Manic Monday -- March 17, 2025

Locator: 48515B.

Golf: Rory McIlroy wins the Players Championship on a St Patrick's Day three-hole playoff in spectacular fashion.

Coal:

• German deindustrialized to "save the world"
• being reported today: China will burn as much coal in a decade that the US burned in 200 years (numbers rounded)
• China will likely run out of indigenous coal within 30 years
• Taiwan is not known for its coal deposits

Copper: SCCO, FCX. 

Harvard: free tuition for families with income less than $200,000. Was $85,000.

• currently, the annual investment income earned by the endowment is taxed at 1.4 percent.
• Vice President JD Vance has proposed raising it to as much as 35 percent.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $67.84.

New wells:

• Tuesday, March 18, 2025: 47 for the month, 162 for the quarter, 162 for the year,
• 40482, conf, Silver Hill Energy Operating, Tucson W 158-94-26-35-1MBH,
• 40473, conf, Hess, GO-John-156-98-0508H-4,
• 40157, conf, Hess, EN-Schroeder-157-94-1102H-4,
• 40031, conf, Hunt Oil, Shell 153-89-6-8H 1,
• Monday, March 17, 2025: 43 for the month, 159 for the quarter, 159 for the year,
• 41023, conf, CLR, Bud FIU 8-30H,
• 39317, conf, Grayson Mill, Marilyn 31-33 1H,
• Sunday, March 16, 2025: 41 for the month, 157 for the quarter, 157 for the year,
• 40866, conf, BR, West Kellogg 4B-MBH-B,
• 40302, conf, Hess, GO-John-156-98-0508H-2,
• 40033, conf, Hunt Oil, Shell 153-89-5-8H 1,
• 40030, conf, Hunt Oil, Oakland 154-89-31-30H 3,
• Saturday, March 15, 2025: 37 for the month, 153 for the quarter, 153 for the year,
• 41050, conf, BR, Phantom Backbone 7D-ULW,

RBN Energy: ONEOK, MPLX ramp up their Permian-to-Gulf infrastructure, sometimes in tandem. Archived.

Crude-oil-focused drilling and completion in the Permian Basin is generating fast-increasing volumes of associated gas — and creating opportunities for midstream companies that provide “wellhead-to-water” services for natural gas and NGLs. ONEOK has become a much bigger player in this space via several transformational acquisitions and MPLX has been making moves of its own. (The companies also are working together on a new LPG export terminal — and more.) In today’s RBN blog, we continue our review of Permian-to-Gulf midstreamers’ expansion plans with a look at what ONEOK and MPLX are up to. 

This is the third blog in our series on the handful of companies that offer the full gamut of midstream services and thereby reap the benefits of operating with extraordinary efficiency, collecting fees from shippers each step of the way, and feeding pipelines, fractionators, storage and export terminals along the network’s value chain. In Part 1, we detailed plans by Enterprise Products Partners and Energy Transfer to build new gas processing plants, add NGL pipeline and fractionation capacity, and expand their already significant ability to export NGL purity products like propane and butanes. (Energy Transfer is also building a new, long-haul gas pipeline.) In Part 2, we examined the recently updated capex plans of Targa Resources and Phillips 66 (P66). Targa has a long list of projects planned, including five gas processing plants, an NGL pipeline (Delaware Express), new fractionators and expanded LPG export capacity, while P66 has been growing its midstream portfolio primarily through acquisitions (including Pinnacle Midstream and — later this year — EPIC NGL).

In today’s blog, we turn our attention to ONEOK and MPLX. ONEOK, like P66, has become a significant player in Permian-to-Gulf midstream infrastructure in large part by buying assets and entire companies. And, unlike the midstreamers that focus on processing and moving natural gas and NGLs (and exporting NGL purity products), it also transports, stores and exports Permian-sourced crude oil.

Figure 1. ONEOK Assets and Projects in Permian-to-Gulf Region. Source: RBN