Tuesday Morning Links -- Part II

From a reader, minor editing, regarding the Red River:

I was reading about your comments on Red River formation on the blog and was surprised how well you guys are tracking activity of main operators and sleeper formation such as Red River.

It's indeed the sleeping giant .... it's not only Red River B that was original producer for many operators including Continental (and yes, that zone can be now targeted in surrounded areas using modern multi-stage frac techniques ) ... but now its also Red River C and D zones are targeted as well as a RESOURCE play.

Only a few have figured this out yet ..., including WLL; and, one private company who drilled two horizontal RR C wells/those 2 wells produced over 300k bbls in one year,  and our company ....  So Red River is in deed next BIG RESOURCE play of the Williston Basin .... especially when price of oil will drop making Bakken less economical. RR play outbids both, Bakken and Eagle Ford!!  We have [x] acres and the target is Red River C, D and B as a complement ...   If you have some other info on Red River activities that we are not aware of and that you can share --- please do ... 

There appears to be at least one person as exuberant as I am about the Red River. In bits and pieces, there is more and more talk about the Red River.  The reader mentioned a third company but I was not sure if I could mention it, so for now, I have removed that part of the note.

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Spectra Energyto acquire Express-Platte Pipeline for $1.49 bln; immediately accretive to earnings: Co announces it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase 100% of the ownership interests in the Express-Platte Pipeline System from Borealis Infrastructure, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMP) for $1.49 bln, consisting of $1.25 bln cash and $240 mln of acquired debt. The pipeline's capacity is 280,000 barrels a day. The Platte pipeline, which interconnects with Express pipeline in Casper, Wyoming, transports crude oil predominantly from the Bakken and Western Canada to refiners in the Midwest. Platte's capacity ranges from 164,000 barrels a day in Wyoming to 145,000 barrels a day to Wood River, Illinois. Co expects the acquisition will be immediately accretive to earnings, with expected full-year 2013 EBITDA of ~$130 mln and full-year annual EPS accretion in the $0.03-0.05 per share range

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From Yahoo! In-Play: Energy provides operational update and confirms it remains on track to close on the sale of its French assets by year-end. 

ZaZa owns and operates approximately 88,000 net acres in the Eaglebine, one of the fastest growing and most prolific oil and gas plays in the U.S. ZaZa's acreage block is located in the highly organic and thickest area of the basin. The company has begun development in the Lower Eaglebine and is exploring development scenarios associated with its Upper Eaglebine resource potential. Additionally, the Lower Cretaceous section sits below the Upper and Lower Eaglebine targets and has a gross thickness of approximately 1,300' on the ZaZa acreage block. The company will spud its first Lower Cretaceous vertical test this month as it evaluates the potential for producing multiple Lower Cretaceous targets in a vertical, comingled development strategy.

ZaZa initially owned ~12,300 net acres in the Eagle Ford and increased its net acreage position to ~72,000 with 100% working interest as a result of the Hess division of assets. The company intends to divest, in the first quarter of 2013, two of the prospects it considers non-core (Dilley Prospect ~2,000 net acres and Hackberry/Oakland Prospect ~23,000 net acres), which collectively represent ~25,000 net acres. The company expects to have ~47,000 net acres post-divestiture.

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Now some WSJ links

Section D: lots of medically-related articles. Maybe I will get back to them later.

Section C: nothing of note.

Section B: oh, yeah! Exxon find: America as net energy exporter. 

North America will become a net energy exporter by 2025, thanks to a surge in oil and gas production and rapid improvements in energy efficiency, Exxon Mobil Corp predicts in its latest long-term energy outlook.

Exxon predicts that an anticipated decline in coal usage by power plants will accelerate as more efficient natural-gas-fired plants are built. The company forecasts coal use will drop 33% from 2010 to 2025, more than its previous 23% estimate.

The Bakken is not mentioned; Exxon operates in the Bakken through its subsidiary, XTO.

A lot of other nice articles in Section B, but just not enough time. Have to keep moving.

Section A:

• Obama's Middle-Class Tax Flip -- op-ed.
• After a decade of bashing by Democrats, the Bush tax cuts get strange new respect. 
• Welcome to the Salazar Wilderness -- op-ed. I did not read.
• Worker liberation in Michigan -- op-ed. See below.
• Raising taxes on the well-off would pay for nine days of spending, but it would make a lot of the 47% feel better. The article is written by a US Senator. The chance of me reading it is somewhere between Slim and Not-a-Chance. And as that great news reader said, "... and Slim just left town."

The vote in Michigan takes place today:

You can tell this is a big deal based on the fury of Big Labor's reaction. Union activists plan to descend on Lansing Tuesday to protest, including many from out of state. State police will have to be on duty to ensure that legislators can get through what is likely to be a loud and abusive cordon of activists who want to block the vote.

This thuggishness is a deliberate and familiar union political strategy: Cause as big a ruckus as possible in hopes of making right to work seem radical when it's already the law in nearly half the country.

We hope Republicans and Governor Rick Snyder aren't intimidated, because they have the moral and policy high ground. Union activists want voters to believe that right-to-work laws deny union organizing rights, or ban collective bargaining. President Obama peddled this distortion on Monday in Redford, Michigan, claiming that "what we shouldn't be doing is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages and working conditions."

Right to work does no such thing. It empowers individual workers. As allowed under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, right to work merely lets individual workers choose for themselves if they want to join a union. The laws prevent closed union shops, which coerce individual workers to join unions and to pay union dues. A teacher who opts out under right to work, for example, could save several hundred dollars in annual union dues that go to political causes he may not even believe in.