Week 36: September 4, 2016 -- September 10, 2016

Of course, the big international story this past week was the decision of the Mexican government to unilaterally freeze (actually decrease) crude oil production this year in support of Saudi's cash crunch. Likewise, Iran has also frozen production, and, not much has changed in Venezuela -
another basket case which will soon join Greece, which is also back in the news. Even Saudi has cut back on production. So, it looks like OPEC is coming together on the proposed crude oil production freeze after all.

The big crude oil story in the US was the spectacular find announced by Apache -- a reservoir that could add 3 billion bbls of crude oil and 75 trillion cubic fee of natural gas to their reserves: Alpine High in west Texas.

The Apache story was only slightly bigger than the EOG story: buying Yates Petroleum and stealing the Permian for about $1,500/acre. Enbridge wants to buy Spectra but the regulators won't like this proposal either (at the same EOG-Yates link).

Serious talk on Wall Street that the Fed might actually, possibly, maybe, but who knows, raise "the rate" a quarter of a percent sent the US stock market into a tailspin unlike anything we've seen in, oh, maybe ten days. Meanwhile, the rest of the western world continues to lower their central bank lending rates and are now in negative territory, which Japan is now re-thinking -- maybe not such a good idea.

Most interesting was the killing of the DAPL, which now joins the Keystone XL and the Sandpiper making it a trifecta. Now that this is over, the North Dakota Native Americans at Standing Rock can go back to what they were doing before they were so rudely interrupted by the sound of progress. The good news is that North Dakota will most likely approve a 3.4-mile Alexander Connector pipeline which will move 100,000 bopd to a Montana terminal. (Again, that's less than four miles long, so hopefully the Obama administration won't step in.) Killing the DAPL is simply a political statement with little relevance: there is excess CBR capacity and operators like CLR already have enough pipeline to ship the crude oil they produce. Welders and investors will be primarily inconvenienced, neither of which are found on Indian Reservations.

By the way, the FAA still bans passengers from taking more than three ounces of fluid when flying commercially, but allows those same passengers to take their Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices on board and even using them, although they advise flyers not to use them -- these devices are well known to explode. Sort of like MuskMelon's Tesla. And his SpaceX Falcon 9. Samsung has recalled every last Galaxy Note 7 but FAA bureaucrats are often the last to get the news.

Speaking of spontaneous combustion, we have some good news: atmospheric CO2 has dropped for the second month in a row; it now stands at 402. At 400 ppm, the earth had been expected by some to spontaneously combust although it felt pretty hot in north Texas this past week. 

Operations
On a single day, nine permits expired
On a single day, twenty-eight (28) permits renewed
The number of active rigs in North Dakota jumped 

CLR's Rath Federal extended long laterals are now being reported
The Oasis Andersmadson wells are huge 
Newfield's Jorgenson Federal wells are huge

Fracking
Mike Filloon had another update on Bakken mega-fracks 

Pipelines
DAPL killed; see narrative above

Miscellaneous
Corn, wheat crops are at record production levels; nothing like a little global warming and a bit more atmospheric CO2 to make things really take off
California utility Sempra buy's Mexico's largest wind farm
Stony Creek Rail Yard has about 1,000 wind tower components to build-out the Lindahl 75-wind turbine farm north of Tioga, Williams County, east of Williston
Record-tying earthquake in Oklahoma was outside the STACK/SCOOP