Week 28: July 9, 2017 -- July 15, 2017

Without question, the big story of the week: Halcon selling all of its operated interests in the Bakken; moving on up (to the Permian).

Of course, the biggest, and saddest non-energy story coming out of the Bakken this past week was the Hedderich's building fire on south Main. Wow, what a sad, sad loss. To some extent, the building was the icon that bridged old Williston with the new Williston.

The Red Queen has not fallen off her treadmill: despite the fact that 45 more were wells taken off-line (shut in) last month, North Dakota is still producing in excess of one million bopd. Production month-over-month was flat (a very slight decrease) despite more than 1,500 wells being shut in and 850 DUCs. It is really quite extraordinary. And for producers, it's not going to cost $20/bbl to bring those 1,500 shut in wells back on line.

Meanwhile, the stock market rally that began on November 9, 2016, continues to run; the Dow finished the week hitting a new record high. And here. The latter link tells me all I need to know about CNBC.

OPEC production hits new record high. It was reported that even Saudi Arabia exceeded its own production cap in June.

For farmers in North Dakota this was huge news: EPA withdraws WOTUS rule.

The Bakken

Operations
Update on a Ballard well north of Glenburn
Oasis reports a nice 50-stage, low-proppant Three Forks 1st bench well

Fracking
Microproppants

Natural gas
Oasis plans largest natural gas processing plant through expansion of the Wild Basin Gas Plant

Bakken economy
Zuckerberg visits Williston, Boomtown USA

Miscellaneous
A new batch of photos from Vern Whitten
The blog recorded its 10-millionth page view