Whiting And MRO Each Report A "High-IP" Well; Active Rigs Hold Steady -- October 20, 2014

Wells coming off confidential list over the weekend, today, have been posted. Whiting and MRO each report a "high-IP" well.

Active rigs:

	10/20/2014	10/20/2013	10/20/2012	10/20/2011	10/20/2010
Active Rigs	191	184	186	195	153

RBN Energy: Houston, we have a storage problem.

Those of us old enough to remember Apollo 13, OPEC oil embargoes, and the glitter rock of David Bowie and Iggy Pop have witnessed a lot of ups and downs in space travel, the energy business and rock-star fashion.

But few, if any, changes have been more amazing to watch (and blog about) than the skyrocketing growth in crude output in the big US shale plays—the Eagle Ford, the Permian and the Bakken chief among them.

While the word “transformational” may be a tad overused, how else can you describe the market effect of oil production in Texas rising 155% (to 3.1 MMb/d) over the past 48 months (according to the US Energy Information Administration, or EIA), and crude output in North Dakota jumping 223% (to 1.1 MMb/d) over the same period?

All that crude—and crude from the Niobara and Anadarko, and even the Canadian oil sands—is reducing the need for waterborne imports, and spurring development of new pipelines to the Gulf Coast (and Houston in particular) as well as new storage capacity.

And, because so much of the new production is light sweet crude (or, in the case of some production like Eagle Ford, very light or super-light condensate), Gulf Coast refineries designed and built to process heavy crude are scrambling to adjust, either by investing in new infrastructure to handle light crudes or (more often--at least for now) resorting to extensive blending of very light crude with heavier crudes. (Blending requires storage capacity too.)

See how Houston is handling all this at the link.

A reminder: the Keystone XL was designed to carry heavy crude oil to the Gulf Coast, but that water is under the bridge, that train has left the station, and one shouldn't cry over spilled milk.