Monday Early Evening: Flaring In The Bakken; NOG; Baker Hughes Suspends Operations In Iraq

A big "thank you" to multiple readers for sending me links to news related to the Bakken on a day in which I was very, very busy.

Baker Hughes suspends operations in Iraq. Rigzone is reporting:

Baker Hughes Incorporated announced Monday that a protest incident by local residents occurred last Saturday at a subsidiary's facility near Basrah, Iraq. No injuries were suffered and the facility was secured. The incident is currently under investigation. Due to the significant disruption of business, Baker Hughes has suspended operations in Iraq, and has issued force majeure notices to its customers.

****************************

Yahoo! News is reporting Bakken operators working to decrease flaring in the Bakken. That's the headline, but as usual, there are some interesting "dots" to connect. The story provides some interesting commentary about the Bakken that is not being reported. 

NaturalGasIntel is also talking about efforts in North Dakota to curb flaring.

************************

Platts is reporting the growing rift between British Columbia and Alberta over oil shipments, rail and pipeline. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. 

Six companies announced increased dividends/distributions, including a healthy incrase by Snap-On, Inc.

Murphy Oil announces $250 mln accelerated share repurchase transaction.

Schlumberger extends solid early gains to 94.64 and pauses.

NOG trading at a nice entry point -- SeekingAlpha. I have not read the article.  

**************************

The ObamaCare Express: CBSLocal is reporting that Oregon's health care exchange has yet to enroll a  single person. By comparison, North Dakota enrolled 35 in the first few days, and cancelled tens of thousands.

With a reputation as a pacesetter in health care, Oregon laid out bold plans for complying with the federal overhaul.

The state wouldn’t just create a health insurance exchange, a complicated undertaking in its own right. Oregon officials set out to build one of the biggest and best in the nation — a model that other states would want to copy.

But more than a month after Cover Oregon’s online enrollment was supposed to launch, reality is lagging far behind Gov. John Kitzhaber’s grand ideas. The online system still doesn’t work, and the exchange has yet to enroll a single person in health insurance.

No comment (for now).

More on the ObamaCare Express, this time from Reuters:

President Barack Obama's healthcare reform has reached only about 3 percent of its enrollment target for 2014 in 12 U.S. states where new online health insurance marketplaces are mostly working smoothly, a report released on Monday said.

States with functioning exchanges have signed up 49,100 people compared with the 1.4 million people expected to be enrolled for 2014, according to the report by healthcare research and consultancy firm Avalere Health. 

With enrollment in the federal HealthCare.gov website serving 36 states stalled by technical failures, the weak sign-ups for functioning insurance exchanges could be due to the administration's difficulty to promote the program as a success, Avalere said. 

The government is due to release national enrollment figures for the month of October this week. Open enrollment ends March 31, 2014.

A reminder: Consumer Reports advises folks to stay from the on-line exchange. Among all the other problems, the site has never been fully checked -- "end-to-end, -- as they say.

*************************