Algore Can Sleep A Bit More Comfortably Tonight; And The Kennedys Can Start Snow Skiing Year Round -- May 7, 2017

I normally would not post this but this is quite incredible, especially linking it with the other global warming story just posted.

For the first time in its history, Squaw Valley, Tahoe, will keep one of its ski lifts operating past July 4th:

According to The Tahoe Weekly, Squaw Valley will keep running its Shirley lift for skiers and riders past July 4th for the first time in the resort’s 68 year-long history.

As of today, Squaw Valley has seen 714″ of snow and their base is a whopping 232″ deep (that's over 19 feet deep).

So,

• nineteen years with no sign of global warming;
• the extent of the Arctic sea ice is back where it was in April, 13 years ago;
• thirteen years ago, the Arctic ice cap was extremely thin, but this at least a whopping (that word again) two meters thick;
• the Greenland ice cap last winter increased in volume faster than at any time for years; and,
• of course, the Antarctic has never shown any evidence of "shrinkage"

Wells Coming Off Confidential List Early This Week -- May 7, 2017

Wednesday, May 10, 2017
None.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

• 31992, 847, Oasis, Rolfson S 5198 12-29 8T, Siverston, Three Forks 1st Bench, 36 stages, 4.1 million lbs, t11/16; cum 116K 3/17;
• 32504, 1,576, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-94-1A-12-11H, McGregory Buttes, 33 stages, 4.9 million lbs, t12/16; cum 88K 3/17;
• 32993, 102, Petro Harvester, PTL1 05-08 163-91 B, Portal, a Madison well, t3/17; cum 1.5K after 29 days;

Monday, May 8, 2017

• 29126, 955, EOG, Parshall 402-3534H, Parshall, 24 stages, 6.7 million lbs; t11/16; cum 59K 3/17; or more on this area, see "well of interest"
• 29127, 1,584, EOG, Parshall 401-3534H, Parshall, 2 sections, 18 stages, 5.2 million lbs, t11/16; cum 40K 3/17; for more on this area, see "well of interest"
• 30241, 2,614, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-13H, Antelope, 35 stages; 5.3 million lbs, t12/16; cum 112K 3/17; see "well of interest"
• 32482, SI/NC, Hess, BB-Chapin A-151-95-0403H-2, Blue Buttes, no production data,
• 32506, 1,588, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-94-36D-25-10H, McGregory Buttes, 33 stages, 5 million lbs, t12/16; cum 98K 3/17;

Sunday, May 7, 2017

• 30245, 1,588, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-13H, Four Bears, 36 stages, 5.4 million lbs, t11/16; cum 64K 3/17;
• 32483, SI/NC, Hess, BB-Chapin A-151-95-0403H-3, Blue Buttes, no production data,

Saturday, May 6, 2017

• 28470, 1,374, Lime Rock Resources, Matthew Schmidt 4-2-35H-143-97, Cabernet, 35 stages, 4.5 million lbs, (22918, 18427); t11/16; cum 54K 2/17; went off-line all of 3/17;
• 30242, 2,324, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-12H, Antelope, 35 stages, 5.3 million lbs, t12/16; cum 78K 3/17;
• 30246, 2,480, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-8H, Four Bears, t11/16; cum 125K 3/17;
• 31991, 1,311, Oasis, Rolfson S 5198 12-29 7B, Siverston, 36 stages, 4.1 million lbs, t11/16; cum 156K 3/17;
• 32484, SI/NC, Hess, BB-Chapin A-151-95-0403H-4, Blue Buttes, no production data,

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31992, see above, Oasis, Rolfson S 5198 12-29 8T, Siverston:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	16043	30512
2-2017	25785	49397
1-2017	31243	60338
12-2016	29772	51707
11-2016	13135	21514

32504, see below, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-94-1A-12-11H, McGregory Buttes:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	14550	10933
2-2017	26233	16658
1-2017	16507	5147
12-2016	24706	16057
11-2016	5971	3676

29126, see below, EOG, Parshall 402-3534H, Parshall:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	8807	6090
2-2017	8981	4699
1-2017	11891	1174
12-2016	15373	1168
11-2016	13766	4589

29127, see below, EOG, Parshall 401-3534H, Parshall:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	6164	3631
2-2017	4988	2366
1-2017	5065	6568
12-2016	7347	5797
11-2016	16267	5671

30241, see below, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-13H, Antelope:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	25809	26415
2-2017	22310	24188
1-2017	37536	20986
12-2016	25252	0

32506, see above, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-94-36D-25-10H, McGregory Buttes:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	17282	13117
2-2017	25983	17123
1-2017	21877	11928
12-2016	23878	14846
11-2016	8279	3309

30245, see above, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-13H, Four Bears:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	9522	12560
2-2017	12620	16326
1-2017	12646	14422
12-2016	21923	22727
11-2016	7244	8321

28470, see above, Lime Rock Resources, Matthew Schmidt 4-2-35H-143-97, Cabernet:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
4-2017	0	5040
3-2017	15793	7441
2-2017	16310	8623
1-2017	4426	3351
12-2016	8055	3817
11-2016	8754	2268

30242, see above, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-12H, Antelope:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	20849	26293
2-2017	20785	28729
1-2017	16232	13302
12-2016	19228	20053

30246, see above, HRC, Fort Berthold 152-93-7C-6-8H, Four Bears:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	20771	24848
2-2017	20460	26667
1-2017	26445	31203
12-2016	30871	32243
11-2016	26300	33802

31991, see above, Oasis, Rolfson S 5198 12-29 7B, Siverston:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
3-2017	16016	38638
2-2017	25517	56825
1-2017	38176	69700
12-2016	47040	75296
11-2016	29626	41451

A Little North Dakota History -- Nothing About The Bakken -- May 7, 2017

A reader sent me this link to a story in The Bismarck Tribune today:

The Ashley Jewish Homesteaders Cemetery was named to the National Register of Historic Places for being a legacy of the largest Jewish agricultural settlement in North Dakota and, as would naturally follow, the largest such cemetery. An association of far-flung descendants that sees to the upkeep and maintenance is sponsoring a cemetery rededication at 2 p.m. May 21. Everyone is invited.

I had to look up where Ashley is: a little west of the southeastern corner of the state.  It's a fascinating story on so many levels.

I quickly pulled out my copy of David J Wishart's Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. Canada had an aggressive marketing campaign in the late 1800's to lure immigrants from the US into Canada, from page 245:

Like the Mennonites, other minorities were pushed to the Canadian Prairie West by conditions in their homelands and pulled by the liberality of the Canadian government. In 1877, Icelanders settled a block grant ... Mormons moved north from Utah to evade a US antipolygamy law ... attracted by assurances that they could preserve their cultural distinctiveness, Jewish homesteaders abandoned north Dakota to create six agricultural colonies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

I know I have another book on early settlers of North Dakota but I can't locate it at the moment.

**********************************

A Note To The Granddaughters

I've always wanted to read something by Alexander Pushkin but for some reason have never gotten around to it, mostly because I was always a bit intimidated and I always thought Russian literature would be difficult and depressing. I was certainly wrong about Pushkin.

A new translation of all his prose works has just appeared: Novels, Tales, Journeys -- The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin, translation by Richard Pevear and Lrissa Volokhonsky, c. 2016. It is very, very good.

He has an excellent sense of (dry) humor. Occasionally I am reminded of Mark Twain but Pushkin is so much more subtle; perhaps "irony" is the better word. The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin very much reminds me of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

From a website that does short bios of Jewish men and women (and men and women who seem Jewish but are not) comes this blurb:

Pushkin, who is not Jewish, is the greatest Russian author of all time (yes, that includes Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, the father of modern Russian literature. Pushkin married the hottest woman in all of Russia and was then killed in a duel over her.

*****************************

Another Note To The Granddaughters

Not a lot of people know this:

Last week we were brought back to earth by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), as charted by our friend Paul Homewood on his blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat, with the news that ever since December temperatures in the Arctic have consistently been lower than minus 20 C.

In April the extent of Arctic sea ice was back to where it was in April 13 years ago. Furthermore, whereas in 2008 most of the ice was extremely thin, this year most has been at least two metres thick. The Greenland ice cap last winter increased in volume faster than at any time for years.

As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the “hottest year on record”.

This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years.

But the BBC won’t be telling us any of this. And we are still stuck with that insanely damaging Climate Change Act, which in this election will scarcely get a mention.

ND State Oil And Gas Lease Auction -- May, 2017

Disclaimer: I went through the spreadsheet quickly and did not double-check the numbers. In most cases I counted the tracts once and most likely made mistakes in counting. There will likely be other factual and typographical errors. If this information is important to you, go to the source.

Note: I notice that I may have forgotten to post the results from the February, 2017, sale but a quick look at that sale did not reveal anything particularly noteworthy, although, like May, 2017, a lot of parcels were sold. 

It's my impression that activity with regard to oil and gas lease auction picked up considerably in May. The number of tracts bought is quite remarkable and folks are getting tracts at fire-sale prices. Yes, I know it's location, location, location, but compare these with the prices being paid in the Permian. These are prices similar to those paid before the Bakken boom, before folks knew what was there. Probably inappropriate exuberance on my part. Without further ado, the summary:

Billings County

• 26 parcels, more or less
• range: $1 to $126/acre
• mostly below $10

Bowman County

• 14 tracts
• range $1 - $7/acre or thereabouts, except for two tracts, one for $27/acre and one for $38/acre
• Northern Energy bought most of the parcels
• Skyworld Oil ND Ltd bought three parcels
• Yockim Resources Exploration Co bought one parcel

Burke County

• 2 parcels (triple-checked)
• a 40-acre tract for $982/acre; Liberty Resources LL
• an 80-acre tract for $41/acre; Northern Energy Corp

Divide County

• 34 parcels, more or less 
• range: $12 to $510/acre
• NP Resources made a number of purchases, paying top dollar in Divide County
• a 160-acre parcel for $510/acre, NP Resources 
• a 160-acre parcel for $387/acre, NP Resources

Dunn County

• 52 parcels, more or less
• range: $1 to $123/acre
• Dunn County: one of the four top Bakken counties
• most of the tracts in Dunn county for for $1 - $3/acre -- yes, you read that correctly
• at the other end, Northern Energy paid $123/acre for a 160-acre parcel 

Golden Valley

• 8 parcels
• range: $2 - $7

McKenzie

• 15 parcels
• range: $56 - $1,513 but most between $156 - $1,027, it appears, but wide differences
• a 160-acre parcel for $1,027/acre; Marshall & Winston Inc
• a 3.3 acre parcel -- no typo -- a little more than 3 acres for $1,513/acre; KKREP, LLC (private E & P company out of St John, Indiana)

Mountrail

• 6 parcels
• most expensive parcel among the counties
• an 80-acre parcel for $7,002/acre; Petroshale; section 5-151-91
• one could have gotten an 80-acre parcel for $86/acre nearby (section 17-151-19)
• the other four tracts unremarkable 

Rolette

• 2 tracts, both for $27/acre
• Northern Energy Corp and Coyote Oil & Gas Company LLC

Slope

• 21 parcels
• mostly 80-acre and 160-acre parcels; all from $2 to $4
• with exception of three parcels being bought by Skyworld Oil ND Ltd, the other parcels were pretty much evenly divided between Northern Energy and Interwest Petroleum Corp

Stark

• 20 parcels
• one parcel for $551/acre; RLD Exploration LLC; 7.90 acres, a little sliver of land; section 12-139-97
• most other tracts around $14/acre 

Williams

• 40 parcels, more or less
• many/most parcels below $40/acre
• Kraken Oil & Gas was willing to pay "top dollar" for parcels in Williams County
• a 4-acre parcel for $809/acre; Lynx Oil Co
• an 8-acre parcel for $621/acre; Lynx Oil Co
• a 20-acre parcel for $407/acre; Kraken Oil & Gas II, LLC
• a 75.28-acre parcel for $302/acre; Kraken Oil & Gas II, LLC