Canadian Supreme Court Slaps Down BC -- Re: TransMountain Pipeline -- January 16, 2020

Video here.

One New Permit; WPX Reports Five Completed DUCs -- January 16, 2020

Active rigs:

$58.51	1/16/2020	01/16/2019	01/16/2018	01/16/2017	01/16/2016
Active Rigs	55	68	57	36	49

One new permit, #37353:

• Operator: Slawson
  Field: Big Bend (Mountrail)
• Comments: 
• Slawson as a permit for a Moray Federal well in section 10-151-92, Big Bend oil field;

Five producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 35640, 2,341, WPX, St Anthony 9-16HD, Mandaree, t12/19; cum --;
• 36095, 2,618, WPX, St Anthony 9-16HUL, Mandaree, t12/19; cum --;
• 35639, 2,937, WPX, St Anthony 9-16HX, Mandaree, t12/19; cum --;
• 35637, 3,513, WPX, St Anthony 9-16HY, Mandaree, t12/19; cum --;
• 35635, 1,682, WPX, St Anthony 9-16HDZ, Mandaree, t12/19; cum --;

Neighboring wells of interest:

• 18560, off line, 11/19; an Enerplus Levings Estate well;
• 17024, off line, 11/19; a WPX Tekakwitha well;
• 17943, off line, 11/19; a WPX Alisia Fox well;
• 18520, off line, 11/19; a WPX Birdsbill well;
• 20243, off line, 4/18; intermittent production since; a Petroshale Horse Camp well;
• 23678, off line, 11/19; a WPX Martin Fox well;
• 23679, off line, 11/19; a WPX Martin Fox well;

Notes From All Over, Part 3, Huge Day On The Market -- All Major Indices At New All-Time Records -- January 16, 2020

The Dow: up all day about 150 points and then in the last hour, a surge, the Dow jumped 267 points for the day. The surge?

• short squeeze?
• FOMO?
• earnings?

UNP: all-time high?

Notes From All Over, Part 2, Sense Of Urgency In China -- January 16, 2020

DUCs: lots of articles this week about DUCs dropping in number. The NDIC's Director's Cut will be out tomorrow. I track Bakken DUCs here. 

IMO 2020:

China. China's economy in deep trouble? From Fox Business News today --

• China to report GDP tonight: expected to be lowest in 30 years
• China's largest utility writes: economic growth could fall to 4$ over the next five year

China: later, WSJ -- China's slowing growth underlines stress facing its economy in 2020.

Natural gas fill:

Bank of New York (BNY Mellon) - BK:

• shares plunge 8%
• down $4.05; trading at $46.64
• from Zacks:
• adjusted earnings: $1.01; surpassed forecast of 99 cents
• earnings reflect a rise of nearly 2% from the prior-year quarter
• net income applicable to common shareholders was $1.39 billion or $1.52/share, up from $832 million or 84 cents per share recorded in the prior-year quarter
• for full year, 2019, earnings per share of $4.02 surpassed forecast, $3.99
• for full year net income applicable to common shareholders was $4.27 billion or $4.51/share, up from $4.10 billion or $4.04 per share recorded in 2018 
• despite that beat, shares plunged 8%
• the "whisper" numbers must have been a lot greater than the two-cent beat 

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

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The Book Page

From The Viking Wars: War and Peace in Kin Alfred's Britain, 789 - 955, Max Adams, c. 2018.

I had not heard of quarter days before. From wiki:

In British and Irish tradition, the quarter days were the four dates in each year on which servants were hired, school terms started, and rents were due. They fell on four religious festivals roughly three months apart and close to the two solstices and two equinoxes.

The English quarter days are

• Lady Day (25 March) 
• Midsummer Day (24 June) 
• Michaelmas (29 September) 
• Christmas (25 December)

But this is what fascinates me:

There is a mnemonic for remembering on which day of the month the first three quarter-days fall (Christmas being easy to recall): Every quarter day is twenty-something, and the second digit of the day of the month is the number of letters in the month's name. So March has five letters and Lady Day is 25 March; similarly June has four letters and September nine, with Midsummer Day and Michaelmas falling on the 24th and 29th respectively.

I've finished this book but will keep it on "top shelf" as a reference book. It's an incredible book for those interested in the trivia of this period in English (British?) and Scandinavian history. I doubt many folks will read it straight through; it's a real slog, but as a reference book, it's outstanding.

One of the things I appreciated most was the author's use of words and terms, no matter how obscure or archaic, without digressing with definitions. He simply assumed, I guess, we either knew what these words meant, or we could look them up for ourselves.

An example, and another pearl, from page 437:

A meeting is to be held in each wapentake, and the twelve leading thegns, and with them the reeve, are to come forward and swear on the relics that are put into their hands that they will accuse no innocent man nor conceal any guilty one.

This is generally held to enshrine the concept of a jury system, unknown in English law before this date but secure in its Scandinavian origins. 

From the Wantage Code, 997, King Æöelred II.

"Wapentake" -- link here.  Pronounce this as "weapon-take" and the etymology seems clear.

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- January 16, 2020

$13 trillion: that's the amount equities have appreciated since President Trump took office.

$7 trillion: that's the amount of assets that BlackRock has under management. According to The WSJ, "BlackRock's assets blew past $7 trillion in milestone for investment giant." It was $5.98 trillion at the close of 2018; at the end of 2019, $7.43 trillion. Earnings scheduled to be reported January 29, 2020.

Alcoa: misses by a mile.

• forecast: an adjusted loss of 21 cents/share; sales of $2.5 billion
• actual: an adjust loss of 31 cents/share; sales of $2.4 billion

Keystone XL: inches forward.

Heavy construction equipment will be moved to worker campsites and pipeline storage sites in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska in February, the Calgary-based company said in a filing with the U.S. District Court in Montana on Tuesday. TC then plans to start building the part of the conduit that crosses the U.S.-Canada border in April.

Deere: buy a bigger tractor. Deere aims to reap billions with "corn warrior" technologies.

The average acre of corn planted in the U.S. yields more than 170 bushels. A bushel—an old measure of weight—is 56 pounds of corn kernels. That means corn planted on an acre—the standard U.S. measure of farming area that is a chain times a furlong, two other old measures—generates almost 5 tons of food.

That is impressive, but there are more-impressive feats of corn.

The top of the range—the best farmers can do—is more than 600 bushels an acre. One farmer grew 616 bushels of corn on an irrigated acre with Corteva (CTVA) seed in the national corn-growing contest.

Yes, there is such a contest.

The farmers competing—some of whom call themselves corn warriors—are spending a lot of time and money ensuring the health of each corn plant. Nothing is too small to measure. It might not be practical or cost-effective to adopt all the techniques used to generate incredible crop yields en masse. But the yields they achieve demonstrate the upper fertility limit of American cropland. 

Chain times a furlong?

• chain: 66 feet or 22 yards; 100 links; 4 rods
• chain: 100 links (Gunter's chain)
• furlong: 1,000 links
• from wiki:

The rod or perch or pole (sometimes also lug) is a surveyor’s tool and unit of length exactly equal to ​5 1⁄2 yards, 16​1⁄2 feet, ​1⁄320 of a statute mile, or one-fourth of a surveyor's chain (approximately 5.0292 meters). 

The rod is useful as a unit of length because whole number multiples of it can form one acre of square measure. The 'perfect acre'[2] is a rectangular area of 43,560 square feet, bounded by sides 660 feet (a furlong) long and 66 feet wide (220 yards and 22 yards) or, equivalently, 40 rods and 4 rods. An acre is therefore 160 square rods.

Acre: amazing how it has survived. I suppose after President Jefferson's survey, the "acre" as a unit was too big to fail. No way was there going to be any interest in changing everything to metric. 

WTI Opens Well Below $58; Eleven Wells Come Off The Confidential List Today -- January 16, 2020

New record: Texas oil and gas industry paid $16.3 billion in taxes and state royalties in 2019, most in Texas history.

Canada: severe winter cold snap shutting down oil operations ("heavy oil" becomes too viscous to move) and refiners have been disrupted due to the cold. Western Canadian Select (WCS) has fallen to $35.33 earlier this week from $40.77 less than two weeks earlier. Bloomberg, behind a paywall, reposted by oilprice. 

Active rigs:

$57.82	1/16/2020	01/16/2019	01/16/2018	01/16/2017	01/16/2016
Active Rigs	52	68	57	36	49

Wells coming off the confidential list today -- Thursday, January 16, 2020: 52 for the month; 52 for the quarter; 52 for the year:

• 36398, SI/NC, Rimrock, Two Shields Butte 4-24-12-4H3U, Mandaree, no production data,
• 35905, 2,818, CLR, Honolulu 5-15H, Indian Hill, t7/19; cum 117K 11/19; 34K month;
• 35825, 602, CRL, Gjorven 7-21H1, Brooklyn, t9/19; cum 58K 11/19; 25K month;
• 35688, SI/NC, BR, Tailgunner 1C MBH, North Fork, no production data,
• 35504, 1,996, CLR, Weisz 6-11H, Pleasant Valley, t11/19; cum 36K 11/19; 35K month;
• 34827, drl, Hess, HA-Nelson A-152-95-3427H-8, Hawkeye

Wednesday, January 15, 2020: 46 for the month; 46 for the quarter; 46 for the year:

• 36399, SI/NC, Rimrock, Two Shields Butte 4-24-12-4H3, Mandaree, no production data,
• 35995, 1,659, Whiting, Martell 34-36-2H, Glass Bluff, t7/19; cum 59K 11/19; 19K month;
• 35779, 1,549, Hess, EN-Farhart-156-93-0409H-7, Baskin, t7/19; cum 98K 11/19; 23K month;
• 35689, SI/NC, BR, Tailgunner 1D TFH, North Fork, no production data,
• 34828, drl, Hess, HA-Nelson A-152-95-3427H-7,Hawkeye,

RBN Energy: Tallgrass/Rockies Express recontracting efforts for Rockies gas flows.

Tallgrass Energy’s Rockies Express Pipeline (REX) has been through a lot in its 10-plus years of operation. Since its first eastbound-only segments started moving natural gas out of the Rockies in 2008, flows on the pipeline have evolved due to market events, primarily the onset of the Shale Revolution, which has resulted in a surge of gas supplies in the Eastern U.S. and increasing gas-on-gas competition across North America. Rising to the challenge, REX has undergone a number of transformations to adapt to the shifting gas flow patterns and price relationships, including reversing flows on the eastern zone of the pipe to move gas west from Ohio. In 2019, REX was again put to the test, this time on the western end of the pipe, where the bulk of its legacy long-term contracts for eastbound flows out of the Rockies expired, with the last of them rolling off on November 11, 2019. Some of that has since been recontracted, and the in-service of the REX Cheyenne Hub Enhancement and Cheyenne Connector projects could further shore up REX mainline flows. Today, we begin a short series providing an update on REX’s eastbound gas flows and contract changes.

You could say REX is the Madonna of gas pipelines. The Queen of Pop’s four-decades-long (and still going) career has been attributed to her habit of constantly reinventing herself. Similarly, REX’s long-term success has depended on its ability to morph, particularly given the rapid-fire changes that have buffeted the gas market over the past decade, all driven by the dramatic effect the Shale Revolution has had on the geographic distribution — and sheer volume — of gas supply across the Lower 48. The large-diameter, long-haul pipeline is now a robust bidirectional cross-country system that behaves like a massive header system for interregional flows. But it didn’t start out that way.

REX began as a much-needed outlet for surplus Rockies gas supply, initially only extending east to delivery points in the Midcontinent and terminating at the Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line (PEPL) interconnect in northeastern Missouri.

But by November 2009, the easternmost section was completed, allowing REX to flow as much as 1.8 Bcf/d all the way east to Clarington, OH, for further delivery into the Northeast’s premium consuming markets along the Atlantic seaboard. This eastern section of REX — or Zone 3 — added more than 15 interconnects with other interstate pipelines running generally perpendicular to REX and feeding Midwestern and Eastern markets plus a number of local utilities in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

This all made sense at a time when Rockies natural gas producers were looking to sell into the Eastern U.S., and when the Northeast region — the biggest heating demand region in the U.S., then and now — had little local supply of its own to help balance its consumption. As a result, Rockies producers quickly filled REX to near its eastbound capacity of about 1.8 Bcf/d by April 2010, and sustained that level for over a year. But that plateau didn’t hold up for long.

Not even a year-and-a-half later, by late 2011, west-to-east gas flows were facing pushback at REX’s eastern terminus from the emerging Marcellus Shale. REX still flowed net eastbound from the Rockies, but the deliveries shifted back to interconnects in the Midcontinent and Midwest, as Appalachian gas increasingly took over serving Northeast demand. Eastbound flows out of the Rockies also became more seasonal and declined as Rockies production growth slowed, taking a back seat to shale drilling elsewhere, and the region no longer had the kind of surplus gas and severe pipeline takeaway constraints it had faced just a few years earlier. Flows ramped up during the summer when Rockies demand was lower, and slowed during the winter, when most gas was needed to heat homes and businesses locally or in the Pacific Northwest.

Much, much more at the link.