Oil's Other Strategic Reserve Is Running Low, Also -- WSJ -- November 11, 2022

Ukraine: Russians withdraw from Kherson. The timing is interesting. The announcement to withdraw was made by the Russians on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. Link here.

Russian oil production: could drop one million bopd (or more), to 9.0 million bopd, once the December sanctions kick in. Link here. With Baker Hughes leaving that pretty much ends all western oil field services technology responsible for Russian oil production. 

• Russia's quota: 11 million bpd
• actual production, October, 2022: 9.9 bpd, excluding condensate
• and that was October; additional, more severe sanctions start in December, 2022
• by which time pretty much all western OFS technology will have also exited
• November quota: 10.5 million bpd 
• EU to ban Russian imports of crude oil from December 5, 2022, and it's not likely that China, others have the storage facility to suck up all that "extra" oil
• will it become Russia oil vs Saudi oil for China?
  

Trump:

• lost both Carl Quintanilla and the New York Post -- in one day.

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Back to the Bakken

DUCs, link here.

After seeing oil demand plunge in 2020, U.S. producers’ mantra switched to “frack, baby, frack” as they paused drilling new rigs in favor of completing—or fracking—wells that had already been drilled. Drilling is just the first step in shale formations. Fracking, a process that involves the injection of water, sand and chemicals into the drilled well, actually gets the oil out of the ground. 

Producers’ preference for completion over drilling has led to a steep decline in the number of drilled but uncompleted wells, or DUCs, since August 2020. That inventory is at five-year lows, according to Rystad Energy data. While the U.S. Energy Information Administration counts all available DUCs, Rystad and S&P Global Commodity Insights prefer to track wells that are no more than two years old, because they are likely to be completed at a later date. Any older, and the chances of completion get much slimmer.

The Far Side: link here.

NDIC office closed: I assume. Due to "inclement" weather and Veterans Day.

Active rigs: perhaps less than 35 with another epic storm in the Bakken.

WTI:

Natural gas:

Sunday, November 13, 2022: 23 for the month, 60 for the quarter, 605 for the year.
38381, conf, Oasis, Swenson Federal 5197 43-35 3B,

Saturday, November 12, 2022: 22 for the month, 59 for the quarter, 604 for the year.
38271, conf, Whiting, Platt 44-18-2H,

Friday, November 11, 2022: 21 for the month, 58 for the quarter, 603 for the year.
38725, conf, Slawson, Sauger Federal 5 SLTFH,
38380, conf, Oasis, Swenson Federal 5197 43-35 2B,

RBN Energy: mega rule puts all gas-gatherinng pipelines under federal scrutiny.

For decades, gas-gathering pipelines largely escaped the federal scrutiny that was primarily focused on much bigger pipelines in more populated areas. But all that has changed with final publication of the so-called Mega Rule, which applies federal pipeline safety regulations to hundreds of thousands of miles of gas-gathering pipelines — previously not subject to federal safety regulation — for the first time. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the history behind the three-part Mega Rule, what it’s designed to do, and the challenges pipeline operators will face to stay in compliance.

Today is Veterans Day, and we at RBN want to take a moment to thank all veterans for their service to our country.

Discussions about ways to improve natural gas pipeline safety go back many years but gained greater prominence after a deadly explosion in San Bruno, CA, in September 2010. In that incident, a 30-inch-diameter segment of a state-regulated intrastate natural gas transmission pipeline owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) ruptured in a residential area of San Bruno, a city just south of San Francisco. The released natural gas ignited, resulting in a fire that destroyed 38 homes and damaged 70 others. Eight people were killed and several dozen injured

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the explosion was caused by deficiencies in quality assurance and quality control during the pipe’s installation as well as an inadequate pipeline-integrity program that failed to detect the defective section of pipeline.

California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) exemptions related to pressure testing for existing pipelines, which likely would have detected the installation defects, were also cited as a factor, as was the CPUC’s failure to notice and address the inadequacies of PG&E’s pipeline-integrity program.