No Bakken Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today Were Reported As Completed -- May 27, 2020

Scandinavia and Wuhan flu, for those keeping track, new deaths/new cases "yesterday":

#10 Sweden: 96 / 597 -- looks like this country never flattened the curve;  may be experiencing second wave;
#49 Finland: 4 / 29
#91 Denmark: 0 / 41
#95 Norway: 0 / 19

Norway coronavirus:

• total number of deaths: 235 as of yesterday

Sweden coronavirus:

• number of new deaths, yesterday: 96

Look at those numbers again. Staggering (note: number of cases is about the worse way to measure the crisis, but it's a favorite of mainstream media analysts.

• Sweden reported almost 600 new cases yesterday.
• Norway, meanwhile, reported less than twenty new cases yesterday. 
• in fact, Sweden reported almost 5x as many new deaths (96) as number of new cases reported by Norway (19) -- is that possible; may need to be fact-checked by The Washington Post;
  
• To put Sweden's numbers in perspective, the following US states reported fewer new cases yesterday than Sweden:
• Georgia (583)
• Ohio (540)
• Maryland (535)
• Florida (509)
• PA (494)
• CT (430)
• MA (422)
• NJ (413)
• NC (398)
• Louisiana, a "hot zone" (259)
• Michigan (223)

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Back to Energy

OPEC Basket: $28.06

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$33.89	5/27/2020	05/27/2019	05/27/2018	05/27/2017	05/27/2016
Active Rigs	14	65	65	50	29

Four wells coming off confidential list today -- Wednesday, May 27, 2020: 89 for the month; 139 for the quarter, 366 for the year:

• 36961, drl/drl, WPX, Meadowlark 6-34HQL, Heart Butte, t--; cum --;
• 36472, drl/drl, Slawson, Periscope Federal 4-10-7TFH, Big Bend, t--; cum --;
• 36210, drl/drl, XTO, FBIR Baker 34X-25C, Heart Butte, t--; cum --;
• 33841, drl/drl, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Tami 5-8-5-157N-99W TFH, Lone Tree Lake, t--; cum --;

RBN Energy: US liquefaction capacity growing, even as utilization declines.

Progress for the second wave of U.S. LNG export projects, which already had begun slowing in the latter half of 2019, has come to a near standstill this year, with several developers delaying final investment decisions (FIDs). The economics for U.S. LNG exports have evaporated in recent weeks, and for the first time in the four years or so since the Lower 48 began exporting LNG, cargo cancellations have become a regular part of the U.S. gas market’s vernacular. International prices are signaling that oversupply conditions will linger for a while, likely well after COVID’s impacts on demand ease. Nevertheless, projects that are already under construction are pushing forward, including the last of the first-wave expansions and two facilities from the second wave of proposed projects. There’s also one more second-wave development that could take FID this year.

It wasn’t long ago that rampant growth in U.S. LNG exports this decade was practically a foregone conclusion. With the first wave of U.S. liquefaction capacity additions either operational or well on their way there, the last couple of years brought a cascade of announcements for still more U.S. LNG export capacity — the so-called second wave. This included nearly two dozen projects totaling 235 MMtpa (~35 Bcf/d) of liquefaction capacity, primarily along the Gulf Coast. Not all of those were expected to make it across the finish line, of course, but all indications were that several would materialize in this decade and most of those by mid-decade even. At this time last year, industry warnings of a global LNG oversupply in the mid-term were beginning to rise, but a frenzy of regulatory approvals and commercial activity suggested a slew of FIDs were imminent and that 2019 would be a watershed year for many of these second-wave projects. It’s safe to say that fervor (and the capital behind it) is dead. It began to fizzle out in the latter half of 2019 as a global gas supply glut worsened — largely a result of project completions and growing exports from the U.S. and Australia, though other factors like the U.S.-China trade war and high European storage levels exacerbated it as well. And any remaining optimism has since been squashed by the COVID crisis, which crushed global demand after lockdowns began in February 2020, and the oil price collapse, which has made oil-indexed LNG prices overseas much more competitive against U.S. LNG, almost all of which is priced off the Henry Hub gas benchmark price.