Notes From All Over -- Part 1 -- June 27, 2019

This is part 1. There may be no part 2. LOL.

I'm traveling and have not been paying attention to the news. I am now at my destination and have all kinds of time to blog but it's hard to get started.

I have not followed the news for the past three days. When I haven't followed the news, I can't put things into perspective. It's hard to start from scratch. So, I'm not sure what I will do.

I know I will be energized when I start listening to music, and there will be some breaking news that will get me excited but until that happens, I may not write much of consequence.

I might write a lot but I doubt it will be important. We'll see.

My biggest problem right now is keeping my coffee warm. It is cold where I am - really cold in the morning -- it will get down to 47 degrees overnight tonight; right now it's 57 degrees and it's about 8:07 a.m. local time.

So, coming from 105-degree weather in Texas, it's really, really cold here. I'm wearing my Carhartt jacket that I bought at Home Economy in Williston, ND, years ago -- really, really warm.

Break, break.

Ah, here we go. Makes my day. From Rigzone, "Why rapid shale production is a perk." Archived.

Since the early days of shale oil and gas production, some analysts have expressed alarm about the rapid decline that those wells experience, suggesting either that this will harm shale’s financial viability and/or lead to an early peak and decline in overall production.  But this attitude fails to acknowledge the benefits of producing a resource rapidly.

It is true that it seems inefficient to install capacity that will quickly be underutilized. No one builds a refinery that will see its utilization drop to 20 percent in a few years. But that is the nature of producing fluids; a field can be designed to produce at a constant rate, but only by offsetting the decline in individual well production, whether by enhanced recovery methods and/or additional drilling.

Incredible article. If you have time to read only one article today, this would be the article you need to read.

Break, break.

From Bloomberg: drillers using fuel to power fracking operations.

Thrifty drillers have found a new use for the glut of natural gas that’s sent prices for the fuel below zero in America’s biggest shale patch: Use it to power fracking operations.
For decades, explorers have used massive diesel engines mounted on tractor-trailers to shoot a mixture of water, sand and chemicals down wells and blast open layers of oil-soaked shale rock. That’s changing now that soaring output has crushed gas prices, especially in West Texas’ Permian Basin, where the fuel is a byproduct of crude oil extraction.

Explorers are switching to so-called e-fracking, using gas from their own wells to run turbines for electric motors that power drilling pumps. The move helps in two ways: It cuts about $1 million a month in fuel costs for a set of fracking equipment by 90%, according to Wells Fargo & Co., and it lessens the excess gas burned off at the well site, a practice environmental groups frown upon. Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. predicts electric pumps will represent about a third of the market in roughly the next five years, from about 3% now.

The e-frac movement is “probably going to have some legs," Jud Bailey, a senior equity analyst at Wells Fargo in Houston, said in a phone interview. “It’s clearly a movement by some major operators to experiment with it,” though it’s not clear how quickly a shift would happen, he said.

So much more at the link.