Week 13: March 26, 2017 -- April 1, 2017

It was a fairly quiet week in the big scheme of things. The price of oil trended down early in the week but by Friday was back up to $50.

Now that oil is "under the river" in the DAPL pipeline (whether it is flowing is another story), the company is no longer required to provide weekly updates to the court. If everything goes smoothly we won't hear much about the daily flow, but hopefully we will get updates in the NDIC Director's monthly "Director's Cut."

There were a lot of posts about Slawson and the number of wells it will drill in 640-acre and 1280-acre spacing units. Every year, in my annual top stories of the year, I name the Bakken operator that I found "most interesting" for the year. Right now, Slawson is easily winning in that category.

At the national level, economically, things look quite exciting, but that is not yet reflected in objective data, like project GDP growth.

National, miscellaneous
Consumer confidence, strongest level measured in decades
US energy production falls for first time since 2009

Operations
Whiting reports another great Rolla Federal well
Oasis: 90 wells in small area in northeast McKenzie County
Oasis to drill as many as 30 wells in one 640-acre unit 
Oasis: another 18 wells in a drilling unit with seven long laterals
EOR pilot, Madison pool, Samson Oil and Gas
Hess transfers nine (9) wells in Divide County to Crescent Point
Random update of an area of interest in Charbonneau oil field
Skarston wells off-line again; no explanation

Pipelines
Oil in DAPL pipeline segment that is under the lake/river
ND active rig count jumps 40% after President Trump approves DAPL 

Fracking
Production jumps 13-fold in an old BR well in North Fork oil field 
Two Haystack Butte wells with interesting production profiles 
Is the Elidah oil field telling us something?
Two Petro-Hunt Charlson oil field wells finally completely; 50 stages but only 5 million lbs each

DUCs
EOG reports eight (8) completed DUCs -- all unremarkable 

Bakken economy
Contractor named for new Williston airport

Commentary
Connecting the dots: Keystone, Canadian oil sands, heavy oil, light oil 
Why Midwest refiners chose to pass up local Bakken bounty