ND Oil Cities Poised For More Growth -- January 10, 2017

DAPL wind child to be life-threatening. Story at Bismarck Tribune.

ND oil cities poised for more growth; have big needs. Story at Bismarck Tribune.

Five stories with regard to the market caught my attention this morning;

• ATT sell-off (one story used the word "tanking")
• EPD: Investopedia suggests EPD about to breakout
• WMB: increases dividend 50%
• ; but o/w an "ugly" day for WMB -- missed top line, bottom line; company blamed strength of dollar; half of WMB revenue from outside the US; will issue more shares at $29/share 
• COP: a contributor over at SeekingAlpha suggests COP's number one shale play is the Eagle Ford; interesting in light of recent talk about Austin Chalk
• Oilfield services: investors may shift -- Barclays, over at Rigzone

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.

Oil cut. Russia cuts oil output by 100,000 bopd in early January.  Early this morning on the CNBC crawler, WTI at about $52 and Brent about $55.

Job cuts: not everyone is adding jobs. Big Box stores struggling. Today, Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart plans new round of job cuts. There are many, many factors, but some folks will argue that this was predicted when Wal-Mart did the politically-correct thing to raise the minimum wage.  The jobs cuts apparently not so much at the retail stores themselves, but at its headquarters in Arkansas and "regional support personnel."

The world’s biggest retailer plans to eliminate hundreds of jobs before the end of its fiscal year on Jan. 31, both at headquarters and regional personnel that supports stores, these people said. Many of the eliminations will affect Wal-Mart’s human resources department, a large team that some senior executives believe should be more efficient or whose duties could be handled by outside consultants, said these people. Other departments could be affected as well, say these people.

It appears the focus on "job cuts" is just a bit of smoke. The fire is e-commerce competition from Amazon.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

	1/10/2017	01/10/2016	01/10/2015	01/10/2014	01/10/2013
Active Rigs	37	58	167	193	181

RBN Energy: DCP Midstream LLC, DCP Midstream Partners LP join forces.

The recently announced combination of DCP Midstream LLC and DCP Midstream Partners LP creates the nation’s largest natural gas processor and natural gas liquids producer at what may be a particularly opportune time.

The newly formed DCP Midstream LP, operating as a master limited partnership, owns 61 gas processing plants with a combined capacity of 7.8 Bcf/d—enough to process more than 10% of current U.S. production—as well as 12 fractionation plants, 59,700 miles of gas gathering pipelines and 4,600 miles of NGL pipelines.

Better yet, many of these assets serve some of the U.S.’s most prolific and promising production areas, including the Midland and Delaware basins within the Permian; the Denver-Julesburg (DJ); and the side-by-side SCOOP and STACK plays. In today’s blog, we review the combined entity’s assets and prospects for growth in what soon may be happier times for NGL processors.