Several Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- September 6, 2022

The Far Side: link here.

WTI: $87.06. Volatile.

Natural gas: $8.395.

Active rigs: 46.

Wednesday, September 7, 2022: 8 for the month, 58 for the quarter, 397 for the year

• 38006, conf, Hess, CA-E Burdick-155-95-2932H-5, Capa, t--; cum 61K 7/22;
• 37371, conf, Petro-Hunt, Jorgenson 158-94-2B-11-1HS, East Tioga,

Tuesday, September 6, 2022: 6 for the month, 56 for the quarter, 395 for the year

• 37372, conf, Petro-Hunt, Estby 159-94-35C-26-1HS, East Tioga,

Monday, September 5, 2022: 5 for the month, 55 for the quarter, 394 for the year

• 35443, conf, Whiting, Lapica 34-23TFH, Alger, t--; cum 80K 7/22;

Sunday, September 4, 2022: 4 for the month, 54 for the quarter, 393 for the year

• 36643, conf, Hess, BL-S Ramberg-155-95-0601H-4, Beaver Lodge, t--; cum 130K 7/22;

Saturday, September 3, 2022: 3 for the month, 53 for the quarter, 392 for the year

• 37339, conf, Whiting, Ark 21-15-2H, Dollar Joe, t--; cum 90K 7/22;
• 35444, conf, Whiting, Lapica 34-23HU, Alger, t--; cum 90K 7/22;

RBN Energy: piping refined products from the Midwest to the East Coast, part 2. Archived.

Since the century turned, there’s been a big buildup in refining capacity in the U.S. Midwest, primarily to process the increasing volumes of heavy sour crude being piped in from Western Canada. Over the same period, refining capacity in the Mid-Atlantic region has declined by more than half, mostly for economic reasons — including the lack of pipeline access to favorably priced U.S. shale oil — but also due to events, such as the devastating June 2019 fire at Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ 330-Mb/d refinery in Philadelphia, which led the facility’s owner to shut it down. In addition to spurring more refined product imports to the Mid-Atlantic and increased flows to the region on Colonial Pipeline, the changing market dynamics prompted a push to increase pipeline flows of gasoline and diesel east from the Midwest to markets in Pennsylvania and beyond. In today’s RBN blog, we continue a review of the U.S.’s still-morphing refined product pipeline networks with a look at recently added capacity from PADD 2 to PADD 1.

In this blog series, our aims are to provide an overview of the U.S.’s major refined product pipelines and to describe how the network continues to be reworked — extended, expanded, repurposed and/or reversed — to reflect changing market dynamics. In Part 1 we took a big-picture view, looking at many of the large pipelines and pipeline systems that transport gasoline, diesel and jet fuel long distances from refineries to refined product terminals throughout the U.S. We noted that, in addition to these long-haul, higher-volume pipelines, there are scores of shorter, lower-volume pipes that fan out from these lines to distribute refined products to terminals in smaller cities and towns. In most cases, gasoline and diesel are transported “the last mile” to service stations by truck.

Today, we begin a review of significant changes that the midstream sector has been making to existing networks to reflect major market shifts, such as the combination of declining refining capacity in the East Coast (PADD 1) and the push by refineries in the Midwest (PADD 2) to transport more of their refined products to the East Coast. In an upcoming blog, we’ll look at market shifts instigating a number of refined product pipelines in Texas and other states in PADDs 3 and 4 (Gulf Coast and Rockies, respectively).

Midwest refineries made a big bet on Western Canadian heavy sour crude in the 2000s, investing billions of dollars in expansions and equipment upgrades (such as new cokers) that increased their ability to break down low-API oil into valuable products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Commitments to make these big investments — BP spent $4.2 billion to add a coker and make other improvements to its Whiting refinery in northwestern Indiana and Marathon Petroleum spent $2.2 billion on a coker project at its Detroit refinery — were made as several oil sands producers in Alberta were bringing new production online and before the Shale Revolution took hold and Bakken production of light sweet crude took off. Back then (in “the aughts”), the prevailing opinion was that easier-to-process lighter crudes were becoming scarcer and likely to get more expensive and heavy crude would be more abundant and cheaper.