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Saturday, December 31, 2022

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Wow, wow, wow! Sugaring NYC is putting in a brand new "store" in our neighborhood shopping mall, without question, one of the best malls of this type in the Dallas-Ft Worth area. 

Covid-19: percent of Americans vaccinated for Covid-19. Link here.

Seasonal flu -- link here:

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The Book Page

A slew of books are now in the public domain:

In 2019, for the first time in over two decades, a new crop of literary work entered the public domain: everything first published in the United States in 1923. (Don’t forget the secret public domain books, either.) In 2020, books by E.M. Forster, Edna Ferber, and Edith Wharton became available for remixing. 2021 brought us everything published in 1925, “the greatest year for books,” including, of course, The Great Gatsby (yes, a sequel was published immediately, with plenty more in the works). And last year, notably, A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh passed through the veil, leading, inevitably and unfortunately, to this.

 

So what’s on the table this year? Though copyright laws differ from country to country, on January 1st, 2023, books that were published in 1927 will enter the public domain in the United States. Here’s a selection of the most interesting:

 

Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Agatha Christie, The Big Four

Countee Cullen, ed., Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets

Franklin W. Dixon, The Tower Treasure (The Hardy Boys #1)

Franklin W. Dixon, The House on the Cliff (The Hardy Boys #2)

Franklin W. Dixon, The Secret of the Old Mill (The Hardy Boys #3)

Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger”

Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place”

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Franz Kafka, Amerika

Anita Loos, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

Edith Wharton, Twilight Sleep

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Week 52: December 25, 2022 -- December 31, 2022

Top US energy story of the year:

Top story:

  • Joe Biden is still president

Top international non-energy story:

  • Russian-Ukraine war continues
    • Ukraine destroying Russia's conventional military with cast-off weapons from US
  • Covid-19 surges in Asia
    • all the attention on China, but Japan, South Korea also experiencing surge

Top international energy story:

  • Russia to flood global economy with diesel just before sanctions kick in
  • EU energy crisis averted (at least for now): warm weather and de-industrialization
  • Texas grid -- ERCOT -- holds just fine

Top national non-energy story:

  • various agencies, states recommend US mask indoors again; data doesn't support that recommendation -- yet
    • cases plummeting

Top national energy story

  • WTI ends at $80.29 last trading day of 2022
  • natural gas: proved reserves in US sets a new record
  • oil: US oil reserves increased by 16%
  • STR acquires MNRL
Javier Blas:

Focus on fracking: most recent edition.

Top North Dakota non-energy story:

  • Polar vortex shuts down 1/3rd Bakken production

Top North Dakota energy story:

Geoff Simon's top North Dakota energy stories:

Bakken economy:

Commentary:

Entertainment:

Saturday, New Year's Eve -- December 31, 2022

Sunny skies and 70 degrees -- this is north Texas on New Year's Eve and Olivia's soccer team winning this morning's tournament game, 6 - 0. 

Rock my world:

Brooks and Dunn


Saudi Arabia foreign exchange reserves: link here.


US natural gas records: link here.

Laser-focused on dividends: link here.

Companies in the S&P 500 allocated an estimated $561 billion toward dividends in 2022, up from $511.2 billion in 2021 and the highest amount on record.
Dividend spending is poised for another record in 2023 as companies are under pressure from investors to keep increasing returns ....“There is still a lot of cash on corporate balance sheets. You’d have to have significant pullback for there not to be a record [in 2023] at this point.” 
Other shareholder returns, such as buybacks, are expected to decline slightly from a total of around $963 billion in 2022, as a 1% excise tax is set to take effect in January.
S&P 500 companies spent $210.8 billion on stock buybacks in the third quarter, down about 10% from a year earlier.
Among the businesses that increased dividends in 2022 were chip maker Broadcom Inc., fast-food giant McDonald’s Corp., credit-card firm Visa Inc. and biopharmaceutical business AbbVie Inc.
For example, Broadcom in December said it was boosting its quarterly dividend by 12% to $4.60 a share for the fiscal year ending October 2023, pointing to strong cash flows over the past year and the expectation of continued demand in most of its markets.
Broadcom: cash and cash equivalents were $12.4 billion as of Oct. 30, 2022, up 2% from a year earlier, a filing showed. It paid $7 billion in cash dividends for the year ended October 30, 2022, up 13.2% from the prior-year period.
Dividends are also set to get a boost in 2023 as some of the companies that cut or pared payouts early in the pandemic bring them back. Nearly 190 U.S.-listed companies stopped paying dividends in 2020 to preserve cash as the pandemic closed swaths of the economy.
Thirty-nine returned to them that same year, 53 followed suit in 2021, and roughly 30 have done so this year. 

I have to thank a reaeder for alerting me to Broadcom, now a significant part of my "new money" allocation, 30-year plan. 

Friday, December 30, 2022

"Chest Cold" Update -- December 30, 2022

I'll post the rest of the graphs later, but this pretty much tells the story. Unless we get a second wave, this will be a most remarkable season.

Link here.

All "chest colds" -- seasonal flu, RSV, unspecified, and Covid-19, out-patient visits as percentage of all clinic visits:

Laboratory-confirmed seasonal flu for which we have a vaccine:

As far as Covid-19 goes, new cases reported on a daily basis two days ago, link here:

WTI: $80 At End Of 2022; Two New Permits; Seven Permits Renewed -- December 30, 2022

Active rigs: 45.

Two new permits, #39539 - 39540, inclusive:

  • Operator: WPX
  • Field: Heart Butte (Dunn County)
  • Comments:
    • WPX has permits for two more Two Shields Butte wells, SESE 8-149-92, 
      • one to be sited  635 FSL and 180 FEL, and the other to be sited 606 FSL and 178 FEL

Seven permits renewed:

  • CLR (4): four Sodbuster permits in Williams County;
  • Enerplus: a Widgeon permit, a Scaup permit, and a Pintail permit, Dunn County; the Enerplus "Daffy Duck" pad is tracked here;

ERCOT: My Electricity Statement -- December 22, 2022

We only have electricity, no natural gas. This is our only monthly utility bill.

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Elsewhere

New Hampshire:


Connecticut:

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New Hampshire

From the New Hampshire link above:

One of the state’s major utilities is set to double the price of electricity in August, and it’s likely other utilities will be forced to raise their prices, too. The price hikes are being driven by projected high costs of natural gas.

In a Monday filing with the Public Utilities Commission, Liberty Utilities proposed increasing the per kilowatt hour price of electricity from 11.11 cents, the rate in effect from February to July of this year, to 22.23 cents starting in July.

That means a typical household would see a 47 percent increase in its electric bill, according to consumer advocate Don Kreis. (Other charges on the bill would remain unchanged.) A household currently paying $150 per month would see their electricity increase to $220 per month.

“I think people are really going to feel this in their pocketbooks. It’s going to be a very unpleasant winter for everyone in New Hampshire,” said Kreis, adding that low prices for natural gas have lulled the state and region into complacency over the last decade.

Those low prices have evaporated, with some natural gas prices reaching $8.78 per million British thermal units in May, the highest they’ve been since 2008. Projections show that cost more than tripling to $30 per mmBtu.

Laser-Focuseed On Dividends -- December 30, 2022

Link here.

Vardah Gill: sixteen best dividend stocks of 2022.

For this list, we selected dividend stocks (regardless of yield) with the highest returns in 2022 so far.
These companies also have strong balance sheets and sound financials. The stocks are ranked according to their year-to-date returns, as of December 12, 2022.

In reverse order, #16 first:

  • DVN, PSX, EOG, ADM, CF
  • MRK, COP, MCK, CAH, APA,
  • MRO, XOM, EQT, HES, OXY,

and #1:

  • INSW -- International Seaways.

WTI Turns "Green" On Last Trading Day Of The Year -- December 30, 2022

South Korea: link here.

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Back to the Bakken

The Far Side: link here.

Active rigs: 46.

WTI: $79.19. On last trading day of the year, WTI is up 1.01%; up 79 cents.

Natural gas: $4.494.

Monday, January 2, 2023:
38531, conf, Whiting, Kannianen 43-31XH,
38198, conf, Hess, EN-Rehak A-155-94-1423H-5,

Sunday, January 1, 2023:
38955, conf, Ovintiv, Anderson Federal 152-96-9-4-6H,

Saturday, December 31, 2022:
None. There was no June 31, 2022.

Friday, December 30, 2022:
37642, conf, Slawson, Genekat Federal 5-13-12TFH

RBN Energy: the top ten RBN blogs of 2022 -- all about energy security. Archived.

  • #10 – 6/26/22 – U.S. Refinery Shutdowns a Major Contributor to Refined Products Squeeze and High Prices
  • #9 – 8/21/22 – As the U.S. Races Toward 30 Bcf/d of LNG Exports, What Could It Mean for Upstream Markets?
  • #8 – 7/24/22 – Will the Propane Market Be Prepared for Winter?
  • #7 – 3/31/22 – The Real-life Impacts of the Planned Crude Oil Releases from the SPR
  • #6 – 2/28/22 – Unseen Costs of the Energy Transition: Minerals, Metals, and Construction Materials
  • #5 – 3/6/2022 – What Do U.S. Refineries Import from Russia? And What If They Stop?
  • #4 – 2/27/22 – An Update on LNG Export Projects Along Canada's West Coast
  • #3 – 3/13/2022 – Cushing's Running Low on Crude Oil. How Much is Left In the Tanks?
  • #2 – 2/6/2022 – Alberta's Oil Sands Production Setting Up For Another Record Year In 2022
  • #1 – 5/6/2022 – What's Driving U.S. Refiners' Sky-High Crack Spreads?

Twenty Photos -- Vern Whitten -- From 2022

Link here

Mr Whitten would love to hear from you.

Vern Whitten Photography
www.vernwhittenphotography.com
(701) 261-7658

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Previously Reported -- Updates -- December 29, 2022

Locator: 36900TECH.

Tag: TSM, INTC, Intel

TSMC: link here.



Ford: link here.

Frisco, TX, PGA Course Opens -- Cost One-Half Billion Dollars -- What A Great Country -- December 29, 2022

Frisco, TX, "Sports City, USA." Link here.

Frisco, TX: just up the road from where I live .

In spring 2023, the Professional Golfers’ Association of America’s 660-acre, $520 million mixed-use development campus is slated to open to the public.
The campus will include two 18-hole courses, an Omni Resort, golf-themed retail stores and restaurants, a driving range and a clubhouse. Everything except the headquarters building is still under construction.
In August, 2022, tickets became available for the first championship tournament to be played at PGA Frisco.
The headquarters building held a grand opening August 22, 2022. It features offices, outdoor terraces, a video studio and an indoor golf training facility that includes a chipping area, a putting area and driving range simulators.



An XTO Parent Well With A 26x Jump In Production -- December 29, 2022

The well:

  • 18903, 394, XTO, Opedahl 21X-11, Capa, t8/11; cum 198K 10/22; recent production, a jump from 700 bbls to18,000 bbls represents a jump of 26x, at the wellhead, at $70/bbl --> from $49,000/month to $1.3 million:
PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN10-202231183031828436454241601094912924
BAKKEN9-2022301212612030284002176569020903
BAKKEN8-20221982568462238481651193115463
BAKKEN7-202259626411037519252861622
BAKKEN6-20220000000
BAKKEN5-20220000000
BAKKEN4-20220000000
BAKKEN3-20222947460079410708170
BAKKEN2-2022287327647571464117627
BAKKEN1-202231713720808164313540
BAKKEN12-202131819820876169314120
BAKKEN11-202130798769931155512840
BAKKEN10-202131797877916718171285

The map:

Five New Permits (Hess); CLR Renews Nineteen Permits; Five Permits Canceled; One DUC Reported As Completed -- December 29, 2022

Paid no federal taxes in 2020:

  • 60% of American households, paid no taxes in 2020;
    • neither President Trump nor his wife Melania paid any taxes in 2020
    • in 2020: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros -- among the 25 richest Americans that as a whole, paid a "true tax rate of only 3.4% -- but again, that's more than what the Trumps paid -- link.
  • I don't even want to think how much I paid in 2020, how much in 2021 and how much I'll pay in 2022.
  • The Bidens in 2020:  The President and the First Lady filed their income tax return jointly and reported federal adjusted gross income of $607,336. The Bidens paid $157,414 in federal income tax and their 2020 effective federal income tax rate is 25.9 percent. Link here.

Keystone Pipeline: the system is now operational to all delivery points -- source.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 46.

WTI: $78.63.

Natural gas: $4.566.

Five new permits, #39534  - #39538, inclusive:

  • Operator: Hess
  • Field: Manitou (Mountrail)
  • Comments:
  • Hess has permits for five EN-Enger wells in NENE 15-156-94; to be sited 588 FNL and between 434 FEEL and 566 FEL

Twenty permit renewals:

  • Slawson: one Ripper Federal permit (Mountrail)
  • CLR (19):
    • two Schroeder permits (Williams)
    • two Marleene permits (Williams)
    • four Lancaster permits (McKenzie)
    • one Chicago permit (McKenzie)
    • two Charlotte permits (McKenzie)
    • two Sacramento permits (Williams)
    • one Akron permit (McKenzie)
    • two Thronson permits (Mountrail)
    • one Sorenson permit (Mountrail)
    • two Sodbuster permits (Williams)

Five permits canceled:

  • Petroshale: five Tahu permits canceled

One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed:

  • 36185, 1,118, Olaf 42X-11EXF, Williams

EIA Weekly Petroleum Report -- December 29, 2022

API from yesterday:

Weekly report, link here:

  • US crude oil inventories increased by 0.7 million bbls; now stand at 419.0 million bbls; 6% below the five-year average;
  • US refiners operating at 92.0% of their capacity
  • distillate fuel inventories increased by 0.3 million bbls; remain at 7% below the five-year average.
  • jet fuel supplied was up by a whopping 8.6%;

Gasoline demand, link here:


Jet fuel delivered
:

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The Apple Page

I think we may have discussed this before: the difference between OLED and LED.

In one drawing:


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Mnemonics

House: Season 1, episode 2.

Acronym: MIDNITE

  • metabolic
  • inflammatory
  • degenerative
  • neoplastic
  • infection
  • trauma
  • environmental

Third year medical students have these in their toolkit.

Admission orders: DC Van Dissl, MD (but varies)

  • diagnosis
  • condition
  • vital signs
  • activity
  • nursing procedures
  • diet
  • ins and outs
  • sleep medications
  • stool medications
  • labs
  • meds
  • diagnostic tests

Physicians "learn" these in their first year of clinical medicine. They still remember them seventy years later. 

MNRL --> STR; Three Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- December 29, 2022

2023: global oil demand could surge three to four million bopd next year. Alex Kimani.

  • hint: watch for May 31, 2023

MNRL --> STR:

  • the announcement, September 6, 2022: link here.
  • completion of merger announced, December 29, 2022: link here.
  • shares, exchange: link here;

Tax selling losses:

Jobs, BLS: link here.

Market after BLS report released: link here.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 300 points Thursday after initial unemployment claims data from the Labor Department exceeded estimates. And Tesla stock surged as Morgan Stanley reiterated an overweight rating with a reduced price target.
Weekly unemployment figures showed first-time claims rose to 225,000 vs. 216,000 in the previous week, higher than Econoday estimates for a rise to 222,000. Claims have been up and down in recent weeks, but generally trending lower since a mid-November high of 241,000.

Job market is still strong, link here

Stocks rallied on Wall Street in afternoon trading Thursday as investors reviewed the latest government update showing that the labor market remains strong.

The S&P 500 rose 1.8% as of 1:46 p.m. Eastern. More than 95% of stocks within the benchmark index gained ground. It's the latest oscillation in what has been a volatile, holiday-shortened week for stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 376 points, or 1.1%, to 33,250 and the Nasdaq rose 2.6%.

Last week, the market went down because the job market was still strong. Whatever.

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Back to the Bakken

The Far Side: link here.

Active rigs: 45.

WTI: $77.64.

Natural gas: $4.442.

Friday, December 30, 2022:
37642, conf, Slawson, Genekat Federal 5-13-12TFH,

Thursday, December 29, 2022:
38956, conf, Ovintiv, Anderson Federal 152-96-9-4-13H,
38199, conf, Hess, EN-Rehak A-155-94-1423H-4,
37641, conf, Slawson, Genekat Federal 4-13-12TFH,

RBN Energy: EPA proposal brings third parties into fight against methane "super-emitters." Part 4

The Biden administration’s first foray into reducing methane emissions from oil and gas operations, released in November 2021, promised to reduce emissions from hundreds of thousands of existing sites, expand and strengthen emission-reduction requirements, and encourage the use of new technologies. It was clear about one other thing too, namely that more was already in the works. And sure enough, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently followed up with a proposal that significantly broadens the initial plan. In today’s RBN blog we look at that supplemental proposal, its targeting of so-called “super-emitters,” and why third-party groups will play a bigger role in mitigating methane emissions in the years ahead.

We have written extensively about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the past few years. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has often been the focus, but methane is also an important part of those discussions because it’s a particularly powerful GHG, with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) that is 25-36 times that of CO2 when normalized to a 100-year timeline. (And more than 80 times that of CO2 if normalized to a 20-year timeline.) A tricky part of the problem is that the actual level (and sources) of methane emissions can be hard to accurately identify and quantify, mostly because estimates can vary greatly depending on how they’re calculated.

Wow, Wow, Wow -- The Kraken Jenna Wells Are Going To Be Monster Wells -- December 28, 2022

Updates

January 2, 2023: important update. 

Original Post 

The Kraken Jenna wells are now being reported.

See map below; this was not on my bingo card. This is about the last oil field in which I would expect wells like this. [See update, January 2, 2023, above. Now we know why.]

I have time to post only one Jenna well:

  • 38509, F/A, Kraken, Jenna 4-33-28 3H, Burg, t--; cum 239K 10/22; 240K x $70 = $17 million at the wellhead:
PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN10-20223022682224563168223560219091051
BAKKEN9-2022262372624128303482706426215349
BAKKEN8-2022313191231979430722904028468356
BAKKEN7-2022232033920414303871728816639490
BAKKEN6-2022293044630501467182435623569581
BAKKEN5-20222925162246654125117363131703975
BAKKEN4-2022222100121305374911480614129408
BAKKEN3-2022202304122598431731705116378434
BAKKEN2-202278138836918609586044841274
BAKKEN1-20222732369317966738223630211862052

The map:

Updating Initial Production Data For CLR Rolf Federal Wells In One Of My Favorite Fields -- December 28, 2022

The CLR Rolf Federal wells are tracked here

Updates. A couple of those wells.

38297, drl/A, CLR, Rolf Federal 9-17H, Brooklyn, t--; cum 154K 10/22;

PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN10-2022311511815002200125791457386125
BAKKEN9-20223021905217952305866036642941358
BAKKEN8-20222822300223852172542732403822021
BAKKEN7-20223141194415173331375865712444222
BAKKEN6-20223042982427463740073248702132660
BAKKEN5-20228102289867156411509014789301
BAKKEN4-2022431931937409770977

38296, drl, CLR, Rolf Federal 10-17H1, Brooklyn,  t--; cum 129K 10/22

PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN10-2022311592715835205505288052338139
BAKKEN9-2022251977519630222294447443858306
BAKKEN8-20222312420125051373325034194265378
BAKKEN7-20223135819358053434961224595321293
BAKKEN6-20223035717358433752360945577812785
BAKKEN5-2022888928528154671348412868616
BAKKEN4-202253353353023000

Perhaps, the parent well:

  • 20183, 282, CLR, Rolf 1-20H, Brooklyn, t6/11; cum 488K 10/22;
PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN10-2022318188403875207816590
BAKKEN9-2022307635513885165712520
BAKKEN8-2022316827913825117872930
BAKKEN7-202228483317345763426910
BAKKEN6-2022600121431410
BAKKEN5-20220000000
BAKKEN4-20220000000
BAKKEN3-20220000000
BAKKEN2-2022158891154872310629300
BAKKEN1-2022312025190722818248775673
BAKKEN12-20213119672062239296489011220
BAKKEN11-202130206519152589906686620
BAKKEN10-202131215323122803823178130

A Hess EN-Johnson Well Is A Monster Well -- December 28, 2022

The graphics:


The Hess EN-Johnson wells are tracked here.

Here we go.

  • 37711, loc/drl-->loc/A, Hess, EN-Johnson A-155-94-2932H-9, Alkali Creek, first production, 9/21; t--; cum 248K 10/22 in thirteen months; at the wellhead, $70 x 248 = $17.4 million.
PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
BAKKEN10-2022318560859467813767037311359
BAKKEN9-20223082898247701537272298727400
BAKKEN8-202231696269911542534750273037447
BAKKEN7-20223111903119101386139377343535024
BAKKEN6-2022301439414381134973396933692277
BAKKEN5-20222613156131761109229424294240
BAKKEN4-202227128241280690552823427773461
BAKKEN3-202231145531458895002576825538230
BAKKEN2-2022282263122582156243644335847596
BAKKEN1-20222917106171301316338068354592609
BAKKEN12-20212722768228091351034807330211786
BAKKEN11-20213038405384212760860480580662414
BAKKEN10-20213150594505304047152343507211622
BAKKEN9-20211866016540428289918625366