A BR Kings Canyon Well Back On Line -- April 25, 2020

The well:

• 18018, 331, BR, Kings Canyon 21-27H, Camel Butte, t12/09; cum 298K 2/20;

Recent production:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	2-2020	27	2392	2083	482	3792	3725	0
BAKKEN	1-2020	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	12-2019	1	0	0	0	18	18	0
BAKKEN	11-2019	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	10-2019	1	1	234	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	9-2019	10	300	222	40	760	731	4
BAKKEN	8-2019	2	246	227	15	847	447	395
BAKKEN	7-2019	2	166	228	53	1017	783	229

NDIC To Consider "Price" And "Waste" -- April 24, 2020

Link here.

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Corona Virus? What Corona Virus?

Plenty Of Oil -- What's Up With That? -- April 24, 2020

From What's Up With That today:

I remember through the 1970s, we were meant to run out of oil, soon. In fact, as long as I can remember we have been running out of oil, soon.

Instead, oversupply is such that the benchmark for US oil fell below zero for the first time ever a couple of days ago. That is, the share market suggested oil couldn’t even be given away because it was in such oversupply.

There is no shortage of oil despite more than 7.6 billion people on planet Earth, and so many vehicles powered by it.

Prices have collapsed, because despite all the pumping from ‘Mother Earth’ since I was a child, there is still more. Because of the pandemic, global demand, not supply, has fallen dramatically. In fact, the worldwide supply glut has created a worldwide shortage of storage space for oil.

And the writer throws cold water on Michael Moore's new movie. Wow, I'm glad I didn't watch more than the first five minutes. Calling it tedious is being kind. 

In 2017 and 2018, the US set new all-time records for proved reserves of crude oil, liquid condensate and natural gas.

Trump was elected president in 2016 and he assumed the presidency in early 2017, remaining in office through 2018, and will probably be in office to the end of 2019 when another record will be set.

Of course, prior to his presidency we had this doofus (if you ever want to find this clip quickly, search "doofus"):

Doofus-in-Chief

By the way, with oil now priced below $20/bbl, I assume global reserves will plummet. Just like that.

CLR With Two New Permits; ND Rig Count Remains At 29; Equinor "TA's" A Nice Well -- April 24, 2020

OPEC basket: $15.23.

Active rigs:

$17.09	4/24/2020	04/24/2019	04/24/2018	04/24/2017	04/24/2016
Active Rigs	29	62	62	48	29

Two new permits, #37536 -  #37536, inclusive --

• Operator: CLR
• Field: Dimmick Lake (McKenzie County)
• Comments:
• CLR has permits for two Kennedy wells in Dimmick Lake, lot 1 section 6-150-96;
• the Kennedy wells are tracked here;

Ten permits renewed:

• NP Resources (6): three Elkhorn Ranch Federal permits and three Little Mo Federal permits, all in Billings County;
• XTO (3): three Kenneth permits in Williams County;
• Cobra: a Neru permit in Billings County;

Four producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 36200, drl/A, WPX, Pheasant 33-28HZ, Spotted Horn, t--; cum 74K over 48 days;
• 35990, SI/NC, Equinor, Sam 30-31 3H, Bull Butte, t--; cum --
• 31910, TA/A, Equinor, Sax 25-36F 2TFH, Three Forks B1, Banks, t--; first produced, 9/19; cum 61K 2/20;
• 24050, SI/NC, Petro-Hunt, State 154-94-31C-32-6H; t--; cum --

It will be interesting if "TA" starts to be the norm in the Bakken.

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TA

This well was drilled back in 2015. Bottom hole was reached December 22, 2015. The company requested to temporarily abandon the well pending improved economics, sundry form dated September 7, 2017.

In a sundry form dated September 13, 2018, the company requested an extension of the temporary abandonment status for another year.

FracFocus shows this well was fracked 8/17/2019 - 8/28/2019; 10.3 million gallons of water; 90.2% water by mass; friction reducer (petroleum distillates, hydrotreated light, 0.05079; poly (oxy-1,2-ethanediyl), a-tridecyl-2-hydroxy-, branched, 0. 00339, percent by mass

The completion data:

• Bakken, TA, 10/1/2018

Well status:

• Well status: A, 10/1/2018

Production profile:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	4-2020	30	11799	11743	25547	37021	36153	868
BAKKEN	3-2020	31	12629	12848	26751	38847	38128	719
BAKKEN	2-2020	29	12517	12339	25654	38001	36708	1293
BAKKEN	1-2020	29	12631	12787	32199	36459	34811	1648
BAKKEN	12-2019	31	12616	12485	36247	33323	33153	170
BAKKEN	11-2019	30	17090	17570	36142	42600	42124	476
BAKKEN	10-2019	3	1787	1309	3414	3293	3285	8
BAKKEN	9-2019	4	4728	4563	12015	8043	7218	825

On another note, how precise are these drillers? I find this amazing. From a Statoil letter, dated November 5, 2014:

Statoil ...  is fully aware.... that the well path of the lateral portion will be drilled approximately 14' - 39' from the 500' west boundary line until a proposed bottom hole footage call of 250' FNL & 539" FEL has been reached.

With this proposed well and all future 1280-acre stand-up and laydown units, Statoil will put key emphasis on properly constructing the Bottom Hole Assembly with the correct non-magnetic collar spacing to adjust to the south-north orientation of the proposed wellpath.

Wow.

CLR To Halt Bakken Production -- April 24, 2020

From SeekingAlpha contributor: CLR to halt Bakken production -- link here, but no additional story other than what's posted below --

• Continental Resources the company controlled by billionaire Harold Hamm, has ceased production in North Dakota and shut in most of its wells in the state's Bakken shale field.
• According to Bloomberg, the producer also declared force majeure on at least one of its contracts this week after crude went negative.
• Betting economic growth would lift prices, Continental is more exposed to weak prices because it did not hedge future production with derivatives, a common strategy within the industry.

Active rigs:

$17.03	4/24/2020	04/24/2019	04/24/2018	04/24/2017	04/24/2016
Active Rigs	29	62	62	48	29

Only one well coming off confidential list today -- 

Friday, April 24, 2020: 37 for the month; 37 for the quarter, 291 for the year:

• 36904, loc, PetroShale, Bridger Federal 1TFH, Bear Den,

RBN Energy: how the futures market impacts physical crude oil.

On Monday, front-month WTI at Cushing cratered to a negative $37.63/bbl. On Tuesday, the same futures price rose by nearly $48 to close at about $10/bbl — a positive $10, that is. As for WTI to be delivered in June, it lost well over a third of its value on Tuesday, ending up at less than $12/bbl, but over the past two days it has roared back to over $16/bbl. No doubt the WTI futures market will see more wild times in the days and weeks ahead as traders look to avoid the traps that ensnared the market as the May contract approached expiry. If there’s a lesson to be learned from the past week, it’s that it really helps to understand the ins and outs of the futures market — especially when it is so volatile. Perhaps the most important thing to wrap your head around is that while the futures market mostly involves financial players who will never take physical delivery of oil, the two markets — financial and physical — are fundamentally linked. Prompt-month futures converge on spot prices over time, while physical contracts are settled in part based on NYMEX futures, so producers will feel the sting of Monday’s negative prices when physical April deliveries are invoiced. Today, we begin a two-part blog series examining U.S. spot crude pricing mechanisms.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) NYMEX (formerly New York Mercantile Exchange, or “Merc”) WTI is the most liquid (widely and actively traded) commodity futures contract in the world. So far this year, the market has traded more than 1.5 billion barrels per day of crude across all delivery months for the contract and on Tuesday that volume spiked to over 4 billion barrels. The NYMEX WTI crude price is so ubiquitous that it also underpins the domestic U.S. crude spot market. At the same time, futures traders must be mindful of what happens in the spot market. In a strange symbiotic relationship, not only do cash crude prices heavily influence futures prices, but the cash price for most U.S. crude is indexed to the futures price. Sort of a “do-loop”, for you programmers. Differences between futures and physical trading, as well as the delivery mechanism that links the two markets, make pricing physical WTI complicated.