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Monday, April 24, 2023

Oasis With Four New Permits -- April 24, 2023

Locator: 44465P.

"Politics." For the archives. All in the last 24 hours it's being reported:

  • Top marketing folks at BUD part company with the beer company.
  • Don Lemon and CNN part company.
  • Tucker Carlson and Fox News part company.
  • Not sure what this means, but Susan Rice has stepped down from her government job

Beer: the silliest issue. But I'm learning a lot about beer. Especially two things:

  • the stable of brands "under" Budweiser" / "MolsonCoors"; and,
  • profit margins for each. It's quite interesting.

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Back to the Bakken

Legacy fund: link here

North Dakota Legacy Fund: posts - 10.1% net return for fiscal year. Despite a negative ten percent, it's actually quite better than that reported by many others. Link here. I assume this includes deposits, but don't know for sure.

Active rigs:

WTI: $78.76.

Natural gas: $2.273.

Four new permits, #39848 - #39851, inclusive:

  • Operator: Oasis
  • Field: Rosebud (Williams)
  • Comments:
    • Oasis has permits for four Thunderhill Federal wells, NWSE 3-153-102; 
      • to be sited between 2048 FSL and 1913 FSL and between 1332 FEL and 1329 FEL

One permit renewed:

  • 38737, conf, Hartman 144-97-5A-3H, 

Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- April 24, 2023

Locator: 44464B.

Active rigs: 44.

Peter Zeihan newsletter.

WTI: $78.64 and trending up.

Natural gas: $2.270 and also trending up.

Tuesday, April 25, 2023: 44 for the month; 44 for the quarter, 299 for the year
38857, conf, Whiting, Littlefield 11-21-2TFHU,
38564, conf, Hess, GO-Haug-LE-156-98-1917H-1,
32922, conf, Whiting, Crane Creek State 11-16H,

Monday, April 24, 2023: 41 for the month; 41 for the quarter, 296 for the year
None.

Sunday, April 23, 2023: 41 for the month; 41 for the quarter, 296 for the year
38682, conf, Whiting, LBJ 14-14HU,
36146, conf, BR, Mazamaphantom 1A MBH-ULW,

Saturday, April 22, 2023: 39 for the month; 39 for the quarter, 294 for the year
None. 

Friday, April 21, 2023: 39 for the month; 39 for the quarter, 294 for the year
39062, conf, KODA Resources, Bock 3229-2 BH,
37474, conf, Petro-Hunt, Watterud 160-95-11C-2-3H,

RBN Energy: for LNG developers and sponsors, it's a tricky path to reach FID. Archived.

In the period between Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the end of last year, LNG sales and purchase agreements (SPAs) totaling 47.23 million tons per annum (MMtpa; 6.3 Bcf/d) were signed between buyers and nine U.S. LNG projects under development. Of those, the projects that will ultimately secure a critical mass of reputable offtakers and achieve a final investment decision (FID) must also secure permitting and financing. Two project FIDs were taken in 2022: Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage III in Texas and Venture Global’s Plaquemines Phase 1 in Louisiana. Although two more FIDs have recently been announced — Plaquemines Phase 2 and Sempra’s Port Arthur Phase 1 — there can be a timing disconnect between the commitments LNG buyers are prepared to make and the ability of project sponsors to deliver on their plans. In today’s RBN blog, we focus on the increasingly important role of financing in the implementation of U.S. LNG projects and the challenges that project developers and sponsors face.

Flashback: This Is From January 15, 2023 -- About Three Months Ago -- Re-Posting April 24, 2023

Locator: 44463A.

This story was written PRIOR to the deal reported last week -- Apple Savings partners with Goldman Sachs.

These two stories are amazing when read in this context.

This is truly tectonic what's going on in banking, fintech, Apple, Wall Street.

Link here, also: https://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2023/04/will-apple-take-big-bite-out-of-banks.html.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.    

From January 14, 2023.

There were two huge stories reported yesterday.

Here is the first of those two.

Apple.

To put this in perspective, for Big Pharma a "one-billion-dollar-in-sales (annual)" is a blockbuster drug for Big Pharma. They don't come often but when a pharmaceutical company books $1 billion in sales in one year for a single drug, that's a huge, huge story.

Yesterday someone noted that Goldman Sachs lost $1.2 billion due to a single Apple "product."

Link here

This is huge on several levels. 

For me personally, this is most interesting. Have you ever been charged (usually, about $25) for a late payment on a credit card? I have. Rarely and it's usually due to simply forgetting to pay on time, especially with a credit card I seldom use. 

At best, the credit card company reminds you after the deadline has passed, and you've already been assessed that late fee.

Apple Pay doesn't let that happen. If Apple has not received your payment within twenty-four hours (or thereabouts) of its due date, Apple sends you a reminder so you have a chance to "beat" that late fee. I wouldn't be surprised if someday, they take it a step further, and for "good" accounts, not only remind you of the due date pending, but adding an extra day or two if you've been a good credit card customer. 

I'm not sure, but I think Apple is moving toward a BNPL format -- buy now pay later -- which is now favored by many millennials. 

There are additional advantages with using Apple Card. 

But think about this.

Goldman Sachs. A bank. Market cap: $130 billion. Credit cards / its credit card division is a huge profit center for the bank. It's what banks do. Make money on credit cards.

But Apple. Credit cards -- for Apple the credit card division is a sideline -- probably run by some intern. LOL. And Apple has time to make its credit card division better. Its market cap? $2.15 trillion and will hit $3 trillion before GS hits $500 billion. 

Yes, this is a huge story. 

By the way, look at the photo above. With GS, most folks carry plastic. With the Apple Card, just carry your iPhone.

And, with Apple, you actually have three "options": Apple Pay, Apple Card, and Apple Cash

Okay, now look at this. 

This was posted last week before the GS story came out:

  • AAPL's biggest "outside" shareholder? Warren Buffett (BRK)?
  • who does Tim Cook call when he needs investment advice? And who picks up the phone personally?
  • if so, remember, if there's one thing Buffett knows and knows well, it's banks.

Really exciting. Even I have "Apple Wallet" -- linked with a non-Apple credit card.

From CNBC, June 7, 2022:

Flashback: This Is From January 15, 2023 -- About Three Months Ago -- Re-Posting April 24, 2023

Locator: 44462B.

This story is in the news today now that the refinery has been up and running for about a month.

From January 15, 2023:

Disclaimer: All my posts are done quickly. There will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them

Long notes like these are particularly prone to having errors. If this is important to you, go to the source. I'm less interested in individual well production as I am in understanding the Bakken

Updates

January 23, 2023: see this note. 

Original Post 

Yesterday, I said there were two huge stories that broke on Friday, January 13, 2023. The first story was with regard to Apple and banking. The second story, below, is about XOM and its refinery expansion (technically, a new refinery).

From Beaumont Enterprise, an exclusive, September 4, 2022. Right on schedule. Only in Texas.

This is huge. Corroborates my thoughts about so much with regard to Canada, heavy oil, the Keystone XL, light oil, the Bakken, and the Permian.

From the linked article:

ExxonMobil will be bringing 40 to 60 new permanent jobs to the area when it's expansion opens in the first quarter of 2023. This is a $2 billion expansion.

The company's Beaumont Light Atmospheric Distillation Expansion, more commonly known as BLADE, is the United States' largest refinery expansion in a decade.

The expansion is set to increase the light crude refining capacity at the facility by more than 65%. According to the company, its Beaumont Refinery brought in 383,000 barrels per day in the second quarter of 2022. The BLADE project will bring in an extra 250,000 barrels a day.

"The Beaumont Refinery Expansion Project will expand light crude refining to bring greater supplies of transportation fuels to the market," the company said. "The expansion consists of adding a third crude unit within the Beaumont Refinery's existing Footprint -- increasing production of diesel fuel to help meet growing demand."

Refinery Manager Rozena Dendy said the expansion is like a mid-sized refinery all on its own.

The project will also be increasing ExxonMobil's U.S. Gulf Coast refining capacity by close to 17%.

Since construction began in 2019, ExxonMobil has hired 1,600 contractors onto its workforce.

Much more at the link.

I assume if construction began in 2019, thinking about the project began seven years earlier, perhaps as early as 2012. What was going on in 2012?

I figured the Keystone XL was dead as of 2012. Link here.

In California News Today -- The Headline Story Over At The Los Angeles Times -- Tulare Lake Is Back -- Monday, April 12, 2023

Locator: 44461BT. 

Updates

May 20, 2023: California to open relief gates to mitigate Lake Tulare flooding

The intertie functions like a gated alley connecting two much larger streets. On one side lies a stretch of the Kern River called the Buena Vista Channel, and on the other is the California Aqueduct, a simple name for a complex system of tunnels and pipelines that transports water from Northern California and the Sierra to the state's arid central and southern expanses.

Original Post

I don't know if folks remember this, but if you do, hold that thought. This was the huge Red River flood of Grand Forks back in 1997. Photo link here.

Fast forward.

Out in California, The Los Angeles Times reports on something similar facing Tulare, California, central valley, northwest of Los Angeles, northwest of Bakersfield. Tulare Lake is back. See also the blog of June 24, 2017.

This story may or may not be behind a paywall. I was able to access it without difficulty.

The flooding has only recently begun and is expected to last at least two more years, assuming I read the article correctly, which seems correct because the state is working on a plan to raise the existing earth dikes another 3.5 feet.

What the flood plain looks like on the map:

Why this story is of interest? Not so much what was reported but what was not reported.

The California Bullet Train.

Link here.

The map from the state of California:

Going back to the earlier map:

Note: this is the easy part of the bullet-train-rail -- flat. No tunnels. No mountains. No major river crossings. Just absolutely flat.

And flooded.

The good news: they can put 12-foot dikes on either side / both sides of the rails.

The bullet train is tracked (no pun intended) here.

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Current Cost / Funding Status

Link here.