Some Shale Drillers Return To The Oil Patch -- WSJ -- August 22, 2016

Updates

Later, 12:59 p.m. Central Time: the nuclear mishap reported below reminds me of another government toxic debacle. From wiki:

The 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill is a 2015 environmental disaster at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.

On August 5, 2015, EPA personnel along with workers for Environmental Restoration LLC caused the release of toxic wastewater when attempting to add a tap to the tailing pond for the mine.

Workers accidentally destroyed the plug holding water trapped inside the mine, overflowing the pond, spilling three million US gallons of mine waste water and tailings, including heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, and other toxic elements, such as arsenic, beryllium, zinc, iron and copper into Cement Creek, a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado.

The EPA was criticized for not warning Colorado and New Mexico until the day after the waste water spilled, despite the fact the EPA employee "in charge of Gold King Mine knew of blowout risk."

Later, 10:01 a.m. Central Time: wow, a sharp-eyed reader (with an elephantine memory) caught something I missed; something I had forgotten. In the original post below I mentioned that I was unaware of the nuclear mishap in New Mexico. The reader recalled that I had indeed posted the report of the mishap. In fact, it was made easy to understand how it happened by another reader who explained the difference between inorganic kitty litter (clay pellets) and organic kitty litter (think Trader Joe's or Whole Foods). Here were the earlier links:

• August 2, 2015
• March 16, 2015

A huge thank you to the reader who caught this. I'm pretty embarrassed. Not only did I not remember posting this but the "kitty litter" analogy should have stuck with me forever. Now I have to go back and see if the Los Angeles Times even explained how this mishap occurred. If the Times did not, we have yet another story line. Again, a great story. Thank you. See first comment below.

Original Post

GDP Now - Latest forecast: 3.6 percent for 3Q16 — August 16, 2016

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2016 is 3.6 percent on August 16, up from 3.5 percent on August 12.

After this morning's new residential construction release from the U.S. Census Bureau, the forecast for third-quarter real residential investment growth increased from 0.4 percent to 2.4 percent.

Active rigs:

	8/22/2016	08/22/2015	08/22/2014	08/22/2013	08/22/2012
Active Rigs	32	76	193	184	191

RBN Energy: pipelines from hubs to refineries -- part 2, the series continues.

There is a story behind every new crude oil pipeline built to supply a decades-old refinery. After all, the refinery surely had a well-established crude-delivery system in place –– why change horses now, especially with refinery margins under so much pressure? Typically, the answer is that, well, times have changed. Or, more specifically, the Shale Revolution has up-ended traditional crude sourcing, forced refinery owners to rethink their crude slates, and opened up opportunities to access new, lower-cost oil. Today, we continue our look at these new pipeline connections, their rationales, and their effects on other pipelines, barge deliveries and crude-by-rail.

In an earlier post, we noted that new pipelines to increase crude oil takeaway capacity from major producing areas to oil storage and distribution hubs like Houston, TX and Cushing, OK seem to garner most of the media’s attention. Just outside the spotlight’s glare, though, midstream companies are building several “demand-pull” pipelines to move crude to refineries more efficiently, and to give refineries easier, cheaper access to new, desirable supplies. We noted that U.S. refineries –– and most of the crude oil delivery infrastructure that supplies them –– were built many decades before the Shale Revolution enabled vast quantities of oil (and natural gas and natural gas liquids) to be freed from the shale and/or tight sands of the Permian, the Eagle Ford, the Bakken and other big-name plays. Rapid production growth from these new plays forced a major rethinking –– and re-plumbing –– of the nation’s crude-delivery infrastructure; slashed oil imports (especially lighter crudes); and led a number of U.S. refiners to revamp their oil-processing facilities to allow the use of more domestically sourced crude.

Jumping the gun? Some shale drillers are returning to the oil patch -- The Wall Street Journal. 

Devon Energy Corp. , Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and other prolific shale producers are telling investors that this fall they will pour more money into drilling new wells. The burst of activity shows the resilience of American energy companies that managed to survive oil’s plunge from over $100 a barrel in June 2014 to less than $30 earlier this year. But the burgeoning ramp-up threatens to cut the recent rally to $50 off at its knees.

Investors are scared there is little room in the market for all the new crude that is about to be unleashed by companies restarting their operations in Texas and Oklahoma. Federal data shows companies are already pumping more from each well, getting an additional 15 percent to 30 percent from new wells in some of the biggest shale fields.

“I do worry,” said Daniel Katzenberg, an energy analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. “This higher activity level may be premature, in my view, and probably keeps a cap on how high oil prices can go.”

Venezuela "soaks up" US light crude oil -- Platts:

Venezuela’s thirst for light crude imports could play an interesting role in crimping as much as 300,000 b/d of its own crude exports. That would amount to a whopping 14% of Venezuela’s 2.12 million b/d production as of July.

The two are tied because of Venezuela’s rising dependence on imported light crudes and condensates for blending with its increasingly heavy domestic oil — a result of the government’s bet on heavy oil production and sharp declines in conventional output.

Venezuela’s net crude exports could drop by 200,000-300,000 b/d if credit concerns prevent state-owned PDVSA from keeping those light crude imports flowing.

Malaysia: Profit falls 96% at Malaysia's state oil company, Petronas, after prices slump - Bloomberg.

Saudi crude oil stocks, from John Kemp:

Another government cover-up? Completely off my radar scope: Nuclear mishap two years ago in New Mexcio among most expensive in US history.

When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations.

The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup program that spans the nation, or that it would jeopardize the Energy Department’s credibility in dealing with the tricky problem of radioactive waste.

But the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history.

The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2 billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

The February 14, 2014, accident is also complicating cleanup programs at about a dozen current and former nuclear weapons sites across the U.S. Thousands of tons of radioactive waste that were headed for the dump are backed up in Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere, state officials said in interviews.