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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

CED Expands To North Dakota

I am exhausted; can't post any more tonight, and have to be up early in a.m.

But this is too good a story to not post now; I might comment on it later, but the story speaks for itself.

The Dickinson Press is reporting.

Now, if you want to see why this is such a great story, go to their website....

http://www.cedcareers.com/

.... and scroll down about a third of the page to "CED Locations" and look at that lone yellow dot. I assume another yellow dot will be added soon to North Dakota. What an incredible graphic, and it must tell us something about the development going on in western North Dakota.

Again, Don, alerted me to the site.

CED, from their website:
Fifty-seven percent of all U.S. homes were built before 1980, and total U.S. Housing Starts have averaged almost 1.5 million units annually since 1959. We supply just about every piece of residential electrical equipment to power American lifestyles.

Companies Supporting The Bakken Boom Locating / Renovating / Expanding Outside The Bakken: Grand Forks, Bismarck

Multiple stories here.
  • Bobcat expanding in Bismarck.
  • Steffes Corp of Dickinson expanded in Grand Forks.
  • Diverse Energy Systems locates in Grafton (north of Grand Forks).
  • Menard's of Minnesota looking at manufacturing site in Bismarck area. 

Wells Coming Off Confidential List Wednesday; Whiting With Three Nice Froehlich Wells In Their Pronghorn Prospect

20064, 1,875, Whiting, Froehlich 21-28PH, Bell, t11/12; cum 72K 3/13;
21722, drl, Hess, BW-Larson 149-100-1720H-1, Ellsworth, no production data,
22373, 2,172, Whiting, Froehlich 11-28PH, Bell,  t11/12; cum 56K 3/13;
22774, 1,947, Whiting, Froehlich 41-28PH, Bell, t11/12; cum 61K 3/13; 
23110, drl, KOG, P Bibler 154-99-1-5-29-1H3, Epping, no production data,
23111, drl, KOG, P Bibler 154-99-1-5-29-2H, Epping, no production data,
23113, drl, KOG, P Bibler 154-99-1-5-8-15H, Stockyard Creek, no production data,
23824, drl, Hess, EN-State D 154-93-2635H-3, Robinson Lake, no production data,

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

20064, see above, Whiting, Froehlich 21-28PH, Bell,

DateOil RunsMCF Sold
3-20131065512187
2-20131088010661
1-20131567916141
12-20122604330734
11-201290422650

 22373, see above, Whiting, Froehlich 11-28PH, Bell:

DateOil RunsMCF Sold
3-2013804210009
2-201332233300
1-20131424616376
12-20122085522348
11-201290652235

22774, see above, Whiting, Froehlich 41-28PH, Bell:

DateOil RunsMCF Sold
3-201396309941
2-2013910010044
1-20131449516169
12-20122076319804
11-201272411893

Five (5) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA

Active rigs: 188 (steady but trending down)

Five (5) new permits --
  • Operators: EOG (3), Mountain Divide, BR,
  • Fields: Parshall (Mountrail), Charlson (McKenzie)
    Comments: Mountain Divide has four permits, all permits; #23900 is on DRL status; the other three are confidential.  Their permit today is a permit for a wildcat in Divide County.
Wells coming off confidential list were posted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

Just Tweeted: API Stats

API stats: crude up 0.5mil b, distillates up same, gasoline up big 3 mil b. Platts projection was crude dn 1.2 mil, gasoline dn 200k.

Big Stories: Saudi Production In Light Of North American Energy Revolution

Saudi to OPEC: sayonara -- May 23, 2016.

Putin's friend: "say goodbye to OPEC": May 10, 2016 link
Internal differences are killing OPEC and its ability to influence the markets has all but evaporated, top Russian oil executive Igor Sechin told Reuters in some of his harshest remarks ever about the oil cartel.
OPEC in tatters: April 18, 2016

Track slump in oil prices here, 2014 - 2015: link here.

OPEC never was a cartel: December 7, 2015.

Saudi's action results in free-fall in price of oil: link here -- December 1, 2014.

This week's OPEC meeting: most important in years, link here -- November 25, 2014.

OPEC free-for-all: organization disbands production quota monitoring committee -- May 28, 2013.

The Big Stories

 The Next Big Thing

Energy And The Western Hemisphere
Energy and The Mideast 
US Energy Revolution
The continued irrelevancy of the EU.

Making America great again.
  • Shale oil.
  • Off-shore oil.
  • Natural gas. 
  • LNG and LNG export terminals.
  • Diluent.
  • Pipelines.
  • Ethane and ethane exports. 
Geo-political
****************************************
The Big Stories
2013 - 2018

The Next Big Thing

North American Energy Revolution
US Energy Revolution
Natural gas corridors in the United States

The National Grid. How EVs will impact US economy. Start here.
 
US energy centers of gravity (coming)
Natural gas and coal in the post-nuclear world
Comprehending the size of the Bakken: start here.
    EOR-CO2: start here
    Europe At A Tipping Point 

    The global power shift: Russia-China hegemony 
    Russia
    India: the "new China"

    Other alliances:
    Western Canadian Oil (this link will be changed at a later date)

    The Saudi - OPEC myth

    Japan's Energy Crunch 

    China: why China is buying North American shale oil and natural gas assets
    China: "Belt and Road" initiative

    Water

    Disconnected rambling: the activist environmentalists

    North Dakota economy: Silver Shovel Award, 2013 

    Renewables and A Dose of Reality

    Brick and mortar is dead

    Batteries -- Storage

    Global warming.
    Big stories that disappeared in 2017/2018:
    • a growing nuclear North Korean threat
    Big stories that disappeared in late 2016.
    ***********************************
    The Trump Years

    October 13, 2018: Trump's accomplishments in 20 months -- 289 accomplishments -- relentless attack on keeping promises


    Fight's On! Trade War.
    The first year: 81 major achievements; 11 Obama items repealed
    Investment in the US
    Energy: All The Above
    Campaign Promises, Non-Energy
    ********************************
    The Obama Years 

    The Obama Legacy
    ObamaCare
    The Doomsday Chronicles
    EPA
    The EpiPen Story

    ************************
    FBI Director Comey Re-Opens Hillary Clinton E-Mail Investigation.

    Link here.  
    ************************
    Will President Obama Succumb To The Pressure, as did Nixon?

    January 5, 2015: you can google it, but I believe Obama has worse polling numbers than Richard Nixon. Whatever. It was a most bizarre moment yesterday (or was it today?) when President Obama "cried" or at least "shed tears" while announcing executive action he planned to take to tight gun sales. He had just come back from vacation so he should have been well rested. He is in his last year, and can easily "run out the clock." I don't see any reason why he would be this "emotional" at this time. Executive action on gun control is hardly an "emotional" issue. It was either theatrical or something deeper is going on that no one has sorted out yet. I doubt the latter but "theatrical" (as in "crying") doesn't seem to be in his toolkit. If this is a "one-off" we should know over the next two months. His performance ("crying") does not fit DSM IV 301.81.

    October 7, 2014: This really doesn't fit this page. The "big stories" are for the most part non-political and have to with energy. However, the Panetta story is hard to ignore. The reason I am posting this is for the time-stamp. I'm not going to re-write all my thoughts, but this note to a reader will give folks an idea what I'm thinking about:
    Panetta is a pretty solid Democrat; he's been around. I don't care for him, but he's held some important jobs after being tapped by Obama. For a solid Democrat who served under Obama, for him to say these things publicly, one wonders what folks are saying privately. There's a very, very good chance, no one, absolutely no one is going to help Obama's candidates in this election. Not only is Obama looking more and more detached (one wonders if the pressure is getting to him just as pressure got to Nixon), anyone considering supporting Obama's candidates run the risk of Hillary's (and Bill's) everlasting wrath.

    I don't think it's a stretch to compare the weekly video beheadings with the Iranian crisis under Carter. The common theme: the president was seen as WEAK, unable to do anything about the beheadings or the Iranian hostages.

    Big Stories: Japan Energy Crunch

     Japan's Energy Crunch

    The solar energy debacle in Japan, reported by Reuters, November 19, 2013. 

    Random update: severity of Japan's energy crunch -- reported by Reuters, September 26, 2013
    As expensive imported fuel has sent corporate electricity prices surging by more than a third since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, firms have scrimped and employees have grown used to sweaters in the winter and open collars in the summer.
    Adding to the pressure, Japan is without nuclear power for only the third time since 1970 after the last of its 50 nuclear plants was closed for routine maintenance on September 15.
    "Electricity fees will rise further and further," said Yukio Noguchi, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "We are just at the beginning of the problem."
    Before the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima nuclear plant and prompted the shutdown of the industry, nuclear power supplied about 30 percent of the energy needs of the world's third-biggest economy.
    With no sign of the post-Fukushima power-crunch abating, most organizations plan to keep responding just as they've been doing: by cutting costs and trying to save more energy, a Reuters survey shows.
    Japan and Natural Gas

    Japan Japan snaps up US LPG exports to diversify supplies for trading, Platts:
    Most Japanese suppliers and end-users have either locked in or are seeking to seal term contracts for LPG from the US to diversify supplies to meet steady demand, piling pressure on the Middle Eastern market and spurring global trade among Japanese firms, industry officials and traders said recently.
    Major Japanese importers and traders such as Astomos Energy, Eneos Globe, TonenGeneral, Idemitsu Kosan and Iwatani Corp. have concluded multi-year term supply deals with Enterprise Product Partners. Refiner Showa Shell is also in talks with the US producer for a couple hundred thousand mt/year under a possible contract, sources familiar with the matter said. -- June 4, 2013
    US grants export license to Freeport --> Japan.

    Platt's feature: Japan eyeing New Mexico natural gas fields (the Permian and San Juan basins). Challenge: not enough pipeline from New Mexico to gulf coast.
    In an interview Monday, Muramatsu said he was on a fact-finding mission to learn about opportunities for JOGMEC investment in New Mexico's upstream industry as well as the feasibility of moving gas from that state to the Gulf Coast, where it could be liquefied for export to Japan as LNG.

    "There is a challenge for getting New Mexico's gas to the Japanese market because there is not so much (pipeline) capacity to the state of Texas," he said. "That will be a challenge for New Mexico's gas."

    Currently only two LNG export terminal projects -- both located on the Gulf Coast -- have received approval from the US Department of Energy to ship gas to countries with which the US does not have a free trade agreement, which includes Japan.

    The second approval was announced just last week, when DOE gave the go-ahead to permit the Freeport LNG Expansion and FLNG Liquefaction to export up to 1.4 Bcf/d over 20 years from the multi-billion-dollar facility on Quintana Island, Texas.

    The project still is subject to environmental review and a separate approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

    Houston-based Freeport has agreements with BP and Japan's Osaka Gas and Chubu Electric Power for use of the facility and has said it planned to launch exports in 2017.

    Prior to its approval of the Freeport project, the only other project to have won DOE approval to export LNG to non-FTA nations had been Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass Liquefaction project in Louisiana.
    Remember earlier story about Panama Canal expansion.

    You Can't Have It Both Ways

    I'm assuming it's just a matter of time before we start seeing politicians blame the recent spate of tornadoes on a) global warming; and, b) George Bush. 
    But you can't have it both ways. 


    Flashback: 1975 -- Steven Goddard reminds us of the terrible run of tornadoes --
    "Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen US states."
    Why the upsurge in tornadoes. Hold unto your hats, buckaroos!
    "To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental change sin the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change (global cooling) is as profound as some of the pessismists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic." -- Newsweek, April 28, 1975
    In fact, US corn crops have become so abundant, Al Gore is burning corn-derived ethanol in  his gas-guzzling SUVs.

    Now, somehow, an enquiring mind has to reconcile this data.

    Back in 1975, global cooling, for whatever reason led to a spate of tornadoes. Then the earth started to warm and the tornadoes sort of disappeared (at least in number and intensity). Then in 1998, the warming trend stopped (yes, came to a standstill, dead stop, the BBC reports), and now we are back in that cooling phase and the tornadoes are back.

    I can't make this stuff up.

    A huge "thank you" to:
    a) Real Science for a spectacularly good website
    b) for Don, again, finding this article
    Here's the link to the original Newsweek article on global cooling, the coming ice age. I remember it vividly. It was back in 1975. Of the three major weeklies at the time (US News & World Report, Time, and Newsweek, I subscribed to the latter. The first was too conservative; Time was too liberal. Newsweek was "just right.")

    Al Gore got rich off a lot of gullible folks, it appears. Good for him. The American Dream.

    Wow, Talk About Turn Of Events: One Year Ago Philadelphia Refineries On Life Support. Today: Talk Of Philadelphia Becoming A New "Cushing" -- A Reminder to Jane: All Because Of The Over-Hyped Bakken; An 8-Page Internet Article

    Rigzone reporting:
    When two executives of a Philadelphia-based petroleum midstream and processing company last year proposed developing a crude-by-rail terminal to deliver domestic light sweet crude oil to five area refineries clustered along the Delaware River, the response from some was less than encouraging.
    "They said we were nuts," recalled Erik Johnson, vice president and general manager of Canopy Prospecting Inc.
    "Crude oil to U.S. East Coast refineries has typically been delivered by water-borne methods since the early 1900s," he explained. "Some people who are currently retired and had spent a career in refining thought that rail-borne crude deliveries was an antiquated idea and not viable."
    Lending credence to some refining veterans' lackluster response was a chain of recent events. The fortunes of the region's oil processing facilities had taken a downward turn. For starters, Sunoco had announced that it would close or sell its Marcus Hook and Philadelphia refineries. Subsequently, ConocoPhillips (now Phillips 66) announced plans to immediately idle its Trainer refinery and sell the asset as a terminal or refinery.
    This is an 8-page internet article.

    A nice data point:
    Shipping domestically produced crude oil in rail tank cars is more expensive than transporting the commodity by pipeline, but Johnson and Galloway contend that bringing in 70,000 to 80,000 barrels a day on a unit train would still make the Philadelphia refining market dramatically more competitive. Recent trends suggest that processing Bakken crude rather than imported slates could save a refiner roughly $25 per barrel in feedstock costs.
    Three eventual Philadelphia market developments signified a turning point in the region's refining fortunes. Two of these events helped to bolster the case for Canopy's proposal. First, Delta Airlines unit Monroe Energy purchased, upgraded and re-started the Trainer refinery. In addition, The Carlyle Group and Sunoco created a joint venture – Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) – that will keep the Philadelphia Refinery open.
    Okay, one more:
    Having garnered a lease for the crude-by-rail terminal, Canopy now had to find the money to make the $68 million project a reality. Johnson and Galloway initially explored the private equity route, but their due diligence efforts brought them in contact with a representative of Enbridge Energy Co. Their acquaintance with the Canada-based company, whose extensive assets include a 120,000-barrels per day crude-by-rail terminal in Berthold, N.D., to complement its 355,000-barrels per day North Dakota Pipeline System, suggested that Canopy initiate talks to investigate a joint venture (JV).

    Briefly, Weekly Montana Update

    Again, huge thanks to:
    New locations:
    • Eight (8) new permits: all horizontal, all middle Bakken, all in Richland County; all CLR
    Completions (one completion in Powder River County; all others in Richland County):
    • Bell Creek Consolidated 33-09R, no data, DNR, Powder River County, DNR, Skull Creek Formation;  
    • Archer (Federal) 1-26H, Slawson, three laterals; 490,
    • Android 1-6H, Slawson, 180,
    • Rustler 1-4H, Slawson, 247,
    • Candee 3-18H, CLR, 109, TD = 19,274 feet
    • Simmers 4 21-30-1H, Whiting, 470,
    • Sheri 2658 43-9H, Oasis, 860, TD = 20,460 feet

    Random Look At Two EOG Wells: 50+ Stages; 10 Million + Pounds of Sand

    22704, 926, EOG, Wayzetta 149-1509H, Parshall, Three Forks, t1/13; cum 40K 3/13; 53 stages; 11 million lbs sand;  spacing - ICO;  spacing is interesting to note; the lateral was supposed to reach section 9 based on name of well, sited in section 15, going through section 10, and ending in 9. The operator requested 1920-acre (3-section spacing). The file report says the lateral reached the north east corner of section 9, but the GIS map server shows only through section 10 for now.  Obviously the file report is accurate; the GIS map server will be updated. (For newbies: this is interesting, because Parshall oil field was originally all 640-acre spacing by EOG.) TD: 20,422 feet.

    23421, 1,011, EOG, Garden Coulee 1-1410H, Painted Woods, middle Bakken; 49 stages; 10 million lbs sand; 960-acre spacing (along Montana state line where sections narrow significantly); TD: 20,821 feet; t12/12; cum 54K 3/13; 

    Tuesday Morning News And Links

    Active rigs: 189 (steady)

    RBN Energy: update on the Utica.

    WSJ Links

    Section D (Personal Journal):

    Section C (Money & Investing):

    Section B (Marketplace):

    Section A