Sunday, October 1, 2017

Active rigs:

$51.64	10/1/2017	10/01/2016	10/01/2015	10/01/2014	10/01/2013
Active Rigs	58	33	68	191	187

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NFL-Free Sunday 

There are an incredible number of headlines at the various news aggregators regarding the price of oil going forward.

I plan to spend the day reading: I will attack the 3-volume Mark Twain autobiography that first started appearing in 2010. The third volume has a copyright date of 2015. I don't particularly care for Mark Twain but I felt any good library needed to include his autobiography. My notes on the autobiography will be at this post.

I have read snippets of the first volume but did not enjoy it; my mind was unprepared. However, now I am ready and having read some from all three volumes today, I am more than ready to proceed.

So, if the blogging is intermittent today, you will know why.

With regard to all the stories being reported today, for now I will simply link the articles, make minimal comments and come back to the stories later if the spirit moves me, and likely it won't.

The headlines:

• Escalating problems in Iraq's Kurdistan region could affect supply, FX Empire via Yahoo!Finance
• Saudis pay the price for OPEC leadership, Bloomberg. 
• Saudi Arabia is ceding oil market share to support prices and that's good for US oil plays, Forbes.
• OPEC oil output rises by 50,000 bpd in September, Reuters
• Bullish oil streak means strongest third quarter Brent price gain in 13 years, Reuters 
• Five large-cap oil stocks are up 20% or more in September -- and more gains appear on tap, MarketWatch
• From oilprice, consider the source: analysis -- oil prices have risen too far too fast (all the way to $51 for WTI)
• From oilprice, consider the source: is $80-oil possible? Eight comments (so far) at the linked article.
• From oilprice, consider the source: markets react stoically to rising oil rig count. Stoically?
• From oilprice, consider the source: traders are betting on $100 oil in 2018
• From oilprice, consider the source: majors race to gain more acreage in the Permian

Note: some oilprice links may be sponsored content; I no longer know what articles from oilprice are paid content.

Comments:

• much of this oil-price forecasting seems to be coming from an echo chamber from a cubicle on the 98th floor of some skyscraper on Wall Street
• themes affecting price of oil
• strength of the US dollar: Yellen wants to strengthen the US dollar (price of WTI drops); tea leaves suggest Trump will "price" her out to pasture
• recent IEA and OPEC prognostications of increasing demand for crude oil in 2018
• misleading headlines that OPEC is complying with cuts (OPEC production increased in September and hot summer in Mideast is coming to an end, just as the driving season in the US is coming to an end
• bulls betting on collapse of Kurdish exports
• $60 oil and the Bakken ramps up
• $80 oil and The New York Times will have an article on the Bakken boom
• $100 oil and the Bakken explodes (memo to self: note to Jane Nielson, the writer of the prescient essay, "Bakken Oil Hype")

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By the way, from the "Bakken Oil Hype" link above, Ms Nielson wrote:

Not unreasonably, USGS estimates of undiscovered and technically recoverable oil are posed rather like gambling odds. At Bakken, USGS estimates:

• 5% chance of finding a total of 4.3 billion barrels,
• 95% chance of finding a total of 3.1 billion barrels, and
• 50% chance of finding a total of 3.6 billion barrels (the famous USGS “mean” estimate).

In its Fact Sheet 2008-3021, USGS upped its estimate of undiscovered oil in the Bakken by a factor of 25, compared to its 1995 figures. Many petroleum experts are quite willing to agree with USGS’s admission of significant uncertainty in these estimates.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations and comments:

• the North Dakota Bakken boom began in 2007 and hit its stride in 2010
• North Dakota is producing about 1,000,0000 bbls of oil/day -- not all of it from the Bakken, but most of it is now coming from the Bakken
• 1 million bopd x 365 days = 365 million bbls/year
• x 10 years = 3,650 million bbls or 3.65 billion bbls
• some say operators have drilled one-sixth of the wells that will ultimately be drilled
• EURs of future wells will exceed current and older wells

Amazing, isn't it. The USGS "mean" projection was 3.6 billion bbls. 

Disclaimer: I often make simple arithmetic mistakes and mathematical errors. I often make typographical and factual errors. My typographical errors include typing "billion" when I mean "million" and vice versa. If any of this information is important to you, go to the source.

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Imagine The Negative G's and Zero Gravity

I'm not sure why this was posted over at Twitter today. It was filmed more than a year ago at the Farnborough 2016 Air Show: