Boring Tuesday -- Five Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today -- January 10, 2023

Five four things that we've talked about for over a year and nothing has changed:

• stagflation;
• the recession;
• oil to hit $140;
• Biden will announce to run for re-election
• Biden has not visited the southern border.

Let's say, inflation comes way down earlier than expected -- those COLAs -- active military, retired military, and social security -- those COLAs are going to look really, really nice. Link here.

RMDs: thank goodness, no Santa Claus rally. RMDs really low this year (compared to last year -- which was a real disaster). But the better news: minimum age raised for taking first RMDs -- "age 73 in 23."

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 45.

The Far Side: link here.

WTI: $74.46.

Natural gas: $3.565.

Wednesday, January 11, 2023:
27880, conf, CLR, Jersey Federal 18-6H,

Tuesday, January 10, 2023:
38530, conf, Whiting, Kannianen 43-31-2H,
38196, conf, Hess, EN-Rehak A-155-94-1423H-7,
37565, conf, Petro-Hunt, Johnson 158-94-14A-23-2H,
36179, conf, BR, George 2C MBH,
27879, conf, CLR, Jersey FIU 17-6H,

RBN Energy: why US natural gas liquids production is surging. Archived.

Since the advent of the Shale Revolution way back in 2008, U.S. production of natural gas liquids from gas processing has grown pretty much non-stop, from an annual average of 1.8 MMb/d 15 years ago to 5.9 MMb/d in 2022 — a 9% compound annual growth rate. Today, NGL production exceeds 6.1 MMb/d and that number might be even higher if the glut of supply wasn’t depressing prices and discouraging the recovery of a lot of ethane. All that production has major implications for domestic pricing, upstream economics, midstream infrastructure, and downstream consumers like petrochemicals, not to mention international markets, which now receive roughly 40% of U.S. output. In today’s RBN blog, we examine what’s causing NGL production to continually increase.

To understand what’s going on with U.S. production of the mixed stream of natural gas liquids collectively known as NGLs (ethane, propane, butane, isobutane and pentanes+), it’s important to recognize the relationship between NGLs and the production of crude oil and natural gas — after all, they all come from the same holes in the ground in hydrocarbon-rich areas like the Permian, Bakken, and Eagle Ford. Because of their common origin, RBN refers to the three commodity streams (crude, gas and NGLs) as the “drillbit hydrocarbons.”

These days, about 80% of drilling in the U.S. is primarily directed at crude oil production, which makes sense because (generally speaking) crude is the most valuable of the drillbit hydrocarbons on a per-Btu basis. Crude doesn't emerge from shale plays on its own, of course — instead, it comes out of the ground mixed with what’s typically referred to as associated gas, a gurgling combination of methane (natural gas), mixed NGLs and various impurities. The composition of this oil/natgas/NGLs stew varies widely, not only between shale basins but within each basin and from well to well — and even within each well over time.