Three Wells Coming Off The Confidential List -- July 24, 2020

BRK: contributor over at SeekingAlpha. Monthly update of dividend-paying stocks held by Berkshire Hathaway. I have not read of the article, mostly the summary, and even not much of that.

AAPL: profit-taking. Contributor over at SeekingAlpha. I have not read the entire article.

VZ: beats estimates; EPS, $1.13 per share, vs $0.95 per share a year earlier.

SLB: revenue tumbles 35%; falls short of estimates; to cut 21,000 jobs, 20% of total workforce.

Trucks: Nikola pilot plant to speed electric truck production. EV trucks are being tracked here, for now.

Boeing:

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Coffee: consumers shifting to cheaper coffee beans. The Arabica (Starbucks) / Robusta (others) ratio. 

The shift in coffee demand is bad news for Starbucks, that's why it announced, last month, over 400 stores will be closing in the next 18 months. The world's largest coffeehouse must shrink its corporate footprint as the economy evolves to where workers are staying home and are reducing costs to weather the economic storm.

The shift in demand is being seen in surging Robusta coffee prices on ICE. In the last 19 sessions, September contracts have gone parabolic, up 19%, hitting 1,363 on Thursday morning (July 23, 2020), or a six month high.

The latest upswing in prices is because the virus-induced recession is "prompting a shift in consumption toward cheaper, instant coffee blends," reported Reuters.  

Equinor: 2Q20 Johan Sverdrup update.

Profits soared for some oil majors who bet on storage. Link here. 

Well, that didn't work out. Saudis gain nothing in first month after price war ends. Bloomberg via Rigzone.

Saudi Arabia gained no financial reward in the first full month after ending its oil-price war with Russia. The kingdom earned 23.9 billion riyals ($6.4 billion) from oil exports in May, the Riyadh-based General Authority for Statistics said Thursday (July 23, 2020). [One riyal = $0.26778 or about 25 cents.]

That was even less than the previous month, when the price war was at its height, and down more than 60% from last year’s monthly average of $16.8 billion.

The government slashed exports to 6.2 million barrels a day in May from a record 9.3 million in April as it came under pressure from world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, to change tack and rebalance an energy market battered by the coronavirus pandemic. 

US crude oil supply, days: 37.7 days; pretty much unchanged week-over-week;

OPEC basket, link here: $44.24.

Bird-watching: Swainson's hawks are still flying over Grapevine/DFW area, but seeing fewer of them. Two juveniles, based on lighter color than adults, were spotted on Wednesday, July 23, 2020. 

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$41.30	7/24/2020	07/24/2019	07/24/2018	07/24/2017	07/24/2016
Active Rigs	13	58	66	59	32

Operators with active rigs:

• BR (2) -- baseline
• CLR (2) -- baseline
• WPX (2) -- baseline
• MRO (1) -- baseline
• Petro-Hunt (1) -- baseline
• Hess (2) -- up one
• Slawson (2) -- baseline
• XTO (1) -- baseline

Three wells coming off confidential list -- Friday, July 24, 2020: 63 for the month; 63 for the quarter, 509 for the year:

• 37069, loc/NC, WPX, Wolverine 21-22HD, South Fork, no production data,
• 35874, SI/A, Whiting, Fladeland 12-10HU, Sanish, t--; cum 86K 5/20; a 27K month;
• 33425, loc/NC, Sinclair Oil, Crosby Creek 6-5H, Little Knife, no production data;

RBN Energy: the ongoing build-out of MPLX's NGL/condensate pipeline network in the midwest. Archived.

Since the mid-2010s, MPLX has been developing a far-reaching pipeline system for delivering heavier natural gas liquids and field condensate from the Utica and “wet” Marcellus plays to Midwest refineries for gasoline blending and refining, and to the Alberta oil sands for use as diluent.

The multi-year, multi-project effort, which has involved the construction of new pipelines, the repurposing of existing pipes, and the development of new storage capacity, will reach another milestone next month, when MPLX starts batching normal butane and isobutane through most of the pipeline system. And further enhancements are on the horizon. Today, we provide an update on the master limited partnership’s long-running strategy for moving Marcellus/Utica-sourced liquids to market more efficiently and at a lower per-barrel cost.

Moving the increasing volumes of NGLs and other hydrocarbon liquids produced in eastern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania, and northern West Virginia to market has been a major midstream challenge — the region hadn’t been a major producer of NGL-rich gas until the start of the Shale Era, and the pipelines in place to handle the resulting flows were few and far between.

For midstreamers, a need is an opportunity, and a number of companies stepped up.

Between 2013 and early 2020, Enterprise Products Partners developed the Appalachia-to-Texas Express (ATEX) pipeline to transport ethane to Mont Belvieu, TX; Energy Transfer built out both the Mariner West pipeline to move ethane to Sarnia, ON, and the Mariner East system to pipe ethane, propane, and normal butane to the company’s Marcus Hook, PA, marine terminal near Philadelphia; and Kinder Morgan brought online the Utopia Pipeline to send ethane to Windsor, ON. Also, Shell is building the Falcon pipeline system to transport ethane to the company's planned steam cracker in western Pennsylvania.