No Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today -- July 18, 2019

Politics: US House is irrelevant -- Trey Gowdy. I could be wrong but I thought I heard that the US House voted on articles of impeachment yesterday.  I'm waiting for the headline with the results of the vote; haven't seen it.

Tea leaves: it appears the only folks pushing solar and wind energy are Germany; parts of England; Scotland; New England (US); parts of the west coast (US); and that's about it. I may have missed a few, but that's about it. When one reads the Rigzone article linked below about LNG demand to spike five-fold in parts of Asia, one realizes just how parochial "our" thinking really is about renewable energy. Combine that with the story in the July 5, 2019, issue of The Economist about India about to begin coal mining operations in one of the world's biggest coal mines in Australia and one starts to get a much different picture than one sees when reading press releases disguised as news stories coming out of Minnesota and Iowa.

21st century: America's century.

22nd century: China's century.

The baton -- from America to China: will be passed 2051. To be more specific, Tuesday, June 6, 2051.

Mission to the moon: watching the documentaries over the past few evenings about the 1969 moon landing and the missions leading up to it -- absolutely fascinating. I'm not sure "we" can do it again.

Woodstock: 1969.

Jobless claims: pending, link here -- 

• prior: 209K
• prior revised: 208K
• forecast: 215K
• actual: 216K  -- well, that was anti-climactic

LNG: LNG demand to spike five-fold in parts of Asia. From Rigzone:

Demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from South and Southeast Asia will more than quintuple by 2040, reaching 236 million tonnes per annum (mmtpa), Wood Mackenzie predicted Wednesday. In a research note emailed to Rigzone, WoodMac noted that nearly one-half of the Asian demand spike will come from two major markets: Indonesia and India. Asti Asra, WoodMac principal analyst, noted that different sectors will drive demand growth in India and Indonesia – expected to require 63 mmpta and 43 mmtpa, respectively, of LNG in 2040.

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Back to the Bakken

No wells coming off confidential list today.

Active rigs:

$57.00	7/18/2019	07/18/2018	07/18/2017	07/18/2016	07/18/2015
Active Rigs	56	67	59	30	73

RBN Energy: how rising baseload demand for gas is reshaping seasonal patterns.

Natural gas storage activity this spring suggested extremely bearish fundamentals.

The market injected gas into storage at a record pace, well above year-ago and 5-year-average levels.

The high injection rate was in part a result of demand loss as weather abruptly moderated in April and May. However, a look at injections on a weather-adjusted basis suggests there’s another dynamic at play — namely, that increased baseload demand for gas in the power sector amplified the effects of the mild weather this spring, lowering demand even more than temperatures alone would indicate. Moreover, that same dynamic could have an opposite, equally extreme effect during the hotter months when power generation is the primary driver of gas demand. Today, we look at the latest gas storage and demand trends, and what they can tell us about the balance of injection season.

The winter of 2018-19 was one of records and extremes for the gas market, including record production and demand, and both the highest and lowest spot gas prices ever recorded in the U.S. physical gas market. It’s safe to say that theme extended into spring. Lower-48 gas production continued setting record highs, as did demand, particularly from LNG exports. And we can add one more extreme to that list — some of the highest storage injections seen this decade for the April-May time frame.

Injections in April and May of 2019 totaled 332 Bcf and 524 Bcf, respectively, exceeding both year-ago and 5-year-average levels (dashed red oval). In April, injections came just 24 Bcf shy of the highest total injection for that month seen this decade (356 Bcf in 2010). By contrast, the net storage change was a net withdrawal of 11 Bcf in the comparable weeks last year, and the next-highest injection level in the past 5 years was 250 Bcf 4 years ago in 2015.

The higher-than-normal injections continued through May, but not to the extent they had in April. May’s total injection of 524 Bcf was the highest of the decade and 142 Bcf above last year, though it was only 2 Bcf higher than the 5-year high of 522 Bcf seen in 2015. June injections also were above average, at 404 Bcf, but not as high as the 429 Bcf seen in June 2014. When compared to 5-year average, the deviations in storage injections have swung from being as much as 180 Bcf higher than the historical average in April, to less than 80 Bcf higher in May and then to about 90 Bcf higher in June.