Thursday, June 23, 2016

Saudi Arabia Says It Won't Increase Production -- June 23, 2016

It's not getting much press, and I'm not sure exactly what was said, but it's being reported that Saudi Arabia has decided NOT to increase production.

Just when Saudi Arabia had the US shale industry on the ropes, Prince Salman apparently said Saudi Arabia won't increase production.

No link. I've only seen one story on this. If there's any accuracy to it, we will see more stories.

Only One Well Coming Off Confidential Status Friday -- June 23, 2016

Active rigs:


6/23/201606/23/201506/23/201406/23/201306/23/2012
Active Rigs3077190189210

Only one well coming off confidential list Friday:
  • 32392, SI/NC, Statoil, Jack 21-16 5TFH-R, East Fork, no production data,
Five (5) permits:
No producing wells completed.

Great Britain Leaves The EU -- June 23, 2016

Britain votes to leave, 52% to 48%. Dow futures down 600 points. British PM Cameron will resign.

*************************
California Cap-and-Trade -- On The Verge Of Collapse?

The tea leaves tell me that when President Obama leaves office, it's pretty much the beginning of the end for the "global warming" scam:
  • President Obama recently telling Americans that rising seas would flood the Statue of Liberty was evidence of desperation on his part;
  • Hillary will talk the talk, but won't walk the walk; she won't have the energy to be the world's cheerleader on global warming;
  • California will close its last nuclear plants; the rest of the country will eventually follow -- natural gas will be the fuel of the future;  
  • California has cut the plug on its EV program;
  • Tesla could be the warning shot across the bow of "green energy" companies who have all their eggs in one basket; and, 
  • then this: LA Times -- California's cap-and-trade program in imminent danger of collapse.
The linchpin of California’s climate change agenda, a program known as cap and trade, has become mired in legal, financial and political troubles that threaten to derail the state’s plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The program has been a symbol of the state’s leadership in the fight against global warming and a key source of funding, most notably for the high-speed rail project connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles.
But the legality of cap and trade is being challenged in court by a business group, and questions are growing about whether state law allows it to operate past 2020. With the end of the legislative session in August, Gov. Jerry Brown, lawmakers and interest groups of all stripes are laying the groundwork for what could become a battle royal over the future of California’s climate change programs.
Unless the state acts, “the whole system could fail,” said Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles). “If that happens, we could lose an entire stream of revenue to make our communities more sustainable.”
And note: this is nothing about "global warming." This is about transfer of wealth -- spending other people's money to "provide an entire stream of revenue to ensure communities, who have overspent, survive.
*************************
Led Zeppelin
Posted on YouTube Well Before The Verdict


What little I know, I think the jury made the right decision.

Daily Activity Report For Yesterday Was Posted -- June 23, 2016

Daily activity report from yesterday:

  • No new permits.
  • Texakota renewed two H. Borstad permits, both in Williams County.
  • Four producing wells completed:
    • 27435, 3,397, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-95-23C-14-5H, Eagle Nest, t6/16; cum --
    • 32224, 1,100, Hess, EN-Ruud-LE-154-93-2735H-2, Robinson Lake, 4 sectioins, t6/16; cum --
    • 32225, 626, Hess, EN-Uran A-LE-154-93-2214H-2, Robinson Lake, 4 sections, t5/16; cum --
    • 32226, 765, Hess, EN-Ruud-LE-154-93-2734H-1, Robinson Lake, 4 sections, t6/16; cum --
Futures: DOW futures were up a whopping 270 points overnight but have since dropped back to 141 points; crude oil is up 1.57% at $49.90. It appears TSLA's free-fall has slowed; futures show it down only another dollar, trading around $195.68.

WSJ 52-week highs and lows. New highs: 156. New lows: 5. New highs include: ATT ( a big whoop); CLR (wow); XOM (a big whoop); Newfield Exploration; TransCanada, UPS.

***************************
Jobs

Declined more than forecast: plummeted by 18,000 to 259,000. Survey called for a decline to 270,000. Four-week average: down to 267,000, from 269,250 a week earlier.

Update On One Of The Most Important Pipelines Out Of The Bakken -- June 23, 2016

Democratic sit-in at the House. I bet it's over by the end of the day; if not today, Friday before 3:00 p.m. so reps can catch flights home for the long 4th of July break. The GOP has already left town. 

Active rigs:


6/23/201606/23/201506/23/201406/23/201306/23/2012
Active Rigs2977190189210

RBN Energy: update on Tallgrass Energy Partners' Pony Express Pipeline.
Tallgrass Energy Partners’ Pony Express Pipeline provides capacity to move 230 Mb/d of Bakken crude oil received at Guernsey, WY, all the way to the mega-hub at Cushing, OK, making it one of the most important pipeline corridors out of the Williston Basin.
Possibly because of its moniker ‘Express’, it is often thought of as a bullet line, hauling barrels 760 miles in a straight shot across Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas and into Oklahoma.
But there is much more to Pony, including a major outlet for Niobrara crude (the 90,000 bopd Northeast Colorado Lateral) and an expanding capability to deliver oil to refineries and other facilities on the way to Cushing. In Part 2 of our blog series covering pipelines out of the Bakken/Rockies region, we examine what the changes in crude production and flow patterns have meant to Pony Express and how this pipeline can be expected to respond to changes in regional crude oil supply and demand.
First, a quick recap. For years prior to the Shale Revolution, long-existing pipeline capacity out of the Bakken could handle the modest volumes of conventional oil being produced there. By 2011 though, Bakken tight-oil production had begun a steep, rapid rise, quickly outstripping available pipeline capacity (much of which had to be shared with crude heading south/southeast from western Canada).
As a result, pipeline congestion and significant price discounting festered while Bakken producers and midstream companies scrambled to develop alternative routes to market. The solution was the development of rail loading terminals—they could be built quickly and at relatively modest costs, and they could use existing rail lines. Crude-by-rail (CBR) also allows for destination flexibility; in other words, if a producer could achieve higher netbacks (the crude sale price minus transportation costs from the wellhead) by railing its crude to the East Coast or the West Coast (neither of which is connected to crude producing regions via pipeline) instead of the Midwest or the Gulf Coast then, heck, rail it to the East or West Coast.
In all, 21 rail terminals were built in the Bakken, and their combined capacity is a fairly astonishing 1.5 MMb/d (compared to current Bakken production of just over 1 MMb/d—down from its December 2014 peak of 1.3 MMb/d). Moving crude by rail isn’t cheap, though, and as the Brent-West Texas Intermediate (WTI) differentials that drove the CBR boom went from fat to skinny, what the Bakken needed to remain competitive was new pipeline capacity that could move crude to market much more cost-effectively. Slowly but surely, new pipeline capacity was added, to the point that some are wondering whether new additions being planned are really needed.  But that’s another story.  Today we are focused on Pony Express, which is also called PXP.  The pipeline has quite a history. See that history at the linked site.
See that history as the linked site. A very, very interesting read.

**************************
Finally, It Took Awhile

The Wall Street Journal finally reports on the story of Obama's fracking regulation being struck down by his own appointed judge. 
U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl issued a ruling late Tuesday invalidating the regulation, saying the Interior Department lacked the authority to issue it because Congress hadn’t given the agency such authority. The same judge last year issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rule until he made a final decision.
Mr. Skavdahl, whom President Barack Obama nominated in 2011, said the issue before his court wasn't whether fracking “is good or bad for the environment or the citizens of the United States,” but rather whether Congress had given the Interior Department the authority to regulate fracking.
******************************************* 
Turning Points?

The Wall Street Journal reports that energy stock sales reach a record. Share sales of QEP Resources and Birchcliff Energy show stock investors' faith that prices won't falter again.
Stock sales by two North American oil-and-gas producers vaulted the sums raised by such deals this year to record levels, while further cementing the southwestern Permian Basin as the U.S. oil patch’s hottest region.
Denver-based driller QEP Resources Inc. and Canada’s Birchcliff Energy Ltd. announced offerings late Tuesday that brought to more than $20 billion the total in North American oil-and-gas company share sales this year. That figure tops the record of roughly $19 billion raised in follow-on stock offerings—in which already-public companies sell new shares—for oil-and-gas producers for all of last year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Dealogic data.
******************************** 
More On The Panama Canal Expansion

The Wall Street Journal reports that South Carolina will get boost from the Panama Canal expansion. Inland Greenville-Spartanburg region, called the Upstate, gears up for business boom.

******************
Noise-Canceling Headphones

Last week, while spending the week in Plano/Frisco area in north Texas, I visited the Bose store at one of the many malls there (I now forget which mall). It turns out that Bose had introduced new noise-canceling headphones; they had just been put out on display.

A Wall Street Journal article today reports on the eight best wireless noise-canceling headphones.

The writer got to the point immediately: "I plan to buy the jet-neutralizing Bose headphones."

One upon a time I had a pair of Bose headphones; they were ruined by leaking alkaline batteries. I assume Bose would have provided a free replacement, but maybe not. I never asked. But I was not impressed, to say the least.

The new Bose headphones: they no longer require throwaway AA batteries; they run up to 20 hours on a single charge.

Bluetooth is important: the new iPhone is likely to do away with the headphone jack. 

The Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones cost $350.

The other seven:
  • Runner-up: Sony h.ear on Wireless NC, $350; bulky body
  • Parrot Zik 3, $350
  • Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H8, $450
  • Sennheiser Momentum Wireless, $400
  • Samsung Level On Wireless Pro, $180
  • JBL Everest Elite 700, $300
  • Beats Studio Wireless, $250
Yup. The Apple set of headphones, Beats, was rated at the bottom.

After the first two (Bose and Sony), "the results quickly fell off a cliff." So, if the rest fell off the cliff and Beats was the worse of the lot ... Tim Cook may not be happy....

It's even worse. The writer says that on the light-rail train commute, "with the Beats, I had difficulty determining whether noise-canceling was turned on."

JBL? "My colleagues actually laughed when I walked in one day wearing the JBL headphones. Their large ear pads apparently made me look like a space alien. You won't win any style points for the pleated pads on the Bose, either, though at least they are slim and foldable."

**************************
Beat The Heat

I saw this in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. I see that the on-line edition is still posting it. Kind of fun: 50 clever ways to beat the heat.