Closing Out The Poll -- Active Rigs At 199 -- September 10, 2014; One Shy Of 200; Ties Record For This Date; California Caves - Agrees To Take Bakken Crude By Rail; Mining Bitumen Without Strip Mining

Active rigs:

	9/10/2014	09/10/2013	09/10/2012	09/10/2011	09/10/2010
Active Rigs	199	184	192	199	141

The Poll:

Wiki defines summer for the northern hemisphere as the full three months of June, July, and August. By that definition, summer has ended.

The autumn equinox falls on September 23.

This is the first time I looked at the poll results, so it will be a surprise to me how it comes how. 

The poll:

• we will reach 200 rigs by the end of summer: 61%
• we will NOT reach 200 rigs by the end of summer: 39%

Regardless how you voted, I think we can consider this a win-win for everyone. 199 is very, very close to 200 (and if we reach that number by September 22/23, I will say we hit the 200 mark this summer, though 39% of you will cry foul). But today's 199 ties the record, last set in 2011. And, the rigs are much more powerful and the roughnecks much more efficient in 2014 than they were in 2011.

Quite remarkable to say the least.

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California Caves

This is also quite remarkable. California approves a new CBR off-loading terminal and will accept Bakken crude oil.

The first substantial oil-by-rail project at a California refinery won approval on Tuesday despite a last-minute push for more scrutiny by some environmental groups.

The facility at Alon USA Energy Inc's shuttered Bakersfield refinery in Kern County, home to about 65 percent of California's heavy oil output, will push crude offloading capacity to as high as 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) from the current 13,000 bpd.

The Kern County Board of Supervisors approved the $100 million project after a lengthy environmental review. Alon Chief Executive Officer Paul Eisman told the board the project could start up by the third quarter next year.

At least someone can make a decision, even if President Obama cannot.

By the way, California may not have had much choice. It is my understanding (posted a long, long time ago), California is like Hawaii in that the state has no crude oil pipelines running to it. Again, if I recall correctly, I believe I read somewhere, no crude oil pipelines run to California. That makes sense due to the tectonic movement in that state; the fact that California had its own (almost?) self-sustaining oil and gas industry; and, c) it had ports on the ocean to take Alaska oil. 

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"Mining" Oil Sands Bitumen Without Strip Mining

This is a great article; the link sent to me by a reader. I did not know this. More than half of that Alberta, Canada, oil sands bitumen is being produced in-situ, with steam, without disturbing the surface through strip mining. The Economist is reporting:

Many operators now extract the bitumen without strip mining. “In-situ” production, as it is called, involves injecting high-pressure steam, heated to more than 300°C, into deep boreholes. The steam, emerging from millions of slits in a steel borehole liner, liquefies the bitumen and allows it to be pumped out.

Using steam extraction means that nine-tenths of the land above a reservoir can be left intact. There is no need for waste ponds because the sand is left underground and most of the water recovered from the bitumen can be cleaned with distillation for reuse. Steam can also produce bitumen from a reservoir half-a-kilometre underground, whereas strip mining is only economical for deposits less than 70 metres or so from the surface.

The proportion of bitumen produced with steam now stands at 53% and will continue to grow, says the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), a government agency. One of the newer methods, steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), has proved particularly effective, says Ken Schuldhaus of the AER. SAGD involves drilling two horizontal wells through an oil-sands reservoir, one about five metres below the other. Steam is then released from the top well and over a few weeks can melt bitumen as far as 50 metres above and to the sides of the bore. The bitumen then percolates down and into the lower well, from which it is pumped to the surface.

 Much, much more at the linked article.

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Hawaii Energy

RBN Energy: LNG in Hawaii.