Seven Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today -- January 17, 2020

Schlumberger: stock surges after profit, revenue beat expectations. Adjusted EPS came in at 39 cents vs 37 cents forecast. Net income fell to $333 million of 24 cents/share, from $538 million, or 39 cents/share in the same period a year ago. Revenue rose to $8.32 billion from $8.18 billion, beating a forecast of $8.16 billion. Free cash flow was $1.5 billion for the quarter and $2.7 billion for the year.

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Back to the Bakken

Director's Cut: scheduled to be released this afternoon. 

Active rigs:

$58.82	1/17/2020	01/17/2019	01/17/2018	01/17/2017	01/17/2016
Active Rigs	55	68	58	38	49

Seven wells coming off confidential list today -- Friday, January 17, 2020: 59 for the month; 59 for the quarter; 59 for the year;

• 36397, conf, Rimrock, Two Shields Butte 4-24-11-1HU,
• 36200, conf, WPX, Pheasant 33-28HZ,
• 35687, conf, BR, Tailgunner 1B TFH, 
• 35686, conf, BR, Tailgunner 1A MBH, 
• 35505, conf, CLR, Weisz 7-11H1, 
• 34826, conf, Hess, HA-Nelson A-152-95-3427-9, 
• 32779, conf, BR, Veederstad 8-8-35UTFH-ULW,

RBN Energy: the thinking behind a planned gulf coast ethylene-to-alkylate project. This is a great reference article. Very, very educational.

For a few years now, the Shale Revolution has been opening up development opportunities hardly anyone would have thought possible in the Pre-Shale Era. For example, new crude oil, natural gas and NGL pipelines from the Permian to the Gulf Coast, lots of new fractionators and steam crackers, as well as export terminals for crude, LNG, LPG, ethane and, most recently, ethylene. And here’s another. Thanks to the combination of NGL production growth and new ethylene supply — plus increasing demand for alkylate, an octane-boosting gasoline blendstock — the developer of a novel ethylene-to-alkylate project along the Houston Ship Channel has reached a Final Investment Decision (FID). Today, we discuss how the FID is driven by both supply-side and demand-side trends in the NGL and fuels markets. .

...Examples of the knock-on effects of the flourish caused by plentiful drill-bit hydrocarbons abound, but one that caught our eye in recent weeks is Next Wave Energy Partners’ (NWEP) FID on its planned 28-Mb/d ethylene-to-alkylate plant in Pasadena, TX, the company’s project, known as Project Traveler. ....

What Next Wave saw — in addition to the trends of growing butane and ethylene supply, coupled with increasing demand for alkylate — is that the technology exists to convert low-cost, NGL-based products into an important gasoline blendstock. Project Traveler, a planned 28-Mb/d ethylene-to-alkylate plant scheduled to begin operation in mid-2022, will have two main elements: a dimerization unit that reacts ethylene with itself to form butylene, and an alkylation unit that reacts butylene and isobutane to form a pure alkylate. We hear that Next Wave’s alkylate will be 96 octane — 4 higher than the average 92-octane alkylate produced at refineries — with an RVP of only 3.5 psia and next to no sulfur content.

Ethylene will be delivered to the Pasadena (TX) plant site via the half-dozen or so ethylene pipelines that already run along the site’s boundary; isobutane also will be delivered by pipe. As for the alkylate produced, Next Wave plans to pipe it to two large, close-by gasoline-blending and marine-terminal facilities in Pasadena, one owned by Kinder Morgan and the other by International Terminals Co. (ITC). Kinder Morgan’s facility is the largest gasoline blender by volume in the U.S.

Altogether, Project Traveler has a lot going for it. To put it simply, it’s planning to use ethylene produced from an increasingly available NGL purity product — ethane — to make an increasingly important blendstock — alkylate. In doing so, the facility will provide its ethylene suppliers with a new, albeit small market, for their product; and give the project’s alkylate buyers a new source for the blendstock, all the while mitigating their commodity risk.

Much, much more at the link.