Ten (10) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA; 2 Of 3 Bakken Wells Going To DRL Status -- Awaiting Fracking

Wells coming off confidential list Friday:

• 25777, drl, Statoil, Lloyd 34-3 3H, Sandrocks, no production data, 
• 26234, 2,524, QEP, Moberg 2-18TH, Grail, one section, t11/13; cum 68K 3/14;
• 26378, drl, KOG, P Vandeberg 154-99-1-1-12-15H3, Stockyard Creek, no production data, 
  

Active rigs:

	5/15/2014	05/15/2013	05/15/2012	05/15/2011	05/15/2010
Active Rigs	191	194	210	173	114

Ten (10) new permits --

• Operators: XTO (5), Oasis, Hess, Enduro, Whiting, Welter,
• Fields: North Fork (McKenzie), Haystack Butte (Dunn), Baker (McKenzie), Antelope (McKenzie), Mohall (Bottineau), Sanish (Mountrail),
• Comments: Welter Consulting has a permit for a wildcat in Renville; this is the third North Dakota permit for Welter Consulting; their first two wells in North Dakota were dry, back in 2012 and 2013; Welter Consulting appears to be out of Billings, MT;

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

Five (5) producing wells completed:

• 24984, 2,154, Statoil, Jack Cvancara 19-18 6H, Alger, t4/14; cum --
• 24985, 1,831, Statoil, Jack Cvancara 19-18 7TFH, Alger, t4/14; cum --
• 26071, 860, Hess, BL-Iverson 155-95-1819H-5, Beaver Lodge, t4/14; cum --
• 26112, 800, Hess, EN-Chamley 156-93-0508H-2, Baskin, t4/14; cum --
• 26350, 726, Hess, SC-Berner-157-99-1918H-1, Lone Tree Lake, t4/14; cum --  

American Eagle canceled a permit:

• 27544, PNC, Lorelei 2-1-163-101, Colgan, 

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ObamaCare: Big Increases in Premiums and Deductibles Coming in November

The Fiscal Times is reporting:

The Obama administration postponed a portion of the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act in order to avoid paying the political consequences of a market disruption in the group insurance sector. If new premium pricing proposals from insurer filings in the states of Virginia and Washington come to pass, the White House may have no way out of accountability for their health-care reform folly.

When Obamacare first rolled out last fall, the failure of the federal and state exchanges were only the first signs of disaster. Premiums spiked upward in both the individual and group markets, and insurers raised deductibles and narrowed provider networks to save themselves money. Millions of people lost their existing insurance plans in the individual market, and many ended up in plans that either didn’t fit or cost far more than they spent in the past.

Remember, this is being posted in "mainstream media": YahooNews.

Now that insurers have seen the composition of their new risk pools under Obamacare, they have to calculate their new pricing levels for state and federal regulators. The pricing jump for 2014 was more speculative, based on the presumed demographic composition of incoming enrollees. The pricing proposals from Virginia and Washington indicate that the new enrollments made the risk pools riskier than first thought.

Rate-proposal filings in the state of Washington show the four largest insurers proposing average increases across their plans ranging from 8.1 percent to 11.2 percent in a single year. Jonathan Wu of Value Penguin analyzed the proposals and concluded that the insurers tried betting on success, and came up short.

“What is troubling about the data is that among these insurers, there is clearly an issue with the premiums offered in the first enrollment period,” Wu writes. Noting that the four companies offered the lowest prices in the market this year, their enrollment numbers are not surprising, but their consumers may get a less-pleasant surprise by the end of the year.

In Virginia, two insurers control 86 percent of the market, and both propose steep increases in 2015 premiums. Anthem, which has 113,614 of the roughly 170,000 enrollments, wants to boost prices by an average of 8.5 percent next year, while CareFirst wants a hike of 14.9 percent.

All five insurers in the Virginia exchange want price hikes, with only Kaiser’s proposal falling below an 8.5 percent increase. If the Obamacare experience in these two states provides any indication, Wu writes, “then consumers might need to brace themselves for rate hikes in the coming months.”

The Affordable Care Act.