Friday, August 21, 2026

Friday -- August 21, 2026

Locator: 51512B.  

One bright spot yesterday: COP. When I wasn't looking, COP apparently hit a new 52-week high -- Morgan Stanley and UPS both raised their price targets for COP to $151 and $153, respectively.

SpaceX: link here. Is this crazy talk? Yes, day in an day out, more than one launch ever hour. The next question: why?

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $86.35.

New wells reporting

  • Sunday, August 23, 2026: 45 for the month, 86 for the quarter, 430 for the year,
    • 41972, conf,  Devon, Thunderbolt 10-12 3H, 
    • 41313, conf, Whiting, Dobias 5203 44-32 3B,
  • Saturday, August 22, 2026: 43 for the month, 84 for the quarter, 428 for the year,
    • 41992, conf, Hess, EN-Edwards-157-94-2203H-2, 
  • Friday, August 21, 2026: 42 for the month, 83 for the quarter, 427 for the year,
    • 41991, conf, Hess, EN-Edwards-157-94-2203H-1, 
    • 41358, conf, Whiting, Gullikson Federal 5203 42-31 5BX, 
    • 41129, conf, Whiting, Gullikson 5203 42-31 4B, 

RBN Energy: more LNG export capacity is on the way along the British Columbia Coast. Link here. Archived.  

Western Canada’s British Columbia (BC) is a new hot spot for LNG export development. The 14-million-tons-per-annum (MMtpa) first phase of LNG Canada is up and running; a final investment decision (FID) on a nearly identical Phase 2 is on the horizon; two smaller LNG export projects totaling more than 5 MMtpa are under construction; and a 12-MMtpa proposal may be sanctioned soon. Assuming they all advance to commissioning, BC could have more than 45 MMtpa of LNG export capacity, equivalent to more than 6 Bcf/d of natural gas, in operation by the early 2030s. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our look at BC’s LNG export boom.

As we said in Part 1, it took a long time — 14 years from project announcement to first cargo — to permit, finance and build Phase 1 of LNG Canada (purple diamond in Figure 1 below), which can send out the LNG equivalent of about 1.8 Bcf/d when it’s running on all cylinders. 
But what you might call the second wave of BC-focused LNG export development is rolling in much faster, and has the potential to more than triple Western Canada’s LNG export capacity over the next five years
The co-owners of LNG Canada Phase 1 — Shell (a 40% stake and the project operator), Petronas (25%), PetroChina Co. Ltd. (15%), Mitsubishi Corp. (15%) and Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS, 5%) — are targeting a late-2026 FID on LNG Canada Phase 2 (checkered purple-and-white diamond), which would double the Kitimat, BC, site’s capacity to 28 MMtpa (~3.6 Bcf/d) by 2031-32. 

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Seven New Permits, Four Permits Renewed -- August 20, 2026

Locator: 51511B. 

WTI: $86.37.

Active rigs: 34. New recent high. 

Seven new permits, #43232 - #43238, inclusive --

  • Operators: Phoenix Operating (4); Murex (3)
  • Fields: Charlie Bob, McKenzie County; Beaver Lodge, Williams County;
  • Comments: 
    • Phoenix Operating has permits for four Brenda wells, NENE 32-146-98, 
      • to be sited 355 / 445 FNL and 999 FEL; 
    • Murex has permits for three MD wells (MD-Rae Lynn, MD-Sadie Skye, and MD-Sarah Christine), SESW 8-156-95, 
      • to be sited 565 FSL and 2419 / 2458 FEL.

Four permits renewed:

  • Enerplus (3): Cadence, Tempo, Octave, McGregory Buttes, Dunn County;
  • Whiting: Link 5001, Foreman Butte, McKenzie County.

Copper -- SCCO -- August 20, 2026

Locator: 51511COPPER. 

Copper: this was posted yesterday over at Oilprice:

Didn't seem to affect SCCO too much

Meanwhile, BRKB is down again today, albeit not much.

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Disclaimer

Briefly

  • I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.
  • I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
  • I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
  • See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
  • Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
  • If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
  • Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
  • I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
  • And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution. 
  • I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom. Now, I've added Amazon. And QCOM.
  • Longer version here.
  • Harold Hamm Expands CLR's Footprint In The Permian -- August 20, 2026

    Locator: 51510CLR.   

    Query: Based on price per acre and price per flowing bbl of oil in the Permian, I'm calculating maybe $1 billion at the lower end for this deal, maybe as high as $1.5 billion. 

    Chatbot

    *************************************
    The Article 

    Link here

    From the link:

    Continental Resources is getting substantially bigger in the Permian Basin.

    The privately held oil producer has agreed to acquire FireBird Energy II, adding roughly 54,000 net acres in the Midland Basin along with 32,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) of production, Continental said Thursday.

    About 69% of that is oil.

    The FireBird assets include approximately 147,000 net resource acres across more than six stacked-pay reservoirs and 307 gross operated development locations. Continental will operate about 95% of the acquired acreage.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed. [At $20,000 / net acre and/or $30,000 / flowing bbl of oil brings us to about $1 billion.] [Prior to going private in 2022, CLR had a market cap of about $27 billion.] [This suggests to me Hamm is getting plenty of bullish-on-oil from all his visits to Mar-A-Lago.] 

    The acquisition caps an aggressive expansion in a basin that was once secondary to Continental’s better-known Bakken position. Including FireBird, Continental says it has increased its Permian acreage by more than 40% over the past 14 months.

    *********************************
    Disclaimer

    Briefly

  • I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.
  • I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
  • I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
  • See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
  • Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
  • If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
  • Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
  • I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
  • And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution. 
  • I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom. Now, I've added Amazon. And QCOM.
  • Longer version here.
  • A Graphic Worth A Thousand Words --- August 20, 2026

    Locator: 51509TECH.