Fast And Furious -- Things Are Moving Way Too Fast -- May 5, 2020

Date reminder:

• today: Teachers' Day and National Cartoonists Day;
  
• tomorrow: National Nurses Day
• all week: National Nurses Week, May 6 - May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale
• Sunday: Mother's Day

First things first: wow, I can't wait to get to the Swedish Wuhan flu stories but that will have to wait. But it certainly looks like the NYT editorial board and MSNBC's Brian Wilson are leading the parade on this one. Thank goodness for the internet. Can millennials even grasp the concept of numbers or how to work with them?

</ Really Bad Math, Brian Williams
Tesla: will also have to wait, but apparently it had a huge day in the market yesterday. Wow. Who would have thought?

Headline: NASA's sixteen years of satellite data -- oceans have risen 14 millimeters in the last sixteen years. We'll get back to this, also. It's going to be a great day of blogging. But #1 on my list today: visit the local Lego bricks and mini-figures store.

Headline: global oil glut set to halve in May.

Headline: Venezuela oil exports climb as OPEC agreement kicks in.

Headline: Venezuela? We're not going anywhere -- Chevron.

Headline: Trump orders Chevron to  halt production in Venezuela.

OPEC Basket, link here: $18.36

Global warming and rising seas: science experiment for today for Sophia.

• put a bunch of ice cubes in a glass
• fill the glass with water to the brim
• come back in an hour and see if the water spilled over the brim of the glass
• hint: water expands as it freezes; as the ice cube melts, the volume of water in the glass should actually decrease 

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$25.04	5/5/2020	05/05/2019	05/05/2018	05/05/2017	05/05/2016
Active Rigs	25	64	62	50	27

Three wells coming off the confidential list today -- Tuesday, May 5, 2020: 19 for the month; 69 for the quarter, 295 for the year:

• 37003, drl, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Elena 9-22-15-157N-100@-LL MBH, Marmon, no production data,
• 36588, drl, Rimrock, Skunk Creek 8-2-3-4HA, South Fork, t--; cum 19K over first 31 days; Marmon oil field would be considered to be on the fringe, Tier 2, maybe Tier 3, by some;
• 36504, drl, WPX, Blue Racer 14-11HD, Squaw Creek, t--; cum 32K over first 31 days;

RBN Energy: Refinery cuts, emerging crude production losses drive Permian volatility. Archived.

Well, it’s happened. The first signs of crude oil and gas production curtailments in the Permian Basin materialized over the weekend. That has followed weeks of extreme oversupply conditions, growing storage constraints and distressed pricing, all to deal with the abrupt and unprecedented loss of refinery demand for crude oil due to COVID, not just along the Gulf Coast, where the lion’s share of the U.S. refineries sit, but also more locally in West Texas. The rapidly shifting supply-demand balance, first from reduced local refining demand and now also the emerging production cuts, is adding volatility to the spreads and flows between the West Texas basin’s regional hub at Midland, and downstream hubs at Cushing and Houston. Today, we look at how the Midland market has responded to the downturn in local refining demand, and how production losses will factor into the balancing act.