Huge Earthquake Rocks Oklahoma; US Operators "Content" With $40 Oil -- SeekingAlpha Contributor -- Saturday, September 3, 2016

There Goes The Neighborhood 

5.6 Magnitude Earthquake Rocks Oklahoma

Updates

September 4, 2016: Oklahoma shuts down salt water disposal wells in 514-square-mile area around epicenter; the fate of another 211 square miles under federal jurisdiction will be decided by EPA. I do not know if that affects SCOOP/STACK but 500 square miles is, but a 20x20 mile square is 400 square miles, and from the map below, SCOOP/STACK are more than 20 miles from the epicenter. 

Original Post

 

Best twitter hashtag may be #okquake.  Go to twitter.com. At search, type in #okquake. One cannot "follow" hashtags on twitter. One can only "follow" individual accounts. So don't go looking for a way to "follow" #okquake. One simply has to type it in and then refresh as necessary.

If it is unrevised, 5.6 ties the Oklahoma record previously set in 2011, epicenter at Prague. Prague is in the same general area as El Reno, Stillwater, and Pawnee. Prague seems to get more than its fair share of strong earthquakes in Oklahoma. Prague is about 50 miles east of Oklahoma City and would also be outside the SCOOP/STACK area as seen on map below.

Later: USGS has confirmed that, based on the aftershocks, there is a previously unknown conjugate fault that has been activated.

There are recent stories suggesting that efforts to minimize smaller earthquakes has worked. Data suggests there has been a significant decrease in smaller earthquakes in 2016, but the number of earthquakes greater than 4.0 seem to be increasing, or more notable. The jury is still out with regard to earthquakes trends this past year. 

Link here. Where was it in relation to STACK and SCOOP?

USGS. 

Epicenter:

• eight miles northwest of Pawnee
• 21 miles south-southeast of Ponca City
• 22 miles north-northeast of Stillwater
• 44 miles south of Arkansas City
• 73 miles north-northeast of Oklahoma City
• Four miles deep

Felt from Omaha to Dallas.

I did not feel it, but then I was up and cooking cookies.

Quickly done. Perhaps better graphics later. If I read the map correctly, and if the data source for SCOOP/STACK is accurate, it appears the epicenter was outside the SCOOP/STACK but I cannot say for sure:

Epicenter: up near Pawnee, far to the northeast of Oklahoma City; at the tip of the red arrow.
STACK/SCOOP: in the area outlined by the octagon.

It appears the STACK/SCOOP is within the octagonal area. If so, the epicenter was outside. What we need now is geologic information regarding fault lines and historical information the area of the epicenter.

Of interest from history of Oklahoma earthquakes:

On February 16, 1956, a shock at Edmond broke windows and cracked plaster (VI). It was also felt strongly at Guthrie, Oklahoma City, and Pawnee.

Pawnee is the closest urban area to the epicenter of today's reported earthquake.

The first earthquake in Oklahoma was recorded in El Reno, just a few miles west of Oklahoma City, in 1918. 

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$40 Oil

US oil producers "calling OPEC's bluff." -- Seeking Alpha contributor.

I don't understand all of this (at the link below regarding hedges and graphs), nor do I care to learn, but I agree with the bottom line. US oil producers are "content" with mid-$40 oil.

The article is here. But it goes along with what the CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources said recently. Operators in the US are making money on $40 oil. It may not be much but it's enough to tide them over until things get better. Even the major oil companies are coming around to on-shore shale oil (e.g., Shell).

Saudi Arabia and the other mideast oil-producing countries cannot survive on $40-oil.

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The Language Page
A Note for the Granddaughters

Three articles on language for the granddaughters to read.

It started with an interview in today's WSJ which led to two other articles.

First, a 2007 article in The New Yorker. This was back when The New Yorker was writing serious stuff and good stuff and had not turned into a political mouthpiece for Hillary.

The second article is a book review in yesterday's New York Times, "Tom Wolfe Raises His Voice in an Account of Human Speech."

My current interest in re-learning / re-studying evolution was John Hands' CosmoSapiens. I've posted notes about CosmoSapiens a few times on the blog.

I haven't read Tom Wolfe's new book yet. I will check it out at Barnes and Noble before deciding to buy it. The title, The Kingdom of Species is very, very interesting.

I don't know if Wolfe is suggesting this, or if actually puts it in the book, but it certainly is an interesting thought. Smart people who do these things, say there are three kingdoms of the living: arachaebacteria, eubacteria, and eukaryocytes.

One wonders if Tom Wolfe is suggesting that there should be, in fact, four kingdoms, adding the kingdom of speech. It's a provoking thought.

Again, having not read the book, I don't know where Wolfe takes us.

Apparently, the book will come down to Noam Chomsky's "theory" of language and Tom Wolfe's thoughts.

Chomsky, as I understand him, says language is innate. Humans have built-in wiring that is the basis for thought. Somewhere along the line of evolution, apparently with the brain's thought process evolving along with the human physical form, that built-in language wiring also evolved.

Tom Wolfe, it seems, is suggesting that language did not evolve. But I don't think he provides an alternative to Chomsky's thinking.

There is an analogy here.

It is now pretty much agreed by all those who study these things that eukarocytes did not evolve in the classical sense. Eukarocytes arose when bacteria of one sort "swallowed" bacteria of another sort.

Animal cells trace their origins to bacteria that engulfed a bacterium that has now morphed into what we call mitochondria. The critical metal for mitochondria: iron.

Plants cells trace their origins to bacteria that engulfed a bacterium (probably a cyanobacterium) that has now morphed into what we call chloroplasts. The critical metal for chloroplasts: magnesium.

It sounds like Tom Wolfe might be suggesting something similar. The fourth kingdom, the kingdom of speech, would trace its origins to a ancestor that engulfed "something" that morphed into allowing speech to develop.

That "something" is unnerving. As the WSJ interviewer/writer notes: that sounds a lot like "creationism," which Tom Wolfe vehemently denies.

Hopefully Barnes and Noble has the book on its shelves today. If not, they "can always order it."

Week 35: August 28, 2016 -- September 3, 2016

For those interested in shale oil, this might be a most interesting read -- from Platts: shale and demand uncertainty have put Big Oil on the defensive. Not mentioned in this article is Shell's recent announcement that it would begin to focus on shale oil and horizontal fracking. Shell recently said it actually drilled two long laterals. Wow.

It is interesting to note that first link, Pioneer Natural Resources says the breakeven point in the Permian is $25/bbl. Likewise, Statoil says its North Sea Field is also profitable at $25. Saudi Arabia can't survive on $25-oil.

Along that same line, the graph that terrorizes Saudi Arabia: Permian oil will have significant effect on total US crude oil production. 

Perhaps the biggest story of the week: the EIA reports that US gasoline consumption reached an all-time high for any month -- occurred in June, 2016.

Without question, the most popular posting this week: Vern Whitten's photographs of the Bakken. The "original" Vern Whitten post this past week is here. 

Operations
NDIC September hearing dockets released; significant increased number of wells in drilling units
Richard Zeits is optimistic on the Bakken

Pipelines
Dakota Access Pipeline likely to be keystoned, update 
Enbridge puts the Sandpiper Pipeline project on hold

Fascinating Read: "Shale And Demand Uncertainty Put Big Oil On Defensive"; Shale's Breakeven Price Is $25/Bbl -- September 2, 2016

For me, the biggest takeaway from this article: Saudi Arabia has much to fear. 

First half of the article; much more at the link:

Under pressure from low oil prices and their rising debt levels, top oil executives at the ONS 2016 conference this week might well have found the blunt message of shale driller Scott Douglas Sheffield unsettling.

The chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources seemed to enjoy the role of spoiler-in-chief, harrying Big Oil with some uncomfortable assertions.

The bad news, for those in the industry who missed out on shale and expected it to fade in the face of low prices, is that the Permian basin should be able to increase its output from 2 million b/d to 5 million b/d in the next 10 years, assuming prices reach $56/b in 2025, Sheffield said. Pioneer itself is growing its output by 27-30% annually.

“It’s in that [price] strip that I see the Permian adding 300,000 b/d per year in US supply,” he told the Offshore Norwegian Seas conference, held Aug. 29 through Sept. 1 in Stavanger. Ramming home his contrarian stance, he said he was skeptical of some of the higher forecasts of long-term oil demand growth due to global warming, alternative energy and electric vehicles, while boasting of the company’s use of renewables in its own operations and the solar panels on his home.

In Sheffield’s view, the dip in US production has been misconstrued, with some in the industry underestimating the Permian basin as output falters in the Eagle Ford and the Bakken.

Some have failed to appreciate that rig reductions in the Permian have happened partly because of reduced drilling at conventional, non-shale sites, rather than in the shale plays, he said.

The Spraberry-Wolfcamp shale, where Pioneer operates, remains resilient and Pioneer’s own breakeven price is below $25/b.

Prices paid for shale acreage have been rising, in some cases, to levels higher than in 2013-2014, he said.

“In the Permian we still have about 600,000 b/d of conventional production that’s declining — it’s arresting the growth. [However] there’s one field in the Midland basin, six fields in the Delaware basin that make up most of the growth in production. The Permian is still growing,” he said. With the Permian accounting for over half of US oil rigs, he forecast another 50-75 would be added.

But while the world’s oil majors were largely caught off guard by shale and have of late struggled to maintain a foothold in many parts of the world, Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden insisted on their relevance, reiterating the International Energy Agency’s central scenario for a 25% increase in energy demand by 2035 and predictions of oil demand growth of 1-1.5 million b/d for the next five years.

That, together with decline from existing fields of 5% per year, means the notion of stranded assets, by which oil and gas becomes redundant, is a “red herring,” he said. The industry is now filling the gap between demand growth and natural decline “quite comfortably, with all the investment decisions that we took four-five years ago. [But] that time will dry up,” he said. “We will see the tightness come back into the market. I’m more worried about supply shrinkage.”

And then the second half at the link.

NDIC's Daily Activity Reports For September, 2016, Are Not Available -- September 2, 2016

The NDIC site went down Thursday, September 1, 2016, about noon. It appears much of the site came back up Friday morning, September 2, 2016, with at least one major exception: the Daily Activity Report Index for the month of September, 2016.

The list of wells on the confidential list is up and running and one well will come off the confidential list on Saturday. That will be reported Monday.

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Why I Love To Blog

I posted this story some weeks ago. It's now being reported by The Los Angeles Times: Cornell University welcomes 12-year-old college freshman -- the school's youngest student ever. 

When he was 2, Jeremy Shuler was reading books in English and Korean. At 6, he was studying calculus. Now, at an age when most kids are attending middle school, the exuberant 12-year-old is a freshman at Cornell University, the youngest the Ivy League school has on record.

"It's risky to extrapolate, but if you look at his trajectory and he stays on course, one day he'll solve some problem we haven't even conceived of," said Cornell Engineering Dean Lance Collins. "That's pretty exciting."

Jeremy is the home-schooled child of two aerospace engineers who were living in Grand Prairie, Texas, when he applied to Cornell.

While Jeremy's elite-level SAT and Advanced Placement test scores in math and science at age 10 showed he was intellectually ready for college, Collins said what sealed the deal was his parents' willingness to move to Ithaca. Jeremy's father, Andy Shuler, transferred from Lockheed Martin in Texas to its location in upstate New York.

Grand Prairie sits about 30 minutes southeast of us, smack dab between Ft Worth and Dallas.

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Hell Creek Fossil Beds

Evolution

General Editor: Stever Parker

c. 2015 

At the end of the Cretaceous Period, which also marked the end of the Mesozoic Era, the era of dinosaurs, this is the description of eastern Montana and the western Dakotas.

The western Dakotas and eastern Montana would have been a huge coastal floodplain.

To the east was a huge, huge inland waterway, the Western Interior Seaway.

To the west: flat plains that extended as far as the dinosaurs could see, and if they could see that far, to the growing Rocky Mountains.

The floodplains, topographically, might have looked a lot like Florida swamps, Louisiana deltas, Minnesota's 10,000 lakes, Dakota marshlands, and the farther west one got, the Montana prairies. The climate might have been a lot like Hawaii's climate:

• deltas
• rivers
• creeks
• lakes
• swamps
• dry bushland with clusters of small trees

The plants would have been quite diverse, depending where you were:

• mosses
• ferns
• evergreens, including cycads, ginkgoes, and conifers
• flowering plants and trees, such as palms, magnolias, sycamores, laurels and beeches

In fact, except for the animals it might have looked a lot like central Montana does now, with a bit more tropical flair.
The animals:

• T rex and Triceratops would have been the big game animals, had Hemingway been around
• he would have been bothered by insects but could have enjoyed clams with his mojio
• he would have had plenty of big game fish to bring in: sharks, paddlefish, bowfins, and sturgeons
• he would have seen frogs and salamanders in the marshes, as well as turtles, snakes, and lizards
• most interesting, perhaps, aside from T rex and Triceratops would have been the giant flying azhdarchid pterosaurs (reptiles, but not dinosaurs); on the ground these azhdarchids would have looked like giraffes, or even better, crude oil jack pumps, especially at night, in silhouette (there is some irony there)

My hunch is that big game hunters would not have survived Cretaceous Dakota, except possibly in boats in the rivers and marshes.

The mammals were small and would have been a nocturnal nuisance for anyone daring to sleep in a tent (again, T rex would have had a feast). The mammals would have been small rat-like creatures, probably not the cuddly looking rabbits many eventually became. Hemingway might have seen his distant ancestor, Purgatorius, the earliest example of a primate or proto-primate. It would have looked nothing like any of Hemingway's four wives, although the word "shrew" does come to mind.

Interestingly, Parker's Evolution does not discuss grasses, and the word "grass" is not in the index. So, from another site.

The Cretaceous Dakota flora would have been dominated by mosses, ferns, and conifers, although flowering plants were on the rise. I have difficulty imagining "plains" without grasses. I've been to Hawaii, but I don't recall to what extent grasses cover the islands. Looking at this site of Hawaiian fauna reveals flowering plants with only one grass; maybe this is the type of flowering plants Triceratops would have seen across the fruited plains. But without grasses, Cretaceous Montana approaching the Rocky Mountains would have looked much different than it does now.

By 95 million years ago, angiosperms (flowering plants) were out-competing the conifers and other gymnosperms in many areas and were well on their way to becoming the dominant form of plant life.

From the linked site:

At the [time grasses began to evolve] there was a notable change in the structure of the fruit.

All the ancestors of the grasses had ovaries formed of three fused carpels, each carpel forming one locule with one ovule. In many of the close relatives, and we presume in the grass ancestors, two of those ovules abort and only one develops. In the grasses, only one locule and one ovule ever form. As the ovule develops the outer integument fuses with the inner ovary wall to form the distinctive fruit of the grasses, known as the grain or caryopsis. This structure is unique among the flowering plants.

The dinosaurs never saw grass. Non-avian dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago and the earliest fossil record of grasses is between 60 and 55 million ago. Triceratops just missed grass by 5 to 10 million years.

Streamers: Ivanpah Solar Farm Fries 6,000 Birds Yearly -- LA Times -- September 2, 2016

Updates

Later, 2:53 p.m. Central Time: when you read the following article and note Ivanpah is killing 6,000 birds yearly, remember the fines levied for singular ducks allegedly killed in the Bakken when the boom was just beginning. This is from The Twin Cities Pioneer Press, November 3, 2011. The article begins:

A Texas oil company will plead guilty and pay a $1,000 fine for killing a duck during drilling operations in western North Dakota, according to an agreement filed today.
Dallas-based Petro-Hunt LLC was charged under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for the death of a northern shoveler found May 6 in one of the company’s waste pits. Under the third such plea agreement filed in federal court, Petro-Hunt will pay the fine to the nonprofit National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Other data points from the same article:

• 7 oil companies charged
• 28 dead birds found in uncovered waste pits in May/June, 2011
• misdemeanors; max penalty: for each count -- 6 months in prison, $15,000 fine
• Slawson: plead guilty in October, 2011: killed 12 birds, $12,000 fine
• MDU/Fidelity: $1,500 fine for a solitary sandpiper found in one of the company's waste pits

President Obama gave blanket waiver to wind farms allowing 30 bald eagle kills/year for the next 30 years (that's not quite right, but when I find time, I will correct it).

But at least we know the going price for Daffy Duck in the North Dakota oil patch is about $1,000.
 

Original Post

 

CFC: California Fried Condors?

Ivanpah: another name for "bird sink."

Anyway, whatever, from The Los Angeles Times, the data points:

• streamers: the wisps of white smoke as crispy, fried birds fall to earth over Ivanpah Solar Plant
• along I-15 west of Las Vegas
• 390-MW plant owners tring to think of ways to stop the slaughter -- yes, that's the word used by The LA Times
• 6,000 birds fried or collide each each year 
• three 40-story towers -- about 4x higher than an oil rig; and permanent, unlike rigs which are very temporary

As one reads the story, it only gets worse.  

"Ivanpah continues to operate as though there is an endless supply of birds to burn."  -- Garry George, Audubon California.

And it's either worse than they say, or better than they say. But they have to study Ivanpah for another nine months. I guess if it's only 4,000 birds yearly, that would be better.

I track the Ivanpah links here.