No Wells Coming Off Confidential List; WTI In Trading Range -- March 26, 2021

Meme: Wall Street not keeping up with the global economy or the US economy:

• world trade volumes surged in January, 2021; graphic pending --
  
• what I find most remarkable:
• the US market's three major indices keep hitting new highs; and, yet,
• many blue chip, widely held stocks are still 30% below their 104-week highs; in other words,
• there is a lot of room for some of these stocks to move (on the upside);
• it's a stock-picker's market; the professionals are in the driver's seat;
• mom-and-pop players at home are seeing better gains in their professionally-managed accounts than in their personally-managed accounts -- this is based on a survey of two -- me vs my wife.
  

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. 

Don't underestimate the Bakken: link here.

• so much for that promise to focus on free cash; slow production growth;
• from the linked site:

U.S. oil drillers are no longer sitting in the trenches, waiting for the pandemic storm to pass. They are once again in growth mode, according to the first-quarter energy survey by the Dallas Federal Reserve. As oil prices rebound, activity in the oil patch is expanding, respondents to the Dallas Fed Energy Survey said. And it is expanding strongly: from a reading of just 18.5 for the fourth quarter of 2020, the business activity index of the survey soared as high as 53.6 over the first quarter of this year. 

The data supports evidence from other agencies: the number of active drilling rigs is steadily rising. So is production: according to the latest weekly report by the Energy Information Administration, oil production last week averaged 11 million bpd. That’s still 2 million bpd below the average for this time last year, but above the average for a week earlier and the four-week average for the period ending on March 19. 

The signs seem to point to what OPEC feared the most: U.S. shale is returning. Capital spending is returning, the Dallas Fed reported in its survey. From an index of 12.5 for the fourth quarter of 2020, it has now gone up to 31. What’s more, the industry is upbeat about the future, too, planning to boost spending further next year.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$60.54	3/26/2021	03/26/2020	03/26/2019	03/26/2018	03/26/2017
Active Rigs	14	48	68	59	49

No wells coming off the confidential list this next week. 

RBN Energy: will northeast gas outflows to the Gulf/southeast max out capacity this spring? Part 4.

Natural gas pipeline takeaway constraints out of the Northeast worsened in 2020 despite producer cutbacks in the region as high storage levels and weaker demand led to record volumes of Appalachian gas supplies needing to find outlets in other regions last fall. This year, storage levels are lower and could absorb more of the surpluses during injection season. However, Appalachian gas production so far in 2021 has been averaging higher than last year; and, gas prices are higher year-on-year, reducing prospects for the kinds of producer curtailments we saw last year. As for the “pull” from downstream demand, LNG exports along the Gulf Coast aren’t expected to experience the slump from cargo cancellations seen last summer. In other words, Appalachia’s outbound flows are likely to be robust, setting the stage for takeaway constraints and weak prices, particularly during the spring and fall shoulder seasons. How much outbound capacity currently exists and how much room is there for growth? Today, we continue our series on the Northeast gas market with an update on Appalachia’s southbound takeaway capacity and outflows, starting with a detailed look at the gas moving to the Southeast and to the Gulf Coast.

This is Part 4 of the blog series, aimed at breaking down the fundamentals trends in the constantly evolving Appalachian gas market. In Part 1, we looked at the Northeast gas supply-demand trends that contributed to increased takeaway constraints and weaker Appalachia basis differentials in 2020, namely milder winter demand in early 2020 that led to record high storage levels, despite low rig counts and producer cutbacks in the spring and fall. Then, in Part 2, we delved deeper into Appalachian production and the disparate patterns emerging in each of the sub-regions. We shifted our focus to regional outflows and takeaway capacity utilization in Part 3, starting with a look at the record outflows during Winter Storm Uri last month. Now spring is around the corner and Northeast demand will take a big step back as heating demand fades, leaving the region swimming in surplus gas. How much exit capacity is there for that surplus gas? To understand that, we first need to take stock of existing capacity and flows.