Iraq

This article at The Oil Drum discusses Iraq. The article mentions that at least one more article will follow.

I post it because it provides a comparison of the Bakken with Iraq which is now the #2 oil producer in OPEC, having surpassed Iran last year.

In Iraq, there is a northern oil region (Kurdish) and a southern oil region (Shiite). The following pertains to the Kurdish region:

In recent times Euan Mearns has written of the potential for oil production in the Kurdish region in the north. In total this is estimated to hold around 4 billion barrels of oil, or around 17% of the national reserve. However, as exploration of the potential fields in Kurdistan continues, this estimate has been increased by the local government to a possible 45 billion barrels. Euan, for example, wrote about the development of the Shaikan oil field and the potential size of between 8 and 13.4 billion barrels that it showed in January 2012. Current plans are for production to reach 40,000 bpd “soon”, with production ramping up to 400,000 bpd.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) see it playing a considerable role in achieving their target of 400 kbd this year, 1 mbd by 2015, and 2 mbd by 2019.

The field is being developed by Gulf Keystone Petroleum.

The article alludes to factors that could limit Iraqi oil production, some of the same "factors" that I've suggested could limit Saudi production. 

Such Irony -- It Jus Dawned On Me -- Emissions Scorecard For 2012

DW is reporting:

• China: up 3.8%; 300 million tons in 2012; one of the lowest increases seen in decades
• US: down 3.8%; decreased yoy emissions by 200 million tons
• EU: down 1.4%; despite increased use of coal; due to protracted economic slowdown
• Japan: no percent given, but emissions jumped 70 million tons

It looks like Japan is the outlier here. Such irony then, that it is the KYOTO Protocol.

Japan population: 130 million.
China population: 1.4 billion.
130 million / 1,400 million = 9%

Japan has less than 10% of the Chinese population, and yet, at 70 million tons, Japan's emissions are almost a quarter of what China emits. 

Oil Keeps Pouring Out Of The Bakken -- Motley Fool -- For Investors Only

A nice article even though, in the end, it's like an infomercial on television: information is provided but for "the rest of the story," a paid subscription is required. But, the infomercial is what it is. Oil companies highlighted: CLR, KOG, Halcon, EOG, and MRO. Again, Motley Fool points out some warning signs with KOG, as has Mike Filloon.

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

Ten (10) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA; Note The CLR Brooklyn Oil Field Well With 4-Section Spacing; Statoil Has Some Interesting Wells Getting Ready To Spud; Wells Coming Off Confidential List Tuesday

Active rigs: 186 (trending down)

Ten (10) new permits --

• Operators: CLR (4), Oasis (3), Whiting (2) XTO,
  Fields: Cow Creek (Williams), Dollar Joe (Williams), Sanish (Mountrail), Siverston (McKenzie)
• Comments:

Wells coming off confidential list were posted/tweeted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

One (1) producing well was completed:

• 23220, 475, CLR, Rennerfeldt 3-30H, Brooklyn, t5/13; cum --; 4 sections

One (1) permit canceled:

• 25733, PNC, Triangle, Arnegard 150-100-14-23-4H, 

These will be interesting wells to follow, resurveyed:

• 25087, conf, Statoil, Edna 11-2 6H, Camp, 
• 25088, conf, Statoil, Edna 11-2 4TFH, Camp, 
• 25089, conf, Statoil, Edna 11-2 3H, Camp, 
• 25090, conf, Statoil, Edna 11-25TFH, Camp, 
• 25091, conf, Statoil, Bill 14-23 3H, Alexander, 
• 25092, conf, Statoil, Bill 14-23 5TFH, Alexander, 
• 25644, conf, Statoil, Bill 14-23 6H, Alexander, 
• 25645, conf, Statoil, Bill 14-23 4TFH, Alexander,  

Coming off confidential list on Tuesday:

• 23457, drl, Hess, BB-Budahn A-150-95-0403H-2, Blue Buttes
• 24163, 759, Enerplus, Cirrus 149-94-33D-28H, Eagle Nest; t4/13; cum 13K 4/13;

Apparently Chicago, Maybe Illinois, Will Move Retired City Employees Off City Rosters Unto ObamaCare Rolls

Chicago will save $800 million -- CNBC.

Blue states, blue cities will benefit the most -- CNBC.

Cue up Connie Francis.

IllinoisReview is reporting:

SPRINGFIELD - Would Chicago abandon its public safety retirees to nationalized health care? Quietly, this week, the Illinois legislature passed a measure that could force Chicago retirees off private health care an onto the public exchanges being set up.

SB 1584 passed the Illinois Senate Thursday after passing the Illinois House Wednesday, and is now on its way to the governor's desk. The Fraternal Order of Police opposed the measure.

WGN Radio is reporting: 

A plan to phase out city subsidized health insurance coverage will shift about 30,000 city workers to private coverage or to seek subsidies from the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.

The plan is aimed at saving the city money as it wrestles with an $805 million shortage in retiree health care funds. This comes as the city’s guaranteed health care coverage mandate comes to an end at the beginning of next year.

Emanuel’s decision is raising the ire of city union employees, with some saying the mayor is playing games.

The retirees will move to a system they knew, to a system they do not know; and, all of us will pay for their generous benefits. Train wreck.

My hunch is this will end up in court. 

WWDC -- This Post Will Be Deleted Later Today

3:14: apparently no "one more thing." Later, I heard Apple will not use Google for search, but Bing (MSFT).

2:35: off to pick up the granddaughters at school -- I will miss "the one more thing" --

2:26: demo of iOS 7 -- 

2:24: Craig back on change; iOS 7, the biggest iOS change since the iPhone; typography; parallax tracks your motion; carries over across the system;

2:18: video of iOS 7; Jony Ive narrates; translucency; responds to movement; standing ovation; folks are really, really impressed; so many features I was not even aware of -- how important the features were to the developers

2:18: iOS 7 introduced today; biggest change in iOS since the iPhone was introduced;

2:13: iOS -- huge audience excitement; Apple iOS #1; iPhone users use their smartphones much more than the other phones; same with tablets; important for advertisers to know; iPad and iPhone -- where most mobile shopping is done; customer satisfaction #1 -- 9 consecutive times; first time that has ever been done; IOS satisfaction "off the charts" -- at 97%; "very satisfied" -- 73% (25 points better than Android); only 53% for Windows Phone; more than a third of Android users are using a 2010 version; iOS -- 93% using most recent version; 

2:07: iWork in iCloud -- demo. Will make my life easier when blogging; can do spreadsheets inside the browser; don't need Excel;

2:04: iCloud -- 300 million iCloud accounts; FaceBook took five years to reach this number; fastest growing cloud service; can send 8 billion e-mail notifications (more than NSA can track?); iWork for iCloud; create documents in a browser (what I've always wanted);

1:56: Mac Pro: being worked on -- for creative folks -- desktop; revolutionary; "can't innovate any more? my ass." This is going to blow the socks off folks. In the shape of the cylinder. New INTC chip. Internal storage based on flash; 2.5x faster than any previous flash; 10x faster than any fastest hard drive; Thunderbolt 2; backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1; first Mac ever to have dual workstation GPUs as standard; supports 4K display; up to three 4K displays; wow, about a third the size of the previous desktop; 1/8th volume; the future of the Pro desktop; later this year; designed in California; assembled in the USA;

1:54: new AirPort Extreme; new MacBook Air; twice the storage, same price; longer battery life; ships today;

1:51: MacBook Air -- updated an entire new line -- all-day battery life -- new 4th gen core -- INTC -- 11-inch, 5 hours to 9 hours; 13-inch, 9 hours to 12 hours of battery life;

1:50: Bottom line -- Mavericks now puts all this stuff on all platforms, including the Mac, not just the tablet or the iPhone

1:46: Demo; yes, I will be buying a new, large Apple monitor/display

1:44: iBooks being brought to the Mac

1:43: Maps -- set up route on Mac; one click to your iPhone with turn-by-turn directions

1:42: Calendar -- adds location, travel time, and weather

1:41: Notifications -- pops up on desktop without having to go to the application; can reply directly from the desktop notification without having to go to application; 

1:39: iCloud Keychain -- 

1:30: Back to OSX Mavericks -- battery life innovation

• Coalescing: CPU activity: power optimization; 72% less CPU activity
• Compressed memory:1.5x faster than Mountain Lion
• Safari: private browsing; block 3rd-party -- innovations in the past by Safari; now new innovations; can move from article to article without clicking; improvements over Chrome, Firefox; uses one-third the power that Firefox uses -- so if you want to extend battery life between charging using Safari, not Firefox; searching through messages, super-fast; "glassy-smooth"; power usage: can't be articulated -- need to see the demo;

1:25: Demo -- it's incredible to be watching this live, not having to wait for CNBC to give me an update; the technology is incredible; somehow, I'm getting the feeling this WWDC may be much "bigger" than folks imagined, if this is where they are only 20 minutes into the conference

1:22: OSX Mavericks --

• Finder Tabs: wow, tabs look just like iTunes; can take full screen
• Tags: when you save a document, you can tag it and will be easily found in Finder
• Multiple Displays: menus across multiple displays; summon your dock on multiple displays (more on this later, if I remember) -- this is really, really incredible.

1:21: delayed due to a dwindling supply of cats; this lion-thing in a different direction: Sea Lion? Maybe not. A set of names for the next 10 years: will be named with California theme -- OSX Mavericks -- (this may have been an error: Mavericks can be a "generic" name, but unlike Mountain Lion, Panther, etc., it is not a word "understood" worldwide -- in addition, it is an "inside joke," a familiar location to northern Californians, but not cache for the rest of us)

1:20: 28 million copies of Mountain Lion, IOS X latest version.  > 30% of uses have more recent version of IOS X; Windows struggling to get to 5%.

1:18: the Mac: 72 million installed base; #1 desktop in the US; MacBook is the #1 notebook in the US; average annual growth rate of Mac, 15% vs 3% for the PC; 5-yr total growth, 100% vs 18% for the PC

1:12: "anki" -- robotics and artificial intelligence company; launching their company on stage at the WWDC. CEO of "anki": robotics from labs at Carnegie Mellon; five years of work; this is incredible; programmed racing cars; gaming to a whole new level;

1:10: Update on the App Store. 575 million credit card accounts at the Apple App Store; more than any other internet "store." Click and buy.

1:09: Of course the video is incredible -- The Berlin (Germany) Apple Store. Tim is back.

1:04: Tim Cook is on stage.

1:02: WWDC kicks off with video presentation.

Streaming here. Only on Safari. Starts about 1:00 pm eastern time, and could last as along as two hours.

Live blogging has begun here. 

Note To Readers: There May Be No Single Huge News Story Today But In The Aggregate, One Of The More Exciting News Days In The Bakken In A Long Time

Scroll down. A lot of "small stories" building up to a "huge story" overall this June 10th:

• HK sneaks up on me: 135 net acres and 8 rigs in the Bakken
• TPLM surges; beats expectations
• Williams announces major natural gas line expansion
• Berkshire-B, though it's pulled back a bit now, blew through another 52-week high

These Companies Are Killing OPEC -- Motley Fool

Updates

Later, 4:04 pm: OAS hit a new 42-week high today.

Original Post

Link here.

Companies mentioned, in this order:

• KOG: grew its oil production by a staggering 250% last year
• Halcon: will spend $1.2 billion on oily assets this year; focus on the Bakken
• Oasis: $1 billion last year; less then $900 million this year for same number of wells
• NOG: will partner on 152 wells this year
• CHK: will cut CAPEX by 40%, but focus on oil

Yup, NOG, also.

In another Motley Fool story, these three were highlighted: CVX, COP, and HES.

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

Halcon Snuck Up On Me: 135,000 Net Acres; 8 Rigs In The Bakken

From Yahoo!In-Play:

Halcon Resources provides operational update; says co is currently operating 17 rigs across its holdings and is producing ~ 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day:
The co is currently operating 17 rigs across its holdings and is producing approximately 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Drilling and completion results continue to improve and there are 27 wells currently being completed or waiting on completion. Co continues to identify and acquire specific acreage in its core areas. 

The co is operating eight rigs on its 135,000 net acre position in the Williston Basin.
The implementation of drilling and completion modifications continues to yield impressive results. Co expects well costs in the Fort Berthold area to decrease by approximately 10% to $9.0 million by the end of 2013, through efficiencies related to pad drilling operations, implementation of centralized production facilities and continued optimization of completion techniques. 

Co is operating five rigs at El Halcon. The average effective lateral length for the two most recently drilled and completed wells in the play is 8,349 feet. The average initial production rate from these two wells is 1,116 boepd (94% oil) on a 16/64 choke, or 18% higher than the average initial rate for all previously drilled and completed Company-owned wells in this area. The co is operating two rigs on its 210,000 net acre position prospective for the Woodbine and other formations in East Texas.

Disclaimer: This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you thought you might have read here. 

Williams Announces Major Expansion Of Its Natural Gas Pipeline In Southeast US

From Yahoo!In-Play:
Williams Partners announces a major expansion of its Transco natural gas pipeline was completed and brought into service:

Co announced today a major expansion of its Transco natural gas pipeline was completed and brought into service, providing an additional 225,000 dekatherms of incremental firm natural gas transportation capacity to growing markets in the Southeast United States. The Mid-South Expansion project provides service to power generators in North Carolina and Alabama as well as a local distribution company in Georgia. 

Transco is a 10,200-mile pipeline system that transports natural gas to markets throughout the northeastern and southeastern United States. Transco's major customers are primarily power generators, local distribution companies and producers. 

In the last decade, the company has placed into service 16 Transco growth projects totaling in excess of $1.2 billion of capital investment, and growing system capacity to 9.9 MMdth/d.

For Investors Only: TPLM

Triangle Petroleum beats by $0.05; beats on revs; provides operational update: Reports Q1 EPS of $0.10 vs $0.05 CIQ est; revs increased 17% QoQ to $34.3 mln vs $31.5 mln CIQ est.

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

Two Assault-On-Battery Cases

First: the Tesla is a lemon without a less expensive battery. -- Barron's.

Tesla's stock was down 2.5% to below $99.33 in the first minutes of trading today. This is well off its closing high of $110.33.

This comes after Bill Alpert at Barron's wrote that Tesla's Model S "owes its better-than-200-mile range to batteries costing tens of thousands of dollars."

Tesla needs to drastically cut battery costs by 2016 when it plans to launch a car that is more affordable. "If Tesla's next-generation car can't go the distance at half the price, its stock will head much lower," Alpert wrote.

The sub-head of the summed up Alpert's stance. "Tesla's electric car offers a quiet, powerful ride. But unless it comes up with a cheaper, stronger battery, the stock could turn out to be a lemon.

Why Tesla is the darling of car enthusiasts, I will never know. Tens of thousands of dollars for a battery that will fetch you two hundred miles. What's wrong with that picture?

Second: Exide files for bankruptcy protection -- MarketWatch reports.

The filing is Exide’s second. It emerged from an earlier Chapter 11 restructuring in 2004.

The company makes Exide- and NorthStar-branded lead-acid batteries for vehicles and other machines. Its customers include auto makers, parts suppliers and retailers. 

Exide, which employs about 10,000 people in more than 80 countries, listed assets of about $1.9 billion and debts of $1.1 billion in its Chapter 11 petition.

Its profits have fallen amid high production costs, tight liquidity and stiff competition from its main competitor, Johnson Controls Inc.

Wal-Mart did them in. Wal-Mart chose Johnson Controls as its exclusive battery supplier. 

The Yellow Hose

COP.

15% ethanol.

The yellow hose.

Reuters is reporting.

Diesel.

The green hose.

Safe gasoline.

The black hose.

For Investors Only: BRK-B Blows Through To Another 52-Week High

BRK-B fascinates me for any number of reasons, least of which is not the BNSF story. The BNSF story is a huge chapter in the Bakken boom, but now "hidden" among Warren Buffett's other trophies, much of that story will be lost to the general public.

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

Monday Morning News; The Case For Clear Cutting America's Forests To Power Europe -- The Rolling Stones' Keyboardist; Aubrey Is Back!

Active rigs: 187 (steady, but down 2 after several days at 189)

Wells coming off the confidential list have been posted.

RBN Energy: Alaska LNG markets

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal):

Section C (Money & Investing):

• Aubrey is back! 

In April, after setting up shop in a six-story Oklahoma City building and conducting informal meetings with prospective backers, Mr. McClendon, 53 years old, sent a six-page letter to about a dozen private-equity firms.

The letter said that Mr. McClendon wants to raise between $2 billion and $3 billion of "initial equity capital" for his new exploration-and-production company, American Energy Partners LP.

• Heard on the street: a shale tale -- natural gas will pay the price of own success. I think we've heard this before. 

Section B (Marketplace):

• No links but several stories on upcoming news from Apple.

Section A:

• Technology emboldened the NSA; power corrupts; absolute power corrupts ... well, you know the rest.
• Shocked! Shocked! Booz Allen shocked by employee's data breach; something tells me he no long qualifies for the company's health care plan
• Polls show Americans 100% behind Obama on this one (spying). Not! Although it appears Congress supports him; after all, Senator Reid says Congress knew all about it for years
• Op-ed: why clear-cutting forests can -- and should -- power Europe -- Rolling Stones keyboardist