Seven (7) New Permits, BR Reports Four High-IP Wells -- August 25, 2015

Active rigs:

	8/25/2015	08/25/2014	08/25/2013	08/25/2012	08/25/2011
Active Rigs	75	194	184	189	195

Four (4) wells coming off confidential list Wednesday:

• 29163, SI/NC, Hess, BB-Chapin A-LS-151-95-0403H-1, Blue Buttes, no production data,
• 29610, SI/NC, Statoil, Cheryl 17-20 5H, Banks, no production data,
• 29760, drl/NC, MRO, Halvorson 34-34TFH, Reunion Bay, no production data,
• 30757, conf, XTO, Roen 24X-23E, Elk, no production data,

Six (6) new permits --

• Operators: Whiting (6), WPX
• Fields: Sanish (Mountrail), Lonesome (McKenzie), Juniper (McKenzie), Reunion Bay (Dunn)
• Comments:

Four (4) producing wells completed:

• 29050, 1,584, BR, Kings Canyon 2-8-34UTFH, Camel Butte, 4 sections, KOP - Dec 16; TD - Dec 21, 2015; 17 - 48 feet below the base of the lower Bakken shale; t7/15; cum --
• 29423, 1,608, BR, Kings Canyon 4-8-34UTFH, Camel Butte, 4 sections, pay target 24 feet thick; low background gas, moderately high trip gas; t7/15; cum --
• 29426, 2,040, BR, Teton 5-1-3TFSH, Camel Butte, 4 sections, t7/15; cum --
• 29465, 2,565, BR, Teton 7-1-3TFSH, Camel Butte, 4 sections, pay target 18 feet thick, t7/15; cum -- 

I track the Kings Canyon / Teton wells here.

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For The Granddaughters

From Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: The History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements, c. 2010, p. 142:

As a historical curiosity, he might have also pointed out that the two people who came closest to discovering fission, Ida Noddack and Irene Joliot-Curie -- daughter of Marie Curie -- and the person who eventually did discover nuclear fission -- Lise Meitner, were all women.

Hoo-ah!

Man-Camps Springing Up In San Pedro, California -- August 25, 2015

Tweeting now:  3 hours ago BP has restarted 250,000 b/d crude oil distillation unit at Whiting, Indiana, refinery, company spokesman said Tuesday.

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Man-Camps In San Pedro, California

Only in the land of fruits and nuts and flakes. The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

The running legal and political debate at Los Angeles City Hall over how best to manage street encampments is turning to a new issue: tiny, curbside homes on wheels.

Some advocates for the homeless see the wooden, sometimes colorful single-room structures — about the size of a parking spot — as a simple and safer alternative to having the homeless sleep on the sidewalks.

The mini-houses have popped up recently around Los Angeles, with a number of them in San Pedro. But Harbor-area Councilman Joe Buscaino argues that a proliferation of the structures undercuts the appearance of neighborhoods and poses problems of public safety because the homes don't have running water or reflective markings.

"These wooden shacks are not the real estate I'm looking for in my district," he told colleagues at a committee hearing Monday.

The dispute is the latest twist in a complex and evolving legislative response to a growing homeless problem that has seen encampments spreading into more residential neighborhoods.

Encampments? Perhaps we should call them "man-camps."

In the Bakken, fracking came first, then the man-camps. In California, apparently just the opposite -- build the "man-camps" first. If you build it, they will come.

Safety issues: "... the homes don't have running water or reflective markings." The lack of reflective markings can be easily rectified. Running water: hoses from conventional cooperative homeowners.

Shell Game -- August 25, 2015

Tweeting at the noon-hour -- Nigeria's Buhari approves termination of controversial crude oil swap for refined oil products contracts with trading companies, NNPC says; the background --

The NNPC currently swaps a part of its allotted 445,000 barrels of crude per day to some oil companies and in return receives refined products. 

Oil swap derives from the fact that Nigeria’s four refineries operate mostly below 50% installed capacity and since 2003, the NNPC has continued to allocate them 445,000 barrels of crude oil per day, which corresponds to 100% capacity. 

The oil swaps have come under criticism following allegations that they have been opaque and the government has been short-changed in the deals. In its audit between 2009 and 2012, the Nigerian Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI) revealed that crude oil swap arrangements are not cost- effective, especially when compared to product prices and proceeds paid to the NNPC. 

And, so, the new president scrapped the swaps. Again, look at what was going on:

• the country's refineries had a total capacity of 445,000 bopd
• the refineries were only operating at 50% capacity (official number; reality, probably worse): 225,000 bopd

So, where was the delta going? Each day about 225,000 barrels of crude oil was unaccounted for. Technically, Nigeria just took 445,000 bopd off the global market but, of course, that ain't happening either.

I track Nigeria here when I run out of things to do. Algeria here. Angola here. 

China? What China? It's India One Has To Keep One's Eyes On -- August 25, 2015

The Apple Page

That failed Apple Watch story?

It's now being reported that Best Buy is accelerating its Apple Watch rollout to all 1,050 stores "amid" strong demand.

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The Coal Page

Whenever I see another story on intermittent energy and how important it is to the global economy, I keep going back to this graph:

and this graph:

Did anyone really pay any attention to this graph the first time is was posted? I know I did not. Generally when there is such a huge delta between "consumption" and "production" it is a graph projecting into the future how bad things might become. But in this case, this graph is "real-time." If I understand the graphic correctly, this is all domestic coal production, domestic coal consumption. Therefore, the delta represents the amount of coal that India must import every year, and for the past five or six years that delta is really becoming quite striking.

I doubt India can close the domestic-import delta. If not, it will be interesting where all that coal will come from.Washington state ports? LOL.

But this is really scary for the warmists: regardless of where the coal comes from, look at the "total production target for 2020 -- that's just five years from now. India's total production target is set at 1,500 million metric tons, compared to barely 700 million metric tons in 2014. I'm pretty poor at math, but going from 700 to 1,500 seems to be more than double. In five years.

From wiki:  India ranks fifth in global coal production at 228 mtoe in the year 2013 when its inferior quality coal tonnage is converted in to tons of oil equivalent. Coal-fired power plants account for 59% of India's installed electricity capacity. After electricity production, coal is also used for cement production in substantial quantity. In the year 2013, India imported nearly 95 Mtoe of steam coal and coking coal which is 29% of total consumption to meet the demand in electricity, cement and steel production.

So, if I read that correctly, India's "real" domestic coal production is 228 metric tons (2013); India imported 95 metric tons that year (2013). Compare to graphic above which suggests India domestically produced 600 metric tons -- but it's low quality coal. [Indian coal is of low quality as it has a high ash content.]

More from wiki: India is largely dependent on fossil fuel imports to meet its energy demands — by 2030, India's dependence on energy imports is expected to exceed 53% of the country's total energy consumption. In 2009-10, the country imported 159.26 million tonnes of crude oil which amounts to 80% of its domestic crude oil consumption and 31% of the country's total imports are oil imports. The growth of electricity generation in India has been hindered by domestic coal shortages and as a consequence, India's coal imports for electricity generation increased by 18% in 2010.

Something tells me Soros follows India closely. 

Re-Posting Due To Its Importance -- August 25, 2015

Breaking now: Hettinger, ND, set a new record low temperature yesterday -- 31 degrees. Yes, that would be one degree below freezing on the Fahrenheit scale. The old record was 37, set back in 2007, at the height of global warming.

Definition of irony: spending the past three decades preparing for global warming, and then learning that Algore got it all wrong; he was looking at the graphs upside down? It was the global ice age he should have seen coming! Remember that satellite probe that crashed into Mars some years ago: the engineers mistakenly used feet when they thought they were tracking the probe in meters. And then the EPA who wants to control every last creek in the US, floods a major river system with orange toxin in an amateurish attempt to clean up a mine.

Did anyone, by the way, ever explain why the river turned orange and not some other color? From The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From The Periodic Table of the Elements, by Sam Kean, c. 2010, p. 6:

"... Unraveling that mystery -- it's from hydragyrum, Latin for "water silver" -- helped me understand how heavily ancient languages and mythology influenced the periodic table ... I found mercury in literature class, too. Hat manufacturers once used a bright orange mercury wash to separate fur from pelts, and the common hatter hatters who dredged around in the steamy vats, like the mad one in Alice in Wonderland ..."

So, there you have it. The orange river was caused by mercury.  [CNN: One of the samples of mercury was nearly 10 times higher than the EPA acceptable levels. Samples of beryllium and cadmium were 33 times higher, and one of the arsenic levels was more than 800 times higher.]

If you don't know how poisonous cadmium is, look up itai-itai on wiki. Cadmium caused one of the worst Japanese holocausts of all time, and that includes the two nuclear bombs.

Don't even get me started.

By the way, rumor has it that Algore has been studying the Bakken heat map for the past several months.

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A Government Out of Control? Or In Control?

IRS used secret e-mail account, false identity to do government business, target Tea Party groups.  If Lois is not held accountable ... oh, heck, what does it matter?

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ObamaCare

The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

A new study finds that 75% of California's Obamacare health plans have narrow physician networks -- more limited choices than all but three other states.

The latest report examines health plans sold to consumers last year under the Affordable Care Act and shows wide variation in the prevalence of narrow networks across the country.

Only Georgia, Florida and Oklahoma had a higher percentage of small (sic) provider networks than California did in the insurance company directories analyzed by University of Pennsylvania researchers.
To hold down premiums under the health law, big insurers such as Anthem Inc. and Blue Shield of California cut the number of doctors and hospitals available to patients.

There's actually much more to the story, but that will have to do for now. 

It's A FONSI -- August 25, 2015; How About An Amazon Fulfillment Center In Williston With Current Runways For Unmanned Drones?

The things I learn from the blog. A FONSI?

The Best of The Fonz?
From The Williston Wire:

First article:

It's full steam ahead for Williston's new 250 million dollar international airport about five miles northwest of the current airport, having cleared a long awaited and crucial Federal government hurdle this past week.  Mayor Howard Klug said that the City of Williston received a positive "FONSI" or Finding of no significant impact report from the FAA. 

Second article:

A new state of the art airport will put Williston on the map. The City is planning to build a $250 million airport to accommodate the growing needs of the residents in northeastern Montana and northwestern North Dakota. The executive director of Williston Economic Development says the new Williston Basin International Airport (WBIA) will be a beacon for a mix of economic development projects. "Transportation infrastructure has always been a key component for sound economic growth. I am willing to bet we are going to see some unique business development inquiries as a result of this," said Shawn Wenko.

Third article:

The City of Williston is working with the Cardon Group of Phoenix on developing the land under the current airport once the airport shuts down and moves to the new facility in 2018. Sean Wenko executive director of the Williston Development department tells news radio, that like the new airport and the ARC, the 900 acres that comprise Sloulin Field will be transformed into another jewel in Williston's crown, with a focus on high tech.

"Technology is a big driver in the oil and gas industry and technology can be a big driver for other things as well so we think we can add this into the redevelopment project of the airport property," Wenko said.

Wenko says length and breadth of the project will command public input as well, but in the end it will be a project the community will be proud of. " We want to see something with that property that when you come over the hill on Hwy 2 and you kind of see that corner and just go 'Wow, we're in Williston'," Wenko says.

Maybe an Amazon fulfillment center? High-tech. About the right size. Leave the runway for Fedex planes. Or better yet for the unmanned drones that are being built and tested in Grand Forks. See also this link.

Now, that's a thought.

Memo to self: get Jeff Bezos phone number.

Which reminds me: in 2007 I wrote a letter to Menards corporate offices about a possible new location in Williston. I was still on active duty at the time. My dad put me up to it. He had the deal all worked out. In his mind. Some days later, some VP from Menards phoned me -- at my government office. We had a nice discussion. He said Williston was not on Menards' radar scope. That was in 2007. I think Menards opened in Williston last year, or maybe in 2013. I lose track of time. Global warming has that effect on my mind. It is interesting that the rise in Alzheimer's cases tend to parallel the global warming hockey stick. Now that global warming has plateaued for the past 19 years, maybe the rate of growth in Alzheimer's diagnoses will also plateau.

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Watford City Growth

From The Williston Wire:

For the past three years, the growth in the school district's enrollment numbers has been fueled by the large number of new students in the elementary school. However this year, the number of students in every grade is beginning to level off. For the first time, we will have over 100 students in every grade with the exception of grades 11 and 12," states Holen. "But the largest classes are still in the elementary school." 

Computer Tracking Of Hurricane Erika Shows It Unlikely To HIt The Bakken -- August 25, 2015

Breaking now: Hettinger, ND, set a new record low temperature yesterday -- 31 degrees. Yes, that would be one degree below freezing on the Fahrenheit scale. The old record was 37, set back in 2007, at the height of global warming.

Definition of irony: spending the past three decades preparing for global warming, and then learning the modelers got it all wrong; they were looking at the graphs upside down? Remember that satellite probe that crashed into Mars some years ago: the engineers mistakenly used feet when they thought they were tracking the probe in meters.

Don't even get me started.

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The graphic below shows the dozens of possible tracks Hurricane Erika will take.

This event is measured in hours, days, and weeks. A month from now it will be history. Two dozen tracks. At least one track shows the hurricane ending just northwest of Havana. Another track shows the hurricane weakening to become nothing more than a north Atlantic Ocean storm ending near Greenland. Quite a discrepancy.

The track put together by the warmists / extreme weather climatologists shows that the hurricane will become the biggest in history, striking Disney World, completing wiping out that theme park, and destroying any chances that Jeb Bush might have had for the presidency.

Rumor has it the modelers tried inputting parameters to have at least one track hit the Bakken, wiping out the entire oil basin, but to no avail. Apparently the Koch Bros in Minnesota had something to say about that. All Trump golf courses on the west coast also appear safe ... for the moment.

Atmospheric CO2 was 401.3 for July, 2015, up from 399 one year ago.

The computer models show the tracks ending as far apart from each other as northwest of Havana (Cuba) and southeast of Greenland. And yet, these same climatologists, using the same computers, and the same algorithms, can tell us within a tenth of a degree what the global temperature of earth will be in 2100, and how much man contributed to that 1-degree rise in temperature.

A huge thank you for a reader pointing this out -- early on a Tuesday morning -- when things here in Texas seem fairly calm. I would tell you that it was Don who sent me the link but he may not want you know it was him so I won't mention his name.

I asked my wife, if after the 1,000-point drop in the Dow over the past week or so, if the events in China were having any effect on her life. She asked, "what events in China?" So, there you have it.

I went to Wal-Mart last night and it appeared all the Chinese stuff was getting there just fine; the shelves were very well stocked. I'll stock up on beans and bottled water later this evening.

By the way, that is true. I did go to Wal-Mart last night. During soccer practice for the 9-year-old, I walked over to one of those "Wal-Mart neighborhood stores," the ones that fit in a strip mall, and are much, much smaller than the typical Wal-Mart, probably the size of a typical hardware store in the midwest before those stores all closed because of Wal-Mart locating on the edge of all those midwestern towns.

I had to buy some spiral notebooks. Every school year Wal-Mart sells 88-cent spiral, college-ruled notebooks for 17 cents. I bought three. I also bought some nicer $3.99 notebooks selling for 85 cents. Years ago when I was substitute teaching, I could buy spiral, college-ruled notebooks for 10 cents at Staples. I don't know if Staples still has those school sales.

Oil's Drop Puts Spotlight On Saudi Arabia -- WSJ -- August 25, 2015

These two stories came out yesterday (I was too tired to post earlier):

• Headline: Out in the Real World, Oil Market Is Much Better Than It Looks
• Headline:  Saudi Arabia Hit by Low Oil Prices, Faces Difficult Decisions 

Late last night, a most interesting WSJ article, oil's drop puts spotlight on Saudi Arabia.

The stories all have a very similar theme: for the US, it's a "cyclic thing." For the Saudis, it's an "existential thing."

And this article in The New York Times which we have talked about many times before: "From Venezuela to Iraq to Russia, Oil Price Drops Raise Fear of Unrest."

In oil-endowed Iraq, where an Islamic State insurgency and fractious sectarian politics are growing threats, a new source of instability erupted this month with violent protests over the government’s failure to provide reliable electricity and explain what has been done with all the promised petroleum money.

In Russia, a leading oil producer, consumers are now paying far more for imports, largely because of their currency’s plummeting value. In Nigeria and Venezuela, which rely almost completely on oil exports, fears of unrest and economic instability are building. In Ecuador, where oil revenue has fallen by nearly half since last year, tens of thousands of demonstrators pour into the streets every week, angered by the government’s economic policies.

Even in wealthy Saudi Arabia, where the ruling family spends oil money lavishly to preserve its legitimacy, the government has been burning through roughly $10 billion a month in foreign exchange holdings to help pay expenses, and it is borrowing in the financial markets for the first time since 2007. Other Arab countries in the Persian Gulf that are dependent on oil exports, including Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, are facing fiscal deficits for the first time in two decades.

While the price has been declining for months, forecasts have always been hedged with the assumption that oil would eventually stabilize or at least not stay low for long. But new anxieties about frailties in China, the world’s most voracious consumer of energy, have raised fears that the price of oil, now 30 percent lower than it was just a few months ago, could remain depressed far longer than even the most pessimistic projections, and do even deeper damage to oil exporters.

“The pain is very hard for these countries,” said René G. Ortiz, former secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and former energy minister of Ecuador. “These countries dreamed that these low prices would be very temporary.”

Mr. Ortiz estimated that all major oil exporting countries had lost a total of $1 trillion in oil sales because of the price decline over the last year. 

Much, much at the linked articles.

Countries on the "watch list."

There are indications it has already begun in Venezuela. Be careful. The photo-essay does not provide any background to what is really going on -- although in the big scheme of things it may not matter. In these shortages (real or artificial) one can be assured the government and the military are running the show, take bribes, diverting food and medicine to their own "ports." My hunch is that the upper middle class and the rich are doing just fine; it's the lower middle class and the poor that will really get hit -- but regardless, it will lead to social unrest (already has, if one "believes" the pictures -- remember, this is a PBS link).

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Back To The Bakken

Active Rigs:

	8/25/2015	08/25/2014	08/25/2013	08/25/2012	08/25/2011
Active Rigs	75	194	184	189	195

RBN Energy: a 150-mile gap in the nation's natural gas pipeline system stymies propane shipments. This is a great article with a great graphic that paints the problem.

Coal?

Twitter: this is an interesting factoid. There are three major tight crude oil plays in the US -- the Permian, the Bakken, and the Eagle Ford. Yesterday, Twitter (mostly Platts) had multiple tweets on future of the Bakken; none on the other two.