Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Tuesday: Break The Fever; Slow News Day On The West Coast

Active rigs: 182

RBN Energy: This blog is an epilogue to our recent series titled “Get Back to Where You Once Belonged –REX Reversal and Implications for Marcellus/Utica”.  In that series, Part 1 compared the pipeline capacity constraints faced by Rockies producers a few years ago – and resolved by REX -- with similar constraints that Marcellus/Utica producers are dealing with today.   Part 2 looked at how quickly gas production has increased in Marcellus/Utica, and how pipeline developers are scrambling to catch up.  And Part 3 examined the implications for reversing REX flows into the Midwest market and which traditional supplies in that market will likely be displaced.

The Wall Street Journal

Do you remember my poll -- maybe it's still up -- if so I need to close it out. Do you remember my poll asking why Apple was committed to solar energy? The answer is here.

Congress has moved on. The debate on the nation's debt limit is now taking center stage in the impasse.
Senate Democrats this week are planning a vote to extend the nation's borrowing authority through 2014, the latest sign that the focus of the budget impasse is shifting toward preventing a U.S. debt default.
Democrats are still debating their opening bid, but the most likely scenario is to advance a debt-limit bill free of extraneous policy amendments, as President Barack Obama has demanded. The bill would put the need for the next debt-limit increase after next year's midterm elections.
House Republicans say they won't pass any such debt-limit extension unless it is accompanied by deficit-reduction measures or other priorities.
And then this analysis: why Democrats are dug in on the shutdown impasse.
Republicans have several, sometimes conflicting goals in the current government-shutdown impasse. Democrats, by contrast, have just one. It's called "break the fever."
Breaking the fever is code for ending the cycle of recurring, last-minute crises over spending bills and increases in the nation's borrowing limit—the debt ceiling. The White House believes these crises give outsize power to a minority of conservative House Republicans who don't have the strength to push their agenda into law but can, in a crisis, stop the action.
More important, Democrats are convinced they must break the cycle now, or see much of the Obama second-term agenda sink away.
Greece forecasts a budget surplus; I wonder if they will repay Germany for all the money Germany gave them? LOL.

Karzai raises stakes in US-Afghan talks. There are few world leaders that irritate me more than Karzai. The sooner the US pulls out of Afghanistan, the better.

Alcatel-Lucent will cut 10,000 jobs. It will be interesting to see if the EU allows this.

It looks like the pilots have had time to get their story straight. Remember that Asiana plane that crashed on approach at San Francisco airport? Pilots of an Asiana Airlines jet that crashed while trying to land in San Francisco have told investigators an automated speed-control system malfunction was a major factor in the fatal accident.

The Los Angeles Times

Emboldened Republicans defy DC ways -- top story on front page.
By sheer force of their personalities, and under the protection of their conservative districts, these representatives feel secure in rejecting compromise. 
Give me a break. Let's see: Schumer, New York; Hillary, New York; Kennedy, Massachusetts; Al Franken, Minnesota; Pelosi, California; Harry Reid, Nevada. The list of Democrats that fit the definition is a lot longer than the Republican list. Stories like this, at the top of the page, front page tell me the newspaper is just another blog, and just another mouthpiece for the Democratic party.

It must have been a very slow news day on the west coast.

Why Apple Is Committed To 100% Renewable Energy

One of the polls at the sidebar asks the question why Apple is committed to renewable energy.

The results of the poll:
  • it is the "right" thing to do: 5%
  • it makes economic sense: 8%
  • it is good public relations: 67%
  • there is another over-riding reason: 19%
Generally, I just provide the results of the poll and do not discuss the results. In this case, I make an exception.

Steve Jobs was famous for many things. He always talked about "skating to where the puck would be." In this case, he knew the electric grid was unreliable and for iCloud he absolutely needed a reliable source of electricity. The US electric grid is not reliable and with the war on coal and the war on conventional energy in general, he knew the electric grid would only get worse.

In addition, Steve Jobs was famous for being a control freak. He wanted to control everything that had to do with his company, including controlling his source of power.

Today, the headline story on the front page of The Wall Street Journal: meltdowns hobble NSA data center.
Chronic electrical surges at the massive new data-storage facility central to the National Security Agency's spying operation have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the center's opening for a year.
There have been 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months that have prevented the NSA from using computers at its new Utah data-storage center, slated to be the spy agency's largest, according to project documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
One project official described the electrical troubles—so-called arc fault failures—as "a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box." These failures create fiery explosions, melt metal and cause circuits to fail, the official said.
Exactly how much data the NSA will be able to store there is classified. Engineers on the project believe the capacity is bigger than Google's largest data center. Estimates are in a range difficult to imagine but outside experts believe it will keep exabytes or zettabytes of data. An exabyte is roughly 100,000 times the size of the printed material in the Library of Congress; a zettabyte is 1,000 times larger.
But without a reliable electrical system to run computers and keep them cool, the NSA's global surveillance data systems can't function. The NSA chose Bluffdale, Utah, to house the data center largely because of the abundance of cheap electricity. It continuously uses 65 megawatts, which could power a small city of at least 20,000, at a cost of more than $1 million a month, according to project officials and documents.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Wells Coming Off The Confidential List Tuesday

  • 24360, drl, Statoil, Knight 35-26 2H, Banks, no production data,
  • 24993, drl, BR, Cleo 41-1TFH, Croff, no production data,
  • 25162, drl, CLR, Raymond 1-21AH, Oliver, no production data, 
It appears that the vast majority, if not all, wells going to "drl" status are due to operational reasons, not because the frack teams are unable to keep up with drilling.

There are suggestions that some frack teams are sitting idle waiting for pad drilling to be completed on some pads.

Pad drilling will cause some hiccups:
  • mismatch between drilling and fracking (as noted above)
  • increased time from spud to first delivery 
Over time, these issues will be resolved.

Seven (7) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA; Statoil, Hess With Nice Wells

Active rigs: 182

Seven (7) new permits --
  • Operators: Emerald Oil (2), OXY USA (2), Cornerstone, HRC, Hess
  • Fields: Moline (McKenzie), Little Butte (Burke) McGregory Buttes (Dunn), South Tobacco Garden (McKenzie), Willmen (Dunn), Little Knife (Dunn)
  • Comments: Emerald averages about two new permits every other month or so
Wells coming off the confidential list were posted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

MRO cancelled the following well:
  • 24078, PNC, MRO, Vorwerk USA 34-24H, Deep Water Creek Bay,
Seven (7) producing wells completed:
  • 25384, no data, Whiting, Hartstrom 224-33H, Sanish,  
  • 23945, 1,130, Statoil, Sanders 34-27 3TFH, Ragged Butte, t9/13; cum --
  • 24086, 2,285, Statoil, Sax 25-36 4TFH, Banks, t9/13;
  • 24443, 831, Hess, EN-State B 155-93-1609H-4, Alger, t9/13; cum 5K 8/13;
  • 23183, 564, Hess, SC-Tom 153-98-1514H-2, Truax, t8/13; cum 5K 8/13;
  • 23502, 1,035, Hess, BB-Burk-151-95-0718H-5, Blue Buttes, t9/13; cum 7K 8/13;
  • 24726, 1,250, Hess, HA-Nelson 152-95-3328H-3, Hawkeye, t9/13; cum --

Signing Off For Awhile

President O'Bama has ordered views of Mount Rushmore to be "removed."

This is truly bizarre. Really, really bizarre. 

And with that, I'm signing off for awhile. Good luck to all. I won't be following the market today.