For The Archives -- The Shale Oil Plays

I am posting this link because of the two graphs. The first graph at the link is stunning, to say the least, and will be nice for the archives. If the link is broken over time, the graph shows the oil production coming from the four top US shale plays -- Bakken, Eagle Ford, Niobrara, and the Permian -- between 2007 and 2014.

The second graph is a bit more personal.

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

Okay, back to the second graph, and why it's a bit more personal.


The second graph shows the share price of Continental Resources (CLR) beginning in 2009 and going to May 14, 2014. You will note that you could have bought shares in CLR for as littel ast $15/share back in 2009. It doubled to $30 within days, and by 2012, it was up to $90/share. And, of course, it's now about $135, I guess.

The reason that it's "personal" is because a reader sent me a copy of The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman. The book starts out with the story of Harold Hamm at dinner with a couple of Merrill Lynch reps. They were discussing Hamm's plan to take his company public. Literally as the decision was being made to go forward with the IPO, one of the ML reps took a telephone call to learn that a Bakken well had just been completed ... and it was dry. The question was whether Hamm wanted to continue with the plans to go public, knowing they might have to lower the IPO price. Hamm went ahead with the IPO, pricing shares at $15, exactly where the graph at the linked site begins. 

It's fun to see the human dimension, as it were, behind the mundane graph.

Regardless what you think about the CLR story and that second graph, that first graph at the link is pretty stunning -- the one that shows production from the US shale plays over the past few years.