DUCs -- The New York Times Perspective -- December 25, 2015

The link is here. If you hit a paywall, google Hoping for a Price Surge, Oil Companies Keep Wells in Reserve.

I will likely post a note regarding this story later. But before I post my thoughts, I want readers to take a look at the story and feel out some of their own thoughts.

But this offers the opportunity for a new poll, whether one thinks that Bakken DUCs are a big deal? Yes or no.

Obviously it depends on the definition of "big deal" and it depends on who you are (a driller, a consumer, a mineral rights owner, or a candlestick maker) but think of it this way: you are on a debate team and you are given that question to defend, yes or no, defend.

So, the poll, "do you consider Bakken DUCs a "big deal"?

• Yes
• No

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 DICs And Other Acronyms

Completely unrelated, but of interest, is a bit of trivia. From the article:

• " ... the deferred completions — known in the oil business as D.U.C.s (an acronym for drilled but uncomplete) ..."

Should the word be "incomplete," uncomplete," or "uncompleted"?

My 2001 edition of Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2230 pages exactly, lists both "uncomplete' and "uncompleted" as legitimate words. The dictionary unfortunately does not provide a definition for either. They are simply listed and identified as their part of speech.

There is a fine distinction between "incomplete" and "uncomplete" but I will leave it up to others to come to their own conclusion which word is more appropriate. Perhaps one way to think about the use of the two words is to associate them with an artist's painting when noting that a painting is "incomplete" or "uncompleted." Just to add a bit of fun to this, I think one can look at a painting that has been completed by an artist and is hanging in the museum and say that the painting is "incomplete."

All I will say is this: the acronym that would result from "drilled but incomplete" is an acronym that the NDIC probably did not want to associate with a word like "fracking."