The Energy Page, T+25 -- June 25, 2018

I highly recommend folks who have not looked at these recent presentations / postings on the Permian to find time some time to look at them. The USGS surveys of the Permian are quite staggering. The recent posts include:

The USGS Assessment, 2018. Related posts about the same time:

• names in the Permian
• USGS assessment of the Spraberry formation, Midland Basin  
• USGS assessment of the Wolfcamp formation, Midland Basin

The Permian is a monster, RBN Energy; Bloomberg, June 20, 2018.

Growing into the largest oil patch in the world, Bloomberg, April 24, 2018.

Natural gas production in the Permian to surge by 2020, WSJ, May 30, 2017.

Chevron owns its mineral acres outright in the Permian; no payment to landowners, April 6, 2017

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Now The New Stuff

I received a very, very nice note from a geologist who is quite familiar with the Permian. He confirmed that, indeed, the recent USGS "Permian" survey was based only on the eastern basin, the Midland Basin and did not include the Delaware Basin (or the Central Basin for that matter).

I am always humbled/embarrassed/reminded of how little I know when I get notes from folks in the industry. I assume I know less than 1% of all that is going on regarding the US shale revolution.

Here was part of his note in which he said he was quite eager to see the results of the USGS survey of the rest of the Permian:

I believe the Delaware resource is the grand daddy of all resources in this country and will rival some of the best on this planet. If I had to take a wild guess at this point, it would not shock me if the first USGS Delaware assessment numbers are [well above those of the Midland.]

[Based on my background] - the Delaware Basin resource is unlike any other I've come across - the stacked pay-zone potential is truly astounding!!

Note: the geologist who wrote me was not Art Berman, unless he was using an alias.

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The Bakken

See this post from about a year ago, August, 2017:

This is probably as good a "look-back" as I've seen, from The [London] Telegraph. Archived.

Remember: this article is from a year ago, during the early stages of the "depression."

It's a long article and covers many areas, so let's go through some of the data points with my comments thrown in.

Most remarkable prognostication from the article, from Mark Papa, "a legendary figure in the shale fraternity and now at Riverstone Holdings": 

“I can see a case where US shale is the biggest supplier of oil in the world by 2020. We could turn the whole thing on its ear, producing 13-14m b/d. But it will be really ugly getting through this valley,” he said. 

Most interesting comment from the article, also from Mark Papa:

Mr Papa said it will not be long before engineers work out how to double the efficiency of shale extraction to the 50 percent levels seen in conventional oil wells. "It'll probably come in the next ten years. That's the next big break-through," he said.

For newbies, as I understand it, Mr Papa is talking about "primary production" and does not include enhanced oil recovery using waterflooding or CO2 injection.

I've done this several times over the past ten years, but unable to find the posts (I didn't look too hard) and it really doesn't matter, except for historical purposes.

But time to look at amount of recoverable oil in the best part of the Bakken. Disclaimer: I'm inappropriately exuberant when it comes to the Bakken.

It's getting easier to do these calculations, and you can fill in any number you want to get your own estimates.

• one 1280-acre drilling unit = 2 sections 
• 12 wells on each 1280-acre drilling unit
• EURs of 750,000 bbls (CLR now has 1.1 million BOE EUR type curves for all of its optimized completions)
• 12 wells x 750,000 (2 sections) = 4.5 million BOE/section
• 24 wells x 1.1 million (2 sections) = 13.2 million BOE/section

The reason I'm doing this now is because the numbers I'm seeing coming out of the Permian are staggering. I may want to compare those numbers with the Bakken at a later date.

For newbies, be careful: folks will talk about bbls of crude oil (bo) and bbls of crude equivalent (boe). The latter is the crude oil/natural gas liquids + the natural gas (the latter converted to boe). Note: the 1.1 million boe EUR type curves are BOE (bbls equivalent).