Apparently "Enough Is Enough" -- Williston Voters Reject Bond Issue For Two New Elementary Schools; High School Addiiton -- March 21, 2018

Link to Williston Herald.

$77.2 million bond issue.

The Legacy Fund has in excess of $5 billion?

$100 million / $5 billion = 2%.

It is what it is.

Population of Williston: around 35,000.

Voter turnout: about 2,500.

2,500 / 35,000 = 7%.

It is what it is.

Seven New Permits -- March 21, 2018

Note: normally in the evening I have time to post more news, but due to family commitments, new blogging tonight could be delayed. Stay tuned.

Active rigs:

$65.46↑↑	3/21/2018	03/21/2017	03/21/2016	03/21/2015	03/21/2014
Active Rigs	59	50	32	107	197

Seven new permits:

• Operators: Oasis (6); Armstrong
• Fields: Elidah (McKenzie); Wildcat/Eland (Stark County)
• Comments: Oasis has permits for a 6-well Nordeng/Mildred Nelson pad in NENW 25-152-98

Two permits renewed:

• MRO: a Big Head USA and a Birds Bill USA permit, both in Mountrail County

Wow, Wow, Wow! WTI Breaches $65 -- March 21, 2018

Today, WTI up 2.4%, trading at $65.04.

Most recent data from the EIA:

Did the dollar have anything to do with this today? Unlikely. The dollar is stronger today than it was yesterday. Long-term trend: down.

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The Geography Page

The Greater Antilles: a grouping of the larger islands in the Caribbean Sea:Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Cayman Islands.

Antilles: Europeans used the term Antilia as one of the mysterious lands featured on medieval charts, sometimes as an archipelago, sometimes as continuous land of greater or lesser extent, its location fluctuating in mid-ocean between the Canary Islands and Eurasia.

The Lesser Antilles: a grouping of smaller islands that form an arc between the northern/northeastern coast of South America, extending up to the Greater Antilles. The Lesser Antilles islands form the boundary between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

West Indies: the Greater Antilles; the Lesser Antilles; and the Lucayan Archipelago (northeast of Cuba, east and southeast of southern tip of Florida).

From 1421: The Year China Discovered America, Gavin Menzies, c. 2002

The author:

• 1953: joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15
• seventeen years in the Royal Navy
• 1968 - 1970: commander of the HMS Rorqual; took her from China to Australasia, the Pacific, and the Americas
• guiding stars in the southern hemisphere are Canopus and the Southern Cross; crucial in his discoveries
• educated by a Chinese amah for the first five years of his life
• spent years traveling back and forth to China and around the world; tracking Chinese voyages of exploration
• mentions Chinese porcelain, silk, votive offerings

From the introduction:

• medieval chart dated 1424, signed by Venetian cartographer Zuane Pizzigano
• coastlines of Europe were accurate
• the map also included a group of four islands far out in the western Atlantic: Satanzes, Antilia, Saya, and Ymana
• two largest islands
• Antilia
• Satanazes
• antilia -- anti-- on the opposite side of 
• ilha -- island -- 
• "island on the opposite side of the Atlantic from Portugal"
• Satanazes, "Satan's or Devil's Island" -- a very distinctive name
• author suggests:
• Antilia: Puerto Rico
• Satanazes: Guadeloupe island, in the Caribbean
• this meant that someone surveyed the islands before Columbus
• con/ymana: "volcano erupts there" -- on map where there are three volcanoes on Guadeloupe today
• the volcanoes had erupted twice between 1400 and 1440 but o/w dormant
• someone had established a colony on the island 68 years before Columbus
• it appears the Portuguese had obtained a slightly later -- 1428 -- chart that also showed the same islands
• like Sherlock, author eliminated all other global navies at the time, and by default: the Chinese were left
• all European explorers owed a huge debt to the great figure of Henry the Navigator (1394 - 1460), the Portuguese prince whose base in southwest Portugal became the academy for explorers, cartographers, shipwrights, and instrument makers
• problem: in the mid-15th century almost every Chinese map and document of the period was deliberately destroyed by officials of the Chinese court, following an abrupt reversal of its foreign policy; far from embracing the outside world, after these momentous discoveries, China turned in on itself; anything commemorating its expansionist past was expunged from the record

Random Update Of An Oasis Oyloe Well In North Tobacco Garden -- March 21, 2018

This well came off the confidential list today (its two sister wells are still on confidential list):

• 32616, 1,363, Oasis, Oyloe 5199 14-26 11B, North Tobacco Garden, 50 stages; 9.9 million lbs; mesh/large/large ceramic; a huge well; 130+ in first four full months, including 42K in 12/17; t10/17; cum 145K 1/18;

Look at that production: over 40K in one month plus another 11,000 boe yields about 50K+ boe in one month (plus a lot of water):

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	1-2018	31	35984	35984	32862	55738	49276	6214
BAKKEN	12-2017	31	41925	41925	40391	65257	57214	7795
BAKKEN	11-2017	30	28119	28119	30598	43716	34641	8835
BAKKEN	10-2017	30	34259	34259	36675	53010	29681	23089
BAKKEN	9-2017	9	4715	4715	10204	6990	3263	3655

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Another Oasis Well: 

This Time A Lawlar Well In the Immediate Area As The Oyloe Well Above

The well:

• 20460, 1,195, Oasis, Lawlar 26-35H, North Tobacco Garden, t9/11; cum 310K 1/18; 

Let's check to see the production profile of #20460. FracFocus has no data to suggest that it's been re-fracked but a lot of neighboring wells have recently been fracked.

#20460:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	1-2018	31	11672	12527	12160	22964	22654	0
BAKKEN	12-2017	31	9293	8739	10027	16295	15985	0
BAKKEN	11-2017	30	9825	9775	10915	18136	17440	396
BAKKEN	10-2017	31	12456	12147	17103	20944	19937	697
BAKKEN	9-2017	24	8128	7796	15847	10751	10511	0
BAKKEN	8-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	7-2017	1	0	0	0	10	0	0
BAKKEN	6-2017	1	0	0	0	10	0	0
BAKKEN	5-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	4-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	3-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	2-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	1-2017	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	12-2016	0	0	0	0	3	3	0
BAKKEN	11-2016	18	428	692	345	1675	1445	50
BAKKEN	10-2016	31	1922	2069	845	6809	6809	0
BAKKEN	9-2016	30	2069	1831	1052	8054	7754	0

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The Atomic Page

One book today: The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age, David N. Schwartz, c. 2017

The first paragraph from the preface:

My father was a particle physicist. In 1962, he and two of his colleagues conducted an experiment that demonstrated the existence of two distinct types of "neutrinos," ghostly subatomic particles that can pass through hundreds of millions of miles of lead without bumping into a single atom. Hypothesized in a leap of imagination by the acerbic Viennese physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the neutrino's creation in radioactive processes was first explained by Enrico Fermi, who also gave the particle its Italianate name, meaning "little neutral one." The 1962 experiment -- a direct legacy of one of Fermi's most famous scientific achievements -- made the front page of the New York Times and won my father and his collaborators the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Important dates:

• b. 1901
• d. 1954
• Nobel Prize: 1938

Quick data points from the introduction

• two major intellectual revolutions during his lifetime
• theory of relativity
• quantum theory
• notable contributions to the first
• contributions to the second established him as one of the greatest scientists of the day
• self-educated at Rome
• post-graduate education, briefly, Germany and Holland
• returned to University of Rome
• lecturer at University of Florence where he made his first, and maybe his most important contribution
• a method to bring quantum mechanical rules into the field of statistical mechanics
• two years later: professorship in theoretical physics at the University of Rome 
• he built one of the major international schools of modern physics
• made several extraordinary contributions:
• a theory that explains a puzzling type of radioactive process called "beta decay"
• the discovery that certain elements, when bombarded with neutrons, become radioactive
• the discovery that the intensity of this induced radioactivity increases when the neutrons are slowed down prior to hitting these elements
• 1938, Nobel Prize; uses opportunity to flee fascist Italy via Stockholm for a faculty position at Columbia University
• learned to his astonishment and embarrassment, that German scientists replicating his 1934 experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons concluded that Fermi had been splitting uranium atoms without knowing it
• with this knowledge, he and Hungarian emigre Leo Szilard began to explore the possibility of crating a sustained nuclear chain reaction with uranium
• after moving the project to the University of Chicago at the request of the US government, Fermi and a large team of fellow physicists and others succeeded in doing so on December 2, 1942, officially ushering in the nuclear age
• he was a central figure in the design of plutonium production reactors for the Manhattan Project and in the summer of 1944 moved to Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were designed and built
• he played a key role in solving the many hypothetical and practical problems involved in this final phase of the Manhattan Project
• he witnessed the first detonation of an atomic bomb, known as the Trinity test, at Alamogordo, NM, on July 16, 1945
• rest of career at University of Chicago
• spoke in defense of his Manhattan Project colleague J Robert Oppenheimer during the 1954 hearings
• died of stomach cancer, November, 1954, age 53

Other data points:

• success in integrating quantum rules into statistical mechanics: Fermi-Dirac statistics
• the basis for virtually all condensed matter physics and much else besides
• work after WWII led to Standard Model
• he may have a handful of peers in either theory (Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli) or experiment (Arthur Compton, James Franck, I. I. Rabi), in the art of teaching, he had none
• some five of his graduate students went on to win Nobel Prizes and several other future Nobel Prize winners though of him as their primary graduate or postgraduate mentor
• in terms of influence as a teacher and mentor, he was truly unique

Holy Moly, Batman! Just How Big Are Those LNG Tankers? -- March 21, 2018

Look at this.

This one LNG tanker supplies 25% of Great Britain's daily requirement for LNG. Twenty-five percent.

Also:

• first shipment to Great Britain from US Cove Point 
• only second time in modern history US shipped LNG to Great Britain
• the last time this happened was when the Vikings shut down the North Sea

From Reuters earlier this month:

The United States is expected to become the world’s third- biggest LNG exporter by capacity in 2018, furthering President Donald Trump’s goal of American energy dominance by exporting U.S. oil and gas to help create jobs at home and provide more security to the nation’s allies around the world. 

Dominion Energy Inc said on Friday (o/a March 2, 2018) the first vessel carrying liquefied natural gas from its newly constructed Cove Point LNG export terminal in Maryland left the facility, another sign of growing U.S. prowess as an oil and gas producer.

The LNG tanker Gemmata left fully loaded, according to energy data provider Genscape, which said it observed the loading of the vessel through its cameras set up to watch the facility.

Speaking of which, where is the Shaden? Apparently it's near South Africa.

• Position Received: 2018-03-16 15:11 UTC
• Vessel's Time Zone: UTC +3
• Area: SAFR - South Africa
• Latitude / Longitude: -25.19717° / 51.86633°
• Status: Underway Using Engine
• Speed/Course: 10.5kn / 95°

 

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Madagascar

From Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution (Convergence), Jonathan B Losos, c. 2017

And then there's Madagascar, sometimes called the eighth continent for the distinctiveness of its biota. We've already discussed the island's frogs and birds, but there's much more: a dwarf hippo; an adaptive radiation of lemurs, including a 75-pounder that apparently hung upside down like a sloth and another that looked like a supersized koala; ten-foot-tall, half-ton elephants birds (the heaviest birds ever to have lived); half the world's species of chameleon, which propel their sticky tongues twice their body length to snare unsuspecting insect prey; fossil frogs the size of an extra-large pizza; crocodiles that were vegetarians (so much for all that talk about healthy diets); a beetle with a giraffine neck.

And the plants of Madagascar are no less unusual, including desert forests composed of tall, slender, spine-encrusted stalks and the stout baobab tree, which looks like it's been stuck into the ground upside down with roots coming out on top.

And combining the animal and plant world, there's the orchid with a foot-long tube at the bottom of its flower and a corresponding mouth with a proboscis equally elongated, several times the length of its body, just right for inserting into the tube and reaching the nectar at its base.

Where would primate evolution have led if monkeys and apes had not evolved? Look no further than the diversity of lemurs, found nowhere else but on Madagascar.

By the way, a couple of questions.

How many mammalian species are there in the world today?

Answer: more than five thousand (meaning less than six thousand).

Which mammal accounts for 1,240 of those species, at last count? 

Answer: bats. Yup, bats, At least according to Jonathan Losos.

The Political, Market And Energy Page, T+21 -- March 21, 2018; Re-Balancing Back To 32 Weeks

Wow, I love Joe Kernan on CNBC. This morning this interchange, paraphrased:

Steve Liesman, talking about the "Fed": "it turns out Janet Yellen was a hawk. She raised the "Fed" rate for the first time in ten (10) years.

Joe Kernan: "Did I just hear you (Steve) call Janet Yellen a monetary hawk because she raised "the rate" for the first time in ten years."

Steve: "Yes." [What a doofus.]

Joe Kernan: "One would think that "they" would have models for these (Fed rate) actions."

Steve: "Well, Joe, I wonder if you have models because no one else does."

Joe: "All I know is that we all know the exact global temperature one hundred years from now."

Along with five others, Joe Kernan is a national treasure.

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Weekly petroleum report: link here. WTI is up almost 2% -- getting close to $65 again.

• crude oil inventories: dropped 2.6 million bbls; now at 428.3 million bbls; lower half of the average range for this time of year (we've talked about this trope before)
• refineries: 91.7% operable capacity (wow, see graphic below)
• everything else: unremarkable

Re-balancing: back to 32 weeks --

Week	Date	Drawdown	Storage	Weeks to RB
Week 0	Apr 26, 2017		529.0	180
Week 24	October 12, 2017	2.8	462.2	40
Week 25	October 18, 2017	5.7	456.5	37
Week 26	October 25, 2017	-0.9	457.3	39
Week 27	November 1, 2017	2.4	454.9	38
Week 28	November 8, 2017	-2.2	457.1	42
Week 29	November 15, 2017	1.9	459.0	43
Week 30	November 22, 2017	1.9	457.1	42
Week 31	November 29, 2017	3.4	453.7	41
Week 32	December 6, 2017	5.6	448.1	37
Week 33	December 13, 2017	5.1	443.0	36
Week 34	December 20, 2017	6.5	436.5	30
Week 35	December 28, 2017	4.6	431.9	28
Week 36	January 4, 2018	7.4	424.5	25
Week 37	January 10, 2018	4.9	419.5	23
Week 38	January 18, 2018	6.9	412.7	20
Week 39	January 24, 2018	1.1	411.6	20
Week 40	January 31, 2018	-6.8	418.4	24
Week 41	February 7, 2018	-1.9	420.3	26
Week 42	February 14, 2018	-1.8	422.1	27
Week 43	February 21, 2018	1.6	420.5	27
Week 44	February 28, 2018	3.0	423.5	28
Week 45	March 7, 2018	2.4	425.9	29
Week 46	March 14, 2018	-5.0	430.9	33
Week 47	March 21, 2018	2.6	428.3	32

API Crude Oil Inventory Drops Nicely; WTI Responds In Kind -- March 21, 2018

API: crude oil inventory --

• forecast: a build of 3.2 million bbls
• actual: a drawdown of 2.739 million bbls

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$64.11↑↑	3/21/2018	03/21/2017	03/21/2016	03/21/2015	03/21/2014
Active Rigs	58	50	32	107	197

RBN Energy: why the big spread between WCS (Canadian) and WTI (US) crude oil will stick around.

Western Canadian Select (WCS), a heavy crude oil blend, has been selling for about $25/bbl less than West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at the Cushing, OK, hub — a hard-to-bear experience for oil sands producers that have made big investments over the past few years to ratchet up their output. And the WCS/WTI spread is unlikely to improve much any time soon. Pipeline takeaway capacity out of Alberta has not kept pace with oil sands production growth, and existing pipes are running so full that some owners have been forced to apportion access to them. Crude-by-rail (CBR) is a relief valve, but it can be costly. Worse yet, production continues to increase and the addition of new pipeline capacity is two years away — maybe more — so deep discounts for WCS are likely to stick around.