The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog)

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

It's Cold out There -- And Expensive -- PJM -- December 16, 2025

Locator: 49720PJM.

PJM wiki.

Link here.

Critical Minerals Deposit -- Utah -- December 16, 2025

Locator: 49719UTAH.

I never once believed that China had the only "critical minerals deposit" in the world, and the US had none, or very little.

This tells me that at least four US presidential administrations were asleep at the wheel, letting China take the lead and ignoring our own backyard. It took a crisis (and a Trump) to get this back on track.

Link here.

Two New Permits; Nine Permits Renewed -- December 16, 2025

Locator: 49718B.

Silver:

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $55.77

Active rigs: 29.

Two new permits, #42566 - #42567:

Operators: KODA Resources; Spotted Hawk
Fields: Daneville (Divide County); Van Hook (McLean County)
Comments:

KODA Resources has a permit for a Bock well, NENW 21-161-102,

to be sited 545 FNL and 1734 FWL.

Spotted Hawk has a permit for an Athena well, NENW 18-150-91,

to be sited 368 FNL and 1524 FWL.

Nine permits renewed:

Hess (5): two AN-Double Bar V permits; three AN-Lone Tree permits; all in Antelope oil field, McKenzie County;
KODA Resources (2): two Stour permits; both in Fertile Valley, Divide County;
Cornerstone Natural Resources (2): a Christianson permit and a KMC permit, both in Burke County, Northeast Foothills oil field.

Map Of The Bakken -- December 16, 2025

Locator: 49717B.

Link here.

This was recently posted by RBN Energy. This map will be posted and re-posted by many folks on various websites. One person who has commented on this map has made an interesting observation, one I've thought about many times, used to write about it often in the early days of the blog, but now, not worth the push back, so I simply post the map, for now.

RBN Energy: Which Bakken Operators Have the Biggest Inventories Of Top-Tier Drilling Sites? Link here. Archived.

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The Book Page

I continue the practice and the habit of keeping several books at hand and reading whichever captures my attention at the moment. My three books right now: Tale of Two Cities, a biography of Joseph Conrad, and the history of Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris.

It is interesting that Charles Dicken, whom I had not previously read, is quite a good read. I started Bleak House, but put that aside for awhile and will read and complete Tale of Two Cities. I'm about a third of the way through the book.

What I have found very, very useful is to check in with Google Gemini after I complete each chapter to see what I may have missed and reinforce what I just read. It is interesting: Google Gemini is so much faster and so much easier than Cliffs Notes (CliffsNotes).

But wow, this is really, really bizarre. Many / most of the main twelve individuals in the novel have their own wiki page. Amazing.

Wow, it would be fun to be a high school literature teacher these days.