Active Rigs Trending Down In The Bakken -- March 13, 2019

WTI: did I hear on the news that at $57.51 WTI is at its highest for the year? Maybe.

Wells coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, March, 13, 2019: 47 wells for the month; 267 wells for the quarter

• 34740, 4,424, WPX, Young Bird 34-27HW,  Spotted Horn; t1/19; cum 47K 1/19; 47K constrained, first month; 47K over 23 days extrapolates to 62K bbls/30-day month;
• 33833, 841, Oasis, Berquist 5298 13-27 7B, Banks, t10/18; cum 121K in less than 5 months; huge well;

Active rigs:

$57.51	3/13/2019	03/13/2018	03/13/2017	03/13/2016	03/13/2015
Active Rigs	63	58	46	32	112

RBN Energy: part 2, the rise of US feedgas demand in 2019. Making America great.

U.S. demand for LNG feedgas has picked up in recent weeks, posting a record high of 5.6 Bcf/d in late February and averaging more than 5 Bcf/d in March to date, as Cheniere Energy completed the fifth train at Sabine Pass and the first at Corpus Christi. That level is nearly 1 Bcf/d higher than last month and nearly double what it was at this time last year. But it’s just the start. Train 2 at Corpus Christi was approved for feedgas just yesterday and Kinder Morgan’s Elba Island project in Georgia just days before that. With about 30 MMtpa, or ~4.5 Bcf/d, of liquefaction and export capacity due online this year, feedgas deliveries are poised to surpass 9 Bcf/d by the end of the year, with nearly all of that incremental demand coming online along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. The pace of this demand growth over the course of the year will come down to how quickly the anticipated trains can complete construction and testing, the timing of which can depend on a whole host of factors, including the extent of the repairs or modifications that are needed along the way, the timing of regulatory approvals, or the timing of gas pipeline connections to supply the facilities. Today, we continue our series examining the status and timing of LNG export projects in 2019.

To get a sense of the timeline, we started with a discussion of the various systems involved in the liquefaction and export process, and what it takes to bring a train online. We then used the example of Train 1 at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG (SPL) terminal, which came online in early 2016, to understand the commissioning stages and how they correlate to the ramp-up of feedgas demand. Based on that timeline and an analysis of the ramp-up activity for subsequent trains at the facility — 2, 3 and 4 so far — we concluded that, at least in Cheniere’s world, it takes approximately 200-224 days from when the commissioning phase kicks off to when the train achieves “substantial completion” (i.e. enters full service).