For Investors Only; Infill Density In Stockyard Creek To Be 16 Wells/Driling Unit -- Samson Oil & Gas

Yahoo!'s In-Play still seems to be on the fritz, as they say. It's finally post today's notes, but it is several hours behind. Deere's earnings weren't reported though they are out; they were not a pretty sight, and that probably explains today's market.

Samson Oil & Gas repots its weekly operations update: Co reports the infill development plan for North Stockyard is to drill 8 middle Bakken wells and 8 Three Forks wells.

• Rod pumps were installed on Little Creature and Tooheys wells, and both are currently pumping. 
• The Bootleg 5-14-15TFH well has been drilled a measured depth of 11,675 feet, which is the total depth of the intermediate hole landing in the Three Forks Formation. The rig is currently preparing to run the 7 inch production casing. The rig will then be skidded to the Bootleg 4-14-15TFH well, which has been drilled to surface casing depth of 2,418 feet, where 9-5/8 inch casing was run and cemented. The intermediate hole will be drilled from this depth. 
• Hydraulic fracture stimulation operations are planned to start on both Matilda Bay wells on May 14th.

Six companies announce increased dividends or distributions including Clorox.

The Dow is off slightly but almost all energy stocks are up, and some are up nicely, probably due to the price of oil continuing to rise; today, up another half-percent, solidly above $102/bbl. Interestingly enough, the price of gasoline in our neighborhood is down; the least expensive is about $3.35/gallon.

Trading at new 52-week highs: BAX, TRN.

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KMOV (St Louis, MO) is reporting:

Employees at an Affordable Care Act processing center in Wentzville with a contract worth $1.2 billion are getting paid to do nothing but sit at their computers, a whistleblower tells News 4.

The facility is operated by Serco, which is owned by a British company awarded $1.2 billion partially to hire workers to handle paper applications for coverage under the new healthcare law.

A worker tells News 4 weeks can pass without employees receiving even a single application to process. Employees reportedly spend their days staring at their computers.

“They’re told to sit at their computers and hit the refresh button every 10 minutes, no more than every 10 minutes,” the employee said. “They’re monitored, to hopefully look for an application.”

Nice work, if you can get it, not the employees, but the CEO. I assume the contract was a fixed fee contract; as the number of applications dwindles, the CEO lays off more workers. If the contract were based on the number of applications processed, the company would likely need one or two workers.