Monday, Monday -- April 20, 2015

I guess the Chinese economy is back on track and Greece will be able to pay its creditors: those were the two reasons the market dropped 300 points on Friday, and today in early trading the market is up 200 points.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

I didn't see the race; they talked about it on local radio station this morning -- it must have been a disaster with weather delays, etc, but, wow, it was a great finish for some of the "old" names: Matt Kenseth took first, followed by Jimmy Johnson and teammate Jeff Gordon. And then Tony Stewart at #6 of all things, and even Danica Patrick at #9, among the top 10.

Two interesting things that will show up on today's daily activity report. First, it looks like a new operator in North Dakota has a very, very nice Spearfish well up in Bottineau County. This is the first permit for Resonance Exploration in North Dakota; they have a permit for a second well in the same general location, #30228, currently on confidential status.

Here is their first well:

• 29452, A, Resonance Exploration (North Dakota), LLC, Resonance Ballantyne 13-20H, wildcat, no test date; active as of 11/19/2014; a Spearfish well, 20-163-80, cum 15K 2/15

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
SPEARFISH	3-2015	29	3866	4174	3386	525	0	233
SPEARFISH	2-2015	27	3989	3597	3110	501	0	231
SPEARFISH	1-2015	28	4795	5228	3866	625	0	339
SPEARFISH	12-2014	12	2204	1696	1423	270	0	150

The second interesting thing is a new acronym, at least new to me, regarding status of a well:

• 26041, DNA, CLR, Patterson Federal 4-13H1, Camp, no production data, 

We'll have to wait for the file report to see what it means, unless a reader knows and wants to write in. Since there is no production, perhaps it means "Did Not Attempt," but that makes no sense to me. If they did not attempt, they could have canceled the permit, or it could have simply expired. I suppose it could be "don't (k)no(w) anything" about this well. LOL. Unless, of course, it simply means Data Not Available which is most likely now that I've rambled on. See first comment below: DNA means "Disposal Now Abandoned."

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Miscellaneous

I can't follow the price of crude oil any more. The headlines are all over the place. The pundits can't keep up. Two comments: oil did not fall to $20 (yet) as some pundits predicted; and, a trend for the price of oil may be developing. The good news: the price of oil did not fall to $20 (yet) as some pundits predicted; the bad news: did the price of oil not plummet to $20 because of the Desert War III that we are hearing so little about?

Earnings, HAL:

Halliburton Co. reported first-quarter 2015 results before markets opened Monday. The oil and gas services company posted adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.49 on revenues of $7.05 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported EPS of $0.73 on revenues of $7.35 billion. First-quarter results also compare to the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates for EPS of $0.37 and $6.99 billion in revenues.

On a GAAP basis, the firm posted a net loss of $639 million ($0.75 per share) on inventory write-downs, asset write-offs, impairments of intangible assets, severance costs, Venezuelan currency devaluation, costs related to the acquisition of Baker-Hughes and other charges.

The company did not provide guidance in its earnings release, but the second-quarter consensus estimates call for EPS of $0.22 on revenues of $6.13 billion. For the full year, EPS is estimated at $1.14 on revenues of $24.96 billion.

RBN Energy: continuing the series on the infrastructure in the Marcellus and the Utica.

In the five years since natural gas production began to take off in Appalachia, volumes in the Marcellus and Utica basins have increased by a factor of 9X. Much of that natural gas production growth is “wet” gas containing significant volumes of NGLs. 

Consequently NGL production volumes have skyrocketed and midstream development has been booming. But building all this midstream infrastructure in Appalachia does not work the way it does in other high-growth shale plays. Making sense out of Marcellus/Utica midstream infrastructure is the subject of RBN Energy’s latest Drill Down report, “Join Together With Demand--The Who and How of Marcellus/Utica Midstream”. 

In today’s blog, we provide highlights of the report and discuss what’s in store for the Marcellus/Utica over the next couple of years using our new Pipeline GIS mapping system to help tie all of the assets together. 

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and that proverb has certainly proved itself in the Shale Era. Examples abound. Building new rail-loading terminals to move stranded Bakken crude to market. Reversing the direction of major natural gas pipelines. Re-plumbing much of the Gulf Coast to reflect changing sources of crude oil. 

And our topic today, innovative approaches to meet the unique challenges of Marcellus/Utica midstream. In the Drill Down report we release today, we examine in detail all that has been done—and is being done still—to support the very rapid expansion of gas and NGL production in the Marcellus/Utica. Over the past five years, the Upper Ohio River Valley has been transformed from an energy backwater to a production leader, both for natural gas and NGLs.

I'm placing this with the "Bakken101" tag because of all the background information that also pertains to the Bakken. The entire article will be archived at the source.

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Zeits On Global Oil And Gas Trends

I'm going to post this on this page, as well as a stand-alone. It's that important.

Zeits is writing:

In the past few years, U.S. shales have remained one of the most popular headline themes in the oil-focused financial media. 

With shale oil being the industry's most dynamic "new kid on the block," some of that attention is well deserved. However, the intense coverage has also been due to the simple fact that the U.S. Oil & Gas is one of the world's most "investable," fragmented and open industries. As a result, hundreds of publicly-traded companies offer rich streams of information to a very large universe of interested investors, fueling an intense information dissemination. 

However, oil is a global commodity and it is important not to lose perspective on its global fundamentals by focusing too much on U.S. tight oil. It would be particularly precarious to extrapolate the dynamics that one can currently observe in the North American Land segment onto the rest of the global oil industry, which is often less visible and less understood by investors. 

While all industry participants feel the pain of the low oil prices, the following anecdotal data points show that the cycle may be playing out differently in the U.S. shales than in the rest of the world:

• Saudi Arabia and several other GCC producers appear to be quite busy increasing their investment in production capacity.
• Russia's activity in legacy operating areas remains steady.
• U.S. Gulf of Mexico deepwater activity is on the rise (although focus is apparently shifting towards development projects, away from exploration).
• By contrast, U.S. operators reduced the aggregate oil-directed rig count two-fold in a matter of just three months, a dramatic adjustment given the industry's sheer size.

 As noted, this will be posted as a stand-alone. It will be archived at the source.