Only One Well Comes Off Confidential List Today And It's A .... DUC -- Wednesday, February 6, 2019 -- Happy (Chinese) New Year

Only one well comes off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, February 6, 2019: 24 wells for the month; 126 wells for the quarter

• 34047, SI/NC, MRO, Lucas 34-35TFH, Bailey, no production data,

Active rigs:

$53.31	2/6/2019	02/06/2018	02/06/2017	02/06/2016	02/06/2015
Active Rigs	62	58	40	42	137

RBN Energy: US crude export upgrades at Moda's Ingleside terminal. Where in the world is Amad? Track Amad here. Last position received thirteen hours ago, February 2, 2019, at at 5:47 local time (UTC +4). Currently off the east coast of Madagascar. Archived.

U.S. crude oil exports from Gulf Coast ports are soaring — in January they averaged well over 2 MMb/d — and when you’re moving large volumes long distances by water, there’s no vessel as efficient as a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC). A number of midstream companies are planning costly offshore terminals that could fully load 2-MMbbl VLCCs, but jobs like that take years, and Moda Midstream is in no mood to wait.

Since it acquired Occidental Petroleum’s (Oxy) Ingleside marine terminal near Corpus Christi last September, Moda has been adding new tankage and loading equipment to enable it to load up to 1.25 MMbbl onto a VLCC within 24 hours from arrival to departure, then send the supertanker out to the deep waters of the Gulf for a quick top-off via reverse lightering. Upon completion of further expansion programs, the terminal’s loading capabilities will reach a combined 160 thousand barrels per hour (Mb/hour) among its three berths. Today, we discuss recent and near-term enhancements at Texas’s newest VLCC loading facility. 

The ability for U.S. crude exporters to at least partially load supertankers from land-based ports along the Gulf Coast is a relatively nascent development. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP), which is located 17 miles off the coast of Port Fourchon, LA, in waters 110 feet deep, has been receiving VLCCs loaded to the gills with 2-MMbbl of imported crude since the early 1980s, and first tried its hand at fully loading a VLCC for export last February. LOOP has since loaded and sent out another 10 VLCCs. But loading these crude-carrying behemoths from a land-based terminal is a much more challenging process, mainly because of port draft limits. A water depth of at least 75 feet is needed to fill a VLCC to its brim, and extensive government approvals and maintenance budgets are needed for companies to dredge that deep.