A CLR Kukla Well: 56 Stages; 26 Million Lbs Sand -- September 18, 2017

In a post just the other day I mentioned that I had not seen CLR using massive amounts of proppant. I may have spoken too soon. It looks like CLR may be going "big."

Example, almost 26 million lbs in 56 stages in this well. I won't be updating this page. I follow the Kukla wells here.

Note: these wells are in the Chimney Butte oil field, which in June, 2017, ranked #2 in list of wells with best month-over-month increase in production.

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Production Profiles

High-intensity frack:

• 32094, 1,356, CLR, Kukla 7-16H, Chimney Butte, 4 sections, 56 stages; 25.9 million lbs, t5/17; cum 88K 7/17;

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	7-2017	31	30572	30543	42241	32503	22635	9868
BAKKEN	6-2017	30	30947	30920	44668	30491	28988	1503
BAKKEN	5-2017	20	24505	24454	40935	24523	21024	3499
BAKKEN	4-2017	2	2816	2741	15300	1408	0	1408
BAKKEN	3-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Four Years Later, One Of The Largest Onshore Spills In US History -- Near Tioga, ND -- Cleanup Finally Begins -- September 18, 2017

Updates

September 23, 2017: the PennEnergy story linked below suggested that the clean-up had finaly begun -- at least that's what I thought I read. In fact, The Bismarck Tribune reports that the cleanup has been ongoing since the spill and a 4-year milestone has now been reached.

Crews are nearly done excavating soil from what remains a massive operation to clean up 20,600 barrels — 865,200 gallons — of Bakken crude that Steve Jensen discovered while harvesting wheat on Sept. 29, 2013.

Patty Jensen, surveying the progress last week, took a photo from the industrial site and hopes to stand in the same spot in two years and photograph a wheat field.

I always get a kick out of these articles. Note: it wasn't just "any old oil," but rather the highly controversial, very explosive Bakken oil.

My hunch is that the owners put up with a lot of irritation and frustration but at the end of the day, the heirs are probably going to come out quite well, financially.

What amazes me: 20,000 bbls estimated in this spill, and the state produces more than 1 million bbls daily.

Original Post 

From PennEnergy, data points,

• occurred in September, 2013
• discovered by farmer checking out his fields
• covered 13 acres -- about the size of 10 football fields
• crews now working "around the clock"
• so far, 1 million tons of earth have been excavated
• digging as deep as 60 feet
• responsible party: Tesoro -- now known as Andeavor
• a lightning strike may have caused the rupture in the 6-inch-diameter steel pipeline
• pipeline runs from Tioga to a rail facility outside of Columbus, ND, near the Canadian border
• authorities: no wildlife or drinking water sources affected
• cost: estimated at $73 million
• originally: company though it only 750 bbls; to be cleaned up in two years at a cost of $4 million
• now estimated to be 20,000 bbls

And then this:

The spill wasn't reported to the public until after state regulators — who had known about the spill for nearly two weeks — were questioned by The Associated Press.

What's wrong with that picture?

FERC Approves Third Major LNG Export Project for Lower 48 -- September 18, 2017; US Close To Surpassing Qatar In LNG Export

Before reading this post, you might want to re-read the post about a looming global LNG deficit which we might see in as little as five years from now.

For investors, this almost seems like an open-book test. Nuclear energy is dead -- just saying.


FERC okays Elba Island LNG liquefaction trains. From Argus Media, data points:

• off Savannah, Georgia, which houses an existing LNG import terminal
• Kinder Morgan owns 51 percent of Elba Island LNG export terminal
• 10 liquefaction trains
• third major LNG export project to come on line in the Lower 48
• to start operating in mid-2018, less than a year from now
• the other two previously approved:
  Louisiana, Sabine Pass, started operating February, 2016
• Maryland, Cove Point, on track to start operating later this year
• Elba Island: the only major LNG export terminal in the Lower 48 that will use small movable modular liquefaction trains: lower cost; faster construction schedule
• estimated cost (with associated pipeline): $2.2 billion
• capacity: 2.5 million tons/year, equivalent to 350 million cf/day (9.9 million cubic metric tons/day) of gas; peak capacity of 4 million tons/year
• in comparison:
  Sabine Pass, 25 million tons/year; $20 billion

Final line from the article:

The six facilities being built would have combined baseload capacity of about 64mn t/yr and peak capacity of about 75mn t/yr, almost equaling Qatar capacity of 77mn t/yr.

For previous posts on this story, see these links:

• Update on US LNG liquefaction capacity, staggering -- March 3, 2017
• List of potential US LNG export facilities, October 12, 2016
• Kinder Morgan update, June 3, 2016
• Kinder Morgan update, July 15, 2015
• LNG xxport -- main page, August 10, 2012

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Meanwhile, In Canada: 

British Columbia-Based Aurora LNG Export Terminal Project Canceled

From The Oil & Gas Journal, data points:

• Aurora LNG and its partners: Nexen Energy and INPEX Gas British Columbia
• had studied the project for four (4) years
• reason cited: "an adverse macroeconomic environment" -- whatever that means

Until told otherwise, I will assume the "macroeconomic environment" is code for the cost of fighting faux environmentalists for the next three decades.

The folks did say that upstream operations in the Horn River region of northeast BC would continue.. who they will sell all that NG to is anyone's guess.

And that's the difference between Trudeau's anti-growth policies and Trump's make America great policies.

QEP Has Permits For Another 7-Well Hazel Pad In The Grail Oil Field -- September 18, 2017

Active rigs:

$49.93→	9/18/2017	09/18/2016	09/18/2015	09/18/2014	09/18/2013
Active Rigs	56	32	67	199	180

Eight new permits:

• Operators: QEP (7), NP Resources
• Fields: Grail (McKenzie), Tree Top (Billings)
• Comments: QEP has permits for a new 7-well Hazel well; see below

Nine permits renewed:

• QEP (4): four MHA permits, all in Dunn County
• Newfield (3): three Johnsrud Federal permits, all in McKenzie County
• Petro-Hunt (2): two Eric Stratton Federal permits in McKenzie County

Two permits canceled:

• HRC: a Fort Berthold permit in Dunn County
• Petro-Hunt: a Jorgenson permit in Burke County

Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 33043, 290, BR, Veeder 4B-TFH, Blue Buttes, t8/17; cum --
• 33044, 340, BR, Veeder 4C-MBH, Blue Buttes, t8/17; cum --
• 33045, 149, BR, Veeder 4D MTFH, Blue Buttes, t8/17; cum --

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Producing wells:

• 25871, 2,322, QEP, Pogo 1-28-33BH, Grail, t3/14; cum 257K 7/17;
• 22371, 3,668, QEP, Hazel 13-34/27H, Grail, t5/13; cum 389K 7/17;

I take a closer look at #22371 at this post.

The Emmys: Not Even Nominated -- The Political Page, T+241 -- September 18, 2017

Rush noted that none of these folks were even nominated for an Emmy last night!

Megyn Kelly

Chris Matthews

Joe and Mika


Chris Wallace

Perhaps, a group Emmy award

Or, a group Emmy award for this large group

GDP Now -- Trending Back Toward 2% -- And I Recall Pundits Suggesting Hurricanes Would Have No Impact -- The Market And Energy Page, T+241 -- September 18, 2017

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.
 
Chips: CNBC is excited about semiconductors. It looks like XLNX hit a 52-week high but did not close above that intra-day high.

Markets: Dow 30 and S&P 500 set new records on opening and are holding their gains through morning trading. NYSE:

• new highs: 141, including Boeing, CAT, Valero Energy,
• new lows: 8

Gasoline demand: was record gasoline demand reported last week an anomaly? See this post.

GPD Now: latest forecast: 2.2 percent — September 15, 2017.

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2017 is 2.2 percent on September 15, down from 3.0 percent on September 8.

The forecasts of real consumer spending growth and real private fixed investment growth fell from 2.7 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, to 2.0 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, after this morning's retail sales release from the U.S. Census Bureau and this morning's report on industrial production and capacity utilization.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

We joke that our oldest granddaughter knows something about everything.

Last week, out of the blue, I happened to ask her if she had heard of the expression, a "10-gallon hat." It turns out she had and she explained it to me.

Now, why would I bring that up this morning?

Today, driving to school, we saw a bumper stick, "Never never."

The middle granddaughter was upset that this was a "double negative" and went on and on about not using double negatives. Of course, it is not a double negative in this context. After several minutes of listening to this craziness, the oldest granddaughter just rolled her eyes and quoted Justin Bieber (I am not making this up):

There's gonna be times when people tell you that you can't live your dreams, this is what I tell them, Never Say Never. -- Justin Bieber from a-to-z quotes.

For the record, the  “Never say never” expression was first recorded in Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1837).

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Searching For The Oldest Stars:

Ancient Relics From the Early Universe

Anna Frebel

c. 2015

Princeton Press

DDS 523.8FRE

 
For now, just some quick data points. Maybe I'll expand this later so it make sense.

• at the turn of the century (1890s)
• Edward Charles Pickering, Harvard College Observatory
• Henrietta Leavitt begins work as one of several female research assistants, 1893
• the assistants became known as "computers"
• predecessors included Williamina Fleming and Antonia Maury
• extended Secchi's classification of stars
• Pickering was so frustrated with his male research assistants said even his housekeeper could do better
• he hired her -- Williamina Fleming -- who completed every single assignment she was given
• Leavitt: confirmed period-luminosity relationship, 1912; Magellanic Clouds
• at the time, it was not yet known whether the Universe was any larger than the Milky Way itself
• Edwin Hubble, Mount Wilson, southern California, sorted that out
• Leavitt died of cancer in 1921 at 53 years of age; had she not died she would have been nominated for a Nobel Prize (1924)
• another computer: American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon started working for Pickering in 1896
• her task: catalog an extensive compilation of stellar spectra, called the Draper Catalogue, and develop a classification system
• Cannon was the first to sort spectra by stellar temperature after realizing that a dependence existed between temperature and spectral line strength
• her new system later became famous as the Harvard classification scheme
• O, B, A, F, G, K, and M: "Oh Be A Fine Girl / Guy, Kiss Me"
• O-type stars are the hottest
• M-type stars are the coolest
• Cannon became known for her classification of over 200,000 stars
• numerous awards
• honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1925 -- first ever woman to be conferred with that title
• 1931: US National Academy of Sciences awarded her the prestigious Henry Draper Medal
• Harvard, in 1938, appointed her, at the age of 75, to the academic postof William Cranch Bond Astronomer, with the same "rank" as a professor
• Cannon published her huge catalog with updated editions from 1901 t0 1937
• her work has continued, even after her death in 1941
• The American Astronomical Society had introduced the Annie J. Cannon Award back in 1934; Antonia Maury received it in 1943

Update On California Refiners -- RBN Energy -- September 18, 2017

Active rigs:

$49.52↓	9/18/2017	09/18/2016	09/18/2015	09/18/2014	09/18/2013
Active Rigs	56	32	67	199	180

RBN Energy: California refiners struggle in a state that wishes they would go away.

California refineries get most of their crude from three sources: California production, Alaskan North Slope (ANS) production and imports from overseas.

In 2016, 34% of the crude refined in the state came from California (including small volumes from other Lower 48 sources; green layer in Figure below) and 11% from Alaska (yellow layer), while 55% was imported (blue layer), according to the CEC.

Access to U.S. shale supplies has been limited, largely because no pipelines deliver crude to California from outside the state. Some crude is moved in by rail from the Rockies and West Texas (an average of only 3 Mb/d in 2016).

Given declining California and ANS crude production, the volume of imported crude (which was minimal through the mid-1990s) has increased by 13% since 2010 to an average 867 Mb/d in 2016. Most imports are supplied from the Middle East, Ecuador and Colombia.

California Refineries’ Sources of Crude. Source: CEC 

I Am A Rock, Simon and Garfunkel
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Breaking News

Somewhere in the US they must be putting in a new gasoline service station this week but I couldn't find a story anywhere on the internet earlier this morning. But I see that of all the "stuff" going on in the business world overnight, Google Finance linked a story on a new Tesla charging station going up in Illinois as one of the top ten stories this morning.

Over at the dailyherald, "Tesla rolling out superchargers in Rolling Meadows." Data points:

• Tesla is setting up a Supercharger station outside the Rolling Meadows Meijer store
• "set to go live by the end of 2017"
• off Golf and Algonquin roads
• site chosen: ample parking and access to restaurants and shops
• average charging time is up to 45 minutes in urban centers
• Supercharger stations are equipped to deliver a "rapid" 72 kW of power to cars -- neight "rapid" nor range defined in the article -- unless I missed it

So, for all those Tesla owners in California, add Rolling Meadows as another Supercharger destination. 

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What Are The Odds?

Until this morning, I had never heard of Meijer.

I was curious. Exactly "what was" Meijer"? I put that one word into Google and up popped ths map.

Who knew? Six Meijer gas stations in the US and one of them happens to be in the city in which I live but the station goes by another name -- assuming it's a Meijer station but Google certainly suggests that it is. More irony: I must have driven right by this station over the weekend and never even noticed it. It is really out in the boondocks, a word derived from Tagalog during the Philippine-American War (1899-1902).