For Investors Only; MRO's Tyler Information Released; Price Of Gasoline Hits 6-Year High; North Dakota Crosses The One-Million BOPD Threshhold

North Dakota crossed the one-million bopd threshhold in April, 2014. Data was released at 1:00 p.m., Tuesday, June 17, 2014. The Director's Cut is here.

Price of gasoline hits 6-year high. Bloomberg is reporting.

Trading at new 52-week highs: DVN, ERF, LGCY, NFX, NRG, SD, WIN.

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MRO's Tyler Rundle Trust Well -- file report released

• 26794, 88, MRO, Rundle Trust 21-29TH (second attempt; first attempt: Rundle Trust 11-29TH)

From the well file report:

• 24 stages; 1,676,220 lbs of proppant which is the amount they used to use in the Bakken; now it is not uncommon to go to 36 stages and 3 to 4 million lbs of proppants
• Helmerich and Payne #259
• spud October 28, 2013 
• "the second well of MRO's new exploration program in the Tyler Formation
• "after completing a vertical pilot and coring the Tyler & Three Forks formations, and attempting lateral drilling on the Rundle Trust 11-29TFH, the decision was made to skid H&P 259 to make another attempt to drill a two-section lateral in the Tyler Formation. This lateral is aimed to prove that a two-section lateral can be drilled in the Tyler, and that the Tyler is a viable zone for oil production." 
• MRO is targeting an interbedded limestone and shale interval that is approximately 50' below the top of the Tyler Formation and was expected to be 8 feet thick. Staying in the target proved very difficult. There is a significant hardness difference between the primary limestone target and the interbedded shale units. The limestone is firm; the bounding shale layers were soft 
• very little natural gas; no flaring or backside pressure was observed or held while drilling
• reached total depth of the lateral on December 7, 2013, after 40.5 days from spud
• the curve showed that the Tyler has two prospective targets: one approximately 12 feet thick; and another (thickness not specified, but sounds like 8 feet thick)
• the challenge is keeping the drill bit in the target zone

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Pulling A Bergdahl

A reader sent me a link to this article in which The Chicago Tribune lists all of President Obama's failures (and the list seems endless). The Tribune says President Obama failed, because like President Bush, he is a poor manager.

Regardless of whether one feels President Obama has made any mistakes or not, and let's for argument's sake say he has been perfect, making no mistakes, there's something inherently wrong with the writer's premise. 

My response:

The article says the mistakes were because President Obama was a poor manager. I disagree with that: Presidents, just like four-star general officers, are not "managers." Presidents are not elected and general officers are not promoted for being "good managers."

Presidents and four-star general officers are leaders and change-agents.

This is what Obama and Bush both had in common: they held no one accountable. President Obama should have fired the cabinet head as soon as the specific debacle surfaced. He should have fired Hillary after Benghazi. That would have gotten the attention of everyone in his administration; no one is "holier" than Hillary among the Democrats; she is THEIR sacred cow. He should have fired Sebelius as soon as the first word of disaster in ObamaCare. Shinseki should have been fired a year earlier.

However, that is past.

I think with the Iraqi "thing," I think we are seeing something entirely new with regard to President Obama.

I don't have any clue how "being a poor manager" would have resulted in losing Iraq, as we are now doing. It was his decision not to make a preemptive strike: his decision alone. That's not a failure of management; that's a failure of leadership. 

No, starting about six months ago, maybe a year ago, Obama went AWOL. He has simply walked away from the presidency.

While CNN video was showing a professional army sweeping through Mosul and then Tikrit, to the doorsteps of Baghdad, the President walked (actually he literally flew) away from Washington (just as he walked away from the situation room the night Benghazi fell).

While video was showing a professional army sweeping through Iraq, President Obama left Washington, DC, to a) watch native Americans dance in a remote location of North Dakota/South Dakota (really?); b) to talk about global warming to college students at a non-descript venue in southern California (UC Irvine? Really?); and, c) and I can't make this up, went golfing, according to his mouthpiece, The New York Times. 

President Obama understands the frustration of Sgt Bergdahl who also walked away from his post, frustrated with the US Army.

President Obama has similarly telegraphed his frustration with Washington, DC; Congress; and, the Drudge Report, and is simply pulling a Bergdahl. So, I don't think it has anything to do with poor management. It was his lack of leadership (not holding anyone accountable) that resulted in the failures prior to Iraq, and now the "failure in Iraq," is due to walking away from the job.

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In my 21 years of formal education (I include one year of kindergarten though I only attended half-days, all that was offered at that time), I never once heard Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt (both of them), Kennedy, or even Bill Clinton referred to as great managers. Likewise, I have never once considered Generals US Grant, Robert E Lee, George Custer, Douglas MacArthur, George Patton, great managers.

Even Elizabeth Warren (is she the only Native American currently serving in the US Senate?) would not refer to the four great Native American Indian chiefs -- Crazy Horse (the greatest), Sitting Bull (a close second), Red Cloud, and Spotted Tail -- as "managers." They were leaders, each one of them and many, many others. 

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One of the best stories of leadership I have ever read was John Hershey's 1944 account of JFK's surviving and saving his men when his PT 109 was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer in the Pacific in WWII. I did not understand the weight on President Lincoln's shoulders during the Civil War until I saw "the movie."