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Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The Energy And Market Page, Part 2, T+304 -- November 21, 2017; Two New Permits; Three DUCs Reported As Completed

Market surges, records may be set. NYSE new highs, 217, including: Deere; Diageo; D. R. Horton;
  • new lows: 25
WTI: looks like it could be a great day for oil; up almost 1% shortly before the close.

Remember when Chavez was giving away Venezuela oil to Joseph Patrick Kennedy? No more.  Venezuela now asking for free oil to keep its refineries open. Flashback: Mar 10, 2013 - For years, the eldest son of the late Robert F. Kennedy has relied on the Venezuelan strongman to prop up his charity with tens of millions of dollars in donated oil. The steady flow of heating oil allowed the former congressman from Massachusetts to portray himself — and Chavez — as heroes to the poor ... Amid continuing economic turmoil, Venezuela skipped heating oil contributions to an energy assistance program based in Massachusetts for a second consecutive winter, imperiling the popular program. The decision by Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum Corp. to bow out of the program founded by Joseph P.

Net neutrality: not consistent with a populist president; this is the kind of deal that could cost a president a second term

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

CBS and the kneelers:
Dish Network Corp. subscribers face a Thanksgiving weekend without CBS shows including football matchups like the NFL's Dallas Cowboys versus Los Angeles Chargers after the network's programming was pulled from the service over a fee dispute.
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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$57.0911/21/201711/21/201611/21/201511/21/201411/21/2013
Active Rigs553865191184

Two new permits:
  • Operator: Windridge
  • Field: Short Creek (Burke County)
  • Comments: a relatively new operator but we're seeing the company more often in the news
Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:
  • 24111, 604, Enerplus, Beaver Creek 149-94-31D-30H-TF, Eagle Nest, t11/17; cum --
  • 24113, 695, Enerplus, Zion 148-95-02B-11H, Eagle Nest, t11/17; cum --
  • 28790, 848, CLR, Melgaard 2-23H1, Sadler, t11/17; cum -- 

Link Of The Day -- How To Spot Santa This Year -- November 21, 2017

Here's the link.

Guess what it is.

When you get to the link, push down and hold on your track pad / hold down clicker on the mouse while "moving" the cursor.

Also, in most views, there is a little target which might be easy to miss. If you click on the little target, additional information will pop up.

Again the link: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.5602853,-95.0853914,2a,75y,208.19h,93.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szChzPIAn4RIAAAQvxgbyEg!2e0!7i10000!8i5000.

I don't know yet, if the link is dynamic.

Thank you to Don for sending me this link. It will be great to share with grandchildren.

And it's very possible one might be lucky enough to spot a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer on December 24 - 25. But you will have to look closely. Before then, google "North Pole video."

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Global Warming 2017
Australia

For the archives, link hereAustralia becomes the poster child for idiotic green energy policies.
Global warming hysteria has wrecked the supply of electricity in Australia, causing widespread blackouts. That is quite an accomplishment, considering the abundant resources available in that nation-continent. It takes a special brand of idiocy on a national scale to accomplish such a feat.

It was already "unacceptable" that we banned nuclear power here, despite exporting uranium for some of the 449 nuclear plants overseas that safely produce more than 10 per cent of the world's electricity.
It is also "unacceptable" that we've now banned fracking for gas in Victoria, Northern Territory, Western Australia and much of NSW, also thanks to unscientific green scares.
Our Chief Scientist says this technology is "completely safe" when well regulated and it's been used in the United States to unlock such vast new supplies of cheap gas that it's driven down prices and made the US self-reliant on energy.

So for no sane reason we've banned two major sources of electricity. But even more "unacceptable" is that we've decided that coal – our biggest source of all – should also be banned.

Coal-fired stations produce 73 per cent of our electricity and the cheapest and most reliable. Yet activists convinced politicians these stations were heating the world dangerously by releasing lots of carbon dioxide, the gas which feeds plants. Never mind that the world has, in fact, barely warmed over the past two decades.
And then this:
Wind power is so expensive and unreliable that South Australia has since suffered two huge blackouts and has the world’s most expensive electricity.
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Global Warming 2017
Norway

This is a difficult article to access. The best way to do it, is to google it, simply putting the entire title of the article and the author into the google search box. Clicking on the link will download a pdf on your desktop. But again, it's difficult and you may have to play around a bit. 

Article: Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the “Greenhouse Effect Global Warming” dogma.

by Tom V. Segalstad, Mineralogical-Geological Museum, University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract
The three evidences of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the apparent contemporary atmospheric CO2 increase is anthropogenic, is discussed and rejected: CO2 measurements from ice cores; CO2 measurements in air; and carbon isotope data in conjunction with carbon cycle modelling.

It is shown why the ice core method and its results must be rejected; and that current air CO2 measurements are not validated and their results subjectively “edited”.
Further it is shown that carbon cycle modelling based on non-equilibrium models, remote from observed reality and chemical laws, made to fit non-representative data through the use of non-linear ocean evasion “buffer” correction factors constructed from a pre-conceived idea, constitute a circular argument and with no scientific validity.
Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%. Any CO2 level rise beyond this can only come from a much larger, but natural, carbon reservoir with much higher 13-C/12-C isotope ratio than that of the fossil fuel pool, namely from the ocean, and/or the lithosphere, and/or the Earth’s interior.
This is very difficult to read, but if one tries, I'm sure one can understand it. 

From Readers -- November 21, 2017

I haven't done this before but I don't want to lose the links or the comments, and information contained in comments won't show up in a google search, so I will place the comments here, and perhaps come back to them later.

From a reader, November 20, 2017, which accompanied this post:
The looming global impact of almost unfathomable amounts of natural gas was described in detail by a Seeking Alpha analyst, David Addison, in yesterday's piece " Battle for Dawn".
This follows the stunning announcement last week from Tellurian that they will build a 20 train LNG facility on Lake Charles for $15 billion ... half the historical price for these plants. The LNG project is the Driftwood, being built by Bechtel. [I track the US LNG export terminals here.]
The size and economy of these infrastructures will boost natgas consumption worldwide, possibly even to Melbourne, Australia, where a company is tentatively planning on a floating regassification structure (FSRU) to - perhaps - import LNG from the US as it may well be cheaper than their own Queensland LNG plants.
Absolutely amazing potentialities ahead, due in no small part to the tenaciousness, the foresight of people like Hamm, Papa, McClendon and the people of North Dakota who all helped birth this new reality.
From a reader, November 20, 2017, which accompanied this post:
The Mountaineer Xpress mentioned above - very large at 2.7 Bcfd - is crucial, along with the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, in opening up the southeast to Appalachian Basin gas.
There are plans to build numerous, large Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power plants (CCGT) to provide cheap electricity to Virginia, the Carolinas, possibly Georgia and Florida.

The renewable folks are going absolutely crazy in their attempts to stifle the build out of these pipelines. 
From a reader, November 20, 2017, which accompanied this post:
Oddly, the same date as the Tellurian announcement, another study shows the capacity of new lines approved over the last two decades was more than twice the amount of gas actually produced and consumed daily in 2016.
RBN Energy reported the same in their series on Marcellus/Utica takeaway over a year ago

US gas production in 2016 was below that of 2015:
And our imports, mostly from Canada were greater than our exports:
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Notes to the Granddaughters



North Dakota Shearing -- November 21, 2017

Best non-energy story of the day: decade-old Hettinger wool class sees record attendance. Archived.

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Notes To The Granddaughters


One day when we were assigned to Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany.

Kiri would have been in high school; Laura in middle school. 

The Energy And Market Page, T+304 -- November 21, 2017 -- Moving From "Swing Producer" To "Most Responsive Producer"

Challenge of the day: getting past the Financial Times paywall for this story -- Conoco sets $50-a-barrel oil price ceiling for new projects. A reader sent me the link, but I posted the link/article mostly because I was surprised that the FT did not mention the Bakken in this article. From the article:
ConocoPhillips, the largest US exploration and production company, has ruled out investing in projects that need an oil price of $50 or higher to make a profit, as it attempts to raise shareholder returns after years of poor profitability.

It is also committing most of its investment for growth to shale oil resources in North America, arguing that operations there are most able to respond to volatile markets.

Companies in the US shale oil and gas industry have generally made poor returns on capital and been unable to cover their costs of drilling and completing new wells from their cash flows.
Note that in bold: Platts mentioned that the other day -- the first time I recall seeing the industry note that -- that Platts story is posted elsewhere. Also, it is subtle but perhaps we are moving "from swing producer" to "most responsive producer."

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Biggest story of the day getting no love: Prince Salman to be crowned king this week.

Unemployment:
  • more "red" states experience a drop in labor force participation -- WSJ blog
  • unemployment to reach record lows stretch back to 1969 -- CNN
  • unemployment hit record lows in 13 states this year -- the hill
Energy
  • growing natural gas glut threatens west Texas oil boom -- WSJ  
  • Germany's green energy meltdown; voters were promised a virtuous revolution but get coal and high prices instead -- WSJ 
Market: futures surging. Dow 30 futures up over 100 points. Whoo-hoo!

Miscellaneous:
  • supply of precious metals won't limit (EV) battery expansion -- MIT
Graphic of the day: I will probably post this graphic more than once. This raises so many questions regarding TransCanada's decision to persist, but perhaps more on that later. A huge "thank you" to a reader for sending me this graphic:

 
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Back to the Bakken

A reader writes me today: he has received "division orders" for his residence in Williston, from Oasis.

Only one well coming off confidential list today:

  • 33179, conf, Hess, BL-A Iverson-155-96-1312H-6, Beaver Lodge, no production data, 
Active rigs:

$56.4311/21/201711/21/201611/21/201511/21/201411/21/2013
Active Rigs563865191184

RBN Energy: the topsy-turvy world of Mexican natural gas supply.
Mexico’s natural gas supply situation is in a state of flux, to say the least. Gas production within Mexico continues to decline, but there’s hope it can rebound in the country’s Burgos Shale region. Gas demand is rising fast, and new gas pipelines are being built to deliver Permian and other U.S. gas to new Mexican power plants. At the same time, though, delays in completing some of these new pipes have forced Mexico’s electricity authority to turn to LNG imports to keep gas supply and demand in balance. And yet, plans are afoot to export LNG to Asia from Mexico’s west coast by the early 2020s — gas that, by the way, would initially originate in Texas. Today, we explore recent developments in the Mexican gas arena.
Exports of natural gas from the U.S. to Mexico have increased sharply over the past few years, driven by a combination of rising Mexican demand for gas (mostly to fuel a fast-growing fleet of new gas-fired combined-cycle power plants) and declining Mexican gas production. In 2016, exports of U.S. natural gas to Mexico via pipeline averaged 3.8 billion cubic feet/day (Bcf/d), more than four times higher than they were in 2010, and in the first eight months of 2017 pipeline-gas deliveries from the U.S. to Mexico averaged 4.2 Bcf/d, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). As we said in Part 4 of our “It Was Good Living With You (W)aha” blog series on the Waha gas hub in West Texas, the pace of pipeline-export growth to Mexico in late 2017 and in 2018 will be tied in large part to how quickly new gas pipeline capacity can be completed within Mexico, but a number of pipeline projects south of the border have experienced delays.