Random Update Of A CLR Polk Well In Banks Oil Field -- October 22, 2015

Updates

September 11, 2016: we now know why this well went inactive.  
 

Original Post

 

A reader was interested in this Polk well. The well went inactive July, 2015.

• 21733, IA/1,1118, CLR, Polk 1-33H, Banks, 30 stages, 2.9 million lbs, t3/14; cum 142K 8/15; 

There is nothing in the file report to suggest why the well went inactive. There is some activity nearby but other wells in the are are not inactive. I'll put this on my list of wells to follow up on at a later date.
 
Production profile (talk about very sporadic production):

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	8-2015	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	7-2015	1	0	45	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	6-2015	29	8639	9075	4606	10503	4676	5390
BAKKEN	5-2015	31	10638	10451	7927	12104	2495	9128
BAKKEN	4-2015	21	8121	7773	10435	10979	7462	3195
BAKKEN	3-2015	19	2831	2835	9456	2864	569	2104
BAKKEN	2-2015	1	14	607	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	1-2015	31	4235	4282	2399	6408	4604	1354
BAKKEN	12-2014	31	5831	5874	2625	8659	8162	16
BAKKEN	11-2014	30	5998	5682	2283	11213	10739	15
BAKKEN	10-2014	31	6085	5992	2781	8301	7605	215
BAKKEN	9-2014	29	6484	6526	3001	13353	12863	84
BAKKEN	8-2014	29	7150	7104	2937	12547	12226	22
BAKKEN	7-2014	31	8897	8931	3529	21857	21357	19
BAKKEN	6-2014	30	10429	10557	3922	21501	21483	18
BAKKEN	5-2014	31	12678	12500	3497	23521	19114	4407
BAKKEN	4-2014	30	14415	14592	4012	24022	14858	9164
BAKKEN	3-2014	31	23738	24145	8569	41829	36303	5526
BAKKEN	2-2014	13	5362	4429	11838	18809	6501	12308
BAKKEN	1-2014	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

XOM Sells Troubled Torrance Refinery -- October 22, 2015

For the archives. The Daily Breeze is reporting:

ExxonMobil Corp., hounded by regulatory investigations into its safety record since a February explosion tore through the company’s Torrance refinery, confirmed Wednesday it has sold the crippled plant for $537.5 million to independent refiner PBF Energy.

“The sale results from a strategic assessment of the site and how it fits with our refining portfolio,” Jerry Wascom, president of ExxonMobil Refining & Supply Co., said in a statement.“ExxonMobil regularly adjusts its portfolio through investment, restructuring or divestment consistent with overall global and regional business strategies.” [Incredibly tactful. From the Hillary Clinton school of public relations.]

The announcement Wednesday afternoon comes a year to the day after industry sources confirmed to the Daily Breeze that the refinery was on the block. That would-be buyer turned out to be New Jersey-based PBF, which will become the fifth largest independent refiner in the United States once the sale of the Torrance refinery closes.

ExxonMobil’s 700 employees, including about 600 at the 750-acre refinery itself, were informed of the sale shortly after 1 p.m. All were offered jobs with PBF.
Another 700 contract workers also are expected to continue working at the refinery.

The deal will close the second quarter of 2016. Keep that date in mind -- 2Q16 -- when you read the following from The Los Angeles Times, dated September 23, 2015, before the sale of the refinery was announced:

Just when Southern California motorists were expecting to see some relief from high gasoline prices in the next few weeks, they now may have to wait well into next winter — at least.

Exxon Mobil Corp., still at loggerheads with air quality regulators over a short-term fix for the company's damaged Torrance refinery, appears poised to build a new pollution-control system that meets antipollution specifications, several experts briefed on the matter said.

One of them, oil industry analyst Bob van der Valk, said he learned this week from people who knew about the plans that Exxon has decided to abandon short-term repairs and pursue a longer-term approach that would bring the plant back to full capacity in mid-February.

"They're dead in the water for gasoline," Van der Valk said. "They took everybody off the [short-term] project."

Exxon executives would not comment except to say the company has been working with all agencies and will continue to work with the air quality regulators.

Since an explosion damaged the refinery in February, Exxon has been proposing to use an old pollution-control device, one that doesn't meet air quality standards, to get the plant operating while it worked on a permanent repair.

I assume XOM will have no interest in working with the state on getting this refinery back into full operation -- the article says as much -- the project is "dead in the water." Meanwhile, I doubt XOM will have much interest in letting the new buyer start any work while XOM still owns the refinery -- and, of course, the sale could still be delayed. 

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New Tortoise Species Found In The Galapagos 

Despite global warming and the threat of all those species extinctions, lo and behold, a new tortoise species is found in / on the Galapagos archipelago. FoxNews, fair and balanced, is reporting:

Thanks to DNA testing from tortoise bones that were almost a century old and found in museums in Wisconsin, the United Kingdom and Galapagos, an international team writing in the journal PLOS One this week has identified a second species on the island.

They concluded that a few hundred giant tortoises living on the eastern side of Santa Cruz are distinct from a second, larger population living less than 6.2 miles away on the western side. The new species, C. donfaustoi, is named after a retiring park ranger who spent decades protecting the tortoises.

ND State Senator Asks For Updated Study Of Fossil Fuel Reserves In Western North Dakota -- October 22, 2015

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

U.S. Sen.  John Hoeven, R-N.D., has asked the U.S. Geological Survey to update the agency’s study of recoverable reserves of oil and natural gas in the Williston Basin.

At Hoeven’s request, USGS released the study of recoverable oil reserves in April 2013 that found there are approximately 7.4 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, more than twice the previous estimate in the Williston Basin. The report also estimates there is 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

If you do the math, add the natural gas (boe) to the crude oil, and then divide that number into the natural gas (boe), the number suggests 13% of the crude oil / natural gas mix is natural gas.  

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President Obama Vetoes Defense Appropriations Bill

Bill Had Unprecedented Bipartison Support

Extremely Rare For A President To Veto a Defense Appropriations Bill

Vetoed Over Two Minor Issues, All-Political 

The House of the Rising Sun, The Animals

NDIC Gives Operators An Extra Year To Bring Their DUCs On-Line; Flexibility On Flaring Also Announced -- October 22, 2015

It is "funny" (as in coincidental) how things turn out ... just the other day I mentioned the "one-year-rule" for bringing North Dakota wells on line. And here we are today, it's just announced that North Dakota will extend the deadline by a year. From Seeking Alpha:

• North Dakota regulators approve a plan to give oil producers an extra year to bring a new well online, Reuters reports, in an attempt to give the energy industry breathing room during the oil price downturn.
• Companies will now have up to two years to frack drilled but uncompleted wells under changes approved by the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which means the oil industry will not be forced to spend billions of dollars to frack an estimated 1,000 DUCs, most of which will hit their previous one-year deadlines in December.

Also, in The Dickinson Press link below:

In December through March (2016), about 100 wells per month will reach the one-year deadline.

Under the policy approved Thursday, operators can apply to have those wells put on temporarily abandoned status, giving them another year to store the oil in the ground. Royalty owners, land owners and nonoperating interest owners would have the opportunity to object.

Helms said he expects about 500 wells will be put on temporarily abandoned status, which will prompt a gradual decline in oil production from 1.19 million barrels per day to 1.1 million barrels per day at the end of the biennium in June 2017.

Most experts anticipate that oil prices will recover in 2017, Helms said.

“The state would prefer to tax the oil at a higher price at some point in the not-too-distant future as opposed to taxing it today at low oil prices,” Helms said.

In addition, the NDIC granted some interesting flexibility on the issue of flaring. The Dickinson Press reports:

The North Dakota Industrial Commission adopted new policies Thursday to reward oil companies that exceed their gas capture goals and to allow producers to store oil in the ground until prices recover.

Companies that exceed gas capture goals for 90 days can bank credits for volumes of gas captured and apply them to future months if they fall below the benchmarks.

Helms, who recommended approval of the policy, said credits can only be used if a company encounters extenuating circumstances, such as delays getting right-of-way approval for pipelines or if a gas processing facility is down for maintenance.

The policy aims to motivate companies that are barely making the gas capture target, which is currently 77 percent, to raise the bar so they get credits in the bank, Helms said.

The credits expire after three months and they can’t be transferred to another company.

The policy, which originated as a request from an industry task force, takes effect Nov. 1.

Helms said he anticipates companies to take advantage of the program in the winter, when maintenance issues are more common.

And more:

Last month the Industrial Commission adopted revised gas capture goals that gave the industry an additional 10 months to meet the 85 percent gas capture goal.

In addition, commissioners voted unanimously to grant another six-month exemption from the natural gas flaring policy to XTO Energy for 102 wells, primarily in Dunn County. The commission granted an exemption to those wells in April after a pipeline project failed to move forward. (We've talked about this before.)

The Bear Creek natural gas processing plant under construction by ONEOK will serve those wells and is expected to be complete in fall of 2016.

For me this is the big story: again, operators, royalty owners, surface owners, and the state are working together during a very, very tough time. Good for them; I'm proud of the state.

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COP Gets Permit To Drill Off-Shore Alaska

And then get this, COP wins a permit to drill off-shore Alaska, also at Seeking Alpha:

• ConocoPhillips' plan to build the first-ever oil production facilities at a federal reserve in Alaska is approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, FuelFix reports, allowing COP to construct an 11.8-acre drilling pad and related infrastructure inside the reserve.
• The project offers Alaska the hope of adding new oil to the 800-mile-long Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which was originally built to ferry 2M bbl/day of crude away from North Slope oil fields; it now carries about a quarter of that amount as nearby production declines, leading to slower flows.
• But with low oil prices, it is unclear when or if COP would proceed with its broader Greater Mooses Tooth project, which ultimately could involve drilling up to 33 wells in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

Burning Wood In Europe Is Considered Carbon Neutral -- October 22, 2015

Updates

October 27, 2015: Business Insider reports on this also. 
 

Original Post

 

These were some earlier posts on this ridiculous subject. It almost makes me think the Europeans are going back to the Dark Ages, burning wood chips to keep warm:

• Some disconnected rambling, May 30, 2013
• The importance of spin, April 16, 2015: But there's more: the wood chip industry in North Carolina is huge -- clearing forests to sell wood chips to England and Europe. The Apple connection is interesting.

I bring this up (again), because, apparently The New York Times has even figured this scam out. Don sent me this link with this headline: Flawed Carbon Accounting Drives Boom in Burning U.S. Forests in E.U. Power Plants. Here's the story:

Forestry, done in the right place the right way and for the right reasons, can be an important source of materials, jobs and wildlife habitat.

But are forests an appropriate fuel source for power plants? *

After five months of reporting, John Upton and others at Climate Central have put together a compelling and infuriating package on the growing flow of wood pellets from the Southeast, many from hardwood forests, to European power plants, where the result is touted as carbon-neutral energy and helps country’s meet emissions targets — at least on paper.

But the atmosphere isn’t noticing, according to the analysis. This passage in part three of Climate Central’s “Pulp Fiction” series describes the core issue with the European approach:

Through a loophole in its clean energy regulations, all wood energy is treated as if it releases no carbon dioxide. That accounting trick is allowing European national governments and their energy sectors to pump tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the air every year — without accounting for it. That helps them keep that pollution off their books, but not out of the atmosphere.

Part one explains the loophole:

That loophole treats electricity generated by burning wood as a “carbon neutral” or “zero emissions” energy source — the same as solar panels or wind turbines. When power plants in major European countries burn wood, the only carbon dioxide pollution they report is from the burning of fossil fuels needed to manufacture and transport the woody fuel. European law assumes climate pollution released directly by burning fuel made from trees doesn’t matter, because it will be re-absorbed by trees that grow to replace them. [lol]

The assumption is convenient, but wrong. Climate science has been rejecting it for more than 20 years. It ignores the decades it can take for a replacement forest to grow to be as big as one that was chopped down for energy— or the possibility that it won’t regrow at all. The assumption also ignores the loss of a tree’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide after it gets cut down, pelletized and vaporized.

Much, much more at the link, with some cool graphs. By 2030, we should finally be reading some stories in the NYT about the entire global warming scam. 

One or two millenia ago, humans burned all the trees in Turkey and today -- Turkey is pretty much treeless. I know at one time the NYT was upset about loss of rain forests, but I guess not so much any more, at least in the southeastern US.