Day 7 -- WTI Surges; Reaches $90 --- Friday, March 6, 2026

Locator: 50159B.

S&P 500: 

• to join: Vertiv (VRT); Lumentum (LITE); Coherent (COHR); and, EchoStar (SATS) to join S&P 500. 
• to be removed: Match Group (MTCH); Molina (MOH); Lamb Weston (LW); and, Paycom (PAYC)

*********************************
Back to the Bakken

WTI: during the day, surged 12.21%; up $9.89; trading at $90.90.

Active rigs: 27.

No new permits.

Five Producing Wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 39740, 4,292, Devon Energy, Darlene 13-24F ZW 1TFH, McKenzie County; see below;
• 40762, no IP, XTO, HBU Shoshoni 11X-15C, Williams County;
• 41057, no IP, XTO, HBU Shoshoni Federal 11X-15F, Williams County;
• 40911, 1,357, BR, Watchman Peak 5D, McKenzie;
• 41147, 873, BR, Watchman Peak 5C, McKenzie;

For the BR Watchman Peak wells, see this post. 

Huge well:

• 39740, 4,292, Devon Energy, Darlene 13-24F, XW 1TFH, Westberg, t9/25; cum 247K 1/26; 2560-acre spacing unit, sections 13 / 14 / 23 / 24 -152 -97; frack data not scanned: 39,413 over 14 days extrapolates to 84,456 bbls crude oil: 

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	1-2026	31	31383	31353	34301	116373	115717	391
BAKKEN	12-2025	27	29443	29435	31553	86044	85527	280
BAKKEN	11-2025	30	65365	65557	55319	142288	140538	1350
BAKKEN	10-2025	31	80848	80702	69737	162071	153774	8177
BAKKEN	9-2025	14	39413	39126	38488	119367	29547	89764

 

 

Alison's Quick Connects -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50158B.

Quick connects: 

• If Greenpeace's actions in ND cause the group's demise, that would be justice -- InForum

• Lawmakers seek to smooth rift between developers, landowners -- North Dakota Monitor

• Supreme Court ruling likely to trigger litigation for oil companies -- North Dakota Monitor

• Republican dispute over proposed North Dakota power line reveals a divided party -- MPR

• Federal government exploring slashing regulations to assist North Dakota and overall oil industry -- KFYR-TV

• Interior Secretary Doug Burgum travels to Venezuela to discuss mining critical minerals -- Bismarck Tribune

• Bridger pipeline planning to build 645 mile long multi-state pipeline through Montana -- KFYR-TV

• Intensity Infrastructure Partners and Rainbow Energy Center advance new gas pipeline -- Energies Media

• Senate declines to put eminent domain ban on ballot, concern for other utilities -- South Dakota Searchlight

• 'Carbon is dead,' along with the bill to make CO2 pipelines file an environmental study -- SD Searchlight

• PSC schedules public hearings in Crosby and Ray for proposed transmission line projects -- Williston Herald

• Data center concerns rise in western North Dakota county as NextEra, Basin eye project -- Bismarck Tribune

• ND oil official explains why the U.S. couldn't have afforded bombing Iran before Bakken oil drilling -- WZFG

• Oliver County approves conditional use permit for 420 mile transmission line -- The Center Republican

• Public Service Commission to discuss permit application for wind farm in Morton County -- KFYR-TV

• Here's the ND energy and environment news you might have missed from February -- Bismarck Tribune

• District 26 lawmakers reflect on accomplishments, energy, growth and the road ahead -- Dickinson Press

• North Dakota, Montana lawmakers back Iran strikes; North Dakota Democrats push back -- KFYR-TV

• North Dakota House Minority Leader Ista not seeking reelection for more family time -- Bismarck Tribune

• Dem-NPL leaders eye candidates to run for House Minority Leader Zac Ista's seat -- Dickinson Press

• State humanities group The Study ND receives funding for 'America 250' activities -- Dickinson Press

• ND land owners get tax notices; new state law requires more notification on property values -- The Journal

• North Dakota ethics commission chair Dr. Cynthia Lindquist to step down for out of state job -- KFGO

• ND native Rebecca Bradwisch McElwain achieves rank of US Army Major General -- Minot Daily News

• Recently appointed State Fire Marshall Matt Clark discusses plans and goals for office -- KFYR-TV

• In North Dakota, 202 immigrant commercial drivers' careers on hold during audit -- Dickinson Press

• Senator Dean Rummel and Representative Vicky Steiner are seeking reelection in 2026 -- Dickinson Press

• District 31 legislators prepare for election year; all three are seeking re-election -- Dickinson Press

• North Dakota rural health grant opportunities imminent as feds OK spending plan -- North Dakota Monitor

• Beulah tourism agency misspent gambling revenue says attorney general's office -- North Dakota Monitor

• Three roads and two township bridges in Ward County to see upgrades this summer -- KFYR-TV

• Hazen resident Steve Guenthner appointed to Mercer County Commission until November -- Hazen Star

• Presidential searches narrowing at Bismarck State College, Valley City State, NDSU -- North Dakota Monitor

• Bowman Co. Fire Dept. recipient of $500K rural catalyst grant for new regional facility -- Dept. of Commerce

• Divide County Schools join national trend in incorporating the 'science of reading' method -- The Journal

• 'I'm excited': Incoming Surrey school superintendent Steven Bucks reacts to board decision -- KFYR-TV

• Bismarck Career Academy helps students connect learning to life with hands-on skills training -- KFYR-TV

• Minot high schoolers create mini drone show before Magic City Discovery Centerbig event -- KX News

• How Iran can use its vast oil reserves as a weapon in retaliation against the United States -- Prairie Public

• U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran have surged oil prices; consumer costs at the pump expected to rise -- The Hill

• Data centers could double their current share of US power by 2030 according to a new analysis -- E&E News

• Middle East LNG shutdowns and refinery halts complicate global energy outlook after 3 days -- World Oil

• US success against Iran could be a game changer for world oil security -- Wall Street Journal

• U.S. oil and natural gas output hit record highs in Donald Trump's first year back in White House -- Townhall

• End of baseload as we know it - China, France retrofitting coal plants to operate intermittently -- Oil Price

• US and Japan ponder nuclear energy project in massive $550 billion investment package -- Oil Price

• United States is not expected to tap into its government stockpile of oil yet. Here's why. -- E&E News

• Biofuel supporters say nationwide E15 adoption could temper Middle East oil uncertainty -- KFGO

• Senate energy committee approves former Congressman Steve Pearce for BLM director -- World Oil

• Cramer leads colleagues in calling on EPA to reverse Biden-era vapor testing requirements -- Kevin Cramer

• US issues first commercial construction permit for nuclear reactor in years to Wyoming project -- KFYR-TV

• Courtroom activists: How rogue judges and green litigators are torching America -- American Greatness

• New York: Critics blame "Democrats in charge" for rising utility costs after nuclear plant closed -- Breitbart

• Pipeline bottlenecks and bad policy are driving up natural gas prices, not LNG exports -- RealClearEnergy

• Targeted by lawsuits, ExxonMobil fights back, sues California AG Rob Bonta for defamation -- Just The News

• Another confusing story highlights why media climate hysteria is coming to an end -- Empowerment Alliance

Apple Discontinued Fifteen Products This Week -- Most Of Them Less Than A Year After They Were Introduced -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50157TEXAS.

With all the new products Apple announced this week, it's easy to overlook the ones Apple discontinued. See also the Apple press release regarding some of these new products.

Link here. 

Fifteen products Apple discontinued this week:

• iPhone 16e with A18 (2025) 
• 11-inch ‌iPad Air‌ with M3 (2025) 
• 13-inch ‌iPad Air‌ with M3 (2025) 
• 13-inch ‌MacBook Air‌ with M4 (2025)  
• bought for my wife in November, 2024
• discontinued less than six months later, March, 2026
• replaced with the MacBook Air M5, March, 2026 
• 15-inch ‌MacBook Air‌ with M4 (2025) 
• 13-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with M5 and 512GB storage (2025) 
• 14-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with M4 Pro (2024) 
• 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with M4 Pro (2024) 
• 14-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with M4 Max (2024) 
• 16-inch ‌MacBook Pro‌ with M4 Max (2024) 
• Mac Studio with M3 Ultra and 512GB memory (2025) ‌
• Studio Display‌ with A13 Bionic (2022) 
• Pro Display XDR (2019) 
•  Pro Stand for Pro Display XDR (2019) 
•  Pro Display XDR VESA Mount Adapter (2019) 

Apple introduced

• the M3 chip family on October 30, 2023;
• the M4 chip on May 7, 2024; and, the M4 family, late October 2024
• the M5 chip family on October 15, 2025; the M5 family March 3, 2026.

It is amazing how fast Apple announces / releases upgraded chips. One assumes the M5 might be around for awhile. 

Book Of The Day: Genome, Matt Ridley, c. 1999

Locator: 50156TEXAS.

Chatbot / basic search is so incredibly good right now; absolutely amazing. These chatbots almost almost make taking notes a waste of time. 

I take a lot of notes while reading -- I have a very poor memory.

Today, reading Genone (notes are posted here) I came across something I would normally write down in my journal (or on the blog) but if I come across this "problem" again, it will be easier to simply "google" it than taking notes. 

Chatbot prompt: Genome by Matt Ridley is a great "beach book" or a book for a high school senior headed to college to study biology. But it was published back in 1999. Is there a similar book that is much more recent? 

Yes: A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes by Adam Rutherford, 2016. Link here.

Most interesting, the chatbot also returned this book as the second of ten books on that list:  

• The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, Walter Isaacson, c. 2021, a book that is on my night stand now and that I have pretty much completed. I plan to read it again (and take more notes). Notes on the book are here.

I can hardly wait until our two grandsons, age 6, twins, can start using their MacBook Neos for "search." It will be amazing. Probably three years from now?

******************************
Texas Relocations

 

Link here.

Texas was home to over 1,400 project announcements in 2025, the governor’s office reported. This includes relocations, new business openings and expansions.

On March 2, Texas received Site Selection Magazine’s Governor’s Cup, awarded to the state that attracts the most job-creating projects, for the 14th consecutive year.

“The crown jewel of economic development work is landing good jobs for your citizens, and nobody does that better than Texas,” said Ron Starner, the magazine’s executive vice president.

Demograhics Update -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50155BOOMERS.

If this is accurate -- holy mackerel -- all due to immigration during the Biden years because data before Biden years suggested a significant linear drop. 

Link here. 

Baby boomers, born, 1946 - 1964: in 2035 the age range of those boomers still alive --  71 - 89.

There are current 78.2 million baby boomers in the US right now. The youngest turn 60 years old this year. Wow, that's still pretty young. Apparently the peak was reached this past year -- boosted by immigration in the last few years. The baby boomer generation appears to have peaked at about 79 million. 

So, it's a bit confusing. Pew Research appears to disagree with the data above. Some sources suggest that the baby boomer population peaked within the last year or so; others saying the baby boomer population will increase by about 700,000 by 2035.  

They will "all" be collecting social security. 

Pew Research, link here. Pew Research suggests the 67 million now, will decrease to less than 50 million by 2035.

Maybe I'm misreading the numbers / the analysis.

Humanity's Last Exam -- New Benchmark Test To Test Accuracy Of Chatbots -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50154AI.

Link here. 

Humanity's Last Exam (HLE) is a language model benchmark consisting of 2,500 questions across a broad range of subjects. 

It was created jointly by the Center for AI Safety and Scale AI. 

Stanford cites Humanity's Last Exam as "one of the more challenging benchmarks" developed in response to the popular AI benchmarks having reached "saturation".

The test has been described as the brainchild of Dan Hendrycks, a machine learning researcher and the director of the Center for AI Safety, San Francisco, who stated that he was inspired to create the test after a conversation with Elon Musk, who thought the existing language model benchmarks, such as the MMLU (wiki link here), were too easy. 

Hendrycks worked with Scale AI to compile the questions. The questions were crowdsourced from subject matter experts from various institutions across the world.

Sample question: 

Hummingbirds within Apodiformes uniquely have a bilaterally paired oval bone, a sesamoid embedded in the caudolateral portion of the expanded, cruciate aponeurosis of insertion of m. depressor caudae. How many paired tendons are supported by this sesamoid bone? Answer with a number.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Better yet, put it in your top three favorite chatbots and see how they do.  

The answer to the question, by the way is: four (4). One pair of tendons on each side: two pair x two tendons per pair.

The question is a bit ambiguous -- oe must read it carefully. Is the question asking for the number of pairs or the the total number of tendons:

• total number of tendons: 4
• number of pairs: 2
• number of tendons in each par: 2 

Interestingly, when asking for an image / graphic of this bone, Google Gemini said such an image is not available to the typical search engines because the typical search engines don't search the highly detailed, academic, peer-reviewed sources that would be required to find such an image / graphic. 

AI has a long, long way to go. That seems like a fairly basic question for AI?

X-Files -- TGIF -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50153ARCHIVES.

Texas relocations: companies moving from out-of-state to Texas over past few years. Link here. 

Amazon: there was a problem overnight with Amazon. Down detector suggested Amazon was having problems between 12:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. but appears to be working fine now. My hunch: Apple.

Apple: press release. 

Airfares: I would expect surge in airfares for US routes, but AI not yet reporting that. 

Whipsawing: new word to describe oil prices.  

Iran:

• air dominance for allies;
• ballistic missile launches down 90% since first day as we enter 7th day
• commander-in-chief: directs CENTCOM to sink total Iranian navy
• Iranian drone launcher the size of a WWII a/c carrier has been hit by US and is on fire
• chatbot disagrees with me but I still see Kurds looking for opportunities in northern Iraq 

Knock on wood: most interesting -- civilian casualties in Israel -- zero?

Measles update: NBC tried to get this story back on the front page. Failed.

Flu: done for the year? Weird. We haven't seen the typical second stage yet? Link here. Update expected later today.

US oil production: highest levels every recorded -- SecTreasury Bessent. Link here. That's been the case for quite some time. No new records. Running around 13.8 million bbls oil per day. Unless we hit 14 million bopd nothing to see here.

US LNG exports: hit all-time record. Approaching all-time high of 20 Bcf/day. This surge solidifies the U.S. as the world's leading exporter, with total and cross-border exports reaching historic levels (cross border: primarily pipeline to Canada and Mexico). 

Qatar: says LNG exports will stop within weeks. US as the world's one dependable supplier looks safe, secure, and sensational. To paraphrase Seinfeld.

Personal choice, breakfast: I'm completely done with Starbucks. Now, 100%. I generally bike every day to McDonald's. Switched this past week. Ten-mile bike ride. AI US data; not local data. The biggest savings? Orange juice. Atrocious: cost of butter croissant at Starbucks, though $5 for orange juice is a bit pricey. I don't have coffee any more at either location (Keurig at home for 80 cents a cup). Just orange juice and a hash brown.

• Coffee:
• McDonald's: $1.69 to $2.00
• Starbucks: $2.45
• Orange juice:
• McDonald's: $1.50 to $2.50
• Starbucks: $4.50 to $5.55
• Side:
• Starbucks croissant: $2.95 to $3.45
• McDonald's hast brown: $2.38 to $3.19; this week -- buy a second hash brown for one dollar;
• Total:
• Starbuck's: $10.45 -- coffee, orange juice, croissant;
• McDonald's: $6.75

Money Market Fund US Assets -- New Record -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50152MMF.

My favorite chart. 

Link here. 

WTI Surges Another 4% Overight - Trending Toward $85 -- March 6, 2026

Locator: 50151B.

WTI:

New wells reporting:

• Sunday, March 8, 2026: 9 for the month, 115 for the quarter, 115 for the year,
• None.
• Saturday, March 7, 2026: 9 for the month, 115 for the quarter, 115 for the year,
• 41602, conf, BR, Sivertson 6E, 
• 40632, conf, Hess, EN-Hanson A-155-94-0607H-5, 
• Friday, March 6, 2026: 7 for the month, 113 for the quarter, 113 for the year,
• None.

RBN Energy: existing and planned natural gas storage facilities in East Texas and West Louisiana. Link here. Archived.

“Location, location, location” doesn’t just apply to residential and commercial real estate. It also holds true for natural gas storage, which is in high-and-rising demand along the Texas/Louisiana border, where a slew of new LNG export capacity is coming online — new gas-fired power plants, too. In today’s RBN blog — #3 in a series — we finish our look at existing and planned gas storage capacity in the corridor between the Haynesville/Western Haynesville and the LNG export complex along the Sabine-Neches and Calcasieu waterways, as well as storage near the Katy Hub west of Houston.

In Part 1, we said the three existing LNG export terminals in the Sabine-Neches/Calcasieu area demand up to 7 Bcf/d of natural gas and that four new terminals under construction there will add another 10 Bcf/d of demand over the next five years. The gas needs of these facilities and other large energy consumers can vary widely — and sometimes suddenly. As we noted last time, pipelines can absorb many of these variations with linepack and other means, but balancing gas supply and demand will require more gas storage facilities that can, for example, quickly receive large volumes of gas when an LNG train trips offline or quickly send out stored gas when demand for gas-fired generation spikes.

In our first  blog, we looked at Caliche Storage’s Golden Triangle Storage and Spindletop Expansion Project; Trinity Gas Storage’s Bethel, TX, facility; and Energy Transfer’s Bethel Gas Storage and Bammel facilities. Then, in Part 2, we discussed NeuVentus’s Texas Reliability Underground Hub in Liberty County, TX; the Black Bayou Energy Hub in Cameron Parish, LA; Gulf Coast Midstream Partners’ Freeport Energy Storage Hub (FRESH); and three Energy Transfer facilities: Moss Bluff in Liberty County; Egan in Acadia Parish, LA; and Tres Palacios in Matagorda County, TX.

Today, we conclude our review of gas storage facilities and projects in this general area — note that there is additional gas storage a little further afield, but we won’t be covering that in this blog series.

We’ll start with gas storage giant Williams Cos., which owns six gas storage facilities across Louisiana and Mississippi — some salt-cavern and some depleted-reservoir — with a combined capacity of about 200 Bcf, as well as 37 Bcf in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Most relevant to this blog series are Williams’s 48-Bcf Pine Prairie salt-cavern storage facility (magenta star in Figure 1 below) in Evangeline Parish, LA, and its 14-Bcf Arcadia facility (also salt caverns; pink star) in Bienville Parish, LA.

Pine Prairie has connections to Williams’s Transco Pipeline (light-purple line) as well as ANR Pipeline (dark-blue line), Columbia Gulf Transmission (CGT; light-blue line), Florida Gas Transmission (FGT; green line), Kinder Morgan Louisiana Pipeline (KMLA; yellow line), Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP; orange line), Texas Gas Transmission (TGT; dark-purple line), Texas Eastern Transmission (TETCO; brown line), and three natural gas power plants.