SoCal Summer Electric Grid Is Iffy -- FERC -- June 15, 2017

Updates

June 16, 2017: is this the real reason California needs to ban gasoline/diesel engines and go to EVs. From the LA Times:  

Air quality officials warned Thursday of “very unhealthy” smog levels in the coming days as a heat wave envelops Southern California and primes the region for a bout of unusually high and widespread pollution.

Levels of ozone — the lung-damaging gas in smog — are likely to reach “unhealthy to very unhealthy” levels in the Santa Clarita, San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, Inland Empire and the San Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The health warnings come as Southern California has experienced an increase in bad air days following decades of improving air quality.

Last year the region experienced its worst smog season in years, logging 132 bad air days and ozone concentrations not seen since 2009.

So far this year the South Coast basin, the coast-to-mountains expanse of 17 million people across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, has violated federal ozone standards on 44 days.

The air district in March adopted a plan to clean smog to federal standards by 2031 that, to be successful, will require boosting local, state and federal spending on cleaner vehicles by more than tenfold to $1 billion a year.

Original Post

This is one of several states that wants intermittent energy (solar, wind) to provide all electricity for the state by 2035 or some such year.

This is the state where today less than 5% of all new automobile sales are EVs/hybrids but wants to have nearly 100% of all automobiles EVs by 2035 or some such year.

In other words, this state has some grand plans for intermittent energy. Good luck.

Today, from SeekingAlpha: Southern California power supply at risk this summer, FERC says

• natural gas constraints in Southern California could pose a risk to the region's power supply this summer, while New England and Texas could face tight electricity supplies, according to the FERC
• the agency's summer reliability assessment forecasts power resources should be adequate to meet demand in most regions this summer, but restrictions at the Aliso Canyon storage facility could pose a risk to gas and electric reliability in Southern California, especially if hotter than normal weather conditions and unplanned gas pipeline outages materialize during the summer.

In the military we called this "triple-P": piss-poor planning.

Be that as it may, the story at SeekingAlpha speaks volumes.  Thank goodness Ivanpah is finally up and running.

Clearly, California has some big dreams.

California Dreamin', The Mamas and The Papas

Zavanna Has Two New Permits; Triangle USA Coming Out Of Bankruptcy Rebrands As Nine Point Energy -- June 15, 2017

Active rigs: this was posted March 20, 2017 -- this is a pretty big deal.

Some time ago I asked folks if they thought when/if we would ever see 50 active rigs in North Dakota again. The best answer was a reader with some close-hold information suggesting that we would see 50 active rigs by June. I was skeptical; I did not think we would see 50 active rigs in North Dakota in 2017, but here it is, on the first day of spring, 2017, and we have 50 active rigs. Compare to 32 one year ago, and 107 two years. Fifty rigs now easily beats 107 rigs two years ago.

Today, active rigs:

$44.39	6/15/2017	06/15/2016	06/15/2015	06/15/2014	06/15/2013
Active Rigs	56	27	77	187	185

Note: 56 rigs is more than twice the number we had one year ago. For newbies: the numbers of active rigs in the Bakken has little correlation with production of crude oil; the number of rigs correlates with the amount of "activity" in the basin. 

Two new permits:

• Operator: Zavanna
• Field: Stockyard Creek (Williams)
• Comments: wow, it's been a long time since I've seen a Zavanna permit!

Permitted for recompletion:

• 22076, Cornerstone, Ingerson 7-13-24H, Burke County

Operator Transfer: from C12 Energy North Dakota LLC to Scout Energy Management LLC

• 28 oil and gas wells; one SWD well
• all in the Dickinson-Heath-Sand Unit
• oldest permit: 03700
• most recent permit: 13622

Operator Transfer: from Triangle USA Petroleum Corp to Nine Point Energy, LLC. After coming out of bankruptcy, Triangle USA rebrands as Nine Point Energy (see first comment):

• 170 wells (more or less)
• throughout Williams and McKenzie counties
• oldest permit: 08706
• most recent permit: 33518

I track Bakken operators here. 

The Canary In The Coal Mine -- Peak Oil? What Peak Oil? -- June 15, 2017

From twitter:

Four Strong Winds, Ian and Sylvia

Random Update Of The Completion Strategies In The Bakken -- June 15, 2017

Completion strategies: of the middle Bakken and Three Forks wells that have been fracked in the past several months, these are my general observations (I am not tracking frack data for DUCs, yet). These are my observations. I could be completely wrong; I may be seeing things that others don't see, or some observations may be compleetely wrong. Don't quote me on any of this. I post this only to help me better understand the Bakken:

• almost all horizontals are the standard, long laterals found in the Bakken, about 9,000 - 11,000 feet long
• generally, the exception to the "long" laterals are the short EOG laterals in the Parshall, but EOG is also beginning to do long laterals in the Parshall, also
• the number of stages generally ranges from about 35 stages to 50 stages
• any frack less than 30 stages jumps out at me
• same with any frack with more than 50 stages; it jumps out at me
• the amount of proppant generally ranges around 8 million lbs +/- 2 million lbs
• any frack with less than 6 million lbs jumps out at me
• any frack with more than 10 million lbs jumps out at me
• EOG, Whiting, and QEP have all fracked wells with greater than 10 million lbs of proppant, mostly sand 
• fracks are generally all sand, but it appears CLR still uses a mix of sand and ceramic (but I don't pay much attention to the mix of proppant)

I have posted the raw data at this post.

Initial Jobless Claims Fall More Than Expected -- June 15, 2017

At BusinessInsider:

• first time claims fell by 8,000 to 237,000
• forecast: 241,000
• last week's unrevised, at 245,000
• four-week moving average: 243,000

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The Political Page

Camille Pagille in The Weekly Standard:

It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender. 

Here We Go Again -- Judge Orders More Environmental Analysis of DAPL

Here we go again: At Reuters, federal judge orders more environmental analysis of Dakota pipeline. This is the judge's 91-page opinion -- it will download as a pdf. A big "thank you" to a reader for sending me the link. The reader who follows this story a whole closer than I do has not anxiety; it is his/her opinion that the judge has a good handle on the situation. This is same judge that allowed the project to go forward in the first place. DAPL would be wise to do whatever the judge asks, or perhaps better said, to negotiate in good faith with the judge and all parties involved.

Active rigs:

$44.42	6/15/2017	06/15/2016	06/15/2015	06/15/2014	06/15/2013
Active Rigs	56	27	77	187	185

Note: in this month's Director's Cut (released two days ago), Lynn Helms suggested that the maximum number of active rigs we would see in 2017 was 55. Today, we went to 56.

RBN Energy: COP leads diversified E&Ps profit turnaround. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, relationship, or travel plans  based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

Of the 43 major U.S. exploration and production companies we have been tracking, the 13 diversified companies — the ones with a balanced mix of crude oil and natural gas reserves — engineered the most dramatic financial reversal in the first quarter of 2017, generating $4.6 billion, or $11.46 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe), in pretax operating profit after almost $65 billion in pretax losses in 2015-16. These producers, like their oil-weighted and gas-weighted counterparts, benefited from higher prices and sharply lower drilling and completion costs and lease operating costs.

The magnitude of the turnaround was driven by exceptional results from giant ConocoPhillips, which generated more than one-third of the total first quarter 2017 pretax operating profits for our 43-company universe and nearly one-quarter of the total cash flow. The remaining 12 diversified companies reported $1.3 billion in first-quarter pretax profit after $54 billion in losses over the past two years. Today we look at how the turnaround efforts of 13 diversified oil-and-gas E&Ps have been paying off.

Saudi Aramco IPO "delayed?" Link at WSJ.

A divide between Saudi Arabia’s ruling family and executives of the kingdom’s oil company over where to list its shares is slowing the march toward a planned 2018 initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.

Executives at Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco, are pushing Saudi Arabia’s king and his son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on the merits of listing the state-owned oil company on the London Stock Exchange.

Those executives are concerned that listing in the U.S. would expose the company to greater legal risks, including from potential class-action shareholder lawsuits, according to these people.

The other problem, of course, is to go public when oil is selling at $40/bbl. 

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