Four Reasons Why Production / Rig Is Increasing -- RBN Energy -- February 27, 2017

Today's post from Rusty Braziel (RBN Energy) is a must-read. The article will be archived.

The writer posits the four reasons why oil production / rig is increasing at incredibly fast rates:
larger leaseholds: I think this has more to do with economics than with oil production / rig, but "whatever"

• longer laterals: sort of an obvious explanation; regular readers of the blog have known this for years
• extra sand: ditto
• more "choking back": I'm glad he used this term; I often used this term on the blog but never knew if it was correct, and I didn't really think about the derivatives from this phenomenon

It seems to me that almost everything we've learned about tight oil production was learned in the "Bakken."

Nothing was said about re-entry and re-fracking. Or about taking wells off-line for two months every now and then.

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Salt: A World History

Mark Kurlandsky

c. 2002

DDS: 553.63 KUR

See this post, also.

Chapter Eight: A Nordic Dream

Time: 13th and 14th centuries
Location: Scandinavia

One of the major commercial uses of salt: to preserve herring, second only to salt cod, in the  European Lenten diet (see earlier chapter).

Fish dealers in Paris, 12th century: harengeres -- herring sellers.

Herring is a Clupeidae, a member of the same family of small, forked-tailed oily fish with a single dorsal fin known as sardines. Anchovies are of a different family but of the same Clupeiforme order as sardines and herring.

Greeks called it alexiium, from the word als or hals, as in Hallstatt, meaning "salt."

Herring became important in the 14th century precisely because north Atlantic countries were becoming important in the 14th century.

A peculiarity of English language: most fish swim in schools; herring swim in shoals -- a word of the same meaning derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root.

Herring can be hard to find due to their peculiarities of feeding behavior.

The reason for the explosive growth of herring 13th and 14th centuries in Scandinavia: greater access to salt (not greater access to herring).

Holland: learned to pickle herring using brine, fresh with no drying at all -- eliminates the risk of its fat turning rancid from exposure to the air.

Poor people at lenten food -- salted, dried fish. Rich people had access to fresh fish.

Cured herring had an even lower standing than salted cod.

Zelle: Hollanders; burning peat that was impregnated with seawater.

The Dutch: green herring.

East Anglia: red herring.

Findon haddocks: near Aberdeen, Scotland.

Surstromming: Bay of Bothnia, between Sweden and Finland.

Sweden: both a north coast and a south coast. On the north coast, herring, sill; and on the south coast, stromming.

Russians: a Baltic salaka and an Atlantic sel'd.

Like garum (see earlier chapter), stromming is fermented, not rotten.

Hanseatic League: 1250 - 1350 -- helped solve the problem of salt shortage.

The Hanseatic story. Hanseatics known as Easterlings, because they came from the east. Easterlings is the origin of sterling -- of "assured value."

The oversupply of herring, and then the American fisheries, helped end the Hanseatic cartel.