The Energy And Market Page, T+81 -- April 12, 2017

Bakken boom: Williston's school district is studying need for yet another new school. I love the second of these two next paragraphs, just thinking about all those happy, smiling kids, really, really, enjoying what the Great Plains have to offer:

Williston’s population has grown by 65 percent since 2010, according to the latest estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. The school district enrolled 3,780 students in fall 2016 — a 60 percent increase from the 2009-10 school year.

While enrollment continued to rise even amid a downturn, it isn’t the source of alarm. It’s instead the birth rate and the few years before those newborns become the district’s incoming kindergarteners.

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Hess: shares could rally 60% in the next year -- Bank of America. I don't follow Hess share price so have no comment. However, Hess has placed a lot of new infrastructure in place in North Dakota and it seems natural gas is becoming a bigger and bigger deal for the oily Bakken.

Coal: China buys more coal; slows purchases of coal from North Korea.

Alaska pipeline: yet another story on challenges for the 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline System due to very sluggish flow due to low volume. Alaska's output was 565,000 bopd last month, down from a peak of more than 2 million in 1988. I think they've been talking about this problem for years.

Trend: it appears most blog sites / most business articles suggest oil will trend higher toward the end of 2017.

OPEC staying true to their word? OPEC cut oil output in March by more than pledged.

More OPEC: wow. From twitter -- former advisor at Saudi Arabia's oil ministry, now the World Energy Council vice chairman, says oil market needs $70 - $80 over the next decade to balance. That's a far cry from the $100 that Saudi Arabia used to base their annual budget on, and the vice chairman is talking about a) the next; and, b) the decade. That's a long time. 

WTI: trending up; around $53.

Peak oil? What peak oil? From the EIA:

Note that the Gulf of Mexico will not reach 2 million bopd even by the end of 2018 (forecast) and yet the Bakken could produce 2 million bopd if unfettered (forecast). Just helping me to put things into perspective. The USGS says the Permian is 3x larger than the Bakken, which takes us to 6 million bopd, and then, of course, we have SCOOP/STACK, and the Niobrara. The EIA estimates that the US will produce 9.9 million bopd in the next couple of years.