Week 40: October 4, 2015 -- October 10, 2015

Operations
Oldest North Dakota well back on-line
New operator in ND? Prairie Hills Oil
Oasis reports two nice wells -- high volume, 50 stages
Number of active rigs in North Dakota ties post-boom low

Fracking
Halo effect? 

Bakken economy
Bakken economy drives $326 million BNSF capital projects in Minnesota 
Relocation of Williston airport on track; building surge in Crosby forecast 
2Q15 taxable sales; Cass County back on top; Williams County slips to second 

Three (3) New Permits -- North Dakota, October 9, 2015

Active rigs:

	10/9/2015	10/09/2014	10/09/2013	10/09/2012	10/09/2011
Active Rigs	68	192	185	191	194

Three (3) new permits --

• Operator: CLR
• Fields: Chimney Butte (Dunn)
  Comments:

One (1) producing well completed:

• 29235, 589, Statoil, Heen 26-35 8TFH, Todd, t9/15; cum --

EOG places five wells on "temporary abandon" list. It looks like all five wells are on TATD status and EOG says they will re-evaluate the wells when prices recover. It looks like the wells were drilled to total depth but no further activity. The file numbers affected: #28306, #28608, #29103, #29104, and #29105.

Heavy Oil Sands Mini-Boom In Saskatchewan -- About 500 Miles Northwest Of Williston, ND -- October 9, 2015

 From the WSJ:

EDAM, Saskatchewan—In a muddy field where rows of canola stood just three months ago, a miniature oil-sands plant is rapidly being assembled by a small crew of workers.

What is unusual about this project is the speed with which it is being built—in a matter of months—and its compact, football field-size. Oil-sands sites typically take years to build and require hundreds or thousands of acres of land. At a time when slumping crude-oil prices have shelved most new oil-sands projects in neighboring Alberta and halted drilling for all but the most productive shale-oil wells in the Bakken formation on both sides of the border, pint-size sites are proliferating in Saskatchewan’s oil patch.

About a mile away from the construction site, down a rural highway in western Saskatchewan, three other similarly sized heavy-oil projects are rising on a landscape filled with cattle pastures and duck ponds.

The miniboom along Highway 26 is upending the long-standing logic that this type of extraction needs to maximize economies of scale to provide the best return on capital.

While Saskatchewan’s oil reserves are a fraction of those in neighboring Alberta, companies developing small-scale sites in the province say they are profitable, even with crude prices at six-year lows. That is due to advances in modular construction, ample rail and pipeline takeaway capacity and an attractive regulatory environment.

Typical steam-powered oil-sands plants produce from 30,000 to 100,000 barrels a day, but smaller-scale thermal heavy oil facilities produce as few as 2,000 barrels a day. Both use a technology called steam-assisted gravity drainage, or SAGD, to tap subterranean deposits of molasses-like crude oil. Smaller operations benefit from lower construction and operating costs, faster production ramp-ups and higher prices for their crude than traditional supersize oil-sands projects. That means they can make money below the roughly $65 a barrel needed for most new larger-scale projects to break even.

“Oil at $40 a barrel doesn’t scare us the way it scares oil-sands producers,” said Chad Harris, the founder and chief executive of startup firm Serafina Energy Ltd., which expects to produce 6,000 barrels a day starting in the first half of next year at its roughly 180 million-Canadian-dollar (US$134 million) plant in Edam. That facility is to be the first of several small SAGD plants that Serafina, funded by U.S. and Canadian private-equity investors, plans to own and operate.

The numbers are quite amazing. It's too bad we can't bring this oil into the US via the Keystone XL; it's exactly the kind of oil the US refineries along the Gulf Coast need.

COP Declares Quarterly Dividend In Line With Previous Dividend -- October 9, 2015; Oldest North Dakota Well Back On-Line

For investors only:

• ConocoPhillips declares $0.74/share quarterly dividend, in line with previous.
• Forward yield 5.27%
• Payable Dec. 1; for shareholders of record Oct. 19; ex-div Oct. 15.

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A Devonian Monster Well

Another well has been added to the "Monster Well" list:

• 3983, 234, Enduro Operating, North Dakota C A 3, a Devonian well, vertical, 320-acre spacing, t1/66, cum 1.37 million bbls; celebrating its 50th anniversary next January. 

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Oldest Active Well In North Dakota Back On Line

Two payzone well, total production, ~ 2.29 million bbls since 1951; still active; celebrated its 64th anniversary in August, a couple of months ago.

• 35, 503/PNA, Hess, Beaver Lodge-Devonian Unit H-310, s8/51; t4/52; Madison, 216K; PNA
• 35, 263, Hess, Beaver Lodge-Devonian Unit H-310, t3/60; Devonian, 2.07 million bbls; still active; almost 1,500 bbls monthly, 8/14; around 1,000 bbls monthly in 2015; went inactive 12/13; back on line as of 8/15;
• Note: #35 is the oldest well in North Dakota still producing; all but two or three wells earlier than #35 were dry.  Well #2 was completed in 1923; well #1 was completed in 1916, in Ward County; it tested positive for trace oil. the Clarence Iverson well that started it all was drilled in 1951.

Proposed Wind Farm For Tioga, North Dakota -- Necessary For Pumps, Some Say -- October 9, 2015

The Dickinson Press reports.

• $250 million
• 150 MW
• $1.7 million / MW

It could be worse: they could be considering a solar farm.

If approved, this will help bring ND into compliance with President Obama's Clean Power Act. This would also have huge advantages for the ND oil and gas industry.

If approved, I suppose this is the final nail in the "buffalo commons" coffin. 

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Two Items From Our Granddaughters' School District Monthly Newsletter

First, the note about the elementary school field trip to local college:

In celebration of College Week at Heritage Elementary School, third, fourth and fifth graders took the opportunity to visit GCISD's Collegiate Academy at Tarrant County College Northeast.

The elementary students were excited to walk around the campus and see areas, such as the library, science lab, and study center. A few comments from students included:

"Look! It's a giant building full of books."
"It's a vending machine where you can buy school supplies. I want one of those!"
 "I'm so going to school here one day!" (Heritage ES Principal Stacey Voigt's favorite comment of the day.)

The second note regarding academic achievement at the district's two high schools:

In a side-by-side comparison of scores on college entrance scores, AP exam results, graduation rates and other data, GCISD's two traditional high schools easily outpace average scores from around the state, while posting nearly identical numbers to one another.

Each school currently has 10 National Merit Semifinalists. Grapevine High has 28 National Merit commended students and Colleyville Heritage High has 27. Both schools average in the 1,600's for combined SAT scores.

The schools posted comparable ACT composite scores, with GHS averaging 25.1 and CHHS at 24.6, both well above the 20.9 statewide average. Across the board, CHHS and GHS easily outpace the average statewide end of course scores with very comparable numbers from each campus.

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Target Practice

Based on reports coming out of the Mideast yesterday that Russian submarine-launched cruise missiles hit Iran rather than Syria, I had to look at the map again:

I guess that's why folks want nuclear weapons -- accuracy not quite as important.

Note: the submarine is not drawn to scale, nor is the actual location known for sure. For illustrative purposes only. Do not make any invasion or defensive plans based on this graphic. If this is important to you, go to the source: wikileaks or Hillary's back-up server(s). SecState Kerry might also have a copy, but his would have a picture of a yacht instead of a submarine.