Mike Filloon On The Smaller Bakken Operators; Soaring Grocery Prices

It's been a long time since we've heard from Mike Filloon. And, as usual, very, very good.

The contribution is from SeekingAlpha.

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

Filloon mentions these are the Bakken operators he likes for 2014:

• Triangle (TPLM) 
• Kodiak (KOG) 
• Abraxas (AXAS) 
• Oasis (OAS) 
• Whiting (WLL)  

In addition, he likes Emerald Oil (EOX) and devotes the article to Emerald.

Incidentally, Filloon says this early on in the article:

As you can see in the above diagram, the Wahpeton pad tests 8 wells per interval. Four source rock (sic) were targeted, from the middle Bakken to the third bench of the Three Forks. Continental probably has more well data than any other operator in the Bakken. It's choice to drill the tightest spacing to date (and most expensive pad) in this area shows confidence. Continental has alluded to Wahpeton as a success and it's reason to pursue this spacing using three pads. Each pad is near the Hawkinson, Rollefstad and Tangsrud pads.

That's interesting. I was always under the impression there was one source rock, the Upper Bakken which "fed" the underlying formations.

By the way, there were a lot of typographical errors in this article.

Readers need to know that the article will only be available for a limited time.

The best part of the article is Filloon's optimism on southern ops in the Bakken. To date, I have not been particularly impressed, but Filloon is very, very optimistic. He noted that along with Whiting, Oasis has also invested in the southern edge of the Bakken.

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A Note to the Granddaughters -- Science

The photo is a bit too dark but it will be a nice reminder of how we spent a recent afternoon. We were studying electric circuits. The older one was putting together a circuit that would  produce different alarm sounds by waving her hand over a photo-receptor. Electricity was one of my weaker subjects in high school, and I have learned more about electricity working with our 10-year-old granddaughter than all I learned in high school. The younger granddaughter, by the way, is drawing a cartoon of her grandfather -- that would be -- getting electrocuted. LOL.

 Electric Circuits -- February 16, 2014

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A Note to the Granddaughters: Price Of Bread in 2014

I am not sure what to make of this. CBS News is reporting:

Food prices soar as incomes stand still.

While the government says prices are up 6.4 percent since 2011, chicken is up 18.4 percent, ground beef is up 16.8 percent and bacon has skyrocketed up 22.8 percent, making it a holiday when it's on sale.

"Oh my god!" Singer said as she spied bacon for $3. "The things that are going up in price are the things I absolutely need to buy," she said. "It's the meat, it's the milk, it's the eggs and it's getting out of hand."

So many comments, I don't know where to begin. That's been my impression also, the soaring food prices.  Bread is most interesting: generally, bread costs between $3.00 and $4.00 per loaf here in Dallas, Texas, area. But one can find store-brand white bread for 99 cents. In San Antonio it was 88 cents, but there's a huge difference between $1 and $4 and the product is not that much different.

I also noted that food prices are about 50% higher in southern California (Los Angeles) compared to Texas. The only two differences between Texas and California grocery stores is this, as far as I know: southern California grocery stores are highly unionized and southern Californians keep preventing Wal-Mart form moving in.

I really don't know.

Another observation. The article suggests that CBS is surprised that the government says prices in general are only up 6% since 2011 whereas food prices are up around 20%. Why should that be surprising? Does one really believe the 6%? It seems to me that most numbers provided by this administration -- from jobs to global warming to health care -- have been way off the mark.

Food prices up 20% since 2011? It would be interesting to see what the real tax increases have been on Americans since 2011 -- including the biggest new tax, Obamacare.