Top stories for the week have been posted.
Two items jumped out at me.
First, about a year ago I posted a note suggesting that, and I forget whether I said "2019" or "2020" but one of those years we would start to see a lot of wells going over 500K bbls crude oil cumulative. I may have been a year premature, but clearly we're going to see a fair number of such wells this calendar year (2020) but we should see many, many more starting next year. Pretty exciting.
Second, I posted a note about the US being the new "global" swing producer. I think a new term is needed. Prior to the US shale revolution, there was no question that the concept of "swing producer" and that term's relationship to Saudi Arabia made sense. When circumstances dictated, Saudi Arabia could increase / decrease production and or exports, and thus they were rightly considered the swing producer.
But the US is not a "Saudi Arabia." US oil production is not "centrally" managed out of Washington, DC. As long as operators -- hundreds of them -- are making money producing oil they will continue to produce oil. US oil operators don't act / react "in concert."
So, one can't talk about the US as a "swing producer" when it comes to oil.
A new term is necessary.
On another note, regarding the increasingly better oil production in the Bakken, this note was highly interesting and educational: water. It helps explain why the Bakken wells completed in 2020 are so much better then wells completed in 2010. (And, yes, I could come up with fifteen more reasons, if I had to.)
