Three Wells Come Off The Confidential List Today -- Wednesday, May 9, 2019

California: budget doing just fine, thank you. In fact, really, really fine. 

Last month, corporate taxes came in at $3.4 billion, much higher than [Governor] Newsom administration’s estimated $2.6 billion.

Income taxes also came in ahead of projections, making up for a shortfall earlier in the year, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. If the trend continues, the state is looking at another big surplus this year.

Okay: remember all that hand-wringing over not enough CAPEX on exploration? Rigzone suggests that the majors are driving a rise in global discoveries:

Oil and gas exploration is off to an explosive start in 2019, with such majors as BP, Eni and Exxon Mobil taking a bigger bite of the conventional resources discovered in the first quarter, according to a new report by Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy.

At the end of the first quarter global discoveries of conventional resources reached 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Most of the gains were recorded in February, announcing some 2.2 billion barrels of newly discovered resources – the best monthly total on record since August 2015.

The six largest discoveries by the oil majors each exceeded 150 million boe, and the top three could even hold more than 300 million boe apiece.

American major ExxonMobil was the most successful, with three significant offshore discoveries accounting for over 38 percent of total discovered volumes in the first quarter of 2019. With discoveries made offshore of Cyprus with 700 million barrels of oil equivalent in the Eastern Mediterranean and off of Guyana in South America with more than 5 billion oil-equivalent barrels.

Apart from Exxon Mobil, the other top discoveries were made by Paris-based oil major Total, with its Brulpadda find estimated to have a potential 1 billion barrels of "wet" gas off the coast of South Africa.

Spanish-based Repsol's South Sumatran seas find has preliminary estimates of at least 2 trillian cubic feet of recoverable resources, making it the largest such find in Indonesia for 18 years.

And in Britain’s North Sea China’s CNOOC, in a partnership with Total, made an offshore find equivalent to 250 million barrels of oil.

“If the rest of 2019 continues at a similar pace, this year will be on track to exceed last year’s discovered resources by 30 percent,” says Taiyab Zain Shariff, Upstream Analyst at Rystad Energy.

Pending: EIA inventory data later this morning. 

IMO 2020: marine fuel rule could wreck demand for Mexican residual fuel oil -- Argus Media. Mexico exported 66,000 b/d of its residual fuel oil production in 1Q19, down from almost 90,000 in 1Q18. IMO 2020 rules set sulphur max at 0.5%; Mexican oil is around 4%.

Mexican president threatens journalists: "you know what will happen for bad coverage.

OXY CEO close to winning the bidding war. Anadarko. 

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Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, May 8, 2019: 27 wells for the month; 122 wells for the quarter

• 35198, 1,777, WPX, North Mabel 3l 2-35HT, Mandaree, t4/19; cum 17K 30 days;
• 34425, 736, Oasis, Martin 5302 11-4 4B, 50 stages; 10.2 million lbs; Rosebud, t12/18; cum 84K 3/19;
• 32509, 99 (no typo), BR, CCU Mainstreet 4-1-25TFH, 31 stages; 10.6 million lbs, Corral Creek, t3/19; cum --;

Active rigs:

$60.74	5/8/2019	05/08/2018	05/08/2017	05/08/2016	05/08/2015
Active Rigs	64	60	49	27	84

RBN Energy: Gulf of Mexico crude oil output is approaching 2 million bopd.

It may be easy to forget in these days of Permian this and Permian that, but crude oil production in the offshore Gulf of Mexico (GOM) set a number of new, all-time records in the past couple of years. Better yet, with a handful of key producers in the Gulf planning low-cost, subsea tiebacks to existing platforms — and still discovering more oil — it’s a good bet that offshore production will continue its upward trajectory into the early 2020s. And, unlike U.S. shale wells, whose production peaks early then trails off, wells in the GOM typically maintain high levels of production for years and years. Where do offshore production and drilling activity stand in the Shale Era, and where are they headed? Today, we review recent production gains in the Gulf and examine why the GOM remains the oil sector’s Energizer Bunny.