Harvard Gazette: The UN Has It Wrong -- Not a Bakken Story

Updates

July 17, 2012: 30-second sound bite -- "tree rings don't lie, politicians do."

Original Post

[One day after posting the note below, the headlines are for a huge "deep freeze" for the Midwest today and heading into the Northeast.]

Y'all are gonna hear a lot of talk about the UN report released today that said 2010 ties for warmest year on record in quite some time (tied with 2005 and 1998).

If so, the warming is sure taking a long time. By my calculations, 1998 was about twelve years ago, and we only tied with 1998? I think paint dries faster than that, and even soccer games seem to move faster than that.

Anyway, as your Prius-driving friends are beating you over the head with that UN report today, tell them to read the Harvard Gazette, April 24, 2003 (and any number of other sources):

This review of changes in nature and culture during the past 1,000 years was published in the April 11 issue of the Journal of Energy and Environment. It puts subjective observations of climate change on a much firmer objective foundation. For example, tree-ring data show that temperatures were warmer than now in many far northern regions from 950 to 1100 A.D. 

Some have suggested the Vikings may have been responsible for global warming back then due to coal-powered ships.

[The Vikings and their coal-powered ships:


The Vikings, HistoryTeachers]

The paragraph above was preceded by this:

The heat and droughts of 2001 and 2002, and the unending winter of 2002-2003 in the Northeast have people wondering what on Earth is happening to the weather. Is there anything natural about such variability?

To answer that question, researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) - right in the heart of New England's bad weather - took a look at how things have changed in the past 1,000 years. They looked at studies of changes in glaciers, corals, stalagmites, and fossils. They checked investigations of cores drilled out of ice caps and sediments lying on the bottom of lakes, rivers, and seas. They examined research on pollen, tree rings, tree lines, and junk left over from old cultures and colonies. Their conclusion: We are not living either in the warmest years of the past millennium nor in a time with the most extreme weather.

Just saying.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why they would put out this story in January. Why not wait until July?

Oh, by the way, this winter (2010-2011) is now expected to be the coldest winter since the 1980's.

ONEOK Announces Plans For Additional Investment -- $300 Million -- North Dakota, USA

Late this afternoon, January 20, 2011, ONEOK announced plans to invest another $300 million in natural gas gathering and processing in western North Dakota. A big thank you to a reader for alerting me to this.

Link here.

New projects announced today:

• Stateline II -- a natural gas processing facility in western Williams County; in service by 1H13; $150 million
• Expansion of existing gathering and compression infrastructure: $100 million
• New well connections to Stateline II between now and end of 2014: $45 million

ONEOK calculates there are 1.5 million acres dedicated to their natural gas facilites

Other ONEOK Bakken projects:

• Previously announced projects: Garden Creek and natural gas processing plants
• Existing project: Grasslands natural gas processing plant
• Bottom line: ONEOK's natural gas processing capacity in western North Dakota: 400 million cubic feet/day, nearly quadrupling ONEOK's current processing capacity in the Williston Basin.

Stateline II will be constructed adjacent to Stateline I (expected to be in service in 3Q12.
Garden Creek plant should be in service by the end of this year (2011)

When all this is completed, the natural gas liquids produced from the plants will be delivered to ONEOK's previously announced Bakken NGL Pipeline, scheduled for completion about the same time as completion of the Stateline II plant.

This is a summary of the previously announced Bakken projects (earlier link here):

• Construction of the Garden Creek plant and the Stateline I plant, each a 100 MMcf/d natural gas processing facility, in the Bakken Shale in the Williston Basin in North Dakota, and related infrastructure;
• Construction of a 525- to 615-mile NGL pipeline, the Bakken Pipeline, to transport unfractionated NGLs produced from the Bakken Shale in the Williston Basin to the Overland Pass Pipeline, a 760-mile NGL pipeline extending from southwestern Wyoming to Conway, Kansas; update here; $500 million project
• Related capacity expansions for ONEOK Partners' 50-percent interest in the Overland Pass Pipeline to transport the additional unfractionated NGL volumes from the new Bakken Pipeline;

Three (3) New Permits -- North Dakota, USA

Producers: SM, KOG, and Zenergy.

Fields: Squaw and two wildcats. Both wildcats are in McKenzie County.

In today's daily activity report, Denbury reports a nice well:

• 18998, 2,208, Denbury, Lundin 14-33HEH, McKenzie County, Bakken

Reported earlier:

• 19215, 1,872, BEXP, State 36-1 2H, Williams, Bakken

Remember, Denbury acquired Encore, who had a fair amount of Bakken exposure. See also other posts today regarding DNR and enhanced oil recovery.

Other than that, pretty quiet.

WLL Targeting Two Pools With One Well in SW Part of North Dakota, USA

Updates

Based on the file report, Whiting requested, in March, 2011, to temporarily abandon this well.

There must be a typo on the date on this one. The "snapshot" of the NDIC file shows the status of the well as of 9/16/11 (this is being posted 6/19/11). The spud date was 7/20/10; I assume the status was 9/16/10:

NDIC File No: 18005     API No: 33-033-00294-00-00
Well Type: OG     Well Status: IA     Status Date: 7/20/2010     Wellbore type: Vertical
Location: SESE 35-143-105     Footages: 690 FSL 810 FEL     Latitude: 47.155296     Longitude: -103.943133
Current Operator: WHITING OIL AND GAS CORPORATION
Current Well Name: JONES 44-35
Elevation(s): 2563 KB   2538 GR     Total Depth: 12290     Field: WILDCAT
Spud Date(s):  7/20/2010
Casing String(s): 9.625" 2035'   5.5" 12277'  
Completion Data
   Pool: RED RIVER     Status: DRY     Date: 9/16/2011
   Pool: THREE FORKS     Status: SI     Date: 3/3/2011
Cumulative Production Data
   Pool: THREE FORKS     Cum Oil: 0     Cum MCF Gas: 0     Cum Water: 0

Monthly Production Data

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
THREE FORKS	4-2011	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
THREE FORKS	3-2011	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

This is not the first time I have seen a well listed as "SI" (shut in) immediately after it was drilled.  The file does reveal a single-stage frac stimulation. In March, 2011, he company requested permission to temporarily abandon this well.

Original Post

NDIC is reporting an interesting well:

• 18005, DRL, WLL, Jones 44-35, Wildcat, Red River and Three Forks (not a Bakken); no "H" designation; southwest corner of state; about 16 miles NNE of Beach, ND; absolutely no activity in immediate area.

Note that it is targeting two pools: the Red River (one of the more prolific formations in the Williston Basin targeted in previous booms) and the Three Forks. I don't know if it will be a combination vertical and horizontal or two horizontals. Or if it will simply end up in one formation.

Whiting seems to be the most aggressive right now in "pushing the edge of the envelope" to see what might be at the margins of the Williston Basin, or the margins of the Bakken, in the southwest part of the state.

Fidelity Reports a Nice Well in An Area With Lots of Activity -- Bakken, North Dakota, USA

Fidelity reports a fairly nice well in the Sanish field:

• 19080, 877, Fidelity, Domaskin 19-30-29H, Sanish, Bakken, 30K in 1.5 months

If you go to the NDIC GIS web server, you will see that this well sits almost inside the Robinson Lake field.

Directly west of Fidelity's Domaskin, there is a string of well pads with two, three or six wells on each pad. These are in sections 19, 20, and 21 in T154N-R93W, in Robinson Lake.  They are all Hess wells, and there are currently three rigs on site in that string of wells, including a fourth well that is almost complete. The rig is probably in the process of being moved.

Section 21 will have six wells all in a horizontal string; I assume, being so close together, they will be on one very long rectangular pad. Of these six, one has a rig on site; four are almost complete; and one is producing.

It looks like you could get a nice picture of the rig activity driving south on State Highway 1604 towards New Town.

Although I haven't updated it in quite awhile, this takes you to my description of Robinson Lake field.

Another Story Predicting $5 Gasoline -- Not a Bakken Story

[Update: "Gasoline price spike due to record oil demand" -- according to industry -- and the industry doesn't see a drop in price any time soon. January 21, 2011.]

Link here.

Dovetails nicely with this story from yesterday if you didn't see it -- the Forbes/Sosnoff story.

I have just been called in to teach today so I won't be posting much more until this evening.

Good luck to all.  I've posted a couple of stories this morning; I think the most exciting is the DNR story: scroll down if you haven't seen it.

I think it's a big, big deal. I don't (yet) own shares in DNR. It's just a very interesting story.

A Preview of More to Come? DNR To Bring Old Field Back to Life -- Not a Bakken Story (Not Yet)

A preview of more to come?

It's being reported that a Texas oil field that was thought to be pretty much dead will come back from a near-death experience.

Injection of carbon dioxide will make it possible for the Hastings field to rise once again.

The Hastings field was discovered in 1934 by Stanolind Oil and Gas Co. and has produced about 600 million barrels of oil from 600 wells over its life. After hitting peak production of 75,000 barrels per day in the mid 1970s, it now yields just 1,000 barrels a day, according to Denbury, which took over the western portion of the field in early 2009.

A new $1 billion CO2 pipeline from Louisiana to Texas may reinvigorate a number of old Texas fields. 

Denbury's 320-mile Green Pipeline changes that. It transports carbon dioxide, mined in Mississippi, from Donaldsonville, La., to the Hastings field. Ultimately, Denbury hopes it also will carry carbon dioxide collected from Gulf Coast refiners, chemical plants and other industrial facilities - and be extended to other fields, including the much larger Conroe oil field in Montgomery County.

Already, CO2 injection accounts for about 15 percent of the oil production coming out of Texas.   

Another link here, dated January 23, 2011. 

DNR is also the "face" of enhanced oil production in the Rockies.

Texas Railroad Regulatory Commission May Be Renamed -- Not a Bakken Story

There's an interesting op-ed piece coming out of a Texas newspaper this past week. It looks like the Texas legislature will do away with the Texas Railroad Regulatory Commission (RCC).

Shortly after the turn of the century, oil was discovered and the RRC was given regulatory responsibility over oil pipelines in 1917, oil and gas production in 1919 and gas intrastate pipelines in 1920. In the 1930s the RRC exerted powers that made it one of the most powerful regulatory agencies ever.

Over the years, the rulings of the RCC pretty much set the tone for the rest of the nation. I think it could be argued that the RCC pretty much was very much in favor of growing the oil industry.

So, when I read the headline, I was somewhat startled. I didn't think Texas wanted to give up this leading role.

It turns out that the commission will probably simply be renamed.

The RRC has more than 100 rules and regulations dealing with everything from drilling permits, disposal well restrictions, spacing rules, hazardous materials, environmental regulations and complaints from land owners. Actually, the Sunset Committee doesn't want the duties of the RRC to go away. The committee recommends the RRC name be changed to the Texas Oil and Gas Commission and that the elected three commissioners be reduced to one elected.

Texas will still set the tone when it comes to oil regulation, probably even more so with the discovery and development of Eagle Ford south of San Antonio.