Good Morning! It's Saturday, June 11, 2016

First off, I would like to publicly thank the reader who sent me a note thanking me for posting the video and reminding all of us that "Apache" was simply the best instrumental ever.

Another writer alerted me to the fact that the USGS just released a survey that increased its estimate of technically-recoverable natural gas in the Piceance Basin by 40x, from 1.5 trillion cubic feet to 66 trillion cubic feet. That's technically recoverable, and does not include significant NGLs and crude oil. It gave me an opportunity to update the far larger three-stacked play in the northeast: the Burket/Geneseo - Marcellus - Utica.

SeekingAlpha repeats the USGS claim that the Piceance is second only to the Marcellus. LOL. The Utica dwarfs them all based on a university study -- which by the way, reminds me of Harold Hamm's/Leigh Price's estimate of the Bakken decades before the USGS finally updated the Bakken/Three Forks play.

For newbies,

• the original Leigh Price paper, Part 1, Part II
• the Bakken/Three Forks, a trillion-barrel reservoir

The "trillion-barrel reservoir" was subsequently scaled back to 500 billion bbls but it certainly got our attention at the time.

By the way, as a reminder, the 2013 USGS survey of the Bakken/Three Forks estimated 7.4 billion bbls of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil. If the reservoir contains 500 billion bbls of original oil in place and primary production recovers 3% of that, the 7.4 billion quickly becomes 15 billion bbls of recoverable oil; and, everything I'm reading suggests that 3% is at the far end of what primary production will eventually produce. Some say as high as 8%.

It's unlikely we will see the Piceance developed to any great extent in our investing lifetimes: a) the infrastructure is not there, compared to what is already in place elsewhere (Pennsylvania, Texas); b) it is far from urban centers and refineries in the US (unlike the Marcellus/Utica and the Eagle Ford/Permian); c) much of it is controlled by President Obama, and probably eventually Hillary Clinton (the assets sit under BLM land); and, d) Colorado has more than its share of CAVE dwellers.

The bottom line: China and India have no worries about the earth running out of fossil energy.

Another huge thank you to another reader who has sent me numerous links including one from Bloomberg I have yet to post: "Shale King returns to fracking wells after oil rallies to $50." The "king" is Harold Hamm, of course. I'm going to have to pull out the book on fracking a reader sent me, but it's beginning to look like with the death of Aubrey McClendon and the retirement of Mark Papa some years ago Harold Hamm may earn the title of "last man standing." I need to come up with a fourth -- I'm sure readers will provide suggestions.

The original "last man standing" refers to a chance photograph/impromptu jam session of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins.

But I digress. Baker Hughes does us a service by providing an active rig count every week. That rig count is helpful. However, for those of us following tight oil in the US it would be nice for someone to start tracking DUCs and completed-DUCs, or level of fracking.

The number of active rigs provides an indication of the level of activity in the oil patch but provides little, real helpful information on production.

To the best of my knowledge the only state providing daily DUC data is the state of North Dakota,a  and then a monthly report. I am unaware of any other state providing that data.

So, there you have it. Some Saturday morning meanderings to get me started.

Telstar, The Tornadoes
From wiki: A French composer, Jean Ledrut, accused Joe Meek of plagiarism, claiming that the tune of "Telstar" had been copied from "La Marche d'Austerlitz", a piece from a score that Ledrut had written for the 1960 film Austerlitz. This led to a lawsuit that prevented Meek from receiving royalties from the record during his lifetime, and the issue was not resolved in Meek's favour until three weeks after his suicide in 1967. Austerlitz was not released in the UK until 1965, and Meek was unaware of the film when the lawsuit was filed in March 1963.