Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Energy Links For Wednesday -- North Dakota #3 in Business Climate -- Only Utah, ND in Top 20 In All Six Vital Categories -- Well Ahead of Texas -- California Not Mentioned

Link here to The Dickinson Press. 
The Forbes ranking measured six categories for businesses, including costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. Utah finished first on the list and was trailed by Virginia. North Dakota moved up one spot from its 2011 ranking.
North Dakota finished second only to another energy-leading state — Texas — in the area of economic climate.
“North Dakota is a great place to do business right now,” said Dickinson Chamber of Commerce executive director Cooper Whitman. “I know this sounds crazy, but I continue to say it — western North Dakota is home to the most dynamic business climate in the world right now.”
Rounding out the top 10 on the overall Forbes list are North Carolina at No. 4, followed by Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Iowa. Besides top-ranked Utah, North Dakota was the only other state to finish in the top 20 in all six vital categories.
Utah, Virgina, North Dakota, North Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa.

I was surprised to see North Dakota that far above Texas. Especially in light of some comments from a reader recently comparing oil taxes in North Dakota to Texas.

Wow! Thank Goodness Airport Defibrillators Work As Advertised ----

... after coming to, being brought back from a near-death experience in the Atlanta airport, I was on the gurney trying to figure out what was going on. Fortunately, defibrillators work as advertised. They don't shock if one is not having a heart attack.

It turns out, after I came to, and the paramedics checked what I was last looking at, it all became clear. I must have fainted and fallen off my chair in the waiting area.

My computer screen was still on this page: a Minnesota city "approves" a fracking sand operation.
A proposed rail shipping hub for sand used by the oil and natural gas industries took a major step forward when the Wabasha City Council rejected a request to commission a study on the environmental risks that the sand and hundreds of trucks a day would bring to the picturesque Mississippi River town.
Calgary, Alberta-based Superior Sand Systems Inc. plans to build a storage and loading facility along the Canadian Pacific tracks, from which silica sand mined in Wisconsin would be shipped to North Dakota and Texas for use in the oil and gas extraction process called hydraulic fracturing.
The facility could take in 200 to 300 truckloads of sand a day and run seven days a week. The company hopes to begin operating as early as Thursday.
Wow, I'm still feeling faint. A dream? April First?

Some very, very brave city council members.

Note to the Granddaughters

Only part of the above post is "true." The link to the story and the quote are "true." Don't worry. I did not faint and I did not need medical help.

Non-Bakken News -- Politics --

This is probably the biggest non-Bakken business story of the last ten minutes: The US government will sell 200 million shares of GM at $27. This  means the government would have to sell its remaining shares at an average price of $69.72 to break even.
The Obama administration said Wednesday it will sell 200 million shares — or 40 percent of its remaining stake in General Motors Co. — back to the automaker and announced plans to completely exit the Detroit automaker by March 2014.
The Detroit automaker said it will purchase 200 million shares of GM stock held by Treasury for $5.5 billion — or $27.50 per share — nearly $2 above the stock's closing price on Tuesday. GM shares jumped sharply on the news and were up 6.7 percent to $27.10, or $1.59.
The U.S. Treasury — after more than a year of refusing to say when it might start selling its remaining stake in GM — said it willannounce a written plan in January to shed its remaining 300 million shares over the next 12 to 15 months — likely in a series of small stock sales.
The Treasury's move is intended to minimize the impact of the stock sale on the share price.
The exit plan may prove to be a boost to GM's lagging stock price and to some car buyers, who have avoided GM because of the "Government Motors" label.
Yup. I assume 47% of the US population does not care. Americans are content/satisfied.

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Wow, tell me it's not true. Sam Donaldson arrested for DUI.

Wells Coming Off the Confidential List Today Have Been Posted

Click here for wells coming off the confidential list today; some nice wells, particularly the Whiting Pronghorn wells.

Also, the number of active rigs is up to 187 which is quite surprising, considering all that is going on. I had expected the number of rigs to stay near the intro-boom low of 181.

Traveling For The Next Ten Days Or So; Links; Update -- Re-Completion Wells; RBN Energy; Utica

The blog will suffer.

Some changes while traveling.

1. I will post comments as soon as I can, but I will reply to very few of them. My policy is to reply to all posted comments (with rare exceptions) but while traveling, I just won't have time. So, please keep sending comments. I read them all. But I won't be able to reply to as many.

2. Updates will occur much less frequently. For example, in a few minutes I will be off the net for three hours or so, possibly longer.

3. I hear that the winter storm hitting the mid-section of the US is going to be a pretty good wallop. Don alerted me to that last night, and I posted that. Hopefully, it will stay south of the Bakken.

Bakken Operations

Active rigs: 186 (steady, but well off the intra-boom low of 181).

Per a reader's request, an update for "re-completion wells" has been posted.  I have also tagged it for follow-up in April, 2014. The post for "re-completion wells" is also tagged; the tag can be found at the bottom of the blog where the tags are.

IPs for wells coming off confidential list were not posted at time I was able to access internet this a.m., but preliminary production numbers are now available.  Whiting has a couple of nice Pronghorn prospect wells (at least I think that's where they are located).

Links for today

RBN Energy: the Anadarko.
The Anadarko Basin centered in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle has not yet developed production on the scale of the Bakken, Eagle Ford or Permian plays. Like the Permian Basin the Anadarko is an old field being recycled using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques. Spectacular initial production of over 5Mb/d from wells in the Granite Wash Hogshooter formation this year has excited producers. Today we look at the basin’s development.
BP's Utica regional headquarters moves to Youngstown, Ohio. This was noted earlier, but I'm not sure if I adequately shared the information.
BP announced yesterday they have begun moving into the company’s new “Utica Operations Center,” a 5,000 square foot office space with 38,000 sq ft of warehouse/storage space located in the Youngstown Commerce Park in North Jackson (Mahoning County), Ohio. BP aggressively leased Ohio Utica Shale acreage during 2012—signing up some 100,000 acres of leases this year. Of the Ohio acreage leased by BP, the vast majority (84,000 acres) is in Trumbull County, close to the new office space.
I don't know if it's just me, but there sure seems to be a quantum leap in interest in energy plays in the United States in the past six months in terms of "headline" news and stories. The Utica, particularly, seems to be getting a lot of attention.

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The story is easy to find everywhere on the web; it certainly appears it was not the President, but rather Hillary that missed that 3:00 a.m. call coming out of Libya.
The leaders of an independent panel that blamed systematic State Department management and leadership failures for gross security lapses in the deadly Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya will explain their findings to Congress on Wednesday.
I think this was grossly unfair to Hillary. She never had her day in "court" to explain her side of the story.  She certainly has loyal minions: her security chief (for the State Department) took the fall; he resigned.

By the way, some folks have mentioned the cut in funding for embassy security around the world (I was completely unaware of that; I certainly would have posted that had I  known). I find it interesting that this was not mentioned in the ABC report on the Benghazi debacle.

Perhaps Hillary mentioned it in her 8-page letter to the board; she was unable to attend in person due to the "flu." Wow, I can't make this stuff up. Remember all the Kremlin apparatchiks suffering from the "flu" during the Cold War ... and then never heard of again? Iran is having a similar problem:
The Iranian State media just announced that another high ranking Revolutionary Guard commander, Ahmad Sodagar, has died of a heart attack.
Sodagar, a major general, had served as the head of security and intelligence of the Guards’ Khatam-al-Anbia Base and was the chief commander of the Guards’ Prophet Mohammad Division. He had served in the Iran-Iraq war and, at the time of his death, was the head of the program “Defaeh Moghadas” or Holy Defense.
This is the fifth Guard commander to die because of a heart attack or stroke in the past month.