Two Wells Come Off The Confidential List Today -- June 23, 2020

Market: holds gains; futures look good.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Corona virus: without question, I think folks are getting ahead of themselves. Although having said that, I am conflicted. I really have no desire to post my thoughts on how this will play out. I vacillate between two extremes. I don't even know whether to call it Wuhan flu, Covid-19, COVID-19, corona virus, or coronavirus.

Prisons: we've talked about this previously -- in Texas, for example, the number of cases reported surged, the number of cases did not. Link here.

Behind Bars: America's biggest coronavirus clusters out of America's eight biggest coronavirus outreaks -- seven are in jails or correctional facilities. That's according to a list from the New York Times which shows that the biggest national cluster is in the Marion Correctional Institution in Ohio which has 2,439 cases as of June 16, 2020. Another facility in...but look at the facility that is not a prison ...

Seattle chopped: to be fair, at the end of the day, at least at this point in time, I think the Seattle mayor and police chief handled the protests just fine, at least up to this point. I thought differently when the events first began to unfold, but given the hand they were dealt, they did a great job. I'm not being sarcastic, and I don't think the adjective "great" is out of place.

Falling, Julee Cruise

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$41.45	6/23/2020	06/23/2019	06/23/2018	06/23/2017	06/23/2016
Active Rigs	12	64	65	58	30

Two wells coming off the confidential list: Tuesday, June 23, 2020: 56 for the month; 201 for the quarter, 428 for the year:

• 37202, drl/NC, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Jean 10-9-4-157N-99W-LL TFH, Lone Tree Lake, no production data,
• 36874, drl/TASC, Equinor, Domaskin 30-31 XW 1H, Alger, no production data,

RBN Energy: crude oil's misfortune is positive for natural gas; or it it?

Lower crude oil prices whack oil-directed drilling, slashing crude production, which cuts associated gas output, tightening the gas supply-demand balance, and boosting gas prices enough to spur more gas-directed drilling — it’s a classic case of commodity market schadenfreude, where one product benefits at the expense of another. That’s the way it was supposed to work, according to various trading strategies touted a few weeks back. But here we sit, with crude oil prices still around $40/bbl and gas prices languishing at a paltry $1.66/MMBtu. Was there something wrong with the schadenfreude thesis, or do we have to look deeper to understand how prices will behave in this convoluted COVID era? In today’s blog, we’ll explore this question and what it may mean for natural gas prices in the coming months.