Fourteen (14) New Permits -- Last Friday's Daily Activity Report -- Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA; Active Rigs: 192; Monday Morning Links -- Rail/Pipeline Bakken Differentials

The narrowing WTI/Brent spread is not good news for Bakken or the rails. See RBN Energy below.
 
Active rigs: 192 (very nice)

Fourteen (14) new permits --

• Operators: KOG (4), XTO (2), Newfield (2), MRO (2), Slawson (2), Whiting, Hess
• Fields: Truax (Williams), Elkhorn Ranch (Billings), Haystack Butte (Dunn), Westberg (McKenzie), Reunion Bay (Mountrail), Van Hook (Mountrail), Robinson Lake (Mountrail)
• Comments:

Wells that were released from the confidential list Friday were posted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

Wells coming off the confidential list over the weekend and today have been posted.

Monday Morning Links

RBN Energy: Rail/pipeline differentials affecting the Bakken 

WSJ Links

Section R (Journal Report): most retirement; might look at it later

Section C (Money & Investing):

• Heard on the street: why troublemakers are good for the oil majors. 

Section B (Marketplace):

• Publisher bets on big collectible books.

While many book publishers are heavily investing in the digital frontier, Benedikt Taschen is looking to corner the market in oversize collectible books.
His Cologne, Germany-based publishing house, Taschen, collaborated with Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photojournalist and Unicef Goodwill Ambassador who spent the past eight years traveling to remote places untouched by deforestation, urbanization and the modern world, to produce "Genesis." The 704-page two-volume collection of black-and-white photos depicts Mr. Salgado's trek, which included a 47-day journey tracking 7,000 reindeer across Northern Siberia and a roughly 525-mile hike in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia.

My hunch is that Taschen books will start to compete with wall art among the very wealthy. 

Section A:

• Maybe later I will post the story (probably not) but there's a ridiculous assertion over on Yahoo!News that oil is slicing through $96 because of the great jobs report last week. The price of oil, today, has nothing to do with the  jobs report last week; it's all about Israel laying into Syria. It's all over the news.

• Colleges cut prices by providing more financial aid. Colleges, especially smaller colleges, are concerned they may be pricing themselves out of the market. My hunch: they are already too late. 

• That web sales-tax bill? Don't bet on it.

• Despite Obama's goal to destroy the coal industry in the US, in the Midwest, coal stages a comeback. And now that the President is a lame duck (some would say a rabid skunk), things may get even better.

• Standing guard for the sturgeon: Wisconsinites come out to protect their beloved fish during the critical spawning season.

• Bad news for Statoil? Norway plans rise in taxes on oil companies. Platts tweeted the same.

• Op-ed: A tale of two oil states: while the shale boom lifts Texas, California sits on vast resources.