The Bakken Is An Oil Field, Not A Natural Gas Reservoir -- Or Is It? -- November 27, 2018

From The Williston Herald:

North Dakota’s August gas production alone added 260 million cubic feet per day of gas to daily production totals. By comparison, one world-class gas processing plant would handle 200 million cubic feet per day.

Annualized on a 12-month basis, that kind of growth would require 16 new plants in a year’s time. So far, seven new gas plants have been proposed, adding a little more than one billion cubic feet per day in processing capacity, along with incremental increases of about 40 million cubic feet per day.

The gas production doesn’t come alone, however. There are also NGLs associated with that, which require their own infrastructure. Using a conservative estimate of 6 gallons of NGLs per thousand cubic feet of gas, that would suggest about 40,000 new barrels of NGLs per plant that will also need takeaway and processing infrastructure.

Bakken gas can be as low as 2 NGLs per thousand, but is more often up to 10, making 6 GPM a conservative estimate.

This is absolutely staggering for anyone paying attention. I tend to think I am paying attention but I can hardly keep up. Perhaps I am not keeping up.

But to repeat:

In the Bakken, annualized on a 12-month basis, that kind of growth would require 16 new plants in a year’s time. So far, seven new gas plants have been proposed, adding a little more than one billion cubic feet per day in processing capacity, along with incremental increases of about 40 million cubic feet per day.

By the way, it is very, very likely that the Tribal Council will mandate royalties to be paid on natural gas that is flared. Stay tuned.

By the way, this reminds me. Think about this. Words matter.

The Bakken is considered an oil play, but yet it is producing phenomenal amounts of natural gas, and the production is predicted to increase significantly (exponentially?).  One has to wonder if there really might be something to the "sleeping giant." If natural gas ever got to $8/"unit" we might find out ["unit' = MMBtu, or million British thermal units].

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The Book Page

If anyone is interested in the back story of how Herman Melville came to write Moby-Dick, the best short biography I have ever seen is Chapter VII in Philip Hoare's The Whale, c. 2010.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to have a blast reading The Bible: A Biography, by Karen Armstrong, c. 2007.

From the book, p. 27:

Unlike the Deuteronomists, P's vision was inclusive. His narrative of alienation and exile constantly stressed the importance of reconciliation with former enemies. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his most famous work, the first chapter of Genesis, in which P describes Elohim creating heaven and earth.

This was not a literal, historically accurate account of creation. When the final editors put the extant biblical text together, they placed P's story next to J's creation narrative, which is quite different.

So, even though P came later, his/her writings were the basis of Genesis. That's why it was confusing for me. I always thought the extant Bible was like a journal, or a diary, chronologically put together as J, E, D, P were writing. I was wrong to think that the beginning of the Bible was J's work and then E added to it, and then D came along with Deuteronomy. Finally P came along and did the chapters after the torah. In fact, the editors or redacters came along (after J, E, D, and P) and re-ordered everything and edited -- probably mostly typographical errors, etc.

So, even thought P came along much later, P's work was placed right alongside that of J and E. It makes sense; I just never gave it enough thought. 

At least that's my world-view. Absolutely fascinating.

Later: shortly after writing the above, I went over to Sophia's house. They had just received the December, 2018, issue of The National Geographic. As usual, every December, these magazines feature a story on Christianity. (More later.)