Four New Permits; Three DUCs Reported As Completed -- Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Ohio derailment: exactly what do the reporters taking USDOT to task think that agency (USDOT) should have done immediately after the derailment? Asking for a reader. It's my understanding there was no human loss of life, and air quality is fine in "eastern Ohio." Folks have been allowed to return to their homes. No links; story everywhere.

Covid: with regard to Covid, it looks like Japan is finally out of the woods.  Completely out of touch and tone-deaf, the US CDC continues to push masks, despite evidence "supporting" what we knew all along: masks do/did not make a difference. Time for Americans to push back; of course, they won't. Masks are a great security blanket for a lot of Americans. And for the immunocompromised masks may play a role in mitigating transmission. For that reason, I continue to wear a mask where large groups of folks tend to congregate. Airlines seem to be managing this issue quite nicely. By the way, that "Norway vs Sweden" story. Sweden had almost 3x the number of deaths due to Covid than Norway, per capita.

Gasoline demand, link here: 

Breaking: 7:58 p.m. CT:

EVs: in round numbers -- EVs: link here. Scorecard.

• 2023:
• Tesla: 1.1 million EVs
• F: 500,000 EVs
• GM:
• 2026:
• Tesla:
• F: 2 million
• GM:

From Alex Kimani, link here, but it's not gonna happen in this environment:

Last month, Citi said that the time might be right for a U.S. oil giant such as Chevron or Exxon Mobil to buy either BP Plc., Shell Plc, or TotalEnergies which the Wall Street bank reckons are trading at a massive 40% discount.

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Investors And Reading

Palantir:

Charlie Munger of BRK: never stop reading.

From The New Yorker, February 13 & 20, 2023 "Greetings from Austin, by Lawrence Wright, p. 34++. 

Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist who co-founded Palantir, the data-analysis company, and started the investment-technology firm 8VC, among many other enterprises, came to Austin from Silicon Valley.

 “I like Texas,” he told me. “There’s this spirit of the Texas frontier—strong people confronting challenges and doing so boldly.” That’s the myth I grew up with, but it still has the power to summon entrepreneurs like Lonsdale. 

He worries that Austin’s rising cost of living disenfranchises the very people who made the city so distinct. 

“You want to have lots of hippies around because they make the music and the food better,” he told me. “But you just don’t want them in government.” 

After attending Stanford, Lonsdale became an intern at Peter Thiel’s PayPal, and got to know three future billionaires now living in Austin: Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, and Elon Musk. (Musk has claimed to live in a forty-five-thousand-dollar tract house in Boca Chica Village, at the bottom tip of Texas, to be close to his rocket company’s launch site, but he’s also been seen staying in friends’ mansions in Austin.) 

Called the “PayPal mafia,” they have brought with them the disruptive self-image and libertarian politics that characterized their Silicon Valley ventures. 

Palantir, which is based in Denver but has offices in Austin, typifies the moral complexity of the current tech culture. 

The company has been criticized for allowing U.S. immigration authorities to use its sophisticated software to arrest parents of undocumented children, and for working with the N.S.A. to improve software that the agency used to spy on American citizens. 

But during the pandemic the government tracked outbreaks by analyzing COVID-19 data with Palantir software, and the company’s algorithms are reportedly being used in Ukraine to monitor Russian troop deployments. David Ignatius, of the Washington Post, described Palantir’s code as “the most advanced intelligence and battle-management software ever seen in combat.” 

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Back to the Bakken 

Active rigs: 46.

WTI: $78.59.

Natural gas: $2.471.

Four new permits, #39661 - #39664, inclusive:

• Operators: CLR (2); Lime Rock Resources (2)
• Fields: Cedar Coulee (Dunn); Stanley (Mountrail)
• Comments:
• Lime Rock Resources has permits for a Lucky well and a Dusty well, NENE 30-155-91, 
• the former to be sited 295 FNL and 388 FEL; and Dusty to be sited 308 FNL and 350 FEL;
• CLR has permits for a Thorvald well and a Gale well, both in Cedar Coulee, NWNW 32-147-96; 
• with Thorvald to be sited 498 FNL and 244 FWL and Gale to be sited 493 FNL and 289 FWL

Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed (see this note):

• 36891, 693, Petroshale, Carson Federal 3TFH, Bear Den, no production data,
  
• 36892, 245, Petroshale, Bowie Federal 3MBH, Bear Den, no production data,
• 38013, 619, Petroshale, Thompson Federal 4TFH,, Bear Den, no production data,