CLR Applies For Crude Oil Export Permit -- June 4, 2014

Active rigs:

	6/4/2014	06/04/2013	06/04/2012	06/04/2011	06/04/2010
Active Rigs	190	189	214	171	121

RBN Energy: imagine there is no oil export bill -- impact on refining. These are important stories to watch to see how the tea leaves are floating. I don't expect to see any meaningful change in US oil export laws in my investing lifetime.

The Wall Street Journal

Fed officials growing wary of market risk.


ECB anxious over US fines on banks. If I get a chance, I will get back to this story. It says a lot. In another story, ECB seen ready to tackle Europe's low inflation. Really?

Five states that launched health exchanges under ObamaCare are in for a shock: the cost of fixing their sites. And the five states are ... drum roll ... Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, and Oregon. There is an interesting story line there -- except for Nevada, they were the front-runners in the race to push a US national health system. Minnesota keeps showing up on the wrong lists.

EPA's 30-30 plan pinches states unevenly. Blame Podesta. I was curious who wrote the rules -- I posted that observation just a day or so ago. Behind EPA's cost estimate.

US auto sales surged in May.

ATT sells $2 billion in bonds; 30-year bonds to yield 1.40 percentage points more than comparable US Treasurys, for a yield of around 4.8%. Or you buy the company directly and get 5.2%.

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.

The Los Angeles Times

Republicans are leading key legislative races, early returns show.

DUI driver, pulled from deadly crash with beer in pocket, gets 6 years of free medical care, three meals a day, and a personal man-cave. What's not to like.

Two people killed when Ambrak train hits car in Oxnard. That's more people killed by a quasi-government railroad than by all the crude oil derailments in the US. Will Amtrak need to slow down? LOL. Any slower, and the rules of classical physics suggests Amtrak will have to travel backwards.

Long Beach polling place runs out of ballots during evening voting. They weren't prepared for the union buses coming in from East L.A.

Original Post

Every weekday morning I have a standard North-Dakota-active-rig post, an RBN-Energy link, and a quick look at the day's Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other headline stories. In the past two days I have not posted notes from the WSJ or the LAT; I have just been too busy.

As before, this post will be a place holder for tomorrow morning's post, assuming the sun comes up, my wife's sets the alarm correctly, and I have a wi-fi connection.

First note of note. Reuters is reporting that Harold Hamm has applied for an oil export license:

Continental Resources has asked the U.S. government for a permit to export crude oil it produces in North Dakota and hopes approvals will be granted for the industry as a whole, a company executive said on Tuesday.

You have to love this bit of trivia:

Stephen Bradley, the vice president of oil marketing for Continental, the leading producer in North Dakota's Bakken field, said the Department of Commerce has been weighing the company's request for several months, Argus Media reported.

I'm not holding my breath on this one.

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Second note of note, the June, 2014, Oasis corporate presention, a PDF file. This deserves a stand-alone post; if I remember, I will do that. There's a bit of trivia that I bet no one has picked up on, but it's an important piece of trivia if accurate.

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A reader sent me this story. Because it mentioned Magnum Hunter and the Bakken, I've included it here. bizjournals.com is reporting that Magnum Hunter is more focused on the Marcellus/Utica right now than the Bakken due to better infrastructure in the northeast. 

Houston-based Magnum Hunter Resources Corp. (NYSE: MHR) thinks it could soon take the throne as owner of the most productive well in the Utica shale play. Magnum Hunter's well is only the second in the Utica shale in West Virginia. (Chevron Corp.  drilled the first in Marshall County earlier this year).

It’s located on the Steward-Winland pad in Tyler County, just east of Marietta.

“We think this well is on the equivalent of (Rice Energy Inc.'s Bigfoot 9H) well,” Gary Evans, Magnum Hunter’s CEO, told CNBC host Jim Cramer June 2. “We’ll be fracking that well over the next 30 to 45 days.”

It's a bit hard to tell from the story what Magnum really thinks about the Bakken. I track all Bakken operators at the "Snapshot" tab at the top of the blog.  According to Magnum Hunter's June, 2014, corporate presentation, the company is still bullish on the Bakken, having about 97,000 net acres, some developed, some undeveloped.

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Natural gas killing nuclear energy -- New York Times -- this make the newspaper a candidate for the 2014 Geico Rock Award.

But natural gas is starting to replace nuclear power, which can be seen as wiping out about 10 percent of the savings, because a reactor has a carbon footprint of nearly zero. Last year the owners of five reactors announced they would retire them. Some had mechanical problems or political opposition; some did not. But all were challenged by the drop in prices on the wholesale market, driven down by natural gas. And several other reactors are losing money and could close this year.

Yup.

Japan found out the hard way what a nuclear disaster could do. Germany didn't wait to find out. Germany eschewed natural gas, also -- went back to coal.  This article conveniently forgets to mention that inconvenient truth -- Germany returning to coal.

Speaking of which, speaking of coal, I'm reading the new book published this year by The New Yorker, The 40s which should show up at this link, although the link might be dynamic and might change: http://www.newyorker.com/the40s.

There's a New Yorker article on the "Berlin airlift" re-printed in that book. It is the essay that everyone should read if interested in the airlift. Really well written. Slightly less than 2/3rds of everything airlifted was coal; slightly more than 1/3 was food. The one or two percent that made up the difference included meat, cheese, and chocolate, the top three most coveted items after coal. The Germans love coal. It probably was not difficult for them to give up on nuclear energy.

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Remember the Range Resources story in Texas. Texas Railroad Commission says fracking not the culprit.