Three New Permits -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50373B.

WTI: $104.70.

Active rigs: 24.

Three new permits, #42799 - #42801, inclusive: 

• Operator: Silver Hill Energy Operating,
• Fields: Stoneview,
• Comments:
• 42799, conf, Silver Hill Energy, Holte W 161-94-31-18-10MBHXL, lot 2 3-160-95, 
• to be sited 434 FNL and 1507 FEL; 8-section spacing;
• 42800, conf, Silver Hill Energy, Holte W 161-94-31-18-1MBHXL, lot 2 3-160-95, 
• to be sited 434 FNL and 1472 FEL; four-section spacing;
• 42801, conf, Silver Hill Energy, Holte W 161-94-31-18-2MBHXL, lot 2 3-160-95, 
• to be sited 434 FNL and 1437 FEL; four-section spacing;

One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed:

• 41504, no IP test available, XTO, HBU Shoshoni Federal 11X-15A, Williams County; 

Sempra -- SRE -- Hits An All-Time High -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50372SEMPRA.

Whoo-hoo!

 

Heart Study -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50371HEARTHEALTH.

Link to The Guardian.  And this article links to the Europe Society of Cardiology.

Is this even plausible?

Does hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock count towards that 11 minutes more each night? 

The lede:

Fifty-three thousand folks kept track of exactly what time they "went to bed," but "going to bed" is not the same as "sleeping." I don't know anyone who knows exactly what time they fell asleep -- unless they're somehow hooked up to a polysomnograph. 

And eleven minutes over an 8-hour period of "sleep" -- is that even statistically significant?

And, then, reduce your risk of heart disease by 4.5 minutes with a brisk walk! Oh, give me a break. If that's all one needs to do ... a brisk walk for 4.5 minutes every day reduces your risk of major cardiovascular events. Wow, sign me up!

And what does that get you? A ten percent reduction in "avoiding" a chance of a major cardiovascular event. 

In a population of 53,000, one would expect a rate of 250 - 300 suffering a major cardiovascular event. Ten percent of 250 to 300 is 25 to 30 individuals.   

This study has had its 15 minutes of fame. By the end of the week the study will be consigned to the trash bin (or is it the dustbin) of history. 

Wow, how gullible do they think we are?

China: AI Token Consumption Jumps 57% Last Week, Week-Over-Week -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50370CHINESETOKENS.

Link here. 

WTI Surges To $104 -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50369WTI.

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Warthog

Link here to Barron's.  

 

Golden Pass -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50368QATAR.

Comment: this LNG story is really quite fascinating! 

Golden Pass (US export terminal) will more than make up for any LNG loss from Qatar the country, if I'm reading the links below correctly. How quickly the US becomes the largest LNG exporter. Truly amazing.

A reader sent me a note earlier today: how Europe has fallen so far behind in the energy producing sector; in fact, Europe has fallen even further behind in AI investment. Europe has become not much more than a tourist destination for Americans.

Link here. 

To be completed later, but here are the links:

• link here;
• link here; 
• link here. Link to the blog. 

 

Link here. 

Posted earlier:

Monday -- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50367B.

WTI: later, March 30, 2026 -- jump in WTI -- strange

• tickers for most oil and natural gas companies are down significantly from earlier highs;
• diplomatic efforts coming out of Mideast are more optimistic than pessimistic
• and yet WTI is now up almost 4%; up $3.60; trading at $103.20

And look how far natural gas has fallen! It's just been announced / reported that natural gas export at Golden Pass (XOM / Qatar Energy) has now surpassed that what was lost in Qatar due to missile / drone attacks by Iran. Link here. It certainly appears that the US can make up for any LNG "lost" from the Mideast in the US/Israel-Iran War.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $101 just before opening.

New wells reporting:

• Tuesday, March 31, 2026: 53 for the month, 157 for the quarter, 157 for the year,
• None.
• Monday, March 30, 2026: 53 for the month, 157 for the quarter, 157 for the year,
• 42217, conf, CLR, Louisville FIU 5-7H, 
• 41447, conf, Whiting, Violet Olson 5596 13-5 5BX, 
• Sunday, March 29, 2026: 51 for the month, 155 for the quarter, 155 for the year,
• 42216, conf, CLR, Louisville FIU 4-7H, 
• 42052, conf, Petro-Hunt, Tinjum 159-91-31C-19-1H, 
• 41477, conf, Hunt Oil, State C156-90-3-36H-5, 
• 41476, conf, Hunt Oil, State C 156-90-3-36H-4, 
• Saturday, March 28, 2026: 47 for the month, 151 for the quarter, 151 for the year,
• 42245, conf, CLR, Addyson 7-23H, 
• 42215, conf, CLR, Louisville FIU 3-7H, 
• 42189, conf, BR, Abercrombie 8-8-12 MBH, 
• 42053, conf, Petro-Hunt, Tinjum 159-91-31D-19-2H, 
• 41503, conf, Hess, RS-Sorenson-155-92-0105H-1, 
• 20595, conf, Devon Energy, Wahus Federal 152-97-13-24-1H, 

RBN Energy: the triple-whammy impacts of Iran war on refined products. Link here. Archived.

The ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Iran and the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz isn’t just stranding significant volumes of refined products (especially diesel, jet fuel and naphtha) in the Persian Gulf. It’s also resulting in potentially extensive and long-lasting damage to some refineries there and trapping crude oil that Asian refiners depend on to supply their own operations. The net effect is the largest disruption to the global refining sector in decades (with the exception of the demand-induced COVID lockdowns) and — depending on how long the Iran war continues — maybe ever. In today’s RBN blog, we look at the multiple impacts of the conflict on global refined product markets.

This is the second blog in our series about the effects of the Persian Gulf conflict that has been flaring since February 28. In Part 1, we focused on the region’s NGL fractionators and NGL exports. Before the war started a few weeks ago, the Gulf countries (not counting Iran) had more than 2.7 MMb/d of fractionation capacity, about two-thirds of it in eastern Saudi Arabia and the rest divided among Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As a group, they had been exporting an average of about 1.7 MMb/d of NGLs, including about 1.5 MMb/d of LPG (mostly propane, some butanes) and ~200 Mb/d of natural gasoline and pentanes-plus. (We noted that virtually all the region’s ethane is either rejected into natural gas or consumed domestically at petrochemical plants.)

Part 1 also explained that the vast majority of the Persian Gulf’s exported LPG ended up in Asia — mostly in India (more than 600 Mb/d) and China (more than 500 Mb/d) — and that, with the nearly complete stoppage in imports from the Gulf, India’s LPG supply situation is particularly dire. We added, finally, that there is little U.S. suppliers can do to help in the near term due to limited Gulf Coast LPG export capacity and the fact that it takes at least five to six weeks to transport LPG from Texas to India.

Today, we shift our focus to Persian Gulf refineries and their exports of refined products, which have been affected in the same way as exports of LPG and in many ways are more critical to global product markets.

As shown in Figure 1 below, the combined capacity of non-Iranian refineries in Persian Gulf countries totals about 7 MMb/d, including ~3.3 MMb/d in Saudi Arabia (dark-blue refinery icons), ~1.4 MMb/d in Kuwait (white icons), ~1.1 MMb/d in the UAE (green icons), 429 Mb/d in Qatar (pink icons), 380 Mb/d in Bahrain (purple icon), and 280 Mb/d in Iraq (gray icon). Importantly, Saudi Arabia’s capacity is split, with ~1.4 MMb/d on or near the Persian Gulf — and therefore directly affected by the situation in the Strait of Hormuz (orange circle) — and ~1.9 MMb/d along the Red Sea. (As we’ll get to, even the kingdom’s Red Sea-oriented refineries have been impacted by Iran’s retaliation to U.S. and Israeli attacks.)

Later This Morning, A Picture Will Be Worth A 1,000 Words, But Right Now --- March 30, 2026

Locator: 50366WTI.

"They" say the market it is in correction territory, down 10%. If your portfolio is poorly diversified, you are probably up 10% (or more). 

Ticker: CVX --

Later today -- 

Six months -- 

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The Book Page

Joyce Carol Oates vs Joan Didion. 

JCO: born 1938.

JD: born 1934. 

John Gregory Dunne: born 1932.

More later. It's too early in the morning to write on this now.

AI prompt: Joyce Carol Oates vs Joan Didion.

Joyce Carol Oates: Blonde; a fictional biograph of Marilyn Monroe.
her memoir following the death of her husband, A Widow's Story, 
reviewed in The New Yorker, December 5, 2010; link here.

Joan Didion on grief:

• Blue Nights, wiki; and,
• The Year of Magical Thinking, wiki.

AI prompt: was the word "vortex" when associated with grief, coined by Joan Didion or was "vortex" already used by grief therapists by then? 

Gemini: while Didion may not have been the absolute first person in human history to use the word "vortex" to describe emotional pain, she coined it as a specific, widely recognized metaphor for the modern, clinical experience of abrupt bereavement.

Blue Nights: published 2011

• a memoir; an account of the death of Didion's adopted daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, 
• died at age 39, 2005
• multiple major medical problems exacerbated by fall and subsequent intracranial hemorrage
• "blue nights": summer solstice, when the twilights turn long and blue;
• notable for its nihilistic attitude towards grief as Didion offers little understanding or explanation of daughter's death 
• a companion piece The Year of Magical Thinking, published six years earlier, 2005
• following the death of her husband and hospitalization of her daughter

The Year of Magical Thinking: published 2005

• memoir; the year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunner, 2003;
• acclaimed as a classic book about morning
• won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction
• drew upon her extensive notes, journaling;
• New York Times Book Review: ranked the book as the 12th best book of the 21st century; 

I spent a lot of time on this subject, grief and "vortex" for a couple of specific reasons. I will continue at a later date on a different blog. 

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The Book Page

Ten years from now, it is likely the best-seller in non-fiction will be a history of the US-Iran war called An American Tragedy. It will begin with the loss of Susie Wiles' ability to keep the president in check. 

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LNG (Cheniere)

Might LNG open above $300? LNG was trading for $190 on December 19, 2025 -- just a couple of months ago. That's a 58% gain in three months. Okay. With all the reading Charlie Munger was supposed to have done, one wonders.