Whiting's Flatland Wells In Twin Valley Have Been Hooked Up To ONEOK's Pipeline -- September 5, 2015

Regular readers will remember that ONEOK announced a few weeks ago that it had upwards of 700 wells in the Bakken to connect, IIRC. [700 wells this year, 2015; and 600 wells next year, 2016. It should be noted that the Bakken is an oil play, not a natural gas play.]

This morning while updating Whiting's Flatland wells, I noted that the Flatland wells have been connected to the ONEOK pipeline.

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

CBR

What happens to excess CBR tank cars? They get parked. For example:

Gennessee and Wyoming, the nation’s largest short line rail road, is collecting as much as $5 a day on each of about 2,000 idle crude rail cars in Utah, the Midwest and Canada.

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

Mideast VLCC Tracking: Sailings At Multi-Month Lows

This was reported some time ago, but I'm only now getting to it. For the archives. 

Platts is reporting:

* Middle East's weekly outflow drops to pre-summer lows
* Saudi August departures at four-month low
* China takes 11 VLCCs from Angola in August

The fall in demand to move crude has caused Middle East outflows to tumble to their lowest since before the summer, Platts ship-tracking tool cFlow showed Wednesday, resulting in numerous VLCCs being idled for longer while ample supply and low bunker fuel prices have continued to push down freight rates.

Over the week to Wednesday, sailings from Saudi Arabia, Iraq's Basrah, Iran and the wider Middle East hit their lowest since before the start of June as refinery run cuts across parts of Asia have weakened demand.

So, just when Saudi announces it will not cut production (last October, 2014), causing the price of oil to plummet; Asia sees huge decrease in need for oil. Oh, well.

But look how many ships sail from Saudi Arabia every month; this is really quite amazing -- remember, these are VLCC, the largest tankers:

Departures from Saudi Arabia fell to 24 from 30 last week, while total sailings for August slipped to a four-month low of 125 VLCCs, down from 137 in July.

Iraq:

From Iraq's southern terminals, five tankers left over the week, while in August, a total of 36 departed, up from 34. Despite the slight uptick in VLCC sailings, crude oil exports from Basrah on all ship-types fell in August, to 3.021 million b/d, a drop of 43,000 b/d from July. Oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad, however, said the fall was due to a technical fault in the export system.
Inshallah.

More:

Total outflow from the Middle East -- or the count of ships that left the region -- sank to 19 from 24 last week, also the least since before June. ("Sank" is probably not the best word to use when talking about ships in the Mideast.)

From Africa:

Within West Africa, Angolan departures fell to a three-week low of two, down from three the previous week. In August, a total of 15 ships left, with 11 going to China, which typically takes around two thirds of VLCC sailings from Angola -- currently its second largest supplier of crude after Saudi Arabia.

Also this regarding Angola to US crude oil:

The US also takes crude oil from Angola -- its 10th-largest supplier -- at 100,000 b/d in June, however, the boom in US tight oil production has caused this flow to drop by three quarters from around an average 400,000 b/d in 2010. However, the bulk of the cargoes are hauled on Suezmaxes, with no VLCCs making the voyage this year, while only one went in 2014.

So, not only are we learning about the Bakken, but we are learning about VLCCs and Suezmaxes.