Locator: 51590B.
CNN: a headline I thought I would never see in CNN -- yes, the strait is becoming irrelevant and the blockade is working. When you lose CNN, you've lost the story.
Quite the CEO:
Apple / OpenAI: link here. This has been previously reported on the blog but it shows up again, today. It must be an amazing story, and it would help explain AAPL's ticker this past week. This is an absolutely incredible story. Simple amazing.
Note: stories from as recent as seven minutes ago --
LCDs:
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A Musical Interlude
Link here. So well done. I treasure the seven years I lived in California, including four years in South Pasadena. So many incredible memories.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $85.44. Up $2.04; up 2.45%. Something must be up in the Mideast. Amazing how folks thought the fighting was over and the strait was over.
New wells reporting:
- Tuesday, September 1, 2026: 2 for the month, 100 for the quarter, 439 for the year,
- 42331, conf, XTO, GBU Artemis 32X-13A-N
- 41881, conf, XTO, GBU Artemis 32S-13B-S,
- Monday, August 31, 2026: 57 for the month, 98 for the quarter, 442 for the year,
- None.
- Sunday, August 30, 2026: 57 for the month, 98 for the quarter, 442 for the year,
- None.
- Saturday, August 29, 2026: 57 for the month, 98 for the quarter, 442 for the year,
- None.
RBN Energy: is gas production in the San Juan Basin's Mancos Shale about to rebound? Link here. Archived.
A small cadre of E&Ps active in the San Juan Basin’s Mancos Shale is anticipating breakout growth in natural gas production there if and when gas prices rise, and a well-known midstreamer is planning what could eventually be a high-capacity gas pipeline to the burgeoning Arizona market. Still to be determined, however, is whether the moonscape-like region along the New Mexico-Colorado border emerges as a mini-Haynesville or the optimism withers and dies under the hot desert sun. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss what producers have been saying about their results in — and hopes for — the Mancos and the plan by Tallgrass Energy to build a new, large-diameter pipeline out of the play.
In our 2026 prognostications blog back in January, we said, “There’s been a lot of market buzz around a handful of niche gas plays that share a common profile: the gas is dry, wells are deeper than legacy development in the area, reservoirs are often overpressured, initial production (IP) rates are high, and economics look compelling.” We noted that in the San Juan Basin, “operators are ignoring legacy coalbed methane and targeting the deeper, horizontally drilled Mancos Shale. Our prognostication? These smaller ‘dry-gas islands’ ... are likely to command much more attention in 2026.”
In fact, there has been a lot of talk about the Mancos this year — and a major acquisition (following a big deal last year) — but it’s likely that the production breakout some are predicting may still be a year or two away (and maybe more).
First, a little history. Gas production in the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado has experienced a lot of ups and downs since the first commercially successful gas well was drilled there 105 years ago. In the years up to and just after World War II, the challenge was getting gas to market; the San Juan was hundreds of miles from large population centers and there was hardly any pipeline infrastructure in place. The completion of the El Paso Natural Gas (EPNG) pipeline to California in the early 1950s spurred a boom in conventional gas production in the basin, and (after a handful of mini-booms and mini-busts) there was a late-century surge in coalbed methane production from the uppermost Fruitland Formation (dark-brown layer on right side of Figure 1 below). By 2000, the San Juan Basin was among the U.S.’s top gas production areas, churning out nearly 4.5 Bcf/d of gross gas, or about 8% of total U.S. onshore production at the time.
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Disclaimer
Briefly:
I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken. I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution. I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom. Now, I've added Amazon. And QCOM. Longer version here.
