Wednesday, August 12, 2015; BR's Upper, Middle, And Lower Three Forks; Iowa Quickly Becoming The Wind Farm For America

Active rigs:

	8/12/2015	08/12/2014	08/12/2013	08/12/2012	08/12/2011
Active Rigs	72	194	184	199	191

RBN Energy: update on the Henry Hub, a continuing series.

For newbies, a new designation regarding the Three Forks benches, from an update elsewhere --

#29434, SI/NC, BR, Kings Canyon 3-1-27MTFH is an important well from standpoint of understanding "legal" names of BR Kings Canyon wells in Camel Butte. In the original post below, written a long time ago, I suggested that the "M" in MTF stood for "middle Three Forks," a new term for me. In the old days, it was simply the upper Three Forks that was targeted whenever we saw "TF" in the legal name. Shortly thereafter, operators starting talking about the four benches in the Three Forks, and the "upper TF" became TF1, the first bench. Now, we see "middle Three Forks. In the application, this is identified as Three Forks B2 (second bench).  

BR seems to suggest they might refer to these benches as the upper Three Forks (first bench, B1, UTH); the middle Three Forks (second bench, B2, MTH); and the lower Three Forks (third bench, B3, LTH), suggesting they will not be targeting the fourth bench.

I think this was the first advertisement-free site to suggest what BR meant by UTFH, and that was done quite awhile ago. Always something to learn in the Bakken.

By the way, for newbies, the upper Bakken and the lower Bakken are shale, and are generally not targeted (Slawson has targeted the upper Bakken in tests). The Bakken is a "tight" play and not a "shale" play, I think, is what purists say. The terms "tight" and "shale" are often used interchangeable, but purists "know" the difference.

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Iowa Wind Energy 

For The Archives

Don sent me this link. It's a great article in that is provides a lot of data points for the archives. Update regarding Iowa wind energy:

I think most of this wind energy is being sent out-of-state; it's being used by utilities to meet out-of-state-mandated numbers, I believe.

The good news:

• Iowa has found a revenue-generating business model
• the wind farms are in Iowa and not in western North Dakota; I don't think Teddy Roosevelt would mind; there's probably a reason there are only two national parks in Iowa (although I can't find them at this site, maybe others can);
• and, yes, natural gas will be needed to back-up all this intermittent energy

Great article. Lots of data points. 

Note this: 

On the consumption side of the equation, as of 2015, the Obama Administration does not even breakout wind energy for Iowa (for 2013, the most recent year data is available).  It appears that for electricity, Iowa consumes, in BTUs, from the following sources:

• coal: 400
• natural gas: 305
• nuclear: 50
• other renewables (which I assume is mostly wind): 150

150/750 is still very, very impressive. But, again, all that intermittent energy needs to be backed up by natural gas -- unless they build 4x as many wind farms as needed across the entire state, and assume that if 25% are turning 100% of the time, they will not need back-up.

Iowa is going to look like one huge industrial wind farm. That never goes away. Because, after all, wind is "renewable." 

Iowa becomes the wind farm to America.