Number Of Active Rigs In North Dakota Fails To Grow -- June 7, 2018

Zavanna: I normally don't post rumors, but this is an exception. The reader has been a close follower of Zavanna. The reader writes me --

There are some rumors about Zavanna. They have a lot of very good spacing units in Williams County with only one well. But it's been a long time since they have drilled. You can (deep in the internet) find a statement from a former employer that they a just waiting to be sold.

I actually followed Zavanna fairly closely some years ago, but I have not updated the site since 2016. I'm in the process of updating that page now. Some early observations:

• Zavanna completed about a dozen DUCs in mid- to late-2017
• Zavanna brought an old well back on line just this month (4/18) after being off line since 7/17 (#17446)
• Zavanna has many, many wells that have been on confidential list since 2014 and 2015; not sure why that is "being allowed"
• back in 2015 and 2016, some very old Zavanna wells (drilled in 2010) show impressive jumps in production

It is strange, isn't it? Such great locations and so little activity?

Exactly like the Bakken boom. From Bloomberg via Rigzone --

Jerry Morales, the mayor of Midland, Texas, and a local restaurateur, is being whipsawed by the latest Permian Basin shale-oil boom.

It’s fueling the region and starving it at the same time. Sales-tax revenue is hitting a record high, allowing the city to get around to fixing busted roads. But the crazy-low 2.1 percent unemployment rate is a bear. As the proprietor of Mulberry Cafe and Gerardo’s Casita, Morales is working hard to retain cooks. As a Republican first elected in 2014, he oversees a government payroll 200 employees short of what it needs to fully function.

“This economy is on fire,” he said from a back table at the cafe the other day, watching as the lunchtime crowd lined up for the Asian Zing Salad and Big Mo’s Toaster hamburger.

Fire, of course, can be dangerous. In the country’s busiest oil patch, where the rig count has climbed by nearly one third in the past year, drillers, service providers and trucking companies have been poaching in all corners, recruiting everyone from police officers to grocery clerks. So many bus drivers with the Ector County Independent School District in nearby Odessa quit for the shale fields that kids were sometimes late to class. The George W. Bush Childhood Home, a museum in Midland dedicated to the 43rd U.S. president, is smarting from a volunteer shortage.

The oil industry has such a ferocious appetite for workers that it’ll hire just about anyone with the most basic skills. “It is crazy,” said Jazmin Jimenez, 24, who zipped through a two-week training program at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs, about 100 miles north of Midland, and was hired by Chevron Corp. as a well-pump checker.

“Honestly I never thought I’d see myself at an oilfield company. But now that I’m here -- I think this is it.”

 Just like the Bakken boom.

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Active rigs:

$65.38→	6/7/2018	06/07/2017	06/07/2016	06/07/2015	06/07/2014
Active Rigs	60	52	26	82	194

RBN Energy: with TMX and LNG Canada, are Asian markets finally in sight for Canadian producers?

Western Canada is blessed with extraordinary hydrocarbon resources and in recent years has been ramping up production in the Alberta oil sands and in the Duvernay and Montney shale plays. The U.S. is pretty much Canada’s only crude oil and natural gas customer, though, and there are limits to how much Canada can export to its southern neighbor — especially in the Shale Era, with the U.S. producing more oil and gas than ever and meeting an increasing share of its own needs.

So Canadian producers, midstream companies and others have been working to gain access to new, overseas markets. It has not gone well. Pipeline projects to transport oil and gas to the British Columbia coast have been set back time and again, as have plans for crude and LNG export terminals. At last, there may be some good news. The Canadian government has stepped in to help push through a critically important oil pipeline to the coast, and BC’s leading LNG project just signed on a major new investor/customer. Today, we consider recent moves that could finally allow large volumes of Western Canadian oil and gas to be shipped to Asia.