Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- February 21, 2020

The other day I noted a story in which the Bolingbrook, IL, mayor rejected Amazon's offer to build a huge distribution center in the mayor's city because $15/hour was "not a living wage. In Illinois, it is a living wage. Perhaps not in Silicon Valley or Washington, DC, but in Illinois, $15/hour is a living wage.

I was reminded of that because it was just announced that Amazon would be building yet another major distribution center near DFW airport -- this must be their eighth(?) major distribution / fulfillment center in this area. They will be hiring 1,000 people for this center.

$15 x 40 hours, one week = $600.

Onepointfive weeks: an apartment. We live in an upscale two-bedroom apartment: $1800/month in a high-cost location.

$15 x 40 hours, one week, $600: one car, insurance, maintenance, and fuel.

That leaves 1.5 weeks for food, co-pays for company's health benefits, etc.

It is not much but it's enough to get started.

But you say that I'm not including social security deductions, state and federal taxes. That is correct. If $15/hour is not a living wage according to politicians, the low-hanging fruit is to eliminate all government deductions for hourly wages less than, let's say $20/hour, to include social security, Medicare, taxes. The $15/hour is a living wage -- without the government deductions.

On top of that, those 1,000 folks that won't get $15/hour in Bolingbrook, IL -- what is the living wage they will get from the government for being unemployed. My hunch: not $15/hour.

Back of the envelope:

Is $20/hour a living wage? At some point, the mayor needs to tell us what a living wage in Bolingbrook is. Let's say it's $20/hour, an extra $5/hour for each new Amazon hire.

1,000 employees x $5/hour (extra) and 40 hours/week x four weeks: $800,000 (month) would be necessary.

It is estimated that Mayor Mike Bloomberg is willing to spend $2 billion on his campaign.

$2 billion / $800,000 =  2,500 months = 208 years.

Disclaimer: I often make simple arithmetic errors.

Bloomberg has said he plans to donate the majority of his net worth. His net worth is $65 billion. In my part of the world, "majority" means at least 50.1%

50.1% of $65 billion = $32.6 billion.

A Closer Look At A Whiting Well That Came Off Confidential List Today; Neighboring Well With 700K Bbls Cumulative Crude Oil -- February 21, 2020

Updates

Later, 9:34 p.m. Central Time: see first comment --

Eerie point in this story that the EXTRA Bakken ethane that needs to be pulled out of the gas (not all of it, just the extra) would be enough to fill a cracker.

https://btuanalytics.com/bakken-gas-quality/.

Call Burgum. [Governor Doug Burgum, North Dakota]

See a stand-alone post regarding this comment.

Original Post

The well:

• 35945, 983, Whiting, White 43-33H, 37 stages; 8.4 million lbs; Sanish, t9/19; cum 82K 12/19;

Production:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	12-2019	31	15589	15582	4018	19628	18465	1114
BAKKEN	11-2019	30	15670	15609	3851	17637	17345	247
BAKKEN	10-2019	28	21346	21335	6882	21836	13348	8441
BAKKEN	9-2019	28	23357	23580	8554	22719	0	22671
BAKKEN	8-2019	8	5664	5358	3497	3504	0	3469

From the file report:

• spud date: March 10, 2019
• cease drilling: March 27, 2019
• middle Bakken: 9,997' TVD, one foot low to the prognosis;
• background gas averaged 780 units in the middle Bakken;
• the top of the Three Forks, 10,089' TVD, three feet high to prognosis; background gas averaged 700 units;
• 1st aquitard: 10,127' TVD, one foot high to prognosis; background gas averaged, 750 units;
• Three Forks 2nd bench: 10,138' TVD, two feet high to prognosis; average gas, 200 units;
• 2nd aquitard; 10,175' TVD; ten feet high to prognosis; background gas averaged 180 units;
• Nisku: 10,339' TVD; 99 feet high to prognosis; background gas at 150 units;
• drilling the lateral:
• difficulty with initial lateral
• sidetrack #1, successful;

Older, producing, neighboring wells:

• 19174, 2,090, Whiting, Kannianen 43-33H, Sanish, t10/10; cum 391K 4/19; off line 4/19; remains off line 12/19;
• 20437, 134, Whiting, White 43-33TFH, Sanish, t12/11; cum 177K 12/19; off line 2/19 - 8/19; minimal jump in production when it came back on line;
• 18298, 3,422, Whiting, Kannianen 44-33H, Sanish, t10/10; cum 702K 4/19; off line 4/19; remains off line 12/19; from spud to NW lateral, 13 days drilling; sidetrack #1, twenty-one days from spud; during a trip back into the hold, gases reached 9,598 units with a 20' flare;
  

A Closer Look At A Petro Harvester Well -- Still A DUC, But Producing -- February 21, 2020

The well:

• 36690, SI/NC, Petro Harvester, Three Forks, first bench; FTH1 27-34 161-92 B, Foothills, t--; cum 16K first full month of production;  

Production:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	12-2019	31	16006	15705	102131	20477	0	20477
BAKKEN	11-2019	10	539	0	22152	376	0	376

From the file report:

• 13 miles north of Powers Lake, Burke County; sits on a pad with intentions of drilling a lateral through the Three Forks, first bench;
• Patterson 348, a modern top drive rig with walking capabilities; surface to TD in 13 days;
• vertical to KOP: 48.9 hours
• KOP to curve TD: 12.8 hours
• lateral with one assembly: 55.7 hours
• total lateral footage: 9,906'
• target window: 12- 20' into the Three Forks first bench;
• exposed 75.6% of the lateral borehole to the target window;

All Politics -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 21, 2020

Headline: Fox News more than triples CNN's collapsing viewership. Google it.

Even with the Democrat primary in high gear, the U.S.S. CNN’s ratings are still beyond pathetic. The far-left CNN, a hate network that spreads conspiracy theories and promotes violence against President Trump and his supporters, could not even average a million viewers during the same week New Hampshire came out to vote.

Worse still, CNN’s chief nemesis, Fox News, annihilated the fake news network in the ratings by averaging more than three times — three times! — as many primetime viewers as CNNLOL. Here’s the primetime breakdown of average viewers during the week of February 10:

• Fox: 3.2 million
• MSNBC: 1.677 million
• CNN: 969,000

Or:

• Fox: 3. 2million
• MSNBC + CNN: 2.65 million 

Or:

• Fox: 1.2 x MSNBC/CNN

It gets worse. Total day viewership average for the same week:

• Fox: 1.743 million
• MSNBC: 920,000
• CNN: 630,000

Or:

• Fox: 1.743 million
• MSNBC + CNN: 1.6 million

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Regarding the Statistics Above

Actually, the numbers are even worse.

A lot of us tune into MSNBC and CNN to watch:

• a meltdown;
• a sitcom;
• fake news -- how it is packaged, marketed;
• to track anti-Trumper talking points

CNN in airports? McDonalds?


Most boring talking show ever: "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. Same guests; same contributors; nothing has changed. To may astonishment, former CIA director John Brennan was guest on MSNBC. He is the poster child why Trump and his supporters don't trust the "professional" intel community. 

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It's All In A Name

At one time a lot of folks were "embarrassed" to call themselves Republicans. Not any more. Now its the center-left (?), sane, rational, salt-of-the-earth folks who register as Democrats cannot believe that their front-runner is a socialist-communist.

It's my understanding that midwestern farmers generally, as a bloc, self-identify as Democrats and vote blue. But not one farmer/rancher would consider herself/himself a socialist-communist. Well, there might be one or two. But not the entire herd.

Same with police, firemen, etc.

I'm not so sure about public school teachers. Certainly at the university level many of the professors would identify as socialist-communists.

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Democrat Race

I didn't watch the Nevada debates, but I've viewed a lot of video clips, have read a lot of news reports, and listened to a lot of talk radio (I have not watched network evening news).

My thoughts on the debate and the status of the Democrat campaign.

What do Mitt Romney and Mike Bloomberg both have in common? Two men without a party. 

Most interesting state to watch: if all eight or nine current Democrat candidates stay in the race through Super Tuesday, Bernie should win all off California's delegates; none of the others will reach the 15% threshold required to start gaining delegates. And it now appears all current Democrat candidates will remain through Super Tuesday.

Trump campaign's best news: Mayor Mike Bloomberg says he will stay in the race to the end. If he doesn't get the nomination, he can only stay in the race to the end by doing one of two things:

• contributing his support and vast resources to the Democrat nominee;
• run as an independent

Bloomberg's only platform plank: remove Trump from office.

Steyer's only platform plank: remove Trump from office. We've seen how that has worked out.

Bloomberg as an independent:

• will siphon votes from the Democrat candidate;
• will get zero votes from Trump supporters

Bloomberg will NOT contribute anything to Bernie Sanders.

We now know how to get under Bernie's skin:

• mention that he is a multi-millionaire;
• mention that he has three homes;
• mention that his third home is a Vermont lake cabin just like the one everyone else in Vermont has
• call him a communist
• remind him he is not a democrat: by his own admission he is an independent

The debate:

• Klobuchar-Buttigieg: I've never seen anything so amateurish; again, I just saw the clips;
• Klobuchar: her demeanor, countenance, and blue dress really, really, really evoked a Saturday Night Live skit; she wasn't punching above her weight in the Nevada debates
• Buttigieg: all platitudes; I don't think Americans know where his financial support is coming from; he's a front for 24 - 40 multi-millionaires / billionaires;
• Bloomberg: a man without a party
• Bloomberg: got no credit for "staying above the fray"
• Pundits loved Pocahontas taking out Bloomberg; need to see if it translates to votes; it translated to $5 million overnight (as if that matters -- except that it reminds us she still has a lot of supporters but against Bloomberg's billions, $5 million is a rounding error

Vermont lake houses:

Only Two Wells Coming Off The Confidential List Today -- February 21, 2020

Flaring: Texas unveils flaring criterion. 

• Flaring has increased significantly overall in Texas during the past decade, paralleling the state’s oil production levels. 
• The estimated range of 650,000 thousand cubic feet per day (Mcf/d) of total flare volumes for Texas oil and gas operators in 2018 ranks among the highest levels on record. 
• Among the world’s top oil-producing regions for 2018, the United States and Texas’ respective flaring intensity values fall below the international average. 

WTI price jumps on booming US exports. Link here.

• American oil exporters shipped the equivalent of more than one-fourth of the nation’s output to foreign buyers, a government report showed. Meanwhile, U.S. oil stockpiles rose by 415,000 barrels last week, well below the 3.2 million forecast by analysts.

*************************************

Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 

$52.91	2/21/2020	02/21/2019	02/21/2018	02/21/2017	02/21/2016
Active Rigs	55	66	55	42	38

Two wells coming off the confidential list today:

Friday, February 21, 2020: 49 for the month; 156 for the quarter, 156 for the year:

• 36690, SI/NC, Petro Harvester, FTH1 27-34 161-92 B, Foothills, t--; cum 16K first full month of production; 13 miles north of Powers Lake, Burke County; sits on a pad with intentions of drilling a lateral through the Three Forks, first bench;
  
• 35945, 983, Whiting, White 43-33H, Sanish, t9/19; cum 82K 12/19;

RBN Energy: the changing composition of a US NGL barrel.

There is no such thing as a typical NGL barrel. For example, the composition of y-grade production out of the Marcellus is significantly different from y-grade out of most of the Permian. And it is not just gas processing engineers who care. The make-up of an NGL barrel is inextricably linked to the value of that barrel. The reason is pretty simple: there’s a big difference in the value of each of the five NGL products. These days, natural gasoline is worth nearly eight times as much per gallon as ethane. Normal butane is worth 1.6X as much as propane. Consequently, the more natural gasoline and normal butane in your barrel versus the amounts of ethane and propane, the more the barrel is worth. So it’s important to anyone trying to follow the value added by gas processing and related infrastructure to understand where these numbers come from and how much the composition of a barrel can vary from basin to basin, or for that matter, from well to well. In Part 2 of our series on gas processing, we turn our attention to the variability in the mix of NGL production and its implication for processing uplift.

Earlier we laid out a framework for the basic understanding of natural gas processing value creation, using the frac spread as the metric. Frac spread — the differential between the price of natural gas and the weighted average price of a typical barrel of NGLs on a dollars-per-Btu basis — is a rough-cut indication of the value added at gas processing plants by extracting NGLs out of the raw natural gas stream from the wellhead. We went through a frac spread history lesson to explain what the measure can tell us about cycles in the natural gas and NGL markets, and then we worked through an example using RBN’s basic frac spread Excel model. After touting all the exceptional insights that can be gleaned from looking at the frac spread over time, we then looked at the limitations of the frac spread model, including differences between the mix of NGL purity product components in the NGL barrel from one production area to another, and from one set of market conditions to another. Today, we’ll delve into the details of those issues, and along the way, we’ll point out some data quirks imbedded in the assessment of NGL production volumes.

Clearing Out The In-Box -- February 21, 2020

Fracking ban talks: something is going on here. I'm beginning to think we're rounding up the "usual suspects" and not considering the real culprits. 

Solar: recent article on Tonopah. Now we have this on Ivanpah. The world's largest concentrated solar plant generates as many problems as megawatts. -- Atlas Obscura.

Power Line:

• Bloomberg's moment: I think there is some good news about which folks are not reporting. I hope to find time to get back to this.
• Quick! Name the shooter who shot Rep Steve Scalise and a number of other GOP legislators. Or at least something about the shooter. The Daily Caller may help you remember. The shooter has been completely erased from history. Scalise earns tweet of the year. 
• The most important campaign document of 2020. 

Fact check: earlier I mentioned that I don't recall Mike Bloomberg suffering a heart attack as Bernie Sanders claimed. I was correct. Bernie, after the debates, sent out a correction: Bloomberg had had stents placed as a precautionary measure; no history of heart attack.

US Navy: amphibian assault forces to get F-35s. Huge, huge story. Google key words. 

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Fossil Fuel

Oilprice:

• Suncor gets Alberta approval for 40,000-bpd sands project. 
• Trafigura won't trade Rosneft due to new Trump sanctions -- huge, huge story.
• Venezuela declares energy emergency. The timing is interesting.
• Shell looks to expand Mars crude pipeline system.

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Market Meltdown 

Goldman Sachs, Alan Greenspan, WHO press conference mentioning pandemic -- all coincidentally spoke around 10:00 a.m. yesterday. All "Debbie Downers." Dow dropped almost 400 points By end of day had recovered remarkably. Down only 160 points. This morning, futures suggest Dow to open another 100 points down.

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Re-Posting

AOC has company: Bolingbrook, IL, mayor rejects Amazon's offer to build a "massive" distribution center in Bolingbrook.

Japan: and coal. 

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.

If You Have Time For Only One Post Today -- February 21, 2020

The most important campaign document of 2020.