No Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- WTI Breaks Through $82 -- October 15, 2021

RBN Energy: if you aren't reading RBN Energy every morning ... well, what can I say? See below.

Market: being reported and repeated over and over this a.m. -- inflation numbers came in better than expected yesterday.

ISO NE: holy lutefisk! Early morning; balmy autumn Friday; quiet; but ISO NE prices already in the yellow (worse than green); headed toward red;

• $130 / MWh
• getting Biden WH attention, see below
• if this were Texas, DC would not care;
• but in NE -- oh, oh
  
• without pipeline, NE, like California and Hawaii, becomes an "energy island"
• natural gas + nuclear: 88%
• hydro: 6%
• renewable: 6%
• indirect relationship between renewable contribution and total demand
• currently spiking -- high all night (and no overnight EV charging yet) and now the spike begins at oh-dark-thirty;

ISO NY: doing better at $53 / MWh; link here.

• mix:
• dual fuel: 28%
• natural gas: 29%
• nuclear: 18%
• hydro: 21%
• solar: 0%
• wind: 2%

WTI: breaks through $82

Biden White House: looking at ways of moving "energy" around the US. I can't make this stuff up. Link to Reuters.

• pipeline?
• Keystone XL
• CBR?
  
• seriously, this suggests the WH is looking at ISO NE on a daily basis;
• doesn't Bernie Sanders have a home or two in New England?
  

Bitcoin: up, trading over 59,000; closing in on 59,500.

Virgin Atlantic: shares falling like a meteorite

• not only is that not a space company, it's delaying future launches

Covid-19: #1 killer of Americans age 35 to 54 last month; #2 overall; link here.

• this is interesting on so many levels:
• reminder: time to look at the CDC's monthly surveillance report;
• the data is simply bizarre
• diagnosis and classification of flu-like illnesses during the plague year (2020) resulted in a complete mess for this data
  

Supply chain shortages: a meme that needs attention; more on this later if I don't forget.

*******************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$82.00	10/15/2021	10/15/2020	10/15/2019	10/15/2018	10/15/2017
Active Rigs	23	16	60	68	59

No wells coming off confidential list.

RBN Energy: the battle over Questar Pipeline's natural gas infrastructure in the Rockies. Wow, wow, wow. A must-read. Archived. 

Billionaire Warren Buffett tried to buy it but later bowed out. Billionaire Carl Icahn thinks buying it is a dumb idea — and has launched a tender offer and proxy fight to stop it. The long and winding road leading Southwest Gas Holdings to its planned $1.975 billion acquisition of Questar Pipeline from Dominion Energy started more than a year ago and touches on a number of hot-button topics in today’s energy industry: the divestiture of natural gas assets, the ongoing energy transition, concerns about antitrust regulations, activist investors, and infrastructure. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the sale itself, the current state of natural gas production and pipelines in the Rocky Mountains, and how that gas fits into the nationwide picture.

The made-for-HBO story behind the Questar Pipeline sale begins with Dominion Energy’s decision to sell a broader set of its natural gas transmission and storage assets to Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy in July 2020. The $9.7 billion deal, which included the assumption of $5.7 billion in debt, was part of Dominion’s plan to focus more on renewable generation and move toward its goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all its operations by 2050. Dominion said at the time that it expected up to 90% of its future earnings would come from its state-regulated electric and gas utilities in North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, and Utah. The deal also included a 25% ownership interest in the company’s Cove Point LNG terminal in Maryland, as well as assets in Appalachia.