US Onshore Flaring: Lowest Level Since 2012; Six DUCs Reported As Completed; No New Permts But Fifteen Permits Renewed -- December 15, 2021

AMD/XLNX: is the deal dead? Link here. Best outcome now: the deal won't close before the end of the year but will eventually close. Worst outcome: deal won't close. That's fine. XLNX will do fine, long term.

Covid-19: it's baaaaccck. So much for all that optimistic talk about Covid being behind us. Not so fast. But again, the policies will be worse than the "disease." It looks like we're going to be seeing Brandon in his mask at all the DC Christmas parties.

Jim Cramer on Enbridge:

• dividend greater than 7%
• solar and carbon capture big part of their business
  
• interview with CEO
• incredible things said about environment and energy
• Cramer is excited about Enbridge
• pipeline challenges: there's going to be more pain before politicos willing to support pipelines
• natural gas is going to be a huge, huge deal in the Permian
• Enbridge is very, very well set up in the Permian to export LNG: locality (production); locality (terminals);
• has been in renewable energy for 20 years; 
• comment: I know this very, very well; posted on the blog ten years ago about ENB getting into wind and solar farms in Canada; at the time, as an investor in ENB, I was not happy
  
• hydrogen projects, incubation projects
• Paris protocol: to be met CCS is critical; Enbridge positioned perfect for CCS
  

Do three of these four headlines not get you excited? The fourth is a non-story; I won't even click on it. From oilprice:

Note: I will post this again as a stand-alone but in the daily activity report below, there are certain things going on of which folks may not be aware:

• first and foremost: after telegraphing they were not interested in the Bakken any more now that they were in the Permian, EOG is getting quite active in the Bakken again;
• pad drilling is resulting in several DUCs being reported at the same time: those folks who suggest that the dropping number of DUCs is driving the production in the shale plays these days may be correct, but those folks are missing the bigger picture;
• CLR's reported IPs don't seem particularly great but reported IPs are very deceiving. Top three months -- production -- is of much more interest; so time will tell;
• CLR: in addition to aforementioned comment, even if the IPs are not as robust as we might help, for the investor / the owners, the money spent to drill and complete these wells is sunk costs; it's gone; it was spent  six months to two years ago; now, that's history, and now we have free cash flow.
• twice as many active rigs year / year, going into winter months
• oh, I almost forgot, this does not show up in this post and I've not talked about it on the blog yet, but NOG announced a new dividend program rewarding owners of the company (anyone who owns shares, owns part of the company, often forgotten) -- this should remind folks we're in the manufacturing stage of the Bakken and not the boom; that's been true for several years but it seems some folks outside the Bakken don't understand that;
  

Santa Claus rally: I did not know this. I assumed the Santa Claus rally applies to market action between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. According to Jim Cramer, the Santa Claus rally does not traditionally / historically begin until later this week, around December 17th or slightly later. 

Jim Cramer on Jay Powell: every investor should listen to Cramer's monologue on Jay Powell. Best I've heard from anyone on this one.

PFE: $50 billion in cash the past two years simply from vaccine sales. I think $50 billion is about one-four the amount of cash AAPL has. Fact-check necesito.  That $50 billion is absolutely huge.

Flaring: US onshore flaring falls to lowest level since 2012 -- and this is with record amount of production, I assume.

• Onshore gas flaring in the U.S. has plummeted, falling to its lowest level since at least 2012.
• The most significant contributors to this steep decline were the Bakken and Permian plays.
• The contribution of privately-owned players to gas flaring totals has declined from a record high of 61.5% in April 2021 and sits at 52.3% as of September.
• “While the reduction in the Bakken was largely in line with expectations, based on our analysis of satellite data, the rate of change in the Permian is surprising. The decline in flaring activity across the board is a concrete sign that best practices are spreading beyond just large producers to small, privately-owned operators too, and this trend looks likely to continue in the foreseeable future,” says Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad Energy.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rig report:

• NDIC reports 31 wells; I did not check for duplicates;
• one of the 31 wells is a SWD well; not oil and gas;
• Slawson with one rig
• Kraken not on the list but a reader says the Kraken rig is in Montana

Active rigs:

$70.87	12/15/2021	12/15/2020	12/15/2019	12/15/2018	12/15/2017
Active Rigs	30	14	53	67	53

No new permits.

Fifteen permits renewed:

• Rimrock (9): Nosepress, Shifty, Amethyst, Citrine, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Hammerhead, and Tiger, all in Dunn County;
• EOG (6): five Riverview permits in McKenzie County and one Burke permit in Mountrail County.

Six producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 37399, 1,374, CLR, Gale 8-32H1, Cedar Coulee, first production, --; t--; cum --;
  
• 38238, 1,600, CLR, Jenson 10-8H, Chimney Butte, first production, --; t--; cum --;
• 37374, 1,225, CLR, Gale 6-32H1, Cedar Coulee, first production, --; t--; cum --;
• 37400, 1,062, CLR, Gale 9-32H, Cedar Coulee, first production, --; t--; cum --;
• 36793, 1,359, Sinclair, Harris Federal 2-32H, Lone Butte, first production, --; t--; cum --;
  
• 38236, 584, CLR,  Mittlestadt 10-17HSL1, Cedar Coulee, first production, --; t--; cum --;