Active Rigs Jump In Number; Now Up To 66; Bakken Operators And Flaring -- RBN Energy -- November 28, 2018

"Switch and bait" -- the WSJ explains why oil prices tanked and what to expect next. Nothing new here. The interesting thing is why "we" didn't see it coming. As soon as one waiver was signed "we" should have known that the surge in anticipatory production was overdone.

Most ridiculous headline of the day: Mars InSight powered by solar panels. Well, duh. That's been going on for decades. What did CleanTechnica expect? Shell service stations? Natural gas plants?

By the way: down here in Texas, during the reporting of the successful landing, side-by-side animation was shown on television. Some viewers thought the animation was live and called into talk radio to suggest that it would have been more interesting to have watched the television crew landing on Mars to film the InSight landing. One reporter on Ft Worth talk radio said that after saying he was reporting "remotely" (he was in Houston) -- listeners called in saying, "... of course he was reporting remotely --- he was on Mars." And they were apparently serious. At least they were aware that Mars was "remote." I assume some folks think Mars is a suburb of Paris, Texas.

************************************  
Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off confidential list today -- Wednesday, November 28, 2018:

• 34738, 198, BR, Rink 6-1-5MBH-R, Pershing, t10/18; cum 9K over 28 days;
• 33111, 1,881, CLR, Wiley 9-25H2, Pershing, 4 sections, 50 stages; 8.1 million lbs, t7/18; cum 75K 9/18;
• 30545, 2,070, Bruin, Fort Berthold 151-94-26A-35-9H, Antelope-Sanish, 55 stages; 14.4 million lbs, t6/18; cum 126K 9/18; sundry form says middle Bakken;
• 30542, 2,010, Bruin, Fort Berthold 151-94-26A-35-5H, Antelope-Sanish, 55 stages; 14.2 million lbs; t6/18; cum 56K 9/18; sundry form says Three Forks B1;

NDIC is reporting 66 active rigs, a jump from the previous 62 a couple of days ago. A reader went through the data and suggests there may be an error -- some accidental "double-counting" of a couple of rigs.  -- posted November 28, 2018.

Active rigs:

$51.53	11/28/2018	11/28/2017	11/28/2016	11/28/2015	11/28/2014
Active Rigs	66	55	37	64	184

RBN Energy: Bakken producers get a welcomed reprieve on natural gas flaring. Archived.

Crude oil and natural gas production in the Bakken are at all-time highs, as are the volumes of gas being processed in and transported out of the play. The bad news is that for the past few months, the volumes of Bakken gas being flared are also at record levels, and producers as a whole have been exceeding the state of North Dakota’s goal on the percentage of gas that is flared at the lease rather than captured, processed and piped away. State regulators last week stood by their flaring goals, but in an effort to ease the squeeze they gave producers a lot more flexibility in what gas is counted — and not counted — when the flaring calculations are made. Today, we update gas production, processing and flaring in what’s been one of the nation’s hottest production regions.

North Dakota crude production grew by 39% between January 2017 and September 2018 to an even 1.3 MMb/d, according to the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s (NDIC) most recent numbers, and gas production was up an astonishing 62% over the same period, to about 2.53 Bcf/d. Those gains have put enormous pressure on the play’s infrastructure, and — of most interest to us in today’s blog — made it impossible for the state to meet its goals for reducing the percentage of produced gas that is flared.

************************************

The Book Page

I'm in my "Bible" phase, reading the first five books of the Bible and Karen Armstrong's Biography of the Bible. Absolutely fascinating.

The December issue of the National Geographic has an incredibly good photo-essay on the development of the Bible. Every December, in general, National Geographic has a huge "Christianity-related" issue.