Friday, September 16, 2016

Poll: Clinton-Trump Debate Viewership -- September 16, 2016

Updates

September 27, 2016: Clinton-Trump debate breaks 80-million record.

With ratings for 11 networks boasting live coverage of the debate now in, the event has surpassed 83 million viewers — 83.7 million, to be exact. That doesn't even yet include the likely record-breaking showing among streamers. Regardless, it would put it ahead of the 1980 debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. That set the bar at 80 million viewers.
September 20, 2016: this article says upwards of 100 million will watch, but they also say 80 million watched the Carter-Reagan debate.  If 100 million watch, NFL Monday night will be the big loser, but I can hardly imagine football fans tuning in to watch more than a few minutes of the debate.
 
Original Post
 
It's a "given" that the first debate, and probably all three debates, between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be the most watched US presidential debate in history. The first debate is scheduled for September 26, 2016.

The question is whether the first debate (or any of the debates) will exceed the final episode of Magnum, P.I. See list below.

Presidential debates ranked on household average audience, top five, in millions:
  • 2012, Obama-Romney, 1st: 46.2
  • 1980, Carter-Reagan: 45.8
  • 2012, Obama-Romney, 2nd: 45.6
  • 2008, Obama-McCain, 1st : 44.4
  • 1992, Clinton-Bush-Perot, 1st: 43.1
Top series finale, top ten, in millions:
  • M*A*S*H: 125.0
  • Roots (miniseries): 100.0
  • Cheers: 93.5
  • The Fugitive: 78.0
  • Seinfeld: 76.3
  • Friends: 65.9
  • Magnum, P.I.: 50.7
  • The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: 50.0
  • The Cosby Show: 44.4
  • All in the Family: 40.2
The poll: will the first Clinton-Trump debate viewership exceed 50 million viewers?

Idle Comments About Today's Director's Cut -- July, 2016, Production Data -- September 16, 2016

North Dakota actually showed a slight increase in crude oil production in today's production report, for July, 2016:
  • July, 2016: 1,029,507 bopd
  • June, 2016: 1,027,131 bopd
North Dakota went above the 1.03 million bopd threshhold a little over two years ago, in April/May, 2014.

Operators completed 169 wells in the month of April, 2014, and a similar number in May, 2014. In contrast, only 49 wells came off the confidential list in July, 2016 (the most recent report) and most of them were drilled to depth but not completed. According to the NDIC, only 41 wells were completed in July, 2016 (the most recent report) but most of these were older wells that had already been drilled, and were finally fracked).

Think about that for a minute. In May, 2014, crude oil production went over 1.03 million bopd for the first time and it was a time when upwards of 175 wells or more were being drilled to depth and completed. Today. North Dakota continues to produce that same amount of oil, and is only drilling 40 wells or so and completing about the same number (some new wells; mostly older DUCs -- the state now gives operators two years to complete a well after it has been spud.

This was North Dakota's crude oil production data for May, 2014:
Oil:
  • May, 2014: 1,039,635 bopd (preliminary; new all-time high)
  • April, 2014: 1,003,256 bopd (revised; first month to go over 1 million bopd) 
  • April, 2014: 1,001,149 bopd (original)
  • delta: 36,379 bopd
  • 36,379 / 1,003,256 = 3.6% (fairly significant)
Producing wells:
  • May, 2014:  10,892 (new all-time high)
  • April, 2014: 10,665
Pricing:
  • June, 2014: $90.02
  • May, 2014: $88.31
Rig count:
  • June, 2014: 190
  • May, 2014: 189

They Said It Couldn't Be Done -- New Williston Airport To Break Ground October 10, 2016 -- Receives $26 Million From FAA -- September 16, 2016

From The Dickinson Press, data points:
  • airport received $27 million last year
  • now, receives another $26 million from FAA
Williston airport relocation page here

From WalletHub, states in which residents are the happiest:
  • #1: Utah (is generally at or near the top of these lists year after year
  • #2: Minnesota (I believe this is also true for Minnesota; often at/near the top of these lists)
  • #3: North Dakota (color me surprised)
  • #4: Hawaii (not surprising -- what is surprising, is that ND outranked Hawaii)
  • #5: Colorada (often near the top of these lists)
  • #6 - #10: Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and California
  • Texas: #29 (I find that hard to believe; the list must have included lopsided number of ranchers living along Mexican border)
  • #51 - #41: West Virginia (#51), Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico. 
  • Despite Chicago, Illinois smack-dab in the middle at #25, just above New York at #26.

If These Numbers Can Be Believed .... Pricing The Permian -- September 16, 2016

If the Bakken was not landlocked (the keystone trifecta: Keystone XL, Sandpiper, and Dakota Access Pipeline) we might see some of these same stories.

From Yahoo!Finance, which probably re-printed the story or parts of the story from Bloomberg and/or Investor's Business Daily. Some data points:
  • Silver Hill Energy Partners: started in 2011; has raised $725 million; controls 42,000 net acres on the western shelf of the Permian (Delaware Basin); OXY, MRO, and Noble energy all supposedly interested; could go for $2 billion; $50,000 / net acre
  • Noble Energy expanded into the Delaware last year; $3.9 billion takeover of Rosetta Resources; 46,000 net acres; $85,000 / net acre
  • OXY: one of the largest landholders in the Permian with 5.4 million gross acres
It has previously been reported that acreage in the Permian is still going for $40,000 / mineral acre. 

Three New Permits -- September 16, 2016

Active rigs:


9/16/201609/16/201509/16/201409/16/201309/16/2012
Active Rigs3270198178193

Three new permits:
  • Operator: EOG
  • Field (County): Parshall (Mountrail)
  • Comments: three Fertile permits
Twelve permits renewed:
  • Statoil (5): five Lougheed permits, all in Williams County
  • Lime Rock Resources (3): a Dora, A Hansen, and a Sandy permit, all in Mountrail County
  • Petro-Hunt (2): an Anderson and a Kostelnak permit, the former in McKenzie County; the latter in Dunn County
  • Oasis: a Hanover Federal permit in Williams County 
Two producing wells completed:
  • 31355, 961, Hess, BL-Davidson-155-96-0211H-5, Beaver Lodge, Devonian (Three Forks), unitized, t3/16 cum 66K 7/16; "meant to test the Three Forks formation potential in Williams County";  six days to drill the lateral; the lateral drilled in one run with no trips; 
  • 31545, 695, Hess, CA-Russell Smith-155-96-2425H-7, Capa, t7/16; cum 17K 7/16;

Spooky, Spooky, Spooky -- The Apple iPhone 7 -- Nothing About The Bakken -- September 16, 2016

First, a definition of "single-thread" benchmark for comparing computer chips:
The PassMark Single Thread CPU benchmark, like all processor benchmarks attempts to estimate how quickly a processor is able to perform a wide variety of calculations.
The test issues as series of complex instructions to the processor and times how long the processor takes to complete the tasks.
The faster the processor is able to complete the tasks, the higher the benchmark score. The PassMark Single Thread CPU test only runs one stream of instructions rather than multiple parallel streams per core.
The majority of consumer applications (MS World, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and most games) although multi threaded rarely utilize more than one thread at a time, so this test can be seen a a reasonable real world test for typical consumer workloads.
Now, the new iPhone 7 chip.

The new chip in the iPhone 7 is Apple's own A10 fusion chip.  From wiki:
The Apple A10 Fusion is a 64-bit system on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc.
It first appeared in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus which were introduced on September 7, 2016.
The A10 is the first Apple-produced quad-core SoC, consisting of two high performance cores for demanding tasks like gaming, along with two highly energy-efficient cores for normal tasks in a configuration similar to big.LITTLE technology.
Now the spooky stuff.

How does the A10 fusion chip compare with perhaps the most robust Mac desktop computer?
 

Did you all see that? The new iPhone 7 fusion chip scores higher than the Intel chip used in Apple's $6,500 Mac Pro computer.  That chip is an Intel Xenon chip.

I always come away from Tim Cook's semi-annual presentations feeling a bit underwhelmed. It's a personal problem. I simply cannot keep up with what Apple is doing. Nor do I think I am in the minority on this.

This is really, really spooky.

Director's Cut With July, 2016, Data -- September 16, 2016

Link here. Lots of new federal rules, proposed and existing. Bismarck Tribune story here.

Reminder: this is always done quickly; there may be typographical and factual errors. If this information is important to you, go to the source.

Crude oil production:
  • July: 1,029,507 bopd
  • June: 1,027,131 bopd
  • Delta: 2,376 bopd
  • Delta: 0.2 percent
% Producing wells:
  • July: 13,255 (preliminary, all-time high)
  • June: 13,248
Crude oil production / well:
  • July: 77.7
  • June: 77.5
  • For newbies: at the height of the boom, production per well in North Dakota had approached 100 bbls/day; unfettered, wells can easily move back to 100+ bbls/day; this gives one an idea of how much wells have been choked back or take off-line periodically.
Permitting:
  • August: 99
  • July: 86
  • June: 65
Pricing:
  • Today: $32.00
  • August: $33.73
  • July: $35.57
  • June: $38.75
  • May: $33.74
Well completions:
  • July: 41
  • June: 44
  • May: 45
  • In August, 2016, 26 wells came off the confidential list.
DUCs:
  • Today: 912
  • End of July: 887
  • End of June: 931
Inactive well count:
  • Today: 1,472
  • End of July: 1,486
  • End of June: 1,584
Percentage of gas flared: increased to 10.5% from 9.8% the previous month
  • Target: 91% capture rate by November 1, 2020
  • Tioga gas plant still at only 82% capacity
  • gas gathering project south of Lake Sakakawea now estimated completion in January, 2017 -- not long from now -- but huge bureaucratic delay 

July, 2016, Production Data Is Posted

Link here.

There may be factual and/or typographical errors in the data below. If this information is important to you, go to the source.

Top sixteen North Dakota oil fields by total production for the month of July, 2016:
Field
July 2016 Production
July Wells
July Oil/Well/Month
Sanish
1,334,131
601
2,220
Parshall
1,219,070
438
2,783
Grail
1,031,304
178
5,794
Corral Creek
856,387
148
5,786
Antelope-Sanish
848,633
167
5,082
Alger 
732,454
312
2,348
Blue Buttes
681,982
143
4,769
Spotted Horn
680,174
86
7,909
Banks
666,709
182
3,663
Siverston
625,387
223
2,804
Camp
589,582
132
4,467
Reunion Bay 
551,281
149
3,700
Van Hook
541,306
181
2,991
Heart Butte
528,206
179
2,951
Big Bend
526,998
116
4,543
Truax
497,181
171
2,907

 Top twenty North Dakota oil fields ranked by oil production per well in July, 2016:

Field
July 2016 Production
July Wells
July Oil/Well/Month
Spotted Horn
680,174
86
7,909
Long Creek
197,362
27
7,310
Grail
1,031,304
178
5,794
Corral Creek
856,387
148
5,786
Lost Bridge
321,767
57
5,645
Pershing
209,341
39
5,368
Antelope-Sanish
848,633
167
5,082
McGregory Buttes
453,413
95
4,773
Blue Buttes
681,982
143
4,769
Bear Den
202,143
44
4,594
Big Bend
526,998
116
4,543
Camp
589,582
132
4,467
Eagle Nest
339,938
78
4,358
Crazy Man Creek
191,066
44
4,342
Elm Tree
133,359
31
4,302
Camel Butte
142,098
34
4,179
Williston
85,265
21
4,060
Moccasin Creek
234,313
59
3,971
Johnson Corner
121,544
31
3,921
Sand Creek
308,155
79
3,901

Top twenty oil fields ranked by increase/decrease in oil production / well month-over-month (July-over-June). Except in four cases, the number of wells remained the same month-over-month, and in three of those cases, the number of wells increased by a single well. Only in Camp oil field was there an increase of more than one well. I can say with some certainty, that in almost all cases, the wells did not increase in number by old wells being shut in; new wells coming on line:

Field
June 2016 Production
June Wells
June Oil / Well / Month
July 2016 Production
July Wells
July Oil/Well/Month
Percent Change June-to-July
Lost Bridge
265,023
56
4,733
321,767
57
5,645
19.28%
Eagle Nest
289,010
78
3,705
339,938
78
4,358
17.62%
Camp
486,610
127
3,832
589,582
132
4,467
16.57%
Williston
73,551
21
3,502
85,265
21
4,060
15.93%
McGregory Buttes
392,656
95
4,133
453,413
95
4,773
15.47%
Sand Creek
277,379
79
3,511
308,155
79
3,901
11.10%
Spotted Horn
631,226
86
7,340
680,174
86
7,909
7.75%
Moccasin Creek
217,827
59
3,692
234,313
59
3,971
7.57%
Camel Butte
132,773
34
3,905
142,098
34
4,179
7.02%
Blue Buttes
634,427
142
4,468
681,982
143
4,769
6.74%
Grail
972,202
178
5,462
1,031,304
178
5,794
6.08%
Corral Creek
818,170
148
5,528
856,387
148
5,786
4.67%
Big Bend
504,473
116
4,349
526,998
116
4,543
4.47%
Pershing
202,292
39
5,187
209,341
39
5,368
3.48%
Elm Tree
134,308
31
4,333
133,359
31
4,302
-0.71%
Antelope-Sanish
851,088
166
5,127
848,633
167
5,082
-0.89%
Johnson Corner
123,331
31
3,978
121,544
31
3,921
-1.45%
Bear Den
219,894
44
4,998
202,143
44
4,594
-8.07%
Crazy Man Creek
211,571
44
4,808
191,066
44
4,342
-9.69%
Long Creek
228,029
27
8,446
197,362
27
7,310
-13.45%

******************************
Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution
Nathaniel Philbrick
c. 2016
DDS: 973.4 PHI
Chapter 6
Saratoga
Although this chapter is called Saratoga, there are several battles described. Most have to do with Benedict Arnold; not much is said about Geo Washington in this chapter.

In the north, it's the Brits, under Burgoyne, trying to get to Albany; Americans Gates and Arnold
In the south, it's the Brits, under Howe, trying to get to Philadelphia; Geo Washington to defend

Mostly to and fro; stalemate.
Recap:
  • Arnold, despite issues with Continental Congress, he was in a good mood; he thought his actions would vindicate him
  • Arnold had made a great showing at Battle of Ridgefield in Connecticut
  • now, he had just come to the rescue of Americans at Fort Stanwix (without firing a shot)
  • he had spent 2 1/2 weeks on the Mohawk (at the headwaters: Fort Stanwix)
  • HQ, Army of the North: an island at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers, probably Van Schaick Island
  • during this time, Army of the North had been transformed; victory at Bennington, VT (just east of Saratoga) boosted morale; steady influx of militiamen from New England; influx of Continental troops from the south, all added up to a new army
  • Schuyler vs Gates for undisputed leader of the Army of the North, but Schuyler's humiliating loss of Fort Ticonderoga resulted in being recalled him back to Philadelphia
  • Army of the North preparing for, perhaps, the decisive battle of the war
  • militiamen: one year commitment -- that's why Washington and Schuyler did not like militiamen; Gates "loved" militiamen
  • Arnold and Morgan (Virginia sharpshooters) had the left wing of the Army of the North
  • Morgan's riflemen: deadly aim with grooved barrel; but bayonet could not be fixed to rifle
Now:
  • British Burgoyne crosses the Hudson on September 14, 1777, near the hamlet of Saratoga, north of Albany, just west of Vermont/Massachusetts; just south of Fort Edward on the Hudson
  • Burgoyne "destroyed" by the forests and insect-breeding swamps; one-month's provisions
  • Army of the North on Bemis Heights, south of Saratoga
  • battle at Freeman's Farm had become a stalemate
  • Arnold: mounts, and exclaims, "By God, I will soon put an end to it."
  • Americans had to retreat; Burgoyne had "won" -- but at a cost of 700 Brits vs 150 colonists
  • Americans still on Bemis Heights
Elsewhere, 250 miles to the south in Pennsylvania, the chapter turns to Geo Washington:
  • preparing for second battle at Brandywine
  • a few days early he had moved his army across the fast-moving Schuykyll River that Howe would have to cross if he was going to take Philadelphia
  • Geo Washington's army: 12,000; Howe's, 18,000; Howe eager to attack
  • huge downpour; ended the "Battle of the Clouds," again, with Washington in retreat
Back to the north, Bemis Heights, Battle at Freeman's Farm:
  • again, the difference between Gates and Arnold; the former, cautious; the latter, impulsive and a winner
  • not much happening except squabbles among Gates' supporters and Arnold's supporters
Back to Howe near Philadelphia:
  • Howe out-maneuvers Geo Washington (again) and crosses the Schuylkill River, on way to Philadelphia
  • Howe blundered: split his army -- one to take Germantown; one to take Philadelphia
  • Geo Washington saw his advantage
  • but again, Geo Washington's indecision caused them to lose the battle at Germantown; another loss for Geo Washington; Americans on the run again
Back to the north:
  • this time Arnold takes things into his own hands; soundly defeats the Brits
  • Arnold injured again in the Light Infantry Redoubt after the Battle of Bemis Heights