Random Update On The Moab - Paradox; Note Oil Sands Development -- December 17, 2015

I track the Moab-Paradox Basin here. Now why would I bring that up tonight? Because a reader sent me this article from the Moab Sun News:

Matteson's company -- MDU -- recently announced the sale of subsidiary Fidelity Exploration & Production, which had been actively developing oil and gas projects in the Big Flat area west of Moab. In recent months, however, the pace of that work has slowed down, according to Matteson.

“They're certainly not doing any additional development,” he said. “I think the wells that have been developed continue to produce.”

Now that MDU has sold almost all of Fidelity's assets, Matteson quipped that the decline in oil prices is no longer having the same impacts on the parent company.

“Not as much as they were,” he said.

Looking at the bigger picture beyond Moab, the extent of low oil prices varies, and can depend on everything from a project's geological setting to the different types of drilling techniques that companies utilize.

“It's very difficult to give you one price point and say it affects everybody the same way,” Matteson said.

Indeed, while many of its neighbors in the Book Cliffs appear to be struggling, Canadian company U.S. Oil Sands of Calgary is moving forward with the development of its controversial PR Spring oil sands mine near the Grand and Uintah County lines.

The company initially hoped to begin commercial-scale oil production in the final quarter of 2015, although U.S. Oil Sands CEO Cameron Todd said his company is now on track to reach that milestone in the first three months of 2016.

Todd said the projected holdup is not due to the first assumption that comes to mind – namely, a drop in oil prices. Instead, he said, it's the result of “nagging delays,” including a lag in equipment deliveries, as well as the final engineering work on its piping and electricity, among other things.

With regard to MDU in the Moab - Paradox Basin, this could very well be the theme song:

Those Were The Days, Mary Hopkin