The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog): 06/09/25

Monday, June 9, 2025

Oh-Oh -- Another Solar Energy Company Files For Bankruptcy -- Charles Kennedy -- The House Of Cards, Falling Faster Than Anyone Could Have Imagined -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48728SOLAR.

From Charles Kennedy over at oilprice. Mosaic, home page. Wiki. A "national" company but headquartered in Oakland, California.

Look at this:

US residential solar financing has taken a sharp dive, with Mosaic, a top lender underwriting over $15?billion in home energy loans, filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday.

Founded in 2010, Mosaic enabled rooftop solar, battery storage, and efficiency upgrades for over 500,000 homeowners, but was struck hard by rising interest rates, uncertainties around federal Sections 25D and 48E tax credits, and tighter capital conditions.

The company secured $45?million in debtor-in-possession financing, including $15?million in fresh capital, enabling Mosaic to continue operations and fulfill ongoing loan and construction commitments. Court filings also show motions to maintain payroll, vendor contracts, and complete installations caught mid-project, according to PV magazine.

Mosaic’s filing extends a troubling trend in solar finance. This week Sunnova, another major rooftop provider, also filed for Chapter 11, listing assets and liabilities between $10?billion and $50?billion, and laying off 55% of its workforce (~718 employees).

Both firms cited weakened demand, rising rates, rollback of subsidies in key markets like California, and policy uncertainty—including threats to solar tax credits.

Industry analysts warn that Mosaic’s collapse may slow new rooftop solar installations in 2025, undermining the 1.1?GWdc of residential PV added in Q1, already down 13% year-on-year.

Projects funded through other third-party models, like power-purchase agreements, may outlast bank-loan structures, but the disruption jeopardizes momentum for residential solar growth.

The Big Beautiful Bill:

For energy markets, the broader takeaway is not optimistic because it is impossible to decouple solar demand from financing and regulation. As Washington debates tax-credit extensions, installers and financiers are vulnerable. The coming weeks are pivotal, with Congress potentially taking a firm stance on whether the residential solar boom remains intact or buckles under financial strain.

From earlier today:

Sunnova files for bankruptcy: link here. Add it to the list. Wiki.

founded in Houston, 2012;
solar panel installations, battery storage and repair serves to homeowners and businesses;
nationwide footprint;
share prices plunged below $1 in March, 2025.
traded for as much as $54 back in late January, 2021, but was down to $11 last summer and falling fast.

Zavanna With Three New Permits -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48727B.

WTI: $65.37.

Active rigs: 32.

Three new permits:

Operator: Zavanna
Field: Stockyard Creek (Williams County)
Comments:

Zavanna has permits for three Sigurd wells, NENE 05-153-99, to

be sited 508 / 568 FNL and 773 FEL;

41980: sections 28 / 29 / 32 / 33 -154-99
41981: sections 28 / 33 -154-99
41982: sections 4 / 5 / 8 / 9-153-99;

Two permits canceled:

WPX Energy, a Two Shields Butte permit and a High Hawk permit both NWNW 10-149-92; Dunn County;

AI Runs On Energy -- Mostly Natural Gas But Certainly Nuclear Energy Also, Most Of Which Germany Does Not Have -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48726AMZN.

Amazon, link here.

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For The Archives

Link here.

I may comment on these later.

Williston State College Scholarship Update; Re-Posting Link To Boom And Bucket Scholarships -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48725WSC.

Re-posting.

If I remember, I will re-post this information every so often.

Locator: 48691WSC.

A reader sent me an e-mail requesting that I link scholarship information at this link:

Link to Boom and Bucket.

I have no relationship or connection with Boom and Bucket other than posting this link.

Background.

The "Boom and Bucket" reader had seen a post on the blog with regard to Williston State College scholarships. That blog was posted back in 2014.

I posted all of that on the blog earlier this week but today the Marketing Director at Williston State College sent me an e-mail telling me the college has updated their scholarship information and asked if I could update the blog.

The Williston State College scholarship information is linked here.

Dated October 30, 2024, the press release states that WSC has introduced a newly restructured scholarship program designed to provide students with great control and flexibility.

The updated Homesteader Scholarship now offers up to $4,000 per year, allowing students to use funds for not just tuition and fees, but also for books, housing, and food. This expanded coverage provides greater freedom for students to tailor their aid to meet their personal financial needs, giving them more control over how they manage college expenses.

“By expanding the scope of how scholarship funds can be used, we’re helping students make their financial aid go further,” said Hunter Berg, Executive Director of the Williston State College Foundation. “This flexibility means that more students can afford college without the financial strain that often comes with hidden costs like housing and books.”

The newly revised WSC scholarships:

Offer up to $4,000 per year: Funds can be applied toward tuition, fees, books, housing, and food.
Comprehensive coverage: Scholarship dollars now cover a variety of college-related costs, helping students manage more than just tuition.
Maximized aid: Scholarships are applied after federal grants such as Pell Grants, allowing students to make the most of their available resources.

Hopefully that's all correct. If any of the above information is incorrect or needs to be edited, please let me know.

On another note, something I think about often:

Both my brother and I benefited from low-interest rate loans from the Alva J. Field Memorial Trust many, many years ago.

Miscellaneous -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48724STAGE.

Tony Awards! Highlight of the night, for me. Nicole for Sunset Boulevard. One of my favorite movies, on stage. I don't "own" a copy of Sunset Boulevard on/in Amazon Prime, but may have to consider. Apparently the entire stage play is minimalistic and in black, white, and shades of grey with one exception. Based on the comments elsewhere I can guess the exception. I'll bet it's eye-catching on stage!

Local "Lego" store.

Link here.

Good Ol' Summertime -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48723SUMMERTIME.

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The Book Page

This week's book (along with several other books). The math is way beyond what I can do, but the narrative is very, very good. But the author says one must be comfortable with "advanced math" used by third- and fourth-year college students majoring in math.

The book cover:

An example of the narrative that makes the book so enjoyable, the paragraph inside the red triangle:

"That" holds true for the logarithm exponent identity, also known as the power rule, which also confused me when I was first introduced to that "identity."

Wow, talk about splitting hairs, semantics. Whatever.

Monday -- June 9, 2025

Locator: 48722B.

From Hart Energy, happy anniversary:

From Hart Energy: It was 25 years ago, in a nondescript corner of eastern Montana, that wildcatters unlocked the recipe that would turn the U.S. into the world’s top oil producer.
On May 26, 2000, the first stimulated horizontal oil well was landed targeting the middle Bakken Formation in Montana’s Elm Coulee Field.
My dad and I drove by that well many, many times over the years; paid no attention to it. We were watching the river, the sugar beets, the beautiful scenery. It was amazing how flat, expansive that area was, perfect for really, really good farming.

Locator: 48722B.

China - US: "first" Boeing plane lands in China for delivery as tariff war eases. Link here. In addition, China-US trade talks to begin in London today. Boeing shares are up 34% in past six months and are up slightly this morning in pre-market trading.

Sunnova files for bankruptcy: link here. Add it to the list. Wiki.

founded in Houston, 2012;
solar panel installations, battery storage and repair serves to homeowners and businesses;
nationwide footprint;
share prices plunged below $1 in March, 2025.
traded for as much as $54 back in late January, 2021, but was down to $11 last summer and falling fast.

EVs: link here.

Rivian R2 will nnderpin all future EV projects at Volkswagen.

Audi? Porsche? Yes, Yes. Don't forget newcomer Scout, plus Lamborghini, Skoda, Seat and all of the others under the VW group umbrella.

Yes, you read that right—the R2's DNA will be in not just one future product, but all of Volkswagen's new battery-powered models moving forward.

That all starts with the upcoming affordable VW Every1 (which will have a new name by the time it releases), which will use an off-the-shelf version of the zonal architecture, and then trickle into newly-released models thereafter.

R2 is the platform that will underpin actually all future EV products at VW. So it's really that modular, scalable technology stack that we will take into VW brands, and we will do it in a way where we will still allow each of the brands to express their own identity.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $64.92. Saudi has not appeared to increase production. BofA suggests oil prices could ump on coming short covering. Story at oilprice.

New wells:

Tuesday, June 10, 2025: 34 for the month, 187 for the quarter, 401 for the year,

41118, conf, Oasis, Sawtooth 5202 24-20 3B,
41178, conf, CLR, Helen 5a-8H,

Monday, June 9, 2025: 32 for the month, 185 for the quarter, 399 for the year,

41179, conf, CLR, Kenneth 5-17H1,
41117, conf, Oasis, Sawtooth Federal 5202 24-20 2BX,
40685, conf, Hess, GO-Skjei MW TR-158-98-3526H-3,
40608, conf, Enerplus, Danielle 145-97-12-1-2H-WLL,
40607, conf, Enerplus, Danielle 145-97-12-1-3H,
40516, conf, BR, Keene 14-36 TFH,
40338, conf, Hess, GO-Skjei MW TR-158-98-3526H-2,

Sunday, June 8, 2025: 25 for the month, 178 for the quarter, 392 for the year,

41355, conf, Five States Operating, BC 2-21H,

Saturday, June 7, 2025: 24 for the month, 177 for the quarter, 391 for the year,

41180, conf, CLR, Helen 6-8H1,
40517, conf, BR, Keene 14-36 MBH-ULW,

Enerplus Danielle wells: tracked here. Too early for much new data.

RBN Energy: EOG Resources, upbeat on Utia condensate, doubles down with Encino deal. Archived.

There’s been a surge in E&P interest in the Utica Shale’s volatile oil window the past couple of years, and EOG Resources has been particularly optimistic about its potential for producing large volumes of condensate, the lightest of superlight crude oils. A few days ago, EOG — known for growing its business organically, not via M&A — announced one of the largest acquisitions of the year so far: the planned purchase of Encino Acquisition Partners (EAP), the Utica’s #1 condensate producer by far, for $5.6 billion, including the assumption of EAP’s debt. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, the deal will give EOG its third “foundational” focus area (the others are the Eagle Ford and the Permian's Delaware Basin) and supports the view that the Utica really is an up-and-comer.
In our three-part Hit the Lights blog series a few months ago, we took an in-depth look at condensate production growth across a swath of eastern Ohio, as well as the leading E&Ps in the play and the pipelines and other infrastructure on which they depend. In Part 1, we said that while the broader “wet Marcellus/Utica” is famous for producing vast quantities of natural gas and NGLs, a handful of dogged, innovative E&Ps have concentrated primarily on producing fast-rising amounts of superlight crude — better described as condensate (condy or conde for short) — in the Utica Shale’s volatile oil window, focusing primarily on Ohio’s Carroll, Columbiana, Guernsey, Harrison and Noble counties. Most of the condensate has an API gravity of 55 to 59 degrees, but an increasing share is “heavy condensate” with an API closer to 50.

We noted that after ups and downs through the 2010s, Ohio’s crude oil production — almost all of it condy — is up nearly 3X from July 2022, when it averaged only 48 Mb/d; the state produced 136 Mb/d in March, according to the most recent data available from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Admittedly that’s only a small fraction of what the Permian is churning out (about 6.5 MMb/d lately, according to RBN’s weekly Crude Oil Permian report) and barely one-tenth of Bakken production. But EOG has said the eastern Ohio wells it’s drilled over the past couple of years have IP30 (initial production over 30 days) rates that compare favorably with the best wells in the Permian: 1,425 b/d to 3,250 boe/d, with crude oil/condensate’s share of the Utica wells’ production ranging as high as 70% on a boe/d (barrels of oil equivalent per day) basis.

In Part 2, we discussed the six largest condensate producers in eastern Ohio, starting with #1 EAP and followed by #2 Ascent Resources, #3 EOG, #4 Infinity Natural Resources (which launched a well-received initial public offering, or IPO, in January), #5 Expand Energy (the recently merged Chesapeake Energy and Southwestern Energy) and #6 GulfPort Resources. Part 3 focused on the uses for condensate produced in eastern Ohio and other parts of the Marcellus/Utica and how the condy is transported from wellsites to refineries and other end users.
Long story short (see Part 3 for details), Utica condensate is in demand — it can either be run as a feedstock at refineries, condensate splitters or petchem plants, blended into heavier crude or (in a pinch) used as diluent. As for infrastructure, a couple of things are worth pointing out. First, a good bit of the condensate emerging from eastern Ohio wells needs to have its light ends (propane/butanes) removed; some producers do this themselves at the well pad with heater treaters and some turn to centralized condensate stabilizer sites in Ohio (like MPLX’s at Cadiz, Williams Companies’ at Scio and Ergon Inc.’s at Marietta). Second, there are no condy gathering pipelines in the Utica — the volumes are too small (at least so far) to justify investments in them. Instead, condensate is stored at or near the wellhead in tank batteries, then loaded onto tanker trucks and driven either to the end user (typically a refinery or condensate splitter) or, more frequently, to the next mode of transport (a rail terminal, a marine terminal or a pipeline intake point). Part 3 discusses these takeaway options in depth.

Figure 1. EOG and EAP Acreage, Estimated Undeveloped Resource and Production. Source: EOG

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