Reader With Question About Four CLR Banks Permts Expiring This Month -- September 29, 2014

A reader asked about the status of permits, 23790 - 23793. They were originally permitted in September, 2012; and, permits renewed in September, 2013. No activity yet; curious if CLR will renew the permits?

• 23790, conf, CLR, Pasadena 2-2H, Banks, 
• 23791, conf, CLR, Pasadena 3-2H, Banks, 
• 23792, conf, CLR, Monroe Federal 2-2H, Banks, 
• 23793, conf, CLR, Monroe Federal 3-2H, Banks, 

I doubt CLR would lose these permits. Banks oil field is a great field.

Paperwork often lags events; posting data to the NDIC website takes a bit of time. The wells are still shown as confidential on the GIS map server and the scout tickets.

Sited in this same section, just a few feet to the north of the proposed four-well pad is this well:

• 22891, 947, CLR, Monroe 1-2H, t8/12; cum 209K 7/14;

And another well on 1280-acre spacing ends in this same section; the well is sited in the section to the south:

• 21148, 809, CLR, Pasadena 1-11H, t7/12; cum 138K 7/14;

From a mineral owners perspective, I would be happy if CLR waited until all their new completion data was analyzed, to get the best possible well. It's possible CLR simply has more work than it can handle and is prioritizing based on available resources. It's also possible that CLR is still analyzing the data. This is a great field; they might as well optimize it.

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Wind

If you enjoy spin, you might enjoy this Prairie Business article on wind farms in North Dakota. I'm not going to go through it again, but I link/post it to remind folks of the relative cost of wind/solar/coal:

“A 500 megawatt project will cost about $1 billion when it’s done and we just can’t raise that kind of capital in South Dakota,” Johnson says.

He anticipates the project could be complete by 2018. The company, which is based in Colorado with regional offices in Texas and Minneapolis, has been developing projects in North America since 1997 but didn’t log its first North Dakota project until earlier this year with the purchase of the Border Winds Project near the Canadian border in Rolette County.

Construction began in June and is expected to be complete in October next year, when ownership will transfer to Excel Energy. 

The wind farm will be spread across 23,000 acres and will be capable of producing 150 MW of power from 75 turbines. The cost of the project is not being disclosed, but Morgan says Xcel Energy expects the project could reduce customer costs by about $45 million over its lifetime. 

The cost of the project is not being disclosed; isn't that interesting? That speaks volumes and suggests the cost ....

For comparison in cost:

From an earlier post, March 20, 2014:

• Solar: $3 million / MW
• Wind: $2.5 million / MW
• Natural gas: $865,000 / MW

In this Prairies Business article, it sounds like the wind projects are over $2.0 million / MW, in line with other wind projects. New coal plants are in the $600K range. 

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For Newsaholics / Political Junkies

I am currently reading two books on the Kennedy assassination (Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy) and A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination.

I am not follow the conspiracy theory but the books are excellent resources to help understand the processes involved.

Meanwhile, I have just finished watching the first two full seasons of House of Cards on DVD.

The two books and the TV series really, really put The (London) Mail in perspective: Obama had accurate intelligence on ISIS before the 2012 election. It's pretty clear the president was disengaged from running the country these past two years, and things are now starting fit the timeline quite well. From The (London) Mail:

• a national security staffer in the Obama administration said the president has been seeing 'highly accurate predictions' about the rise of the ISIS terror army since 'before the 2012 election' 
• Obama insisted in his campaign speeches that year that America was safe and al-Qaeda was 'on the run' 
• the president said during Sunday's '60 Minutes' program that his Director of National Intelligence had conceded he underestimated ISIS 
• but the administration aide insisted that Obama's advisers gave him actionable information that sat and gathered dust for more than a year 
• 'He knew what was at stake,' the aide said of the president, and 'he knew where all the moving pieces were' 
• Obama takes daily intelligence briefings in writing, he explained, because no one will be able to testify about warning the president in person about threats that the White House doesn't act on 

Harvard trained him well. He can always say he never saw the briefings.