One Up Is Better Than One Down; No New Permits -- March 18, 2016

Active rigs:

	3/18/2016	03/18/2015	03/18/2014	03/18/2013	03/18/2012
Active Rigs	32	107	191	186	205

No new permits today.

No producing wells completed.

Five permits renewed --

• BR (4), three Curtis wells, one Saddle Butte well, all in McKenzie County
• Resource Energy, a Marlys permit in Divide County

Airline Boardings Decline In The Bakken -- March 18, 2016

Numbers often rounded on this blog.

From The Dickinson Press:

• Dickinson:
• two daily flights to Denver, CO
• down 60% compared to February, 2015
• 1,345 boardings in February, 2016
• United only; Delta service ended in November, 2015
• Dickinson’s boardings fell the most of any North Dakota airport by more than 20 percent

• Williston:
• nine daily flights
• down 40% compared to February, 2015
• 5,269 boardings in February, 2016
• United and Delta to various destinations

Congratulations To Red River Oilfield Services -- Unit Train Project Completed Ahead Of Schedule -- March 18, 2016

This is really a huge story; I had a tour of the operation when I up in the Bakken a month ago (February).

The Williston Wire is reporting:

Red River Oilfield Services, Inc. of Williston has completed its Unit Train Project at the Stony Creek Rail Yard. Unseasonably warm weather benefited the project.

Patrick Construction of Havre, Montana, completed the project just in time for the Red River Switching Crews to stage up the departing empty Unit Train U-WILEOL0-02 scheduled for return to Illinois on Tuesday March 15, 2016. Partner Class 1 Railroad, the BNSF Railway, provided support along the way for this project.

Red River has been in business for 37 years in Williston.

I track CBR terminals in the Bakken here. 

T-REX -- Background And Update -- March 18, 2016

Finally, time to get serious, time to learn about the Rockies Express Pipeline.

First, some data points from wiki:

• 1,679 miles long
• wiki calls it a pipeline from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to eastern Ohio (in fact, better to say the other way around, as we will see later)
• three sections
• one of the largest gas pipelines ever built in North America
• diameter varies between 36 and 42 inches; primarily 42 inches
• initial cost: $5 billion
• compare with Trans-Alaska Pipeline: 800 miles, 48-inch diameter, Prudhoe Bay to Valdez; cost: $8 billion, plus $1 billion to Native Americans plus 150 million acres federal land (according to wiki, 300,000 people in Alaska in 1970; about 15% native American = 45,000 to divide up $1 billion, about $20,000 apiece (my calculations; I often make simple arithmetic errors)

REX - Entrega (Zone 1)

• 328 miles
• within the state of Colorado

REX - West (Zone 2)

• 713 miles
• Colorado to Missouri

REX - East (Zone 3)

• 638 miles
• Missouri to Clarington, Monroe County, Ohio
• Final (current) upgrade: REX has filed with FERC for a 0.8 billion cubic feet per day expansion of Zone 3 east-to-west
• this upgrade is anticipated to be completed in 4Q16

Operators:

• Rockies Express Pipeline, LLC, a partnership between:
• Tallgrass Energy Partners
• Phillips 66
• Sempra Energy
• Kinder Morgan Energy Partners and Sempra Energy acquired Entrega Gas Pipeline from EnCana, 2006
• COP acquired 24% of the project in 2016

Now from RBN Energy, an update:

• Zone 3 Capacity Enhancement expansion project (Z3CE): final approval to begin construction received last week (mid-March, 2016); to add 0.8 Bcf/d
• will expand east-to-west capacity out of the Marcellus/Utica to a record 2.6 Bcf/d
• East-to-West Expansion (E2W), came online last August (2015)
• in one fell swoop, the E2W gave the Northeast producers their first substantial westbound capacity, totaling a full 1.8 Bcf/d
• this will be the first winter (2016 - 2017) with nearly a full winter's worth of pipeline flow data
• since last August (2015), westbound flows on REX have filled to capacity (1.8 Bcf/d)
• winter-over-winter, we now know that westbound movements in Zone 3 have more than doubled, averaging about 1.7 Bcf/d this winter (2015/2016) to date, compared to about 0.6Bcf/d in the same period last winter
• points along the way, especially Chicago Citygate are target demand markets

Making Good On Her Promise; Another Nominee For The 2016 Geico Rock Award -- March 18, 2016

Any union member, any blue-collar worker, anyone who holds a job in the manufacturing job and still supports Hillary has simply not been paying attention: 

"We (Hillary and President Obama's EPA) are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business" when explaining her $30 billion economic transition plan for coal-dependent regions.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said McConnell and other critics "twisted Clinton's words to suggest she showed a disregard for coal workers and their livelihoods."

Yesterday, Peabody mentioned it will likely seek bankruptcy protection.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon has been nominated for the 2016 Geico Rock Award; he apparently did not hear Clinton's speech.