Five Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today: WPX; XTO; Whiting; CLR -- May 13, 2020

Snow! And very, very cold temperatures in Scotland this week. Link here. For those following "grand solar minima" (which is very new to me -- only over the past couple of years have I followed it), this is fascinating:

Monday’s polar blast has arrived with the news that six global organisations, including king warm-mongers themselves the Met Office, have combined to create a weather model for June through August, 2020 (well they’ve gotta spend all that funding on something, right, and the world is just screaming-out for MORE MODELS).

The six forecasters’ combined map shows a 1500 mile-wide “cool blob” covering the Atlantic and much of Europe.

They’ve predicted an overall UK summer temperature of 14.7C, which would be the coldest summer since 2015’s 13.9C.

However, that prediction –as with most-other things coming out of the UK Met Office– is likely on the warm side and something far-closer to 2015’s reading is probably on the cards — time will of course tell.

Tech: I see there's another browser out there competing with Chrome: Brave. I don't care one way or the other but I was talking with the granddaughters last night about their browsers. Apparently, Brave blocks ads and trackers which saves loading time. That's a huge irritant I have with current browsers -- I often watch spinning "clocks" as ads and trackers are downloaded. I have no idea. It was an ad for Brave. Brave has been around for awhile; this story from Computerworld, July 24, 2018. 

The web browser from Brave Software relies on an unusual business model: it strips out ads from websites, replaces them with its own ads, then allows users to send money to sites they like.

Boutique browsers try to scratch out a living by scratching out a niche underserved by the usual suspects. Brave is one of those browsers.

Brave has gotten more attention than most new browsers, partly because a co-founder was one of those who kick-started Mozilla's Firefox, partly because of its very unusual - some say parasitical - business model.

Florida Walt Disney World Reort: taking reservations for July 1, 2020, and afterward. 

Re-opening: if states that are re-opening are able to withstand the barrage of scare stories from the mainstream media and continue with re-opening plans, there is going to be a huge gap between states that fail to re-open and states that re-open. 

Twitter scroll: not much news but there certainly seems to be a suggestion that the worst is over for US oil. Certainly not much bad news. Considering. Bloomberg over at Rigzone.

FWIW: earlier, it was reported that experts predicted that global (?) CO2 emissions would fall 8%; today it's being reported that EIA predicts energy-related CO2 emissions to fall 11% this year. Link here.

OPEC basket: $22.71, link here. OPEC shows $22.83 today.

OPEC, May, 2020 report, various sources:

• OECD commercial oil stocks rose by almost 70 million bbls, month-over-month in March; now at 3,002 million bbls; 125 million bbls higher than last year;
• OPEC crude oil production rose by 1.798 million bbls per day month-over-month to 30.412 million bopd in May -- secondary sources
• Saudi Arabia: says it produced 12.007 million bpd in May -- if accurate, a huge production number going over 12 million bbls

Iraq: agrees to further cuts but less than OPEC+ target. 

International air travel? Emirates to begin flights from May 21, 2020, to London, Frankfurt, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Chicago, Toronto, Sydney, and Melbourne. Note: Italy on the list; NYC not.

API, weekly:

• forecast: another large increase; 4.147 million bbls (note false precision)
• actual: almost double the forecast; a build of 7.58 million bbls

EIA, weekly data, link here, and here, pending, released at 9:30 a.m. CT -- 

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$25.68	5/13/2020	05/13/2019	05/13/2018	05/13/2017	05/13/2016
Active Rigs	17	64	60	51	27

Five wells coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, May 13, 2020: 42 for the month; 92 for the quarter, 319 for the year:

• 36634, drl, WPX, Nighthawk 6-34HD, Heart Butte,
• 36578, drl, XTO, Tong 34X-9E, Midway,
• 36131, 972, Whiting, Elma TTT Federal 43-4H, Sanish, t11/19; cum 98K 3/20; this must be great -- producing oil, selling oil, and not paying (some) bills while in bankruptcy?
• 35383, SI/A, CLR, Palmer Federal 11-25H1, Haystack Butte, t--; cum --; 23,426 bbls over 21 days extrapolates to 33,466 bbls/30-day month;
• 35381, SI/A, CLR, Palmer 9-25H1, Haystack Butte, t--; cum --; 16,344 bbls over 19 days extrapolates to 25,806 bbls/30-day month;

RBN Energy: factors influencing US LNG offtaker decisions to lift vs cancel cargoes.

Global natural gas demand disruptions and high storage levels resulting from the COVID crisis have turned international LNG markets upside down. Price spreads for U.S. LNG exports, which were well above $1/MMBtu two months ago, have disappeared and even flipped to negative, with the UK NBP and Dutch TTF price benchmarks — and briefly also Asia’s JKM index — trading below the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub for the first time since the U.S. began exporting LNG in early 2016. Despite the uneconomic price spreads, U.S. cargo liftings have slowed only modestly so far. That’s likely to change in the coming months as both Cheniere Energy and Sempra have confirmed cancellations or modifications to lifting schedules by some offtakers, and other terminal operators are likely facing the same pressure. However, many U.S. cargoes will still move, regardless of prices. What are the economics of cancelling versus lifting a seemingly out-of-the-money cargo? Today, we begin a short series examining the factors affecting U.S. LNG cargo liftings.

A few months ago, the idea of U.S. LNG cargo cancellations was implausible. While technically possible — U.S. LNG contracts afford offtakers the ability to cancel, though not without penalty — cancellations seemed the least likely of scenarios, especially given that (1) U.S. LNG contracts are take-or-pay, meaning offtakers would pay certain fees associated with the cargo whether they lift it or not, (2) long-term, committed offtakers also have contractual obligations tied to their offtake agreements, such as long-term vessel charters and delivery commitments with utility consumers in destination markets who rely on the gas, and (3) the contracts provide plenty of flexibility on what happens to the cargo once offtakers take possession of it. These factors kept U.S. cargo liftings steady and even rising to new heights through 2019 and early 2020, as additional liquefaction trains were completed and commercialized. This, even as international price spreads shrunk.