WTI Trends Higher -- Closes Slightly Above $51 -- April 4, 2017

Saudi goes mano a mano with the Bakken: Reuters oil analyst is tweeting that Saudi may be cutting overall oil production but Saudi is offering its customers MORE light crude oils while cutting heavy grades, a trend that could increase as the kingdom wants to maximize revenue and needs more heavy oil to power its own refineries. Or to to take on the Bakken mano a mano. 

WTI: trends higher; closes slightly above $51. Was this the reason?

COP has not specified the reduction in crude volume, but combined with the Syncrude outage, up to 490K bbl/day, or nearly 20%, of the oil sands' 2.5M bbl/day of supply is potentially off the market; also, Suncor Energy's 180K bbl/day Firebag thermal plant is undergoing planned maintenance this quarter, adding to the shortage of heavy crude.

Active rigs:

	4/4/2017	04/04/2016	04/04/2015	04/04/2014	04/04/2013
Active Rigs	49	30	94	192	186

Elidah field update: a reader provided a bit of background to a new pad in Elidah oil field.

One well released from confidential list:

• 26281, SI/NC, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-94-36C-25-5H, McGregory Buttes, no production data,

Four new permits:

• Operator: Whiting
• Field: Sand Creek (McKenzie)
• Comments: 

Operator transfer: 20+ wells from CLR to Southwestern Production Corp

• all older wells
• all in Billings County
• includes nine (9) Tracy Mountain wells

No wells coming off confidential list Wednesday. 

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Hyperdrive

Enterprise Products Partners to expand ethylene projects. Data points from Zacks:

• EPD reusing a large, high-capacity ethylene storage well at its Mont Belview, TX, complex
• on completion of this project (as earl as 3Q18), the 5.2 million-bbl facility will be able to inject/withdraw ethylene at the rate of 2,000 bbls per hour
• expandable to 4,000 bbls per hour
• there are seven third-party ethylene pipelines within two miles of the ethylene well; considerable connectivity capability
• EPD will construct a new 24-mle, 12-inch diameter ethylene pipeline to connect Mont Belvieu ot Bayport, TX; will link sites south of the Houston Ship Channel to Mont Belvieu
• much more at the link

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The Apple Page

Huge news over at Apple.

Link here. More on this later. 

Many things mentioned. What caught me was Apple's decision to return to Apple-branded displays, something they gave up less than a year ago. I tried to "rationalize" the decision, and accept it, but deep down I thought Apple had made a huge, huge mistake. Apparently they realized they had. It kind of reminds me of the "New Coke" debacle.