Five New Permits; Six Permits Renewed -- May 19, 2026

Locator: 50838B.

WTI: $104.30. Though, CNBC suggests WTI is >$105. 

Active rigs: 21.

Five new permits, #42951 - 42955; 

• 42951, Enerplus, Magnum 5301 36 4BHP, Baker, lot 7, section 4-152-101; 1287 FNL and 2283 FEL;
• 42952, BR, Ole Clemens 2F-MBH-ULW, Dimmick Lake, SESW 7-151-96; 438 FSL 2145 FWL; 
• 42953, KODA Resources, Pilsner 2511-1BHN, East Goose Lake, SWSW 25-162-103, 606 FSL and 552 FWL. 
• 42954, KODA Resources, Pilser 2514-3BH, East Goose Lake, SWSW 25-162-103, 606 FSL and 587 FWL. 
• 42955, KODA Resources, Pilsner 2512-2BHN, East Goose Lake, SWSW 25-162-103, 606 FSL and 6222 FWL. 

Six permits renewed:

• Oasis (5): four Aune Federal ...3B / 2BX and ne Ernie Federal ... 2BX; Eightmile oil field, Williams County;
• Devon Energy: one Sorenson 29-32 9TFH permit; Alger oil field, Mountrail County. 

Scientific Technical Revolution (STR) -- One Of Three Revlutions In The Modern World -- May 19, 2026

Locator: 50837STR.

Walter Isaacson: said there were three.

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The Book Page

The Mystery of Charles Dickens, A. N. Wilson, 2020.

Notes here.

 

The Annotated A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, Susanne Alleyn, c. 2014.

 

Notes here.  

Tuesday -- May 19, 2026

Locator: 50836B.

Google Gemini / Spark AI introduced. 

Qeshm Island: explosions heard overnight. Mum's the word. 

WTI: spikes to $108.80 mid-morning. Later, $107.70. CVX up $2.70 today; trading at $197.06/

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $103.30, but there are reports that WTI has hit $107.10 overnight.

New wells reporting:

• Tuesday, May 19, 2026: 48 for the month, 148 for the quarter, 305 for the year, 
• 42030, conf, Kraken, Dwyer East LE 2-36-26 11H, 
• 41750, conf, KODA Resources, Stout 1301-1BH, 
• 19795, conf, Devon Energy, Johnson 150-99-34-27-1H, 
• Monday, May 18, 2026: 45 for the month, 145 for the quarter, 302 for the year, 
• 41956, conf, Kraken, Dwyer East 26-35 8H, 

RBN Energy: After years of declining interest, the Anadarko is now an M&A hotbed. Link here. Archived.

The prospect of procuring steady-as-she-goes production assets at reasonable prices has been spurring interest in the sprawling Anadarko Basin. In just the past few weeks, two privately held producers closed on deals totaling more than $4 billion, and earlier this month, publicly held Diversified Energy — in partnership with Carlyle Group, the global investment firm — announced an agreement to buy a big set of assets from Camino Natural Resources for nearly $1.2 billion. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the big-money M&A happening in the Anadarko and the drivers behind it.

The 50,000-square-mile Anadarko Basin, which is centered in western Oklahoma but extends into the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas, has seen its ups and downs during the Shale Era. Back in the early-to-mid 2010s — after the booms in the Bakken and the Eagle Ford, and before the Permian took (and held) the spotlight — it seemed for a moment that all eyes were on the Anadarko’s SCOOP/STACK (see Figure 1 below; we’ll make brief mention of the adjoining Ardmore Basin in Part 2). Production from horizontal wells in the Anadarko continued rising through 2019, with crude oil output peaking at about 500 Mb/d and natural gas production approaching 7 Bcf/d.

But a combination of the Covid shock and better rock (and economics) elsewhere — especially the Permian — took the wind out of the Anadarko’s sails; so did the determination there was “pressure communication” between the STACK’s Meramec and Woodford formations, complicating development there. (Put simply, pressure communication means that wells in one formation are interfering with the other rather than behaving independently — a bad thing.) E&Ps in the play ratcheted down their Oklahoma capex; production sagged and then plateaued at less-impressive levels: about 300 Mb/d of oil and 5 to 5.5 Bcf/d of gas in recent years.

Figure 1. The Anadarko and Ardmore Basins. Source: RBN

Google, Blackstone To Create New AI Cloud Company -- May 18, 2026

Locator: 50835GOOG.

"You can howl at the wind, but AI is not going away." -- Amazon CEO Andy Jesse. 

Link here. 

 From the linked article:

Alphabet’s Google and Blackstone plan to create an artificial-intelligence cloud company to rival the likes of CoreWeave using Google’s specialized chips, according to people familiar with the matter.

The duo plans to launch the unnamed U.S. company with $5 billion in equity capital from Blackstone, which will be the majority owner, the people said. The deal is set to be announced later Monday. 

The venture, the biggest attempt yet by Google to sell and monetize its own chips to external parties, will sharpen a rivalry with Nvidia, the market leader in AI computing.

The new company aims in 2027 to bring 500 megawatts of capacity online—roughly the same amount of electric power required to serve a midsize city—and substantially increase capacity over time, the people familiar with the matter said.

The companies are forming the venture as demand for computing power to train and run advanced AI models reaches unprecedented levels. Most of the major AI companies currently rely, at least in part, on computing infrastructure from CoreWeave, which uses Nvidia’s chips. A class of smaller so-called neocloud companies have also cropped up in response to ravenous demand.

Google last month introduced a new processor that is customized for AI inference, or the computing required to run models rather than train them. Demand for that type of processing has exploded as businesses embrace AI. Google also introduced a new version of its chips that is specially designed for training models.

Google will supply hardware—including its specialized chips known as Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs—as well as software and services to the venture, the people said. Benjamin Treynor Sloss, a longtime Google executive, will serve as the new company’s CEO.

Google and Blackstone have identified data centers that will likely be part of the venture, some of which are in the process of being built.

Industry observers have wondered for years whether Google will commercialize its TPUs for widespread use. The technology giant has signed two major deals with outsiders: one to give Claude-maker Anthropic access to about one million of its chips, and another with Facebook owner Meta Platforms.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply content on Google platforms.

Bakken End-Of-Day Report -- May 18, 2026

Locator: 50834B.

Back to the Bakken

WTI: $104.40.

Active rigs: 22. 

Five new permits, #42946 - #42950, inclusive:

• Operators: Hunt Oil Company
• Fields: Parshall (Mountrail County)
• Comments:
• Hunt Oil has permits for three Oakland wells and two Severance wells, lot 4, section 4-153-89, 
• to be sited 434 FNL and 883 / 1003 FWL.

Eight permits renewed:

• Silver Hill (5):  four Haustveit permits (Capa, Williams County); and, one Tank permit (Wheelock, Williams County);
• Lime Rock Resources (3): two Robert Sadowsky permits (Manning, Dunn County); and, one Harlan Rebsom permit Murphy Creek (Dunn County).