Later, 10:34 p.m. Central Time: after posting the following, I sent a copy to my wife (who is out in California for a couple of weeks). She said this "fad" has been going on for at least two years. She, our older daughter, and our oldest granddaughter often "work" on them while talking; helps relieve stress, she says. I'm always the last to know.
Original Post
Over the weekend, in between games during the Charles Dutton Water Polo Tournament here in north Texas, our granddaughter and I would visit the Barnes & Noble up the street. It was her suggestion.
I had not been there in awhile; coming into the music and DVD section, just before going through the merchandise "detector" I saw a stack of "coloring books," something I don't recall seeing before, at least not this many. I pointed the table full of "coloring books" out to Arianna and said "coloring books have come a long way since when I was a kid."
Today, of all things, I run across this article in the WSJ:Barnes & Noble earnings for 4Q15 were better than expected. Why?
An uptick in print sales, driven in part by the success of adult
coloring books, has bolstered the retailer’s expectations.
Excluding
sales related to its Nook device and e-book business, same-store sales
were up 1.3% in the third quarter. And the company still expects sales
on that basis to rise 1% for the full fiscal year, which ends April 30.
Barnes & Noble said it expects to have closed eight stores by the
end of fiscal 2016, the fewest since fiscal 2000 when it closed five
locations. Barnes & Noble had previously forecast that it would
close 13 stores this fiscal year.
During a call with analysts,
Ronald Boire, Barnes & Noble’s chief executive, said reducing Nook
losses is the retailer’s priority. He said that while the company is
committed to its digital customers, it is exploring all options. The
retailer is currently winding down the sale of its Nook devices and
e-books in the U.K.
Who would have ever guessed: Barnes & Noble reporting a better quarter based on "adult coloring books." Next thing you know Playboy will announce no more nudity in their magazines. Oh, that's right, they already have.
BNSF Railway Co. will continue to invest in North Dakota in 2016, though at a reduced rate.
The
company released a statement saying it plans to spend more than $100
million in North Dakota this year. About $326 million was spent on rail
capacity improvement projects in 2015, and $506 million was spent on
infrastructure in 2014.
BNSF invested more than $1.1 billion in North Dakota from 2012 to 2014.
Spending
this year will be focused on maintenance projects rather than the
additional capacity built to meet customer demand in prior years,
according to a company statement. This will include replacing and
upgrading rail, rail ties and ballast, as well as continued installation
of centralized traffic control signaling projects near Dickinson and
Jamestown.
Maintenance will be performed on more than 740 miles of
track, including the replacement of about 55 miles of rail and 240,000
ties and signal upgrades.
From The Williston Wire, last week:
RDO Equipment Co. will
celebrate a Customer Appreciation Open House at its new Williston
location on Wednesday, March 16 from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m.
RDO Equipment opened its first store in Williston in 2009. In early
2016, construction was completed on the new location at 14057 49th St. NW. The new site offers
more than 36,000 square feet, 12 service bays and a drive-through wash
bay. The original location is now home to RDO Truck Center.
Set in the heart of downtown Williston, Renaissance on Main (ROM), located on the corner of 2nd and
Main Street, is opening the door to the new city center. ROM offers
elegant office space along with retail and residential space. Williston
Economic Development Executive Director, Shawn Wenko states, "Not only
is it a top quality commercial and residential complex; it's going to be
a showcase piece for our downtown." The public is invited to get its
first peek at this exciting new development, during an Open House on Thursday, March 17th from 2-5 p.m.
Local restaurateur Jason Esperum has opened his second restaurant in
Williston. Esperum's newest eatery is Quinn's Bar and Burgers located in
the former Blaine's Auto Body Shop at 2406 2nd Ave. W. Quinn's features
hand ground burgers in a 21 and over bar setting. In addition to
Quinn's, Esperum owns Lucy Lu's Restaurant and Bar in Downtown
Williston.
I am really going to miss this one; this should be fun: The Williston Area Chamber of Commerce and Murphy Motors are gearing up for the annual ShamRockin' the Bakken / Taste of Williston on
Thursday, March 17 from 5:30-10 p.m. at the Grand Williston Hotel and
Conference Center. The St. Patrick's Day Celebration will feature some
of the area's tastiest food and beverages; live music from Whiskey
Rebellion; plus much more. Admission is $20 per person.
In a basement lab of a North Dakota research center, Beth Kurz and an
assistant are peering through a scanning electron microscope, studying
samples from the state's vast Bakken shale oil formation. Kurz, a
hydrogeologist, is part of a team, which looks at using carbon dioxide
to coax more oil out of wells that have already been hydraulically
fractured, or fracked, in the process of extracting oil from shale
rocks.
"No one is sure just yet how this process can work in the
Bakken," said Kurz. "We're hoping to crack that riddle."
The use of CO2 in fracking, for example, could
cut production costs in North Dakota's largest oil-producing county by
about 10 percent. That, according to Reuters calculations, would bring
costs to around $24.30 per barrel, below current market prices.
So
far, the process has worked in laboratory conditions, but not yet in
field trials, so it is unclear how quickly it could be commercially
deployed.
Hess Corp,
North Dakota's third-largest oil producer, is studying how it can
lengthen the horizontal wells and use cheaper materials in fracking.
Services giant Schlumberger NV, licensed a new process last fall that slashes the number of pumps needed to frack a well.
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in North Dakota have met with
varying degrees of success. Some failed to produce any incremental oil
while others successfully increased recovery. Most of the unsuccessful
EOR projects were attempts to waterflood Madison reservoirs in
north-central North Dakota.
The failure of these waterfloods is
inexplicable because waterfloods in the same strata in Canada have been
successful.
One explanation is that project operations were conducted
differently while another explanation is that reservoir properties in
North Dakota differ from similar reservoirs in Canada. Carbonate
reservoirs are often
inhomogeneous and only a thorough understanding of the reservoir
characteristics and careful planning can compensate for these
inhomogeneities.
The EOR projects attempted in North Dakota are listed
in Table II [the table is missing from the article].
Each of the listed EOR projects has a unique identifying
abbreviation that corresponds to those in figure 28, a location map of
all the active units in North Dakota [Figure 28 is also missing from the article].
In 1983, Chevron Oil Co. attempted to unitize Little Knife Field to institute a CO2
flood for pressure maintenance. A successful pilot study involving five
wells had shown that the program would probably be
successful (Desch et al., 1984), but the unitization attempt failed
because the 80% of the royalty interest owners necessary to ratify a
unitization agreement in North Dakota was not attained.
Recent CO2 enhanced recovery programs in Canada have
apparently been successful. These successful programs, coupled with the
apparent success of the Chevron pilot program at Little Knife Field,
might point to a future need for CO2. There are two sources of CO2 presently available to operators in the Williston Basin. The first source is the Wyoming Thrust Belt, where CO2 is produced together with
other natural gasses. The second source is the coal gasification project at Beulah, North Dakota where CO2 is a byproduct of the process. A pipeline is being built to transport CO2 to the Weyburn Field in
Saskatchewan and startup of a CO2 flood may begin during 1999. The pipeline's route takes it past many other fields that are suitable for CO2 programs and perhaps some other fields will be
CO2-flooded soon.
The EERC team is also working to establish the best possible approach to
enhanced oil recovery (EOR). For the past year, the team has been
analyzing and working to test the use of CO2 injected into an oil well
as a vehicle to mobilize previously trapped oil droplets, allowing for
the recovery of more oil. Currently, oil recovered in the resource is
roughly 3 to 5 percent. “If we can change 3 to 5 percent to 4 to 6
percent,” he says, that is very meaningful. “The denominator on this
research is so huge that single type percent increases in recovery are
extremely meaningful. A 1 percent increase of recoverable oil translates
to roughly $150 billion of value.”
To find that value, EERC has
started to analyze two unsuccessful Bakken EOR pilot projects: one in
the Elm Coulee field of Montana and the other in Mountrail County of
North Dakota. The team has arranged a data-sharing agreement that will
help them better understand the efforts. According to Harju, the EERC
team has developed some exciting tests that could help prove Bakken EOR
by 2014.
In their “hottest year ever” press briefing, NOAA included this
graph, which stated that they have a 58 year long radiosonde temperature
record. But they only showed the last 37 years in the graph.
NESDIS Strategic Communications
Here is why they are hiding the rest of the data. The earlier data showed as much pre-1979 cooling as the post-1979 warming.
1520-0493(1978)106<0755:gtvsma>2.0.CO;2
I combined the two graphs at the same scale
below, and put a horizontal red reference line in, which shows that the
earth’s atmosphere has not warmed at all since the late 1950’s.
The omission of this data from the NOAA report, is just their latest
attempt to defraud the public. NOAA’s best data shows no warming for 60
years. But it gets worse. The graph in the NOAA report shows about 0.5C
warming from 1979 to 2010, but their original published data shows
little warming during that period.
Warmists won't be able to read / understand these graphs, and for them, the science is settled.
For the rest of us, it's becoming more and more interesting.
Eventually, there will be too much data for the scientific community to ignore and we will have an honest and open scientific inquiry.
Remember: the Saudi Surge / Slump continues. Seven (7) new permits:
Operator: Sinclair
Field: Lone Butte (McKenzie)
Comment: a 7-well pad in NWNW 8-147-98 in graphic at bottom of post;
Seven permits renewed, including (note: five counties represented) --
XTO, 3 permits, TAT State Federal wells in Dunn County
Petro-Hunt, one M. Thorson permit in Burke County
Thunderbird Resources, one Watson A permit in McKenzie County
Hunt, one Oakland permit in Mountrail County
EOG, one Hardscrabble permit in Williams County
Two (2) producing wells completed:
30813, 294 (no typo), XTO, Klamm 34X-9G, API 33-053-06768, fracked 11/30 - 12/23/2015, Siverston, t2/16; cum -- (on line for four days in 12/15; then taken off-line)
30814, 95 (no typo), XTO, Klamm 34X-9D, API 33-053-06769, Siverston, fracked 12/6 - 22/2015; t2/16; cum -- on line for one day in 12/15; then taken off-line)
Wells coming off confidential list Tuesday:
29762, 959, XTO, Homer 14X-32A, Grinnel, t1/16; cum 4K 6 days production;
30075, 1,283, BR, Cecilia Stroh 44-7MBH, Cabernet, t2/16; cum --
Disclaimer: in a long note like this there will be typographical and factual errors. I may be coming to or leading myself to conclusions that are completely wrong. I may be seeing things that don't exist. I am inappropriately exuberant about the Williston Basin. Do not make any financial, investing, or travel decisions based on what you read here. If this information is important to you, go to the source. This has not been triple-checked. There may be simple typographical errors that need to be fixed. Sometimes simple typographical errors result in huge errors. Now to the post:
While you're doing that, here's some background music, assuming your mobile device can multi-task:
Sweet Jane, Lou Reed
Also, scroll through some Madison wells at the "monster well" site.
With that background, I'm going to take a look at the early production of some of these "monster Madison" wells. When I did the first run, everything was done, of course, randomly. What I post below might have some cherry-picking (to make a point) but not much.
The Madison well and early production:
Drilled back in 1953, #165, 645/PNA, Hess, Beaver Lodge-Madison Unit G-11, Beaver Lodge; t6/53; cum 1.02 million bbls;
MADISON
11-1953
9
2028
0
0
0
0
0
MADISON
10-1953
7
1425
0
0
0
0
0
MADISON
9-1953
8
1820
0
0
0
0
0
MADISON
8-1953
17
4528
0
0
0
0
0
MADISON
7-1953
9
1314
0
5
0
0
0
MADISON
6-1953
20
2993
0
15
0
0
0
Drilled back in 1953, #345, 504/PNA, Hess, Tioga-Madison Unit L-144, Tioga, t8/53; cum 2.1 million bbls:
MADISON
1-1954
8
1644
0
332
0
0
0
MADISON
12-1953
7
1625
0
234
0
0
0
MADISON
11-1953
8
1731
0
303
0
0
0
MADISON
10-1953
11
2371
0
418
0
0
0
MADISON
9-1953
8
1735
0
0
0
0
0
MADISON
8-1953
8
1548
0
0
0
0
0
Drilled back in 1958, #1824, 328/PA, Hess, Blue Buttes-Madison Unit L-306, t6/58; cum 1.01 million bbls 2/05:
MADISON
10-1958
8
592
0
25
0
0
0
MADISON
9-1958
6
717
0
7
0
0
0
MADISON
8-1958
13
1848
0
19
0
0
0
MADISON
7-1958
15
1974
0
0
0
0
0
MADISON
6-1958
5
925
0
19
0
0
0
MADISON
5-1958
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Drilled back in 1958, #1918, 187/PA, Hess, Blue Buttes-Madison Unit M-405, Madison, Blue Buttes, s7/58; t8/58; PNA 8/09; 1.28 million bbls:
MADISON
12-1958
13
1454
0
1354
0
0
0
MADISON
11-1958
12
1007
0
1136
0
0
0
MADISON
10-1958
10
589
0
691
0
0
0
MADISON
9-1958
7
842
0
1434
0
0
0
MADISON
8-1958
7
748
0
1275
0
0
0
MADISON
9-1956
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
Okay, we'll quit there. There was no cherry-picking. I simply took the first four Madison wells with more than a million bo cumulative and then posted the first six months of production. In almost all cases, in general, subsequent production does not exceed initial production unless they go back in and "re-do" the well in some way.
There are exceptions. Look at the production profile in this well, in the first few years. The sundry forms in the well file are not helpful; there is no explanation why this well's production surged some months:
Drilled back in 1977, #6165, 772, Petro-Hunt, Klatt 2-19-3D, Madison, Little Knife, t7/77; cum 1.50 million bbls 10/15:
MADISON
2-1979
16
5266
5296
0
6246
0
0
MADISON
1-1979
28
12536
12752
14
19487
0
0
MADISON
12-1978
29
10941
0
0
9514
0
0
MADISON
11-1978
26
14202
0
7
10868
10868
0
MADISON
10-1978
30
13351
0
1
12505
0
0
MADISON
9-1978
28
9276
0
1
11316
0
0
MADISON
8-1978
30
10978
0
0
9355
0
0
MADISON
7-1978
31
6253
0
26
5972
0
0
MADISON
6-1978
30
2794
0
30
2178
0
0
MADISON
5-1978
29
2831
0
31
2195
0
2126
MADISON
4-1978
7
2800
0
30
2181
0
0
MADISON
3-1978
10
3728
0
31
2895
0
0
MADISON
2-1978
9
4980
0
11
3849
0
3658
MADISON
1-1978
9
4709
0
31
3645
0
3576
MADISON
12-1977
10
5973
0
31
4643
0
4613
MADISON
11-1977
9
5803
0
30
4547
0
4520
MADISON
10-1977
12
6225
0
63
4846
0
4810
MADISON
9-1977
28
17754
0
30
13837
0
13743
MADISON
8-1977
28
12116
0
62
9496
0
9412
MADISON
7-1977
29
3848
0
0
2963
0
0
MADISON
6-1977
0
0
0
0
2568
0
2550
Now go back and look at the production profiles of the three new Chatfield Madison wells (the link again).
There are two points to make:
1. Those three new Chatfield Madison wells are producing at 5,000 bbls/month compared with less than 1,000 bbls/month for what became "monster wells" decades later, but there is a gotcha!
2. Even wells that produced 3,000 or 5,000 bbls/month early on could surprise us and go on and produced upwards of 15,000 bbls/month many months or years later.
Remember, these Madison wells are a) shallow; and, b) not fracked. Shallow? Note that the new Chatfield Madison well reached TD in less than 5 days; 4,667 feet.
There was a third point I was going to make, but now I forgot it. Give me a minute.
Oh, yes, that was the third point: Madison wells are a) shallow; and, b) not fracked.
Oh, yes, the gotcha: notice the number of days those early Madison wells were producing -- less than 10 days per month. The production for the new Chatfield Madison wells is for a full 30-day month.
Of course, I don't have an explanation for why those early Madison wells were on line for so few days when they were just starting out but the interesting thing is that when they went to a full 30 days production was not necessarily much better (at least in the half dozen or so wells I looked at). Could it have been due to takeaway capacity back in the 1950's? Was it due to regional refinery capacity? Too many things to think about. So many story lines.
But now that I've seen the early production numbers of these new Chatfield Madison wells and compare them to "monster Madison wells" it makes me think these may be monster wells some day in the future.
Major OPEC producers are privately starting to talk about a new oil
price equilibrium of $50 a barrel, adding to signs that the market's
long, deep rout is officially over, says one of the industry's leading
prognosticators.
I don't know if folks have noticed, but gasoline has increased "fairly significantly" over the past couple of weeks. This is mostly due to winter / summer changeover at the refineries, but it seems to be moving more quickly than one would expect.
*****************************************
Generational Differences
The other day I pointed out the following license plate to our 12-year-old granddaughter while leaving Barnes and Noble, Southlake, TX:
4KJKR
I asked her what she thought it might mean. I made the mistake of giving my answer before she could answer and thus spoil the opportunity for her original thought.
I told her it could stand for a great poker hand: 4 kings and a joker (where the joker is wild, of course).
Not missing a beat, seriously, not one step later, one nano-second later, Arianna thought it meant "For kids, J. K. Rowling" because the car was parked outside a bookstore.
Bloomberg posted a story Sunday evening (tonight) at 6:00 p.m. or thereabouts suggesting that "the worst may be behind us." I've provided the link and a portion of the story as an update to an earlier post.
************************************
Mulholland Drive Now Part Of The Criterion Collection
Life is "funny." People are attracted to different things for different reasons. My wife hates Mulholland Drive. It's one of my favorite movies. Did we have this discussion before in which I provided a definition of what makes a "top 10" movie for me? If not, some other day.
Of the movies on my "top 10" list this is perhaps the only one I cannot watch often (along with Dr Zhivago), maybe once every ten years. Considering that it came out in 2001 I guess that means I've watched it once, or twice. It comes up now because it has now become part of the Criterion Collection and I finally ordered this copy.
It's hard not to call Mulholland Drive "soft-porn" but it is what it is. I don't suppose it's any "worse" than "old" Playboy (the "new" Playboy, as of March, 2016, no longer shows any nudity -- well, sort of "no" nudity).
The back stories about Mulholland Drive are fascinating and the stories of the real-life actors and actresses are likewise just as fascinating.
The critics "Ebert and Roeper" provide their top ten movies each year. For 2001, Mulholland Drive was #5 on Ebert's list and #3 on Roeper's list. And that's why I say life is funny. On Ebert's list I have only seen three of the ten movies, including Mulholland Drive. On Roeper's list, I have seen only two, and one of them was Mulholland Drive.
The Cowboy, Mulholland Drive
The following video is only a minute-and-a-half of a much longer, and incredibly interesting "interview" with Naomi Watts and David Lynch. This interview and a couple of the other interviews was worth the entire price of the DVD.
On Friday (March 4, 2016) the April NYMEX/CME futures contract
settled at $1.666/MMBtu, the lowest contract settlement since 1999. Rock
bottom prices reflect a growing supply/demand imbalance and concerns
about hitting storage capacity limits later this year.
Last Thursday’s
EIA report showed U.S. gas inventory stands 827 Bcf above last year at
this time and 687 Bcf above the 5-year average.
These are the biggest
surpluses the market has seen since 2012.
Moreover, our latest NATGAS Billboard storage outlook
shows March withdrawals lagging way behind last year and expanding the
surplus further heading into April. In today’s blog, we look at how a
similar situation was resolved in 2012 and what it will take to bring
down the surplus this year.
First we take a look at where we are now in early March – the last month of the winter withdrawal season. The latest Billboard storage estimates
(RBN’s new natural gas market report developed with Criterion Research,
as of March 4, 2016) indicate the market will withdraw a net 70 Bcf
between now and March 25, including the likelihood of two weekly
injections (yes – we mean injections) in mid-March. That’s
compared to last year’s 248-Bcf draw in the same period and a 5-year
average draw of 245-Bcf. Injections are not uncommon in March as the
weather begins to transition from winter to spring and overall
temperatures rise. However, considering that storage inventories started
this March much higher than last year or the 5-year average, early
injections this year will only exacerbate the current oversupply
conditions. Based on these storage estimates, our Billboard analyses
projects that natural gas in storage will end the withdrawal season
(Nov-March) slightly above 2,400 Bcf, about 900 Bcf higher than 2015 and
about 800 Bcf above the 5-year average, which is an enormous surplus in
storage heading into the summer injection season (April-Oct).
This surplus is the key feature of the market this year. It not only
reflects the current imbalance between supply and demand but also
indicates how big a correction is needed to bring the market back into
balance. There are very specific implications for the gas market in 2016
because the surplus cannot grow indefinitely as storage capacity is
finite. Limited storage capacity not only puts a ceiling on inventory
levels but also puts a time constraint on drawing down the mountain of
gas already in storage. Last year, inventories peaked at their all-time
high of 4,009 Bcf in November. If the market were to end March with a
900-Bcf surplus versus last year, as Billboard projects, and carry that
surplus through to November 2016, inventories would peak at 4,909 Bcf.
But as we pointed out in Hot Stuff,
this is not physically possible, given that U.S. storage capacity is
only believed to be 4,300 Bcf. So the outstanding market question is how
exactly will storage balance this year and what will it take? Basically
the solution has to come either from lower supply (meaning less
production) or higher demand.
