Morning Note -- Wednesday, September 26, 2018

AAPL: of the five top business stories trending over at CNBC right now, two of them regard Apple, Inc:

• RBC hikes Apple price target, citing strong demand for expensive iPhones
• Apple could rally to new all-time highs this fall, says trader
• again, the trope, "inexpensive iPhones" -- taking on the ring of Homer's "rosy fingers of dawn." 
• these "expensive iPhones" can be had for $0 / month, subsidized by the carrier; requiring nothing more than an 18-month commitment to stick with the carrier, and then upgrade to a new iPhone at the end of the eighteen months
• what's AAPL doing this morning? All major indices are green, that's a good sign, taking forever to load APPL, there it is .... up 36 cents on a $222 trade. Okay.

Market potpourri:

• NOG: flirting with $4.00 again
• EW finally hits a 52-week high; Cramer spotted it June 12, 2018;
• YUM and AMGN hit intra-day 52-week highs;
• MPC and Endeavor merger moves forward
• ATT, Capital One aim to channel Starbucks; it sure took them a long time 
• all that talk about $100-oil? never mind; story already changing today; COP lower in pre-market trading; talk of $100-oil lasted less than 24 hours; [September 26: Goldman Sachs says WTI will settle in the $70/$80 range]
• Fed to raise rates today, "they" say
• crude oil: weekly inventory data to be released today 
• apparently "the UN laughed at Trump" yesterday; today, it's being reported that India will drop all Iranian oil imports to zero in November;

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

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Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, September 26, 2018 --

• 33113, 1,563, CLR, Bailey 12-24H, Pershing, 65 stages; 15.8 million lbs, t6/18; cum 10K in about 14 days;
• 32129, 832, CLR, Burr Federal 7-26H1, Sanish, 62 stages, 9.9 million lbs, gas averaged 2,442 units in the lateral, ranging from 2 units to 6,834 units, t8/18; cum --;
• 31502, 1,127, CLR, Juneau 10-2H, Brooklyn, Three Forks 1 according to the stimulation sundry form (error -- the geologist report says it was a middle Bakken, and the legal name suggests a middle Bakken), in the target zone only 87% of the total 9,561 feet lateral, 19 total days of drilling, 50 stages; 5.7 million lbs, t4/18; cum 60K 7/18;

Active rigs:

$72.05😄	9/26/2018	09/26/2017	09/26/2016	09/26/2015	09/26/2014
Active Rigs	66	59	34	71	190

RBN Energy: the pipelines that flow into the crude hub at Cushing.

Cushing doesn’t call itself the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World” for nothing. Pipelines with the capacity to handle one-third of total U.S. crude oil production flow into the central Oklahoma hub from a number of production areas, including the Alberta oil sands, the Bakken, the Rockies, the Permian and the nearby SCOOP/STACK. There’s almost as much pipeline capacity out of Cushing, with more than half of it bound for Texas’s Gulf Coast refineries and export docks and most of the rest headed for refineries in the Midcontinent and Midwest. Cushing’s inbound and outbound pipes connect to a staggering 94 million barrels of crude oil storage in about 350 aboveground tanks — each company’s set of tanks with its own unique degree of interconnectedness. Today, we continue our series on Cushing with a look at the large, medium and small pipelines that flow into the hub, and what they transport.

The Cushing hub, located midway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, has been and will remain a critically important element of the U.S.’s midstream infrastructure. To truly understand Cushing — what it does and how it works — you need to know the hub’s assets and how they fit together, and that’s what this blog series is all about.

Cushing’s role in the crude market has been in flux. Permian oil production has been surging, the ban on U.S. oil exports is a fading memory, and the Gulf Coast — not Cushing — is where most U.S. crude production currently wants to go, for its concentration of refineries and export docks. In Part 2, we looked at the 94 MMbbl of crude oil storage at Cushing — where it’s located (mostly South Cushing, with a little at North Cushing), the companies that own the storage (led by the Big Three: Plains All American, Enbridge and Magellan Midstream Partners), and how much they each own.

We also split the users of Cushing storage into six categories (producers, midstream companies, refiners, marketers, or some combination thereof) and explained how each group uses its storage in different ways (some purely operational, some purely commercial and the rest some mix of the two). Finally, looking at Cushing’s cast of characters from a different angle, we divided them into those with “big hubs” and “big spokes” (a lot of storage capacity, plus tie-ins to major inbound and/or outbound pipelines, as well as strong links to other storage within Cushing); “small hubs” and “big spokes” (less storage capacity, big pipes in and/or out — focused on crude oil throughput); and “small hubs” and “small spokes” (relatively small amounts of storage capacity and only limited pipeline connections into, out of and within Cushing).