Rig Count Advances; SRE With Huge Beat; Update On XOM, CVX In The Permian -- Starting Out To Be A Great Day For Blogging -- February 26, 2019

First things first: a reader sent this to me. The reader loves pranks and has found a good one ... especially for those of us who love NASCAR -- link here.

Natural gas:

ISO New England, link here: spiked to $175/MWh earlier this morning with huge demand for hydroelectricity from Canada.

McDermott: offshore Saudi Arabia contracts go to McDermott. 

Quandary: debt payments putting crimp on dividend payouts. Tea leaves suggest 2019, and certainly 2020 - 2021, will be key years for the shale industry.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any financial, investment, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

SRE: maybe Warren should have bought SRE instead of doing that crazy Kraft-Heinz deal? Just saying -- link here --

• revenue: $3.22 billion, up almost 9% year-over-year; beats by $280 million (almost 9%)
• EPS: $1.56, beats by ten cents; GAAP EPS of $3.03, beats by a stunning $1.40
• overall market: futures showing red but SRE futures not yet posting

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Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off the confidential list today -- Tuesday, February 26, 2019: 111 wells for the month; 214 wells for the quarter

• 34896, SI/NC, MRO, Linton USA 31-16TFH, Reunion Bay, no production data,
• 34546, 1,475, CLR, Pasadena 6-11H1, Banks, 4 sections, 57 stages, 6 million lbs, t11/18; cum 48K 12/18; note the small amount of proppant used; the Pasadena wells are tracked here; fracking strategies are tracked here;
• 33092, 2,646, CLR, Sakakawea Federal 10-19H, Elm Tree, 62 stages; 15.2 million lbs, t12/18; cum 21K after 11 days -- extrapolates to 50K over 30 days;
• 30763, SI/NC, Slawson, Hunter 5-8-17MLH, Big Bend, no production data,

Active rigs -- nice -- up one more rig, now up to 67 --

$55.64	2/26/2019	02/26/2018	02/26/2017	02/26/2016	02/26/2015
Active Rigs	67	57	40	38	121

RBN Energy: Permian majors expand downstream crude refining capacity.

In the past month, two integrated majors with strong footprints in the Permian Basin announced plans to increase their refining capacity along the Texas Gulf Coast. During the last week of January 2019, ExxonMobil announced a final investment decision to expand its Beaumont, TX, facility’s capacity by 250 Mb/d, making it the largest U.S. refinery, and then confirmed an investment with Plains All American and Lotus Midstream to build a 1-MMb/d pipeline to ship crude to its Beaumont and Baytown, TX, refineries. In the same week, Chevron announced its purchase of the 110-Mb/d Pasadena, TX, Houston Ship Channel refinery from Brazil’s national oil company, Petrobras. Both Exxon and Chevron boasted record Permian production in their fourth quarter 2018 earnings calls. Today, we review Chevron’s purchase and Exxon’s expansion in light of Permian production growth and the changing Gulf Coast refining market.