The Market, Energy, And Political Page, Part 2, T+1 -- Wednesday, November 7, 2018

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.

Politics: could not have worked out better. The face of the US Congress: Maxine Powers and Nancy Pelosi.

Shale oil: this link was posted earlier. Nothing new that hasn't been said before, but the story is starting to gain some converts, particularly among the majors. Before we go any further, let's remind folks of this graphic, the Permian (56 wells on each pad in the Permian, and my hunch: that's conservative; they show only six wells strung over a mile; based on what I've seen in the Bakken, I think they can squeeze in eight):

and this graphic from the Bakken:

Shale oil vs conventional oil:

• oil field development in shale is incredibly efficient
• incredibly predicatable
• no dry holes
• scalable -- up and down
• incredibly responsive to market forces
• unlike deepwater drilling, we will never see a catastrophic blowout in shale that could literally destroy an operator
• in deepwater drilling, even after one has discovered an elephant field, tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars required for each deepwater drilling complex; in shale, once the first few wells are drilled, infrastructure is in place to bring on more wells at a fraction of the original development costs
• once conventional field starts to deplete, it continues to deplete; we're starting to see signs that technology will reverse that trend in tight oil formations

I don't know if folks noted this Oasis' most recent corporate presentation: the company added Painted Woods to its core inventory. Painted Woods is one of the oldest fields in the Bakken Basin. The field is tracked here; I have not updated it in a long time. It's within bicycling distance from Williston.