Three New Permits -- June 20, 2026

Locator: 51083B.

Markets: Dow closes out 1H26 with another all-time high. Despite a lot of headwinds. It's all about earnings. S&P and NASDAQ biggest gains last day of quarter trading since 2020.

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Back to the Bakken 

WTI: $69.50

Active rigs: 26.

Three new permits, #43075 - #43077, inclusive:

• Operators: Phoenix Operating (2); Heberdev Operating;
• Field: South Meadow (William County); and, Northeast Foothills (Burke County);
• Comments:
• Heberdev Operating has a permit for one Little Bit well, NENW 19-161-91, 
• to be sited 459 FNL and 1625 FWL;
• Phoenix Operating has permits for one Lord well and one Fedor well, both in lot 4, section 7-158-96, 
• to be sited 360 FSL and 821 / 941 FWL; the Lord with 4-section spacing; and, the Fedor well with two-section spacing. 

Ford Recall -- June 20, 2026

Locator: 51082FORD.

Ford recall: 

 One day earlier:

The Best Quarter For The "Stock Market" In Six Years -- But There's More -- June 30, 2026

Locator: 51081INVESTING

Tag divorce.

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Divorce, American Style

Early Morning -- June 30, 2026

Locator: 51081IRA.

Markets yesterday, the penultimate date/day of the end of the second calendar quarter, 2026:

Today, DJI: 52,238.16.

Ticker AAPL: this was from earlier this morning; since then AAPL has continued to increase:

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My Wife's Traditional IRA

At the time she opened an IRA, the Roth IRA was not available. Our only option was a traditional IRA. 

My wife's traditional IRA is actively managed by a major Wall Street financial institution. She actively participates in this IRA by working with the financial institution, adjusting the composition of the portfolio. 

She's been taking RMDs each year since she has been required to do so which was six or seven years ago. 

It appears that over that time span her traditional IRA has appreciated 35.8%. 

I'm sure others have done much, much better, but this gives one an idea how incredible the US equity market has been over the years. 

I provided a chatbot more specific figures and the chatbot had this to say:

With regard to what's going on this year:

Disclaimer / note: I do not have a background in finance / economics, so I often make content errors in my posts on such issues. So, the above is very likely inaccurate to some extent but it seems pretty much in line with what my wife seems to be experiencing.

Two important timing variables:

• EOY value of the traditional IRA (over which one has no control, and determine the RMD for the next year);
• when one takes one's RMD -- this is incredibly important; part of it is luck, part of it is not luck. 

LDCs -- US -- Surge In Data Centers Are Driving Natural Gas Demand In The Northeast -- June 30, 2026

Locator: 51080LDCS.

Today's RBN Energy blog has a great note on LDC build-out in the northeast.  

Link here for this particular update.

LDCs are tracked here. 

As an example:

After being in virtual limbo for the past couple of years, the Northeast gas market is reawakening. Pipeline projects to expand connectivity between Appalachia and demand centers are moving forward for the first time in years, including into the previously off-limits New York/New Jersey and New England market areas. [The current administration is, apparently, getting no credit. It gets tedious.] 

Regional flow dynamics are poised to shift as expansions debottleneck production and pathways out of the Appalachia producing region, deepening seasonal patterns. At the same time, structural changes, such as coal retirements and new data centers, are driving additional gas demand, and we’re already seeing more gas-related projects in areas where data centers are planned or under construction. In today’s blog, we’re calling out the heavy hitters among the 14 Northeast states, the places where big data center clusters already exist and more are planned.

As we detailed in Sweet Virginia, the center of the data center universe is Virginia. The state was the pioneer for data centers and has been home to them since the 1990s — long before most people even knew what a data center was. Virginia has more than 550 data centers, with some estimates at well over 600. Northern Virginia already hosts the world’s largest concentration of data centers, anchored by Loudoun (orange-shaded county on top of Figure 1 below) and neighboring counties, and industry estimates suggest the state’s installed and committed capacity runs into the multi‑gigawatt range, far beyond any other state, with the potential to significantly alter the region’s supply/demand picture, a topic examined in our new report. There are many thousands of megawatts already online, mostly serving hyperscalers like Amazon, Digital Realty, Equinix, Google, Microsoft and QTS. Meta’s 500‑MW Henrico facility near Richmond gives a sense of the scale of individual sites.

Figure 1. Planned Virginia Data Centers. Source: Novi Labs

What keeps pushing Virginia to the top of every list, though, are the development plans. There are hundreds of additional projects planned that would add tens of gigawatts (GW) of capacity, including multiple campuses in the 1-to-3-GW range, such as Microsoft’s Gainesville project in Prince William County, Amazon’s North Creek Tech Campus in Louisa County, and Tract’s big build in Hanover County. As Loudoun County — a primary suburb of the nation’s capital — runs short on land and available power, new campuses are also spilling into nearby Prince William, Fauquier, Culpeper, Stafford and Frederick counties (orange-shaded counties near top of Figure 1 above).

Virginia remains the epicenter of PJM’s data-center-driven load growth. PJM, the regional grid operator for much of the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, expects the Dominion Energy service territory in Virginia to see the biggest jump in peak electricity demand on its system through 2030, largely because of data centers. To handle that growth, PJM has signed off on major transmission upgrades, including several billion dollars of new lines and substations in Virginia aimed at maintaining reliability and pushing more power into Northern Virginia. On the natural gas side, TC Energy’s recently announced Appalachia Supply Project would add at least 800 MMcf/d — and potentially up to 2 Bcf/d — of capacity on the Columbia Gas Transmission (CGT) system, which serves Virginia and the broader Appalachian region.

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LDCs -- US -- Overview

The new meme: twenty-five proposed LCDs were cancelled this past year. That's accurate but it's a meaningless data point. It's actually good news for many of the hyperscalers.  LCDs are tracked here. See story here. Currently 4,438, up from  4,258 LDCs in the US as of May 7, 2026.  

Top states, change from previous update (May 26, 2026 -- link here), 4,258

• Virginia: 579 --> 601-->603-->633
• Texas: 411 --> 441-->461->477
• California: 289 --> 288-->287-->290 
• Illinois: 232 --> 228-->228-->239
• Georgia: 214 --> 213-->213-->226
• Ohio: 201-->204-->204-->224
• Arizona: 163 -->157-->156-->156
• New York: 133 --> 132 --> 132-->133
• Indiana: 89 --> 122-->122-->123
• Iowa: 96 --> 101-->102-->104
• Missouri: 91-->91  

June 30, 2026: 4,438 known LDCs in the US, by state -- 

April 16, 2025: approximately 4,100 -- 

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Locator: 51079B.

T-Mobile: canceling legacy plans; transitioning customers to their new plans. Link here. 

Trains > Trucking: link here. 

Ticker: CSX hits all-time high --

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $69.98

New wells reporting: 

• Wednesday, July 1, 2026: 1 for the month, 1 for the quarter, 354 for the year, 
• 41537, conf, Devon Energy, Stallion 33-28 5H, 
• Tuesday, June 30, 2026: 40 for the month, 196 for the quarter, 353 for the year, 
• 42447, conf, Petro-Hunt, Hoiby 158-94-10B-15-1HS, 
• 41191, conf, Hess, BL-Mortenson-156-95-2234H-3, 

RBN Energy: common-carrier rules shape liquids pipelines, but open seasons remain crucial. Link here.  Archived.

The pipeline open season is one of the most important aspects of the midstream world, regardless of whether the pipeline in question is moving natural gas or a liquid. But liquids pipelines operate quite differently from their gas pipeline cousins. They are regulated under a different law and face broader competition, giving them more flexibility in some respects but less in others. As a result, people who know gas pipelines well are often hopelessly confused when they first start dealing with liquids pipelines. In today's RBN blog, we’ll walk through how open seasons work for liquids pipelines and the role they play.

This is our third blog on open seasons. As a refresher, an open season is a competitive process in which any qualified shipper can bid for firm pipeline capacity. In Part 1, we explained the practice of conducting open seasons for capacity in energy pipelines, and gave a high-level explanation of the differences between natural gas pipelines and liquids pipelines, even though they’re both regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In Part 2, we did a deep dive into interstate natural gas transmission and storage facilities, including how they connect to precedent agreements and certificate proceedings.

A Pipeline Project Under Construction. Source: Adobe Stock