Saudi Making America Great Again -- Worth Reposting -- May 20, 2017

Updates

May 26, 2017: Saudi Aramco to invest $18 billion in Texas' Motiva refinery.

May 23, 2017: six energy companies profiting from Trump's mega-deals with Saudi Arabia: Weatherford was listed first. Then Exxon Mobil; GE; Nabors Industries; Rowan Cos; and, National Oilwell Varco.


May 22, 2017: Saudi Aramco signs deals with US companies totaling $50 billion. 

May 22, 2017: National Oilwell, Saudi Aramco to form JV in Saudi Arabia to build rigs and equipment.

May 22, 2017: Schlumberger signs MOU with Saudi Aramco.

May 21, 2017: Blackston unveils $100 billion ambition for infrastructure; Saudi Arabian wealth fund commits $20 billion to the strategy; buyout firm answers Trump call to rebuild US infrastructure -- Bloomberg. 

May 21, 2017: Boeing signed a number of defense and commercial deals with Saudi Arabia during Trump's visit -- Business Insider. 

May 21, 2017: Saudi-SoftBank tech fund nears $100 billion target. From an earlier post:  

Sorting out SoftBank. Data points from today's news from The New York Times

• SoftBank? think "ATT on steroids" in Japan -- one of Japan's largest telecom providers
• 63,590 employees (ATT: 246,740 employees)
• solar power business
• humanoid robots for home use
• ride-booking services 
• financial technology 
• 2016: SoftBank + Saudi Arabia -- set up a $25 billion private fund for technology investments; could grow to $100 billion  (think "Shark Tank on steroids")
• SoftBank: committed to creating 50,000 jobs in the US and investing $50 billion in US startups
• first huge partner: OneWeb
• OneWeb has obtained $1.2 billion from SoftBank
• OneWeb: plans to build a network of satellites to provide global broadband access; 
• the $1.2 billion: finance the construction of a factory in Exploration Park, Florida; to produce 15 satellites per week at low cost; could result in 3,000 jobs at this site; I think I read elsewhere the company's goal is to place 720 telecommunication satellites in space

May 21, 2017: corporate CEOs "descend" on Riyadh:

Top executives who descended on Riyadh for a CEO summit timed to coincide with Trump’s visit included JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, Blackstone Group LP CEO Steve Schwarzman, and Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin Corp.

Saturday’s meeting, the “Saudi-U.S. CEO Forum,” drew the kind of corporate firepower Trump suggested he could harness when he ran for the Oval Office as a Washington outsider/business executive who would reach outside the Beltway and enlist other executives in support of the administration’s economic goals.

More than 30 CEOs of major U.S. companies were on hand for the summit, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh. Some later joined Trump and Saudi officials at the Royal Court Palace for a deal-signing ceremony. Those who spoke to reporters said they weren’t put off by drama surrounding the Trump White House. “We’re just seeing tremendous opportunity with Trump coming here,” said Steven Demetriou, CEO of Jacobs Engineering Group.

This will overshadow any climate warming conference in quality and quantity (dollars).

May 21, 2017: GE announces $15 billion of business deals with Saudi Arabia.

May 20, 2017: Blackstone (US) and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) each pledge $20 billion ($40 billion total) for US infrastructure projects. 

May 20, 2017: $100-billion deal? LOL. It's $110 billion immediately and $350 billion over 10 years. I did not read the story; just the headline. But one must remember this: the Saudis will need foreign expertise to do all they plan including a new militant monitoring operations center, and one can assume "the Donald" was assured by the Saudis that American companies would get first crack at new ventures. I would assume most military hardware will come from the US. By the way, this is single largest arms deal in the history of the US. And had someone else been president, it's very likely Russia would have gotten the sale. Just saying.

May 17, 2017: John Kemp --  SENIOR Gulf OPEC source wonders how to square billions of dollars of deals to be signed in KSA during Trump visit with austerity programme?

Original Post
(May 14, 2017)

Link to original post.

From Reuters: among everything else, it looks like Trump will announce a $100-billion-arms-deal for Saudi Arabia on his Mideast tour. From the article: 

The arms package could end up surpassing more than $300 billion over a decade to help Saudi Arabia boost its defensive capabilities while still maintaining U.S. ally Israel's qualitative military edge over its neighbors.

Which means Israel is going to get some kind of huge arms deal also. 

It also begs the question where Saudi Arabia will come up with the money. Perhaps some Wall Street bank. You think?

President Obama first visited Riyadh about the very same time in his first term also (June 3 - 4, 2009) and according to wiki it was mostly discussion, not much substance. Nice bow, though. 

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Saudi's Got Talent

Wrong On So Many Levels, Sultan

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New Stuff

Link here.  

80 in '18! For The Archives: Some See 80 Rigs In North Dakota In 2018 -- May 20, 2017

From another blog.

The number of rigs correlates best with amount of activity in the state; the number of rigs is not a good indicator of production.

During the boom, even with 200+ rigs, total ND crude oil production was often below 1 million bopd. Now, with 50 rigs, many wells choked back, 800 DUCs, upwards of 1,200 inactive wells at any one time, the state is producing over one million bopd.

During the early days of the boom, it took 40+ days from spud to completion, and then there was the problem with takeaway capacity. Now, two weeks from spud to completion is the norm (others argue even less than two weeks) and with the DAPL, takeaway is no long an issue.

Early in the boom, EURs were in the 375,000 range; now it is obvious that EURs of one million bbls will be the new floor for "expensive" wells with "$50-oil."

For newbies: any time a new well is fracked (or in many cases when several wells on the same pad are fracked), neighboring wells are taken off-line. Sometimes it's just one neighboring well, but as the infill becomes more dense, more and more neighboring wells need to come off-line when new wells are being fracked. They can be off-line for as little as three weeks, but it seems that the norm is about 1.5 months to three months. The longer time period probably equates to several wells on one pad being fracked.

What interests me now, more than rig counts:

• new completion solutions in the Bakken
• strategies of various operators regarding re-fracking: where to re-frack; when to re-frack
• status of existing and new pipelines (there are still court cases pending re: the DAPL, for example)
• consolidation in the Bakken; new oil service companies coming in
• companies like Kaiser-Francis that have been in North Dakota for decades, but were "quiet" during the boom and are now back in the game
• how the Bakken will do in comparison to the Permian (I think that story is yet to be told; see graph below)

And so much more. 

Note: for 1.5 million bopd (in 2014), the Permian had 500 active rigs. In 2014, North Dakota had around 190 rigs, and produced 1 million bopd for the first time in 2014:

Week 20: May 14, 2017 -- May 20, 2017

(Outside of politics), the big story of the week might have been the fact that WTI finally closed slightly above $50.

Also, for the first time in a very long time, the North Dakota oil story was linked on The Drudge Report.

Operations
Statoil has permits for 16 wells in one location; graphic here
How DUCs affect production numbers

Fracking
Fracking solutions in the Bakken using significantly less sand that elsewhere

Pipelines
DAPL flows 

Bakken economy
SM Energy delays Bakken asset sale
Oasis may spin off MLP
Keane (FRAC) buys RockPile Energy
Platts questions breakeven prices in the Bakken
Update: Bakken oil reaches Asia for first time

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23000

This post is the #23,000th post on The Million Dollar Way. Ten posts are in draft but there are well more than ten posts over at the "wells of interest" site.

To the best of my knowledge, I now have the most posts of any ad-free, non-subscription blog that focuses on the Bakken with political notes and notes to granddaughters.

We're Back! Canada's "Permian Of The North" Sees New Life -- May 20, 2017

From Bloomberg, data points:

• Montney shale formation, northern British Columbia and Alberta 
• contains about 450 trillion cubic feet of marketable nat gas; about half of Qatar's total reserves
• oil well service companies struggling to keep up with demand
• unlike much of Canada's oil and gas region, the Montney sees a resurgence
• pickup started back in November, December, 2016
• idle equipment meant less expensive to drill
• $6 million in 2014
• $3.7 million in 2017
• dubbed "Permian of the North" because it has same layered, stratified geology as its namesake
• Permian: mostly crude
• Montney: mostly natural gas and assoc liquids

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