Producing Acres In The Sanish Field = $60,000/Acre; Monday, Monday -- October 6, 2014; Farley Foods (Wholesale Costco Supplier) To Open Store In Williston

Active rigs:

	10/6/2014	10/06/2013	10/06/2012	10/06/2011	10/06/2010
Active Rigs	190	183	190	194	151

RBN Energy: reviews the proposed merger of Enterprise Products Partners and Oiltanking.

Last Wednesday (October 1, 2014) pipeline and NGL giant Enterprise Products Partners LP (Enterprise) announced step one of a two step multi-billion dollar deal to merge their assets with competing major liquids storage and terminal partnership Oiltanking Partners (Oiltanking).

If the deal goes according to plan (timing to be determined) Enterprise will absorb all of Oiltanking. Both companies have significant midstream assets in the Houston and surrounding Gulf Coast region that is currently front row center of efforts to process and handle an incoming flood of new crude and natural gas liquids arriving from U.S. shale plays. Today we review the deal.

********************************

From Yahoo!In-Play:

Natural Resource announces acquisition of additional Williston Basin oil and gas interests for $340 mln; raises rev guidance as result (NRP) : Co reported that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire non-operated working interests in oil and gas properties located in the Bakken/Three Forks play of the Williston Basin from an affiliate of Kaiser-Francis Oil Company for $340 million, subject to customary purchase price adjustments. 

And, yes, Kaiser-Francis has been "featured" on the blog before.

The Houston Business Journal is reporting:

The properties are in the Sanish Field in Mountrail County, North Dakota, in the Bakken/Three Forks play of the Williston Basin. They are all held by production and operated by Whiting Petroleum Corp. of Denver.

The approximately 5,700 net acres include 186 producing wells and 10 wells in various stages of development and estimated average current production of approximately 3,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

For $340 million, the assets to be acquired:

• Estimated average current production of approximately 3,100 Boe/d
• Includes 186 producing wells and 10 wells in various stages of development
• Approximately 5,700 net acres, all held by production
• Average working interest of approximately 15%
• 100% operated by Whiting Petroleum

$340 million / 5,700 net acres (producing) = $60,000/acre?

Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors.

********************************

The most interesting global energy story is "What will Saudi do?" At the moment, some are reporting that OPEC is in disarray. 

********************************

From a reader, Farley Foods coming to Williston:

Farley Foods (wholesale delivery for Costco) apparently likes the response they received in Williston during their test of the Williston market. Though not a full size Costco (yet) they apparently are moving one step further by opening up their first store in Williston so Williston shoppers can physically go and shop Costco products. 

See the link belowhttp://www.northdakota.farleysmarket.com/#!grains--pasta/c9km. It's likely this link will go away with time.

********************************

This is not an investment site; do not make any financial, investment, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

HP is splitting up. Won't save the company.

S&P 500 spending almost all profits on stock buybacks. Speak volumes for a) the economy; and, b) investors.

Wal-Mart to cash in on ObamaCare. Wal-Mart has studied ObamaCare, knows how to work this. Will open one-stop healthy coverage shopping. With the most employees of any corporation in the universe (with the exception of some "state" entities, I suppose), Wal-Mart has the base on which to study ObamaCare. Very interesting.

Perhaps the most entering iPhone discussions are between the Samsung faithful and the Apple fanboys. I had read earlier today that Samsung might be losing sales to Apple but the source was not reliable. Now Bloomberg is reporting:

Samsung Electronics Co. will spend 15.6 trillion won ($15 billion) building a chip plant in South Korea as it heads for its roughest quarterly result in years amid smartphone competition from Apple Inc. and Xiaomi Corp. 

Samsung, the biggest memory-chip maker, is investing as its smartphone business struggles to stay dominant with Apple introducing bigger-screen iPhones and Xiaomi selling its low-cost devices in more overseas markets. Third-quarter operating profit, due to be released tomorrow, is projected to plunge 47 percent and sales may drop 15 percent in the steepest declines since at least 2009, according to analyst estimates. 

 *************************************

The Wall Street Journal

And that's the top story in WSJ today: HP to split. And we aren't talking about their shares.

Islamic State proves resiliant. The problem, as I see it: President Obama has not dranw a red line around the Islamic State.

 Beckton Dickinson to buy CareFusion.

GM issues three new recalls. There is talk on the street that with one more GM recall, there will no longer be any traffic problems in Austin, TX.

Overheard on the street:

Amazon was the online price leader in clothing and shoes, electronics, housewares and health and beauty, except when compared with Wal-Mart Stores and Target, according to a study by Wells Fargo and product-pricing data firm 360pi.

This tracked prices of 100,000 items over the past year at 10 retailers including Amazon.

It showed the e-commerce giant’s prices were about 20% below online prices at Kohl’s and RadioShack, 16% below Sears Holdings’ and 14% below those at Macy’s.

But Target’s online prices were about 5% below Amazon’s. And, as of August, Wal-Mart’s were trending 10% lower.

The difference has been growing: Wal-Mart’s online prices were only about 1% lower six months ago, the study found. That comes more as a result of Amazon raising prices than Wal-Mart lowering them. 

******************************************

Speaking of Cameras -- Which We Weren't

Folks looking to buy a new camera might want to take a look at Canon's PowerShot SX50 HS -- if you can find them. They are being discontinued, and prices are coming down significantly.  The camera was introduced in 2012, and may simply be one of the best Canon cameras for the buck, especially now that the price has come down significantly.

There may be many, many reasons for this camera to be discontinued, but the biggest reason might be the newer cameras "have" more megapixels. The SX50 has "only" 12 megapixels. The new Canons have 18 megapixels which are recommended if printing pictures bigger than 18 x 24. The largest I have ever done are 8 x 10's and I'm doing a lot more of those now with the granddaughters swimming and playing soccer.

****************************

The Los Angeles Times

Nobel Prize in Medicine goes to "Anglo-American scientist and a Norwegian husband-and-wife" research team.

Vice President Biden will be visiting California where he will no doubt share some new jokes in the 9/11 7-Eleven stores.

For quite some time I've mentioned that I can't take the California drought seriously until they start shutting down golf courses to conserve water. Now, we get this headline in today's Los Angeles Times: California could survive seven (7) decades of drought. That's the headline; based on computer moeling, the same ones, no doubt, used to model global warming. The story suggests traumatic changes would occur but overall, "California has a remarkable ability to weather extreme and prolonged droughts from an economic perspective."

This will be news to Rush: Paul Revere dies at age 76, founded Paul Rever and the Raiers.

Paul Revere and the Raiders, Indian Reservation (Cherokee People)
Tonight on ESPN: Seattle Seahawks will be playing the Washinton Redskins. The new drinking game, apparently, is taking a drink every time the announcer mentions the word "Redskins." Apparently no one is expected to get drunk tonight. It's an interesting story line. I don't get cable television at home -- not entirely true, the only way to get CBS, NBC, ABC in this neck of the woods is with cable or Dish, so I do have cable for four major networks. I may have to go to sports restaurant to see the game tonight.

And with that, I'm out of here. I'm going bike riding. The rain clouds have cleared.

*************************

Sweet Irony

Whether or not President Obama's OPEN BORDERS/OPEN ARMS policy helped spread Ebola to the North American continent, there's no question the "mystery virus" infecting tens of thousands of children, paralysis in some, rare deaths, was brought in from Latin America due to the OPEN BORDERS/OPEN ARMS policy. The CDC epidemiologists will sort this out and the peer-reviewed paper will be published in 2019. Epidemiology takes time. Especially political epidemiology.

I wasn't going to post this until I saw the Los Angeles Times. The editor at the Los Angeles Times must feel the same way I do -- the source of the "mystery virus" in the US. He has an editorial telling us to "quit the blame games" on these viruses -- of course, if this happened under George W. Bush ....