The Obama Environmental Speech

Platts is reporting.

My thoughts all along.

Ten (10) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA;

Active rigs: 192 (nice trend up)

Ten (10) new permits --

• Operators: Bakken Hunter (2), Denbury Onshore (2), Marathon (2), Oasis, Hunt, Newfield, Hess
• Fields: Westberg (McKenzie), Cedar Hills (Bowman), Moccasin Creek (Dunn), Lone Tree Lake (Williams) Cottonwood (Mountrail), Ambrose (Divide)
• Comments: Hunt has a wildcat in Divide County; Red River wells for Denbury?

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

On producing well was completed:
23496, 300, CLR, Angus Federal 4-9H, Elm Tree, t5/13; cum --

Several pages of wells were transferred from G3 Operating, LLC, to HRC Operating, LLC.

This is just administrative; Halcon acquired GEOI which are the parent companies to HRC and G3 Operating, respectively, I believe.

Train Wreck

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

The nation's largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group Inc., is leaving California's individual health insurance market, the second major company to exit in advance of major changes under the Affordable Care Act.

UnitedHealth said it had notified state regulators that it would leave the state's individual market at year-end and force about 8,000 customers to find new coverage. Last month, Aetna Inc., the nation's third-largest health insurer, made a similar move affecting about 50,000 existing policyholders.

Both companies will keep a major presence in California, focusing instead on large and small employers.

The moves illustrate how different companies are responding to a major overhaul of the health insurance market for millions of consumers. Starting Jan. 1, the federal healthcare law forces insurers to accept all individual applicants regardless of their medical history and provide a comprehensive set of benefits with limits on patients' out-of-pocket spending.

Healthcare experts said some national insurers aren't interested in playing by those new rules in states where their presence in the individual market is relatively small and more profits can be made by tending to the employer market.

The government is counting on healthy 18 - 35 y/o's to buy very expensive health insurance to subsidize the program. Not gonna happen. They will pay the $95/annual penalty.

Wells Coming Off Confidential List Wednesday; Half To DRL Status; BR, QEP With Huge Wells; Newfield With Nice Wells

• 22337, drl, CLR, Columbia 3-5H,  Dollar Joe, no data, 
• 23507, drl, G3 Operating, Fort Berthold 152-93-17D-08-5H, Four Bears, no data,
• 23647, drl, BR, Lillibridge 24-22TFH 3NH, Johnson Corner, no data,
• 24230, 2,927, BR, State Veeder 11-25MBH, Blue Buttes, 2-section spacing;
• 24356, drl, Hess, EN-Hermanson 154-93-0235H-2, Robinson Lake, no data,
• 24452, 999, Newfield, Rolla State 152-07-1-12-10H, Westberg, t5/13; cum 3K 5/13;,
• 24453, 1,453, Newfield, Rolla State 152-97-1-1H, Westberg, t5/13; cum 14K 5/13;
• 24537, 2,842, BR, Midnight Horse 11-1MBH-ULW, Union Center, 4-section spacing, t5/13; cum 14K 5/13;
• 24561, drl, Hess, EN-Hermanson 154-93-0235H-4, Robinson Lake, no data,
• 24614, 2,729, QEP, Hemi 3-24-27TH, Grail, t5/13; cum 15K 5/13;

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

24230, see above, BR, State Veeder 11-25MBH, Blue Buttes:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
5-2013	14067	0

24453, see above, Newfield, Rolla State 152-97-1-1H, Westberg:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
5-2013	12052	0
4-2013	1265	0

 24537, see above, BR, Midnight Horse 11-1MBH-ULW, Union Center

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
5-2013	13964	0

 24614, see above, QEP, Hemi 3-24-27TH, Grail:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
5-2013	15187	0

In Ohio: Magnum Hunter Spudding On 18-Well Pad

Oil & Gas Journal is reporting:

Magnum Hunter Resources Corp., Houston, has spudded the first well on its Stalder pad in eastern Monroe County, Ohio.

The pad has been designed and permitted to drill as many as 18 wells, 10 to the Marcellus shale and eight to the Utica shale, using the company’s new Schramm T500XD robotic drilling rig. The first well will test the Marcellus and the second the Utica.

I assume these will all be natural gas wells.

Note: Magnum Hunter's Triad Hunter LLC subsidiary is operator with a 50% working interest in the drilling unit.

Flirting With $100 Oil -- Again

Events in Egypt.

For Investors: Esoteric But Important

Financial Times is reporting: oil groups win...

Oil companies have won a court victory against the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial regulator, over new rules that would have forced them to disclose details of their payments to governments in countries where they operate.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled yesterday morning that the SEC had misinterpreted Section 1504 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation act when drawing up regulations to implement the law.he rules proposed by the SEC would have forced companies to make public disclosures of their payments to governments, a measure that was strongly supported by Oxfam and other non-governmental organisations as a way to improve transparency and help fight corruption in resource-rich countries.

Oil companies had warned that publishing those payments would reveal information that could be valuable to their competitors, and would put them in an impossible position in four countries that prohibit such disclosure: Angola, Cameroon, China and Qatar.

Montana Completions - Oasis With Two Nice Wells; Dual Laterals For CLR, Oasis

Fairfield SunTimes reporting:

• CLR, 317, Cooper 1-10H, two laterals, Richland County
• Oasis, 1,198, Justice Federal 2759 44-11T, two laterals -- one in the Bakken, one in the Three Forks; Roosevelt County;
• Oasis, 1,819, Mercy Federal 2759 44-11, middle Bakken, Roosevelt County

War On Coal -- China

Rigzone is reporting:

As a possible way to reorient China’s economy and boost its sustainable growth, the government is engaging in a kind of populist urbanization, which is really focused more on “small city-ization” rather than traditional “urbanization.”

This policy is meant to focus on developing emerging cities rather than expanding large existing ones. The policy is being implemented by bulldozing farms and villages and moving the people into newly constructed cities with high-rise residential towers.

By 2025, China is expected to have over 200 cities with populations of more than one million people.

What lies behind this new strategy? According to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, city residents spend more than rural residents on services such as schools, healthcare, leisure and financial advice. This spending would help boost the country’s services sector and reduce the economy’s dependence on exports. Premier Li also cited the reality that the services sector is “capable of absorbing the largest number of new employees and is an important driving force behind scientific and technological innovation.” In a nutshell, the plan is to bring rural citizens to where their children can obtain better educations, health care and training that will make the future Chinese labor force more skilled and productive, able to compete on an international scale rather than to be limited to competing only based on low cost labor and manufacturing capacity.

200 Chinese cities, each with more than a million people: got coal?

US coal industry is watching and acting. 

Saudi Arabia Looking To Renewable Energy

Bloomberg is reporting.

This is a huge story with several story lines. I don't have time to post a full note, but hopefully I will remember to do that later this week.

The lede:

Saudi Arabia started a program to assess its potential for generating renewable energy, part of an effort to lure $109 billion for building a solar industry that will free up more of its crude oil for export.  

If one checks the tag at the bottom of the page, "Saudi Perspective" and searches "Saudi" on the blog, one will see where I'm going with this.

A "thank you" to Don for sending this story as well as several others already this morning.

A Note To The Granddaughters

A Note To The Granddaughters

I left the Dallas area last evening about 7:00 p.m. -- getting lost only once due to construction.

I crossed the New Mexico state line earlier this morning. I stopped for cat naps along the way over night.

The huge red rubber ball -- the sun -- is incredible as it sets over west Texas, and then again, as it rises over east New Mexico. It's really incredible. It is huge. It looks like it "is right there" -- close enough to drive to. It is amazing that from another spot in the Milky Way, the sun would be just another star. It's just amazing to think of the energy that is being generated. Talk about solar warming.

As I mentioned before, McDonald's has free wi-fi but no outlets; Starbucks has both but not as easily found.

I stopped at a McDonald's a few miles back but the line was very, very long -- a bus had just pulled in and it appeared all 40 travelers were getting breakfast. So I posted a short note and moved on.

This is incredible! A McDonald's with both free wi-fi and an outlet. One outlet. Someone else had discovered it; they looked like regulars but by the time I got my coffee, they had left. So, free wi-fi, and a chance to recharge the computer. Don't tell anyone, but it's the Santa Rose, NM, McDonald's off I-40. If corporate headquarters finds out, the local operator will get a note to remove the outlet. I think I will leave an extension cord with six outlets so that more people can access it -- LOL.

And a nice break.

It's supposed to be a bit cooler than the seasonal "normal" in this area -- in the Amarillo area it will only reach the low 80's. I don't know the forecast for Albuquerque.

A couple weeks ago I showed Arianna how to skip rocks when we walking around Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts. Lo and behold, there's a front page article in today's WSJ on skipping stones: in competitive stone-skipping circles, a rocky debate:

Among competitive stone-skippers, nothing makes ripples like a disagreement about regulation rocks.

The latest dispute in this sport for people who skim small stones across water is over imports used in competition.

At the Mackinac Island Stone Skipping & Gerplunking Club championships, some believe participants are supposed to source their equipment from the pebble-lined beaches of this Lake Huron island.

But there is growing concern that some competitors in America's oldest stone-skipping competition this July 4 are bringing rocks from other places that offer an unfair advantage.

Enforcing a ban on imports "would really level the playing the field," says John "Skippy" Kolar, the 55-year-old chairman of the club, who calls himself a stone "purist."

Importing stones "renders a disadvantage to the local people," he says. There is also an environmental concern: "You may be bringing in an unwanted traveler that exists on that stone that would do something drastic in the Great Lakes." 

The WSJ even has a video of stone-skipping. I'm impressed.

For reading I brought along several books, including John Steinbeck's The Log From The Sea of Cortez. I read it slowly. It's a great book. Young readers should be introduced to it before reading his other more famous works. One does not have to read the entire book: the introduction, the notes, and a couple of chapters, that would be enough.

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

Some observations on the trip so far:

Not much traffic. Not even very many trucks. I'm on I-40 now, having picked it up in Amarillo. The trucks are driving much more slowly than I would expect. Maybe their speed limit is different than that for automobiles (75).

The most-often-seen branded truck: Fed-Ex -- two so far. No Wal-Mart trucks. One USPS truck and that one was trailing the FedEx truck.

As pretty as the Appalachian Mountains were, I really enjoy the flatness and desolate landscape of Texas and New Mexico a whole lot more -- probably reminds me of North Dakota a bit more.

One of the highlights of the trip last night was to see a couple of BNSF trains just west of Ft Worth. Warren Buffett really, really lucked into a great deal when he bought that railroad.

Oh, and another highlight: I saw NASCAR's Texas Motor Speedway, just about the same time I saw the BNSF trains. They are widening the highway from a divided four-lane highway to what appears a 12-lane divided highway leading into the motor speedway. Just joking. They are enlarging the roads there significantly, but probably not 12 lanes. That's high on my list: to see a live race, probably a Saturday race which must be a whole more inexpensive and a whole lot less busy.

Tuesday Morning News And Lnks

Active rigs:  191 (up nicely)

RBN Energy: second in a series on The Permian. Takeaway capacity.

Minimal blogging for next two days. Driving from Dallas to Los Angeles. Just across the New Mexico state line.

Yesterday:

One one new permit:

• 25892, loc, BR, Blue Ridge 41-20MBH ULW, 

Seven (7) producing wells were completed:

• 22512, 1,848, Statoil, Lonnie 15-22 2TFH, Ragged Butte, t5/13; cum --
• 22668, 1,436, MRO, Diamond A 41-28H, Bailey, t5/13; cum 12K 5/13;
• 22715, 761, Statoil, D D 26-35 2TFH, Squires, t5/13; cum --
• 23243, 645, CLR, Addyson 3-23H, Brooklyn, 4-section spacing, t4/13; cum 19K 5/13;
• 23543, 2,772, Statoil, Albert B. 27-34 5H, Nameless, t5/13; cum --
• 23857, 583, CLR, Salo 6-35H, Hamlet, 4-section spacing; t6/13; cum --
• 23858, 566, CLR, Salo 5-35H, Hamlet, 4-section spacing; t6/13; cum --