One Well Coming Off Confidential List; Monthly Bakken DUC Data Posted -- August 17, 2021

DUCs: special treat today. A reader sent me the monthly DUC spreadsheet for all oil and gas plays in the US overnight. Bakken data posted here.

WMT: beats; shares; ups guidance. Earnings soar; Delta variant fails to curb traffic, grocery spending boom. Food inflation? Winner: Walmart?

Axios: rarely has an American president's predictions been so wrong, so fast, so convincingly. 

Fall guy? General Milley?

LNG: the remarkable rise of US LNG. Link to Tsvetana Paraskova. 

Gulf of Mexico: Big Oil expands footprint. Link to Tsvetana Paraskova.

Tea leaves suggest worsening supply / demand mismatch: China drew on crude inventories in July, marking the fourth consecutive month it has processed more crude than what was available from domestic output and imports. Graphics previously posted, see next entry. Link here. Reuters article here.

China, from August 11, 2021: crude oil inventories dropping. Short term, imports may have dropped due to slowing economic activity but long term, the tea leaves suggest there is going to be a significant supply/demand mismatch. If so, my hunch is that the mismatch won't last long. At $65-WTI, everyone wins.

Global warming: did anyone else know this? Was I the only one. From Alex Epstein:

When people talk about 1.5°C of warming as catastrophic, it's even more absurd than it sounds because it's not 1.5°C warming starting now, it's 1.5°C total since the 1800s. Which means 0.5°C warmer than now -- in a world where far more people die of cold than of heat.

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Back to the Bakken

Synfuels: in the Bakken, a Japanese hydrogen hub. Five-year on-line target.

Active rigs:

$67.19	8/17/2021	08/17/2020	08/17/2019	08/17/2018	08/17/2017
Active Rigs	23	12	61	60	53

Updated rig list is posted by the NDIC at COB.

One well coming off the confidential list:

Tuesday, August 17, 2021: 9 for the month, 20 for the quarter, 200 for the year:

• 22652, conf, WPX, Charles Blackhawk 31-30HC, Heart Butte, look how old that permit is; no production data.  

RBN Energy: Shell's latest crude oil project in the deepwater gulf. Last great American whale?

It’s often said that the offshore Gulf of Mexico is a different animal than its onshore counterparts, especially shale and tight-oil plays like the Permian and the Bakken.

Decisions to invest in new production in the GOM aren’t based on crude oil demand and price forecast for the next two or three years; they’re based on expectations for the next two or three decades.

Well, 30 years from now will be 2051, a year after Shell and a number of other energy companies have pledged to achieve “net-zero” carbon emissions. What does decarbonization mean for future development in the offshore Gulf, where the upfront capital costs are enormous and wells can be prolific producers for many, many years.

In today’s blog, we discuss the final investment decision (FID) on Shell’s Whale project in the western Gulf of Mexico and the prospects for further development in the GOM.