Hot In Dallas -- August 13, 2019

Texas electricity used to be dirt (coal)-cheap but with all the craziness of faux environmentalists, we are now paying outrageous prices for wind power. From zerohedge;

Power demand in Texas hit a record high on Monday as consumers turned up their air conditioners to escape a heatwave that is boiling much of the southern Plains over the next 7-10 days.

"A large ridge of high pressure has anchored itself across the southern Plains over the last 7-10 days, promoting significant heat across Texas. As of Tuesday morning, Dallas has reached 100°F each of the last 4 days, while Houston's Intercontinental Airport has hit 101°F each of the past 5 days."

ERCOT Houston MW-hour jumped from $25 to $603 on August 12, a +2,237% move in 1,440 minutes.

But at least no brownouts or blackouts. Business as usual.

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Soccer

Sophia has her first outdoor soccer practice tonight at 6:00 p.m. It should be cooler by then; maybe 97 degrees.

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The Music Page

Here, Hold My Beer

Over at "YouTube Fugue," I have a page devoted to 1969:

There was an 18-month-period, from late 1968 through mid-1970 that clearly had some of the best music ever.  This was the year of Woodstock. The Beatles were still going strong, but touring less, and would soon stop completely.  Led Zeppelin's first two albums, Zeppelin I and Zeppelin II, were released in 1969. The era of "free love" and the uncertainties of the Vietnam War probably contributed to some of this really incredible music. Speaking of the Vietnam war, I turned 18 in 1969. My lottery draft was July 1, 1970; my lottery number was 103. The highest lottery number called for this group was 125; all men assigned that lottery number or any lower number, and who were classified as available for military service, were called to report for possible induction. I would have been deferred by virtue of being enrolled in college. I was worried that I would be called up before I graduated from college. I was convinced, but wrong, that the war would still be going on when I graduated from college.

For some reason, my "go-to" radio station in the DFW area has Norman Greenbaum/"Spirit In The Sky" (1969) in rotation. It's getting a lot of airtime recently. I don't why.

From wiki:

"Spirit in the Sky" makes several religious references to Jesus, although Greenbaum is Jewish. In a 2006 interview with the New York Times, Greenbaum told a reporter he was inspired to write the song after watching Porter Wagoner singing a gospel song on TV. Greenbaum said: "I thought, 'Yeah, I could do that,' [ "here, hold my beer"] knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes."

Best line: "A psychedelic Christian song, written and performed by an Orthodox Jew. Only in America, only in 1969." [Only in 1969; best year ever for music.]

Which leads me to ...

Not Fair, Lily Allen

And I do believe that Porter Wagoner, the singer, was re-incarnated at Brad Keselowski the NASCAR race driver.

WTI Surges 3.5%; Trading At Nearly $57; Active Rigs At 61; Eight New Permits -- August 13, 2019

API: weekly inventory US crude oil inventory up by 3.7 million bbls. I'm sure this was a surprise, also. [Later: and there it is -- it was another "surprise." LOL]. Headline at oilprice: 

Surprise Crude Build Reverses Earlier Oil Price Gains 

Analysts didn't even guess correctly on the direction.

Analysts forecast a "decline" in US crude oil inventories. In fact, it was an "increase," and not trivial: a build of almost 4 million bbls. Analysts had expected a 2.761 million bbl draw (note the false precision).

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$56.87	8/13/2019	08/13/2018	08/13/2017	08/13/2016	08/13/2015
Active Rigs	61	60	57	33	72

Eight new permits, #36840 - #36847, inclusive):

• Operators: Hess (4); MRO (4)
• Fields: Tioga (Mountrail), Reunion Bay (Mountrail)
• Comments:
• Hess has permits for a 4-well TI-State pad in Tioga oil field, lot 4/section 31-158-94;
• MRO has permits for a 4-well Akko/Aslak/Donaason/Nokelby pad in Reunion Bay, section 21-151-93

Eight permits renewed:

• Equinor (3): three Maring permits in Williams County
• Whiting (3): three Wold Federal permits in McKenzie County
• Oasis (2): a Pederson permit in McKenzie County and an Erickson permit in Burke County

Four permits canceled:

• QEP: four MHA permits in section 23-148-92, Dunn County

One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed -- except it wasn't:

• 35288, SI/NC, Whiting, Berg Trust Federal 1-27HU, Pembroke. Whiting received a letter from the NDIC dated July 8, 2019, that the permit would expire as of August 7, 2019. Back in August, 2018, Whiting had the standard request to waive open hole logs; the plan called for a 30-stage frack by Halliburton; paperwork lags but the NDIC map suggests that Whiting is drilling this pad -- it looks they got the letter, and began drilling; probably completed by August 7 and now remains a DUC.

Australia -- Won't Be Left Behind -- August 13, 2019

A reader caught this interesting note in a reply to this story.

Meanwhile….good news for oil production and energy self sufficiency in Australia:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-12/multi-billion-dollar-oil-project-using-fracking-west-kimberley/11389046

“A network of oil wells that involve fracking in the Great Sandy Desert, connected by pipelines to new and existing ports, may become Australia’s biggest oil producing project.

“Documents on the website of privately owned Theia Energy, some of which have since been removed, say they have found as much as 57 billion barrels of oil in the desert location 150 kilometres south-east of Broome.

“The oil find is described as “unconventional” meaning it is locked in dense rock that will need hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to allow the oil to flow to the surface.

“Theia Energy, a small and privately owned Perth-based company, was created in 2018 when Finder Exploration split into Finder Energy for its offshore projects and Theia Energy for its onshore Great Sandy Desert Project. Theia Energy is in negotiations with the Karajarri traditional owners of the area to gain permission to confirm commercial flow rates of oil by fracking rock over a kilometre underground. [For the record, Bakken operators frack at a depth of almost two miles below ground.]

“Leading the negotiations on behalf of traditional owners is Karajarri Traditional Lands Association chairman Thomas King. 

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

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No Segue

I thought of this while posting links to the "C Rock."

The average university / college in the US:

• alpha males / all males enrolled: 25 / 100

The Ivy League universities / colleges in the US:

• alpha males / all males enrolled: 99 / 100

The same statistics apply to women in the same universities.

Random Update: The Enerplus "Cat" Wells -- August 13, 2019

The Enerplus "Cat" wells have been updated.

Some of these wells are barely a year old and have produced more than 300,000 bbls of oil.

• 31130, 2,184, Enerplus, Persian 147-93-06A-07H, Moccasin Creek, t4/18; cum 342K 6/19;
• 31126, 817, Enerplus, Bengal 147-93-06A-07H, Moccasin Creek,  t5/18; cum 304K 6/19;
• 31129, 3,204, Enerplus, Siamese 148-93-31D-30H, Moccasin Creek, t4/18; cum 303K 6/19;
• 31125, 2,388, Enerplus, Calico 148-93-31D-30H, Moccasin Creek, t5/18; cum 300K 6/19;

This page will not be updated; the Enerplus "Cat" wells are tracked and updated at the link above.

Random Note On The BR Veeder Wells In Blue Buttes -- August 13, 2019

Several months ago, I opined that starting this year or next, we would start seeing a surge of wells go over the threshold of 500,000 bbls of crude oil production in the Bakken. I was thinking about the Legacy wells, the wells that had been drilled early in the boom.

I never expected to see so many recently drilled wells going over 500,000 bbls of crude oil but look at these Veeder wells drilled two years ago:

• 32909, 441, BR, Lillibridge 3B UTFH, Blue Buttes, t9/17; cum 410K 6/19;
• 32910, 555, BR, Lillibridge 3C MBH, Blue Buttes, t9/17; cum 481K 6/19;
• 33043, 290, BR, Veeder 4B TFH, Blue Buttes, t8/17; cum 507K 6/19;
• 33044, 340, BR, Veeder 4C MBH, Blue Buttes, t8/17; cum 518K 6/19;
• 33045, 149, BR, Veeder 4D MTFH, Blue Buttes, t8/17; cum 381K 6/19;
• 33046, 433, BR, Veeder 4E MBH-ULW, Blue Buttes, t7/17; cum 434K 6/19;  

This page will not be updated; the Veeder wells are tracked and updated at the link above.

Another "Old" CLR Well With Huge Jump In Production -- August 13, 2019

In the process of updating the CLR Monroe wells -- huge wells, by the way, I came across this one:

• 21148, 809, CLR, Pasadena 1-11H, 24 stages, 2.2 million lbs, t7/12; cum 295K 6/19; huge jump in production; 

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	6-2019	30	3514	3788	3660	11748	6992	4126
BAKKEN	5-2019	31	4207	3996	4148	13911	13166	100
BAKKEN	4-2019	30	4657	4752	4875	11982	8135	3226
BAKKEN	3-2019	31	3883	3813	4379	9272	3953	4716
BAKKEN	2-2019	28	5169	5279	5266	12151	1776	9787
BAKKEN	1-2019	31	8403	8372	8787	15261	8151	6459
BAKKEN	12-2018	31	10812	10829	12970	10054	1070	8350
BAKKEN	11-2018	29	13854	13906	19248	25728	23578	1600
BAKKEN	10-2018	31	22444	22288	42358	36852	33948	2279
BAKKEN	9-2018	23	2623	2639	7377	4237	430	3435
BAKKEN	8-2018	18	216	0	3047	458	100	0
BAKKEN	7-2018	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	6-2018	0	0	188	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	5-2018	30	1552	1551	892	3039	2583	0

Among other things, this increases the EUR of this well.

Definition Of Insanity -- August 13, 2019

Tag: definition of insanity.

From EnergyNewsNetwork: climate change brings urgency to debate over Detroit's grid resilience.

I can't take credit for this; another reader noted:

Detroit temperatures (weather) can have a 120-degree spread over six months and the grid does just fine.

But, the Detroit Grid, apparently can't handle a rise in global temperature of 1.7 degrees over the next 100 years. Already experiencing blackouts. The "journalist" apparently missed the London blackout story last week and the wind turbine debacle at the Minnesota VA facility this week.

Their solution: more non-dispatchable energy.

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The Book Page

From The Battle For New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution, Barnet Schecter, c. 2002, pp. 270 - 271:

The winter of 1776-1777 and the early spring at Morristown (NJ), though less famous than the ordeal at Valley Forge the following year, were a time of similar privation and suffering for the Continental Army.

However, Washington had chosen a naturally strong position surrounded by hills and forest, and by sending his men out to ambush and rob British foraging parties, he kept his greatly diminished force alive while Cornwallis remained nervously on the defensive. By spreading false reports about his troop strength, Washington also duped the British into believing he had far more than the five incomplete regiments at his disposal.

With 10,000 fully equipped professional troops only a day's march from the American camp, the British might have wiped out Washington's forces. Instead, Alexander Hamilton confirmed in more elegant prose the "extraordinary spectacle of a powerful army straitened within narrow limits by the phantom of a military force and  never permitted to transgress those limits with impunity."

Guerilla warfare.

Fast forward to the 1960s: Vietnam.

For all the lip service officers give regarding the importance of reading military history while attening Army War College it appears to be just that -- reading it but not learning from it. Wow, one just wonders how many weeks senior officers studied the Revolutionary War.

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Footnotes

The footnotes in The Battle For New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution, Barnet Schecter, c. 2002, are among the best I've seen in any book. It was nice to see them at the bottom of the page instead of at the back of the book which would have required endless back-and-forth page turning.

One footnote, p. 118:

"Brooklyn" is the anglicized spelling and pronunciation of breukelen, a Dutch word meaning "marshland" [or swamp]. Soft and spongy because it was the bed of a valley, the ground received the runoff from the surrounding hills. Gowanus Creek was a snaking tidal inlet that penetrated the peninsula from Gowanus Cove and was surrounded by an extensive marsh. Local farmers supplemented their diet and incomes by harvesting oysters from the creek, and the otion of the tieds worked the ills that were built along its course.

The reason I bought this book was because I wanted to learn more about the geography -- particularly the waterways in and around NYC. It has turned out to be an incredible book. It might be a bit drier reading than Nathaniel Philbrick who covered the same history in Valiant Ambition but Barnet Schecter certainly was much more comprehensive. If one has time to read both, read Philbrick first and then Schecter. Philbrick's Valiant Ambition was a biography of Benedict Arnold. Schecter's book was a biography of NYC during the Revolutionary War.

Okay, one last one and then I will quit. Spuyten Duyvil: link here. Apparently it's since been filled in but the area still carries the name:

Spuyten Duyvil Creek is a short tidal estuary in New York City connecting the Hudson River to the Harlem River Ship Canal and then on to the Harlem River. The confluence of the three water bodies separate the island of Manhattan from the Bronx and the rest of the mainland.

Wiki with nice maps.

Beautiful, huh? "C Rock"? See this post, or google it yourself.

If I have any of the annotations wrong, I'm sure a reader will correct me:

No Spill Is Too Small To Report -- No Spill Left Behind -- The Bismarck Tribune -- August 13, 2019

Link here.

From The Bismarck Tribune via twitter:

Data points:

• the spill occurred a week ago, a week before this story was published;
• by the time the story was published, all saltwater was recovered
• the story did not say whether the saltwater spill was limited to the pad or not; based on what was reported, the spill was contained
• 335 bbls or 14,070 gallons of saltwater
• an inspector had been on site 

And we move on.

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Epstein Humor

And these are new.

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Babylon Bee

Link here.

Three Wells Will Come Off The Confidential List Today -- August 13, 2019

Wells coming off the confidential list today -- Tuesday, August 13, 2019: 17 for the month; 66 for the quarter:

• 35938, SI/NC, XTO, Badlands Federal 21X-13B, North Fork, no production data,
• 35352, SI/NC, Hess, RS-State D-155-92-0203H-2, Alger, no production data,
• 32464, drl, BR, CCU Burner 1-1-26TFH, Corral Creek, no production data, TVD = 11,123.79 feet; this was the fourth curve completed on a quad pad; the well was plugged after having problems with hole stability and running intermediate casing; the well file has nice update (at the time) re: pad drilling plans

Active rigs:

$54.47	8/13/2019	08/13/2018	08/13/2017	08/13/2016	08/13/2015
Active Rigs	61	60	57	33	72

RBN Energy: Plains All American Cactus II oil pipeline nears commercial operation. [We posted a screenshot from twitter regarding this yesterday.) This will be a big story over time. Archived.

It’s no secret by now that Permian oil markets have struggled over the last two years as nagging takeaway-pipeline constraints put a damper on production growth and, at times, hammered pricing in the basin. Like the Houston Astros’ opponents in the AL West, though, the days are numbered now for Permian oil market constraints, as two new large-diameter pipelines from West Texas to Corpus Christi will be in-service by the end of the month. One of those pipes, Plains All American’s Cactus II, is set to enter service this week.

Cactus II consists of 575 miles of new 26-inch-diameter pipeline and extends from McCamey, TX, in the southern Midland Basin to delivery points near Corpus Christi. Note that Cactus II can also access the oil hub at Wink, TX, in the Delaware Basin via a capacity lease on another Plains-operated pipeline. Also, while Cactus II closely follows the route of Plains’ original Cactus Pipeline , the two pipelines do not share facilities. From the Permian, Cactus II extends southeast toward the Texas Gulf Coast and has been completed to Ingleside, TX, which is just across the bay from Corpus Christi. Plains confirmed last week that Cactus II is in the process of taking linefill in preparation for entering commercial service this week. Plains is also working to complete a final segment of Cactus II that will run from Taft, TX, to delivery points across the water from Ingleside along the Corpus Christi Ship Channel. This segment is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2020.