Locator: 51608ARCHIVES.
3:07 a.m, CT, September 1, 2026.
89,015.206 pageviews.
Current run rate about one million new pageviews every four to five days. No ads, no passwords, no subscriptions, not monetized.
Again: chatbots are truly amazing.
My son-in-law has linked Claude with his gmail. At the end of the day, he asks Claude to check his gmail for the day. Claude will let him know which e-mails he has not answered and Claude will prepare (and send, if directed) a reply to the unanswered e-mail. I believe this comes with the pay tier of Claude; could be wrong.
Iran blinks. But two tankers were just hit 29 seconds ago. — Staunovo.
Prior to these two tankers being hit, Iran (the official government) said it would cease hostilities if US concedes to original memorandum of some weeks ago.
That's a non-starter now that two tankers were just hit, including a fully loaded very large Saudi tanker and a very large Chinese tanker (oh-oh) -- suggesting IRGC or the Houthis did not get the memo.
Trump: the most transformative president since FDR, WWII.
Russian cargo plane just landed in Iran. 29 minutes ago. — Staunovo. About the size of a C-141.
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A Musical Interlude
Link here. Don't worry, be happy. Seventeen years ago. Things haven't changed.
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More News
WTI: 487.64. Up $1.28; up 1.49%.
The Venezuelan oil deal. Link here. Bigger than pundits first anticipated.
If $100bn of capital eventually restores Venezuela toward more than 2 million b/d, then the tension with Opec+ becomes obvious.
A US-aligned Venezuelan producer sitting on 65bn bl and encouraged to maximize output would eventually sit awkwardly inside a producer group built around supply management (OPEC).
Venezuela will likely leave OPEC.
Locator: 51604B.
Manned a/c vs drones: I finally understand why manned bombers and manned fighters are needed. Link here. GBU-72 and the GBU-57. See this blog post.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $87.92. Continues to climb the wall of reality. Whoo-hoo. This comes overnight and after reports of two very large oil tankers (one Saudi Arabian; one Chinese) hit by projectiles.
New wells reporting:
- Wednesday, September 2, 2026: 3 for the month, 101 for the quarter, 440 for the year,
- 42332, conf, XTO, GBU Artemis 32X-13E-N,
- Tuesday, September 1, 2026: 2 for the month, 100 for the quarter, 439 for the year,
- 42331, conf, XTO, GBU Artemis 32X-13A-N
- 41881, conf, XTO, GBU Artemis 32S-13B-S,
RBN Energy: Enbridge's deal with Sal Creek helps connect deeper to Permian crude and exports. Link here. Archived.
Enbridge announced plans to buy Salt Creek Midstream’s crude-oil gathering business for $600 million on August 26. The deal includes full ownership of the Orla and Wink North systems and a 50% interest in the Delaware Crossing system, giving Enbridge a stronger connection to Permian production.
From there, crude can move onto larger pipelines Enbridge has ownership of, such as Gray Oak or Cactus II, to Corpus Christi, then to the Enbridge Ingleside Energy Center (EIEC) for export. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss how the deal strengthens Enbridge’s link between Permian production and Texas Gulf Coast export markets.
We’ll start with some background on Salt Creek Midstream, whose early growth was rooted in both natural gas and crude oil gathering. Although we discuss the company’s broader midstream buildout below, the Enbridge transaction includes only Salt Creek’s crude oil gathering business. As we noted in Happy Together, Salt Creek was formed in mid-2017 as a joint venture between Ares Management and ARM Energy. Ares provided the financial backing and investment platform, while ARM contributed midstream operating expertise. Salt Creek moved quickly to assemble a broader Delaware Basin midstream business, signing gas gathering dedications with five producers covering more than 175,000 acres by the end of 2017.
From the outset, the strategy extended beyond local gathering. Salt Creek secured capacity on Kinder Morgan’s El Paso Natural Gas Line 1600 to move Delaware gas toward Waha and western markets, became a minority partner in EPIC Midstream’s NGL pipeline, and contracted 150 Mb/d of capacity on EPIC Crude (see Flick of the Switch). It also developed gas, crude and produced-water gathering systems, giving producers a single provider for multiple services.
Salt Creek’s approach was distinctive because it linked its infrastructure to downstream markets without owning every piece of the chain. It used contracts, capacity rights and joint ventures to connect its gathering systems with major outlets. For crude (colored areas in Figure 1 below), that meant gathering and storage in the Delaware, a route to Wink, capacity on EPIC Crude (non-Enbridge owned and recently renamed Cactus III) and access to export-dock capacity at Corpus Christi. The result was a wellhead-to-water offering for its producer customers.
