XTO Reports Several Nice Wells --August 18, 2015; Gasoline Prices Skyrocket In Great Lakes States Region Due To Refinery Outage

Tweeting now: CDU outage at BP's 413,000 b/d Whiting refinery -- at Platts (CDU - crude oil distillation unit). Later, 8:40 p.m. CT: this is the BP/Whiting refinery story being reported by UPI:

An outage at BP's refinery in Whiting, Ind., pushed retail gasoline prices up for nearly a week straight, snapping a 27-day streak of declines.

Motor club AAA reports a national average retail price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline at $2.66 for Tuesday, down a fraction of a cent from Monday but up 8 cents from one week ago. Prices in three Great Lakes states skyrocketed overnight last week after BP reported an outage at its Whiting refinery, one of the largest in the nation.

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Back To The Bakken

Active rigs:

	8/18/2015	08/18/2014	08/18/2013	08/18/2012	08/18/2011
Active Rigs	74	193	183	199	193

Wells coming off the confidential list Wednesday:

• 29390, SI/NC, XTO, Johnsrud Federal 34X-14C,  Bear Den, no production data,
• 30377, SI/NC, Statoil, East Fork 32-29 2TFH, East Fork, no production data,

No new permits --
 
Six (6) producing wells completed:

• 29582, 1,598, XTO, Satter 21X-1C, Siverston, t8/15; cum --
• 29583, 316, XTO, Satter 21X-1F, Siverston, t8/15; cum --
• 29584, 2,057, XTO, Satter 21X-1B, Siverston, t7/15; cum --
• 29668, 1,122, CLR, Thronson Federal 8-21H1, Alkali Creek, 4 sections, t8/15; cum --
• 29669, 962, CLR, Sorenson 6-16H2, Alkali Creek, 4 sections, t815; cum --
• 30214, 1,712, XTO, Marlene 42X-20CXD, Blue Buttes, t7/15; cum --

An interesting permit renewal:
16373, loc, Texakota, H. Borstad 34-1A,

Not surprising, temporarily abandoned:

• 27235, TA, Strata-X, Rohweder 1-11,

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Fast Food -- For The Granddaughters

I'm finally learning a bit of history about the fast food industry. I assume many folks my age grew up with the industry and did not really notice what was going on. Growing up in Williston, we had a Dairy Queen (we never called it "DQ") close enough to bicycle to, but we never had enough money to go anyway, so it didn't matter. I can probably count the number of times I went to Dairy Queen each summer during my high school summers on my two thumbs. But the highlight of every summer was when Dad took us to the A & W Root Beer "stand" about a mile north of Williston on "the Million Dollar Way" (US 2 & 85 north of Williston). He probably took the family once each summer, twice if he was having a particularly good summer.

For those who have forgotten or never knew, from Stephen Fried's Appetite for America:

By the 1920s, however, Americans were seeing the first wave of sit-down fast-food shops featuring signature hamburgers and frankfurters, sodas and ice cream. The first major hamburger chain was White Castle, which began in 1921 with four locations in Wichita, Kansas -- where it competed with Harvey House -- and then spread into other other Fred Harvey strongholds, Kansas City and St Louis, before expanding into Minneapolis and many other Midwestern cities....

White Castle and the A&W Root Beer drive-ins (which started in Sacramento at around the same time) were among the first of the classic American fast-food franchise operations. It was a new and exciting business model that Fred Harvey had eschewed -- although Ford (Harvey, his son) was constantly getting offers to try it...

Some people bought multiple franchises; others used one to learn the business and then went out on their own. (The Marriott hotel chain, for example, had its origins in an A&W Root Beer stand that J. Willard Marriott and his wife started in Washington, DC, in the 1920s, leading them to create their own drive-in company, The Hot Shoppes, and then hotels.)

I first heard of White Castle, I believe, when I visited Minneapolis in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, although I can't say for sure. I do know that I was familiar with White Castle by the time I was in college in Sioux Falls, SD, in the early 1970s.

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Lookin' Out My Back Door

Lookin' Out My Back Door, Creedence Clearwater Revival