Moving On -- March 11, 2020

Wow, I'm in a great mood.

TCM: I have never really paid attention to Joe E. Brown, but he is featured this week on TCM. Wow, I'm impressed. Really, really, really good. Then, a real treat. In Elmer The Great, Joe E Brown plays opposite Patricia Ellis. Wow, what a beauty. Who knew? Her wiki entry is quite moving. It puts a lot of stuff in perspective. Same with Claire Dodd, I guess.

It's purely coincidental. I had planned the change earlier today and now watching Elmer The Great, I know I made the right decision.

Somewhere between here and going over to have homemade stew with Arianna, our oldest granddaughter, I realized it was time to move on. Once I have a pretty good feeling about a topic, not Bakken-related, it's time to move on.

Moving on. I feel that way about both "Campaign 2020" and "Coronavirus." I won't be blogging about either any more on a regular basis. Tonight I really don't care how either turn out. I have my worldview / myth of both and will adjust my worldview as things change. [Yes, I am aware of the Oval Office speech earlier this evening.]

One last coronavirus-related graphic, the "North Dakota corona virus first aid kit." From a reader.

I'm moving on. Closest I could come:

Move It On Over, George Thorogood

Active Rigs Remain Steady At 56 But That's About All That One Can Say Today -- March 11, 2020

Active rigs:

#32.98	3/11/2020	03/11/2019	03/11/2018	03/11/2017	03/11/2016
Active Rigs	56	65	59	45	32

Based on the NDIC daily report it does appear that the Bakken has shut down for new business:

No new permits.

One permit renewal:

• Prima Exploration: a State permit in Divide County.

One permit canceled:

• CLR: an Irgens Rexall permit in Williams County.

One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed:

• 35336, A/drl, Hess, EN-Ruland A-LE-155-94-1201H-1, 33-061-04271, Alger, t--; cum 47K in 51 days; fracked 10/10/19 - 10/18/19; 7 million gallons of water; 84.9% water by mass; friction reducer, 0.17705 (which is the highest by far, on a percentage basis, of all I've seen so far tracking this), Three Forks:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	1-2020	16	12400	12383	13084	10680	9402	1278
BAKKEN	12-2019	31	27243	27303	17628	22927	15468	7459
BAKKEN	11-2019	4	7313	7083	4	0	0	0

From the file report:

• spud date: August 6, 2019; 
• wellsite geological services began at the base of the Tyler formation at 2:40 a.m. on August 8, 2019;
• cease drilling: August 15, 2019
• target: Three Forks;  
• drilling the curve and the horizontal
• Lodgepole, top: 9,644' TVD
• curve: in the Lodgepole, began on August 9, at 5:00 p.m. (about 36 hours after WGS began)
• the curve began at 10,205' MD
• exited the formation at 10,955' MD
• upper Bakken shale: 10,355' TVD; exactly at projected vertical depth;
• middle Bakken: 10,377' TVD; background gas averaged 690 units; max of 1,633 units; 
• lower Bakken shale:10,450' TVD (which means the middle Bakken must have been 73 feet thick; if accurate, that's fairly thick; I think of the middle Bakken as generally being 20 to 40 feet thick); background gas averaged 1,047 units with max gas at 2,453 units; oil shows ranged from poor to fair;
• Three Forks: 10,506' TVD; two feet low to projected vertical depth; target; background gases averaged 754 units with max gas of 1,914 units;
• curve TD reached at 4:25 a.m, August 10, 2019; well bore ended 26' vertical feet inside the Three Forks formation;
• the horizontal:
• lateral drilling began at 3:25 p.m., August 11, 2019 (so a break of about 36 hours before beginning the lateral)
• ideal geological target: 27' below the top of the Three Forks formation;
• early background gases averaged 93 units with a max of 1,106 units
• the third quarter of the horizontal: background gas increased to 281 units with max gas reaching 713 units
• final quarter of the lateral: unremarkable
• TD: 1:00 p.m., August 15, 2019; almost exactly four days of drilling
• no shale strikes while drilling the Three Forks lateral
• sounds like a perfectly drilled well

Frack data not yet scanned in.

There are six EN-Ruland wells on two pads among this group. On one of the EN-Ruland pads are also several EN-Dobrovolny wells.

The EN-Ruland wells:

• 35336, see above;
• 35335, 2,030, .....1201H-4, Manitou, t12/19; cum 37K over 42 days;
• 35334, drl, .....1201H-5, Manitou, t--; cum 41K over 44 days;

• 19989, F/828, Hess, EN-Ruland A-155-94-1201H-3, Manitou, t3/12; cum 248K 9/20; remains off line 1/20; returned to production 3/20; 38 stages; 3 million lbs proppant;
  
• 19987, 1,521, .....1201H-2, Manitou, t9/11; cum 271K 8/19; remains off line 1/20;
• 19983, F/845, .....1201H-1, Manitou, t8/11; cum 266K 9/19; remains off line 1/20;

Note: the EN-Ruland wells are "Manitou oil field" wells except for the section line well which is an Alger well.

Again, no evidence of the parent-daughter problem that analysts report coming out of the Permian. The daughter wells are much better than the parent wells. This is not to say that the daughter wells might have been even better had the parent wells not been drilled earlier, but we will never know, will we? 

Other EN-Ruland well:

• 36796, drl/A, 3,053, Hess, EN-Ruland-LE-156-94-3328H-1, Alkali Creek, big well; 33 stages; 9.6 million lbs proppant; 7.4 million gallons of water; EN-Ruland wells are tracked here;
  

  Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
  BAKKEN	9-2020	24	24081	24019	11282	0	0	0
  BAKKEN	8-2020	31	19221	19182	10696	20851	20851	0
  BAKKEN	7-2020	31	16728	16752	10754	17965	17965	0
  BAKKEN	6-2020	30	22875	22924	40732	29862	29862	0
  BAKKEN	5-2020	31	31843	31675	68648	41519	41519	0
  BAKKEN	4-2020	1	1030	989	1424	4198	4198	0

 

Not From The Babylon Bee -- But Who Would Have Guessed? -- March 11, 2020

First we have this, which truly did look like a headline from The Babylon Bee but is not:

Then, we have the screenshot of the lede from that story:

In case you missed it the first time, she double-downed and used it a second time.

An aside: one wonders where she comes up with these ideas.

Then, google patroning and one gets this:

I finally had to visit a legitimate "dictionary" site and the word does not exist, unless I missed it (which is possible). If it didn't exist earlier this week, it exists now. LOL.

Anyway, more later, but I'm on my way to patron McDonald's.

I'm back. I did a twitter search to see if #aocmemes or #aocpatron existed. Pretty close. Pretty funny. 

Harold Hamm On Business News Networks -- March 11, 2020

I've not watched the video clips at these links:

https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6140553384001/

https://youtu.be/2kk5kW7BKx4

They were sent to me by a reader saying that Harold Hamm has been on CNBC and Fox Business News today.

A "huge thank you" to the reader for sending me the links.

This gives me a chance to remind readers that I posted a lengthy commentary on "how we got here" a couple of days ago.

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

Skiing

I may not have watched the Harold Hamm videos but I watched this video several times. This is Sophia, age five, skiing, taken this morning.

And another:

Breaking News: Italy Has Released Its Daily Figures -- Off The Charts -- Out Of Control -- March 11, 2020

Italy released their figures for the past 24 hours at 12:00 noon CT, March 22, 2020:

• Italy: 2,313 new cases; 196 new deaths;
• China: 36 new cases with 22 new deaths;
• Iran: 958 with 63 new deaths;
• Spain: 493 with 13 new deaths;
• Germany: 288 with 1 new death;
• South Korea: 242 with no new deaths;

A reminder: there was a report that the Italian numbers were artificially low yesterday because a major northern province -- Lombardy -- had failed to reports its numbers. If so, those numbers were aggregated into today's numbers.

Today's numbers as of mid-day, US:

The fatality rate in selected countries:

• Italy's fatality rate has been running about 5.9% or greater;
• the current fatality rate for Italy is 827 / 12,461 = 66%
• South Korea: 60 / 7,733 = 0.8%
• USA: 3%

From March 10, 2020:

• United States: 
• 4,856 coronavirus tests have been run in public health labs, said CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield. “We've got a new reporting system that has CDC, public health labs. We're going to get direct dumps from LabCorp and Quest so people are going to see all the tests done, where they are done. We will have a surveillance system that does that” Redfield said. [Comment: tectonic change for a government-run bureaucracy -- releasing unfiltered data.]
• Michigan: first two cases identified; governor declares emergency
• New York City, Westchester County: interesting time line:
• March 7, 2020: not on MSM radar scope
• March 8: 16 new cases in New York (state)
• March 9: no new cases posted, but CDC said there were now over 100 cases in New York state;
• March 9: about this time, Westchester County area; some areas placed in regional quarantine;
• March 10: no new cases posted
• March 11: as of 12:16 p.m CT, no new cases posted;

Although I was wrong about the public response to coronavirus, I am in agreement with the sentiment posited below:
 

EIA Weekly Petroleum Report; Time To Track Storage Builds, Jet Fuel Supplied, Crude Oil Imports -- March 11, 2020

EIA weekly petroleum report, link here. I'm always curious how the EIA data will compare with the API data which is released a day earlier. Recall that yesterday, the API estimated a build of 6 million bbls vs a forecast of 1.8 million bbls. So, here's the EIA data:

• US crude oil in storage, increase week-over-week: a whopping 7.7-million-bbl increase;
• US crude oil in storage, total: 451.8 million bbls, about 2% below the five-year average for this time of the year;
• US refiners are operating at 86.4% of their operable capacity; on the low side; see jet fuel delivered below;
• imports, watch this closely over the next six months: averaged 6.4 million bbls per day last week; up by 174,000 bopd from the previous week; unremarkable;
• over the past four-week period, crude oil imports averaged about the very same, 6.4 million bopd, 6.5% less than the same four-week period last year (looks like time for another spreadsheet);
• and look at this, jet fuel supplied was down a whopping 13% (to be exact, 12.8%) compared with same four-week period last year -- this might explain refiners' decreased activity; can you say "coronavirus"?

Gas Buddy: $1.50-gasoline in Oklahoma City.

Re-balancing:

Week	Week Ending	Change	Million Bbls Storage
Week 0	November 21, 2018	4.9	446.9
Week 1	November 28, 2018	3.6	450.5
Week 2	December 6, 2018	-7.3	443.2
Week 3	December 12, 2018	-1.2	442.0
Week 4	December 19, 2018	-0.5	441.5
Week 5	December 28, 2018	0.0	441.4
Week 6	January 4, 2019	0.0	441.4
Week 7	January 9, 2019	-1.7	439.7
Week 8	January 16, 2019	-2.7	437.1
Week 9	January 24, 2019	8.0	445.0
Week 58	January 3, 2020	-11.5	429.9
Week 59	January 8, 2020	1.2	431.1
Week 60	January 15, 2020	-2.5	428.5
Week 61	January 23, 2020	-0.4	428.1
Week 62	January 29, 2020	3.5	431.7
Week 63	February 5, 2020	3.4	435.0
Week 64	February 12, 2020	7.5	442.5
Week 65	February 20, 2020	0.4	442.9
Week 66	February 26, 2020	0.5	443.3
Week 67	March 4, 2020	0.8	444.1
Week 68	March 11, 2020	7.7	451.8

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

Princess Ponies

I forget when this video was taken, perhaps a year or so ago, when Sophia was about four years old, +/- six months. And, yes, I forgot to turn the iPhone horizontally.

"Focus On Fracking" May Be Your Best Source For Real-Time Data -- March 11, 2020

For the time being -- maybe the next six months -- the best source for estimating projected global oil in storage will be "Focus On Fracking." The very detailed summaries come out weekly, late Sunday night.

A Reader Asked What North Dakota Has To Offer For Those New To The State -- March 11, 2020

Today is so depressing and so slow, I have finally gotten around to replying to a reader who wanted to know what North Dakota offered those who were new to the state:

1. Chocolate licorice, sunflower seeds, and pork rinds still outsell avocados, artichokes, and arugula.
2. Tater tot salad and jello are year-round staples. In fact, they are the foundation of the North Dakota food pyramid.
3. Handguns-for-sale are on display at the corner convenience store. With ammo. Age restrictions may apply. Or not.
4. Deer whistles for bumpers are sold with no “satisfaction-guaranteed” promises.
5. “No shoes, no shirt, no service” signs are never seen in February. Help wanted signs are.
6. Folks have had electric cords hanging out of the front of their cars long before Elon Musk came along.
7. The one North American event that will not be canceled due to coronavirus: the Minot Hostfest.
8. Mosquitoes were the only thing Lewis and Clark remembered about the area when reporting back to President Jefferson. Lewis and Clark are no longer with us. Wish we could say the same about the mosquitoes.
9. You only need outfits for two seasons — winter and August. When the temperature gets above zero, it’s short-sleeve weather. Zero degrees Farhenheit if there was any question.
10. You can earn $450,000 in the oil fields but still not be able to afford a double-wide. But you can sleep in your F-450. With your dog. And your gun. Or guns.

Perhaps my favorite:

Car dealers sell new cars with cracks already in the windshield so you are not disappointed when you get that first chip in your windshield five minutes after driving off the lot.

$1.50-Gasoline -- March 11, 2020

Saudi Arabia: after that reported telephone call with President Trump, Saudi Arabia says it it will "up" the amount of production it had already threatened.

Currently producing about 9.5 million bopd, Saudi initially said they would up that to 12.5 million bbls, and scrolling through twitter this morning, Saudi is said to be reporting that they will increase production to 13.5 million bbls. Three things:

• I will believe it when I see it;
• every summer, Saudi Arabia increases production; they run a/c off oil; and,
• Saudi Arabia's own refineries may have increased capacity (I don't know, but that was their plan)

So, production numbers are important, but export numbers and destinations are just as important.

Gas Buddy, Oklahoma City: $1.47, 7-Eleven, southwest side of Oklahoma City.

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

Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 

$33.46	3/11/2020	03/11/2019	03/11/2018	03/11/2017	03/11/2016
Active Rigs	55	65	59	45	32

No wells scheduled to come off the confidential list today. Maybe that's why I'm in a bad mood. Nothing to report.

RBN Energy: US shale and Canadian oil sands production in a "cheap crude" world. We've come full circle. We've been here before. Do you remember all those posts about the Bakken having lower breakeven costs than Canadian oil sands, and if the sands survived, shale would survive. We're back to that discussion.

It’s a new world, folks. The Saudis and Russians, who until a few days ago had been trying to prop up crude oil prices through supply management, are now engaged in an all-out war for market share. Crude oil prices are sharply lower. Three weeks ago, West Texas Intermediate was selling for $53/bbl and Western Canadian Select for $37/bbl; yesterday, they were selling for $34/bbl and $22/bbl, respectively.

And things may get worse.

All this has profound implications for North American production, but the effects on production in U.S. shale plays versus the Canadian oil sands will be very different. Today, we explain how the oil sands provide steady-as-she-goes baseload supply through pricing peaks and valleys while U.S. shale plays serve as a global swing supplier.

The crude-oil market gyrations of the past few days have left the energy industry shell-shocked, and for good reason. It’s been years since we’ve seen anything close to the once-unthinkable confluence of events that has dragged down oil prices.

A coronavirus pandemic that is now affecting more than 100 countries, including the U.S. and Canada, and crippling global oil demand. The utter collapse of a fragile-but-effective coalition of OPEC and non-OPEC producers — including Russia — that for more than three years had held crude supply in check to keep prices from tumbling. And then there’s the stock market, whose free fall in recent days has left a long list of North American exploration and production companies (E&Ps) in a financially precarious state.

This got us thinking about the challenges that U.S. shale and Canadian oil sands producers will be facing, particularly if crude oil prices stay low for a long time. The ups and downs of shale plays and the oil sands have been frequent topics in the RBN blogosphere.

In our new "Dakota" series, for example, we’ve been discussing how gathering-system development has been sustaining an oil-production resurgence in the Bakken Shale.

On the downside, we discussed slumping activity and production in the SCOOP and STACK plays of Oklahoma in "Broke Down Engine."

For the oil sands, there’s been more down than up since the crude oil price slump of 2014-16, as we noted in several series such as The "Thrill is Gone", although bitumen production keeps rising. And in our series "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," we covered the competitive strain that rising non-OPEC production had been putting on OPEC and its supply-management collaborators.

Much more at the link, of course. 

Daily Note -- March 11, 2020

Back to reality: I was pretty optimistic, excited yesterday -- things seemed to be improving ... but maybe not. So back to reality. I'm not in a particularly good mood this morning. Blogging will suffer.

Coronavirus: those "better" numbers coming out of Italy may have been because the cases coming out of Lombardy were not counted for some reason. If so, the numbers coming out of Italy today could be atrocious.

• China: down to 34 new cases, 22 new deaths. 
• Westchester County, NY: soaring; New Rochelle quarantined
• Germany recorded its first two deaths a couple of days ago
• South Korea: down to 242 cases; one new death
• Diamond Princess: no new cases, but another passenger that had been on the cruise ship did die about two days ago
• so bottom line: except for a few regions, not a lot of happening; number of cases will grow as more testing becomes available. 

Masks: why they work still -- assuming that they do -- still confounds me.

The virus is much, much smaller than the pores in the mask. Yesterday it was explained that the masks prevent droplets from spreading when folks sneeze. But "everyone" says the most common way the virus is spread is by folks touching their face with their hands. Perhaps the masks are doing not much more than keeping folks from touching their faces. If so, bandanas will work just as well and are not in short supply. Ski masks should also work and I assume northern Italy now has warehouses full of them.

Toilet paper: I'm still perplexed how the panic over toilet paper developed. Coronavirus is a respiratory disease but I have heard a lot of folks in the midwest exclaim: "blow it out your a$$." Except they didn't use the dollar signs.

Be that as it may, an internet search revealed that Amazon is sold out; earliest availability is April 15th or thereabouts. Coincides with tax filing deadline. Checking on-line for Target / Walmart in our local area, north Texas, DFW: both Target / Walmart have toilet paper "available for pickup today." My wife, out in California, San Pedro, south Los Angeles, says her neighborhood Target store has adequate toilet paper in stock but the store limits the amount one can buy. 

Tabasco sauce: no shortages reported yet.

So, a pretty slow start to the day. Updates later when we get the Italy coronavirus numbers.