Spaceholder For Tomorrow's First Post

Update

June 3, 2014: how hilarious -- I am running late. The one thing I did not count on was my wife missing her alarm, which then resulted in me jumping out of bed (for an old man, "jumping" might be a bit of hyperbole), running over to the granddaughters' house and getting them to school. So, everything will be delayed.
 

Original Post

Every weekday morning I have a standard North-Dakota-active-rig post, an RBN-Energy link, and a quick look at the day's Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other headline stories. So this post will be a place holder for tomorrow morning's post, assuming the sun comes up, I get up, and I have a wi-fi connection. Two out of three are sure to happen. And that ain't bad:

Jack Nicolson in Mars Attack
With Congress ceding legislative power to the EPA, we have but one branch of the government working for us, and sometimes I wonder about that group of nine in robes.

The GM Saga: But this story might have legs. There are a lot of ambulance- (and hearse-) chasing lawyers out there. Reuters is reporting that those 13-government-motor deaths attributed to a faulty 67-cent ignition switch may be the tip of the iceberg:

At least 74 people have died in General Motors cars in accidents with some key similarities to those that GM has linked to 13 deaths involving defective ignition switches, a Reuters analysis of government fatal-crash data has determined. Such accidents also occurred at a higher rate in the GM cars than in top competitors’ models, the analysis showed.

NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman told Reuters: “The final death toll associated with this safety defect is not known to NHTSA, but we believe it’s likely that more than 13 lives were lost.”

After all, this is government motors, and Mr Friedman is a government employee, so we're sticking to "our" story.

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Apple: This was an incredibly busy day. I'm not going to talk much about Apple's WWDC right now: there is just too much to digest, but it's easy to find. Suffice it to say, for developers it was a game changer, and for consumers, we will see how it plays out over the next 12 months. Yosemite is free, by the way.

The other big story today: the new EPA rules on the war on coal. The fact that the market actually hit a new high, and oil and natural gas were essentially flat, told me the movers and shakers "blew this off." The real question is this: if things are this dire, why did the EPA stop at 30-30 (cut emissions by 30% by 2030)? Why didn't the EPA go for 90-20 (cut emissions by 90% by 2020)? If the Earth turns into Venus in 2020 it really won't do much good to blame President Obama and the EPA then; it will be too late. The rules are completely arbitrary. 30-30; 90-20; 10-50; 40-20; whatever. If the Earth is on its way to becoming another Venus, we needed a bit more leadership from the president, and 90-20 would have been the least he could have done. Maybe Schwinn wasn't represented at the EPA.

Be that as it may: natural gas is the winner in the US. Coal is the winner everywhere else.

The Taliban exchange. One word: "snookered." Actually two words: "Snookered, again."

I still have to go through the June NDIC hearing dockets, but if you haven't seen them, look at all the requests by Continental Resources for 32 wells on one spacing unit, 2560-acre units. But EOG has a request for 32 wells on a 640-acre spacing unit. Do the math.

More to follow tomorrow. This is a spaceholder for tomorrow, but didn't want to forget this news.

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My condolences go out to his family so do not take this out of context. But really, a full-page story at Rigzone from Reuters on a death of one individual working in the oil sands? Actually, I guess it makes sense. At the end of the story we learn that this is the fourth death at Suncor's site this year; the four deaths  include one woman attacked and killed by a bear. I can't make this stuff up. I must have missed the earlier story on the bear attack. But that's the problem with ending global warming: the bears are making a comeback.

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The other day I got a note from a reader suggesting our oil companies are short-sighted, worried about executing their game plan every quarter (every three months) to keep the shareholders happy. Fortunately the reader doesn't have to despair. Reuters via Rigzone is reporting the price of oil (and by extension, the price of gasoline) could go up by 2035 (I can't make this stuff up):

A potential shortfall in investment in production in the Middle East could create a $15 spike in the oil price by 2035, the energy arm of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said. The world will need to be a total of $40 trillion invested in energy supply and $8 trillion on energy efficiency by 2035 to meet growing demand and falling output from mature sources of energy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report.

The price of oil might spike from $110 to $125 without a $40-trillion investment by 2035. Memo to self: send a letter of concern to my congresswoman.

A Note To The Granddaughters Pending A Bakken Story

Later on I will post something about the Bakken, but I'm so far behind at the moment, it will take me the rest of the week to catch up, and, of course, the stories will keep coming.

But I will get back to the Bakken in a few minutes. For now, something more important:

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A Note for the Granddaughters

A couple of weeks ago my wife called attention to this WSJ article on Arvo Pärt. I read the article in the print copy and forgot to link it at the website. Tonight a reader alerted to another article on Arvo Pärt at NPR. This technology is so cool. At the NPR link, one can actually link to an audio broadcast. Highly recommend it.

I can't remember if I posted my story about how I discovered Arvo Pärt ... and now it's been so long, I can't remember the story. I have it in my journals, but I'm not in the mood to go back to the journals to see if I can find the story.

It was either this, or some close variation. Back in the 2002 - 2004 time-frame, the United States Air Force was sending me to a remote location in northern England on a regular basis. Every two or three months, I was sent to a remote site near Scotland for a few weeks. I was done with my work by 4:00 p.m. every day, and had weekends free. I would have gone nuts had it not been for a) reading; and, b) a Sony portable CD player. I would walk almost every evening and every Saturday and Sunday. On some Saturdays I would start walking at 7:00 a.m. and not get back home until 9:00 p.m., totally exhausted. Some nights, I did not think I would make it back to the dorm -- I was that exhausted. I generally listened to country western. I listened to one CD (actually a double CD) over and over: Hank Williams. Not junior. THE Hank Williams.

Somewhere along the line I first heard Arvo Pärt's music. From then on, I listened to his music almost exclusively some weeks. It was incredible when I was able to attend an Arvo Pärt concert in an English cathedral on one of those trips to Yorkshire -- but not with Arvo Pärt himself, just his music.

Near the end of my Air Force career, when I was making fewer and fewer trips to northern England, I would still walk, but I was walking later in the evening and late into the night. In rural England I found a small chapel whose doors were unlocked. I would go into the chapel about midnight, pitch black, no street lights outside, no lights inside, no flashlight. [I had walked the path so many times in daylight, I could walk it in the pitch black of night. I counted the steps it took from a landmark in the road to the chapel door.] I would sit in the dark chapel for about an hour listening to Pärt on the little Sony portable CD player and cheap headphones.

My favorite, De Teum. This is part 1. The entire Te Deum, it appears last over an hour. This is just nine minutes:

De Teum, Part I, Arvo Pärt

I don't listen to Arvo Pärt as much any more. I had to stop listening back in 2010 or thereabouts; the music just brought back too many bittersweet memories. Periodically I listen to him again, so I appreciate the reader for sending me the link.

As I said, I don't listen to Arvo Pärt as much any more. I also don't see as many meteor showers.

Part 2:

De Teum, Part 2, Arvo Pärt

Update On XTO In The Bakken -- Michael Fitzsimmons

Link here to Seeking Alpha article.

EURs Of > 2 Million BOE In The Bakken? June 2, 2014

Disclaimer: I make simple math errors. I make bad assumptions. I can't keep track of who is estimating "barrels of oil (BO)"  versus "barrels of oil equivalent (BOE)."

Disclaimer: this is for my own use. I strongly recommend no one draw any conclusions from these calculations or make any investment decisions based on them. I throw it out on the blog because it's where I do stuff -- that was the intent of the blog from the beginning. Feel free to read but this is what I'm seeing at the moment.

I still have to clean up this post regarding EURs suggested by Hess based on a corporate presentation: 

http://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2014/06/hess-botpe-annual-stockholders-meeting.html

In that note I suggested that EURs for a long lateral = 2.4 million boe or 1.2 million boe for a short lateral.

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For newbies: Harold Hamm says 603,000 bo [I believe oil, but it could boe]. Filloon says some of the better long laterals will have EURs of 1.0 million.

So EURs of 1.0 million are at the top end (long laterals).

So, when numbers at a Hess presentation suggest 2.4 million boe, it's nice to see if one can find that number anywhere else.)

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Don sent me this SeekingAlpha article on XTO earlier today.

In that article, Michael Fitzsimmons said XTO had ~ 570,000 acres. (By the way, that number agrees closely with the number I show at my "Snapshot" page.)

There was a graphic at the top of that article that said XTO has > 900 million boe resource in the Bakken.

Doing the arithmetic again: 900,000,000 boe / 570,000 acres = 1,579 boe / acre A long lateral, 1280 acres x 1,579 = 2.02 million boe.

So, now I have two large operators, with large acreage, that doing basic math, suggests EURs of over 2.0 million boe. This is significantly more than what the corporate presentations still say. 

Again, in case you missed it the first time, two disclaimers:

Disclaimer: I make simple math errors. I make bad assumptions. I can't keep track of who is estimating "barrels of oil (BO)"  versus "barrels of oil equivalent (BOE)."

Disclaimer: this is for my own use. I strongly recommend no one draw any conclusions from these calculations or make any investment decisions based on them. I throw it out on the blog because it's where I do stuff -- that was the intent of the blog from the beginning. Feel free to read but this is what I'm seeing at the moment.

For newbies: in some parts of the Bakken it looks like some operators will report 92% oil, the rest liquid condensate and natural gas. In other parts of the Bakken, some operators will report closer to 80% oil with the rest being liquid condensate and natural gas, less of the latter, more of the former. 

With the new rules in the war on coal, natural gas becomes more valuable, raising the overall value of "BOE."

Nine (9) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA; Nine (9) Completed Wells Reporting "High IPs"; KOG With Four (4) Huge Stockyard Creek Weels

Wells coming off the confidential list Tuesday:

• 25677, drl, Statoil, Lucy Hanson 15-22 6H, Catwalk, no production data, 
• 25860, 2,716, QEP, Zorro 4-35-26BH, Grail, t1/14; cum 65K 4/14;
• 25861, 2,655, QEP, Zorro 3-35-26BH, Grail, t1/14; cum 63K 4/14;
• 25893, conf, Hunt, Writing Rock 161-101-30-31H-1, Writing Rock, producing,
• 26060, 2,323, QEP, Zorro 27-34-26-35LL, Grail, t1/14; cum 47K 4/14;
• 26537, A, Sinclair, Martens 5-5XH, Sanish, no IP or production data,
• 26679, 1,776, BR, CCU Burner 41-26TFH, Corral Creek, t3/14; cum 4K 4/14;
• 25860, see above, QEP, Zorro 4-35-26BH, Grail:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
4-2014	13140	11173
3-2014	14854	7465
2-2014	15776	0
1-2014	21061	0

25861, see above, QEP, Zorro 3-35-26BH, Grail:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
4-2014	12184	11064
3-2014	17533	9503
2-2014	15675	0
1-2014	17179	0

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Active rigs:

	6/2/2014	06/02/2013	06/02/2012	06/02/2011	06/02/2010
Active Rigs	188	187	215	173	122

Nine (9) new permits --

• Operators: Triangle (4), CLR (2), Legacy (2), OXY USA
• Fields: Elk (McKenzie), Patent Gate (McKenzie), Red Rock (Bottineau), Little Knife (Dunn)
• Comments:

Wells coming off the confidential list were posted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

Twelve (12) producing wells completed:

• 25208, 2,149, HRC, Fort Berthold 148-95-22C-15-4H, Eagle Nest, t4/14; cum --
• 25682, 2,040, BR, Rising Sun 31-1TFH-7NH, Clear Creek, t5/14; cum --
• 25829, 2,088, BR, Sunline 21-1MBH-5SH, Clear Creek, 4 sections, t5/14; cum --
• 26046, 2,485, BR, Capitol 14-7MBH, Westberg, t5/14; cum --
• 26047, 1,683, BR, Capitol 24-7TFH, Westberg, t5/14; cum --
• 26077, 940, OXY USA, Evelyn Stroh 3-17-20H-143-96, Fayette, t5/14; cum --
• 26375, 1,960, KOG, P Vandeberg 154-99-1-1-12-16, Stockyard Creek, t5/14; cum --
• 26376, 1,267, KOG, P Vandeberg 154-99-1-1-12-16H3, Stockyard Creek, t5/14; cum --
• 26377, 2,198, KOG, P Vandeberg 154-99-1-1-12-15H, Stockyard Creek, t4/14; cum 4K 4/14;
• 26378, 2,086, KOG, Vandeberg 154-99-1-1-12-15H3, Stockyard Creek, t4/14; cum 4K 4/14;
• 27317, 817, Whiting, Shell Creek State 11-16-2H, 1 section, Parshall, t4/14; cum 3K 4/14;
• 27318, 988, Whiting, Shell Creek State 11-16-3H, 1 section, Parshall t4/14; cum 3K 4/14;