of interest:

Friday, November 27, 2015

Active rigs:


11/27/201511/27/201411/27/201311/27/201211/27/2011
Active Rigs65183191185202

RBN Energy: New York State of Contango – The Out of Season Heating Oil Storage Play
The New York market for residential and commercial heating oil is traditionally tight in the winter months when demand exceeds local production and supplies are supplemented from storage and inflows/imports from outside the region.
Coming into winter this year inventory levels were above normal for the time of year and market prices are in contango (a condition where future prices are higher than today) – encouraging further storage. Today we explain how the result is an extension of traditional seasonal storage trade opportunities and a shortage of available inventory capacity.
Traders have long taken advantage of seasonal demand patterns for energy by buying when consumption and prices are low in the off-season then storing until supplies become tighter during the high demand season and selling at a profit. Northeast natural gas traders routinely used to take advantage of higher winter prices for gas that they buy cheap in the summer months and inject into storage – selling at a premium when winter weather pushes prices higher. That strategy is getting harder these days because abundant production in the northeast from the Marcellus and the Utica is keeping winter prices lower (as we pointed out earlier this week in “I Walk The Line”).
Another popular trade based on the same principal involves purchasing heating oil during the summer in the northeast - placing it in storage and selling when winter demand pushes prices higher. In both cases (natural gas and heating oil) the success of the trade relies on seasonal demand outpacing local production during the winter and pushing up prices enough to cover the trader’s storage costs and a margin to boot.
The seasonal heating oil trade is popular in the New York region because the CME/NYMEX heating oil futures contract requires delivery in New York harbor – meaning that participants have a pretty efficient hedging tool to lock in the seasonal spreads to profit from the trade. This year however high crude oil and refined product inventory levels in a generally oversupplied market are weighing on prompt prices versus those for future deliveries - a market condition known as contango that we have discussed several times this year. In New York the current heating oil market contango is providing an additional opportunity for traders to profit from storage outside the traditional summer/winter seasonal play.
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There's Still Lots Of Life In Canadian Oil

There were a lot of energy-related stories throughout The Wall Street Journal today but none of them were worth linking -- the stories have already been covered in the blog ad nauseum or they are mostly fluff pieces it seems. There was one exception: Canadian Oil Sands attracts attention, page B8, very last page of that section and easy to miss. Searching for it on the web, I see that it it is an old story, posted two days ago. In fact, now I vaguely remember seeing it earlier and may have even posted / linked it. Whatever.
More than two dozen potential suitors have expressed interest in making an offer for Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. , including four “highly credible parties,” according to documents the company filed in an effort to thwart Suncor Energy Inc. ’s hostile bid.
The interest by other parties may slow Suncor’s momentum ahead of a Dec. 4 deadline it has set for a response to its all-stock bid—currently worth about 4.47 billion Canadian dollars ($3.36 billion)—for Canadian Oil Sands, the largest owner of the Syncrude oil-sands mining consortium.
Canadian Oil Sands last month rejected Suncor’s bid as too low and asked securities authorities in its home province of Alberta to uphold a “poison pill” provision enacted after Suncor made its bid that gives shareholders at least 120 days to consider a takeover offer.
Suncor has cited a lack of competing offers as one reason why Canadian Oil Sands shareholders should accept its bid, which is 0.25 of a share for each Canadian Oil Sands share. The Alberta Securities Commission has scheduled two days of hearings starting Thursday to consider Canadian Oil Sands’ effort to block that bid by ruling on its updated shareholder-rights plan.
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A Note for the Granddaughters

As long as I've got the WSJ  in front of me, I might as well finish it. This is pretty cool. Our granddaughters had several Barnes and Noble gift cards that they have "collected" over the past year. On Wednesday, their mom took them to B&N to stop until they dropped. Our older granddaughter was thrilled to get the new illustrated edition of the first Harry Potter novel, as well as a small field guide called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, written by "beast" authority Newt Scamanader, based on J. K. Rowling's book. I mention this because the WSJ has an interview with Eddie Redmayne (Oscar winner, Theory of Everything, Stephen Hawking) who will play Newt Scamander in an upcoming movie.

I guess you have to hang around middle school teenagers to keep up with current events. But then again, that's always been true. Had I not taught middle school for a few years, I never would have known who Justin Bieber was/is.

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Finishing

The same WSJ has a long article on The Revenant. I think I've blogged about this before. Don't remember. Don't want to go through it again. Yes, here it is. The link to the WSJ story story is here.