Permitting Stats For Calendar Year 2014 -- North Dakota

I have not cross-checked information from previous posts so I have no idea how accurate this information is. If this information is important to you, go to the source, the NDIC. This data is from my own database and will differ from that of the NDIC. My permits are for oil and gas wells only; the number does not include permits for salt water disposal wells. This number also includes permits that were later canceled. Some permits were canceled in the same calendar year they were issued; others were canceled in a subsequent year. New, almost identical permits, were sometimes issued for earlier canceled permits (due to siting changes, or change in operator, for example). These numbers may not be identical to numbers I have previously posted. I did not cross-check; I simply went back to my original databases.

I also track permitting projections in real time (when I remember).

Total permits by year:

• 2014: 3,012
• 2013: 2,671
• 2012: 2,522
• 2011: 1,916

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Permitting by selected month

Permitting (2014):

• December, 2014: 251
• November, 2014: 235
• October, 2014: 328
• September, 2014: 261
• August, 2014: 273
• July, 2014: 265
• June, 2014: 247

Permitting (2013):

• December, 2013: 227
• November, 2013: 232
• October, 2013: 267
• September, 2013: 287
• August, 2013: 276 

Permitting (2012):

• January, 2013: 218 (note the increase)
• December, 2012: 154 ( significant decrease)
• November, 2012: 211 (all-time high was 370 in Oct 2012)
• October, 2012: 370 (all-time high)
• September, 2012: 273
• August, 2012: 261

HAL Cutting Back In Houston; At Least It's Hard To Catch -- January 13, 2015

Houston Biz Journal is reporting that Houston-based Halliburton Co. has cut an undisclosed number of jobs in Houston due to current business conditions.

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Tweeting now: Fort Hood confirms an investigation involving a soldier who died after returning from West Africa.

The CDC has been told to "embargo" news stories regarding Ebola based on an earlier posted story.

Also tweeting now, and quite surprising, or maybe not: the vote to extend military intervention against Islamic State militants in Iraq passed French parliament 488 to 1.

And while we're at it, first Muslim lawmaker will be named to House intelligence committee giving him unlimited access to state secrets in his intelligence oversight position.

And so it goes.

See Disclaimer.

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Schools And iPads

The elementary school that our younger granddaughter attends here in Texas has very successfully incorporated the Apple iPad into its "curriculum."

The Los Angeles Independent School District ... failed. And the FBI is investigating.

My wife's siblings attended schools in the LAISD so we follow the district with some interest. I also enjoy Apple so it was "doubly" interesting to follow the inclusion of iPads into the curriculum of various school districts.

Three things, I think, mean the difference between success and failure introducing the tablet into the elementary schools.

• incredibly good teach instructor and knowledge of the operating system
• tablets stay in school; tablets do not leave the school
• tablets are an adjunct, and not the center, of the curriculum

It appears that LAISD failed on two counts, and probably all three. I believe I am correct when I say that LAISD students were "issued" iPads which they took home with them every weekend and over the weekend.

Having seen how challenging the iPads can be to technologically-challenged adults over the age of 25, I can only guess that LAISD teachers were well beyond their comfort zone when working with the iPad.

Finally, according to the linked article over at Macrumors, the new report deems "the project too heavily focused on Apple's iPad as the centerpiece for the initiative, with no willingness to focus on a less-expensive alternative."

I don't think cost had anything to do with it; after all, it was already in the budget when the program was determined a failure. The money had been spent. I have no idea what the writers meant by "no willingness to focus on a less-expensive alternative." One set of Encyclopedia Brittanica in each classroom? Perhaps.

I have been incredibly impressed with how computer-tablet-e-book literate our younger granddaughter is, a third grader. Each day at the start of the school year for the first two weeks, the students spent 30 minutes at the start of each day loading applications into their tablets. This was not "digging-ditch" work. They learned how to download apps, using passwords and "install." After those 30 minutes the iPad was put away for the day.

At the end of the two weeks, the iPads were used at particular points (and for a defined period of time) throughout the day for specific tasks and then put away. The students did not take their iPads home. They were not given homework to be done on mobile or laptop or desktop devices at home. However, over time, the teachers, parents, and students have learned to use the internet / e-mail to correspond with each other. The other day our granddaughter forgot her "agenda" at school, over the weekend, and panicked, not knowing/remembering the homework.

Her mother was able to go on-line and find that homework assignment. Our granddaughter was thrilled and completed her homework. However, on Monday, our granddaughter was given one demerit because she had forgotten to take her agenda home to have it signed by her parents. That was her first demerit and to put it mildly, she was bummed. But she moved on; more importantly the homework was done.

My wife still thinks California public schools are better than Texas public schools.

And so it goes. Memo to self: talk to that teacher about that demerit. LOL.

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Say It's Not True

Macrumors is reporting, that after 11 years, Apple is quietly doing away with its weekly iTunes freebie.

Apple has seemingly ended its weekly iTunes "Single of the Week" promotion that gave out a free music single download each week on the iTunes storefront. As noted by Business Insider, a member of the Apple discussion forums claims an Apple support employee informed him the company decided to drop the weekly promotion. 

I wonder if this might be in response to the U2/Bono debacle. Which was way overblown (WWWO).

One of the comments mirrored my last statement: "Apple is probably sick of having to be insulted for giving out some little things for free."

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Notes To The Granddaughters

Speaking of schools and technology (iPads above), when I went to pick up the older granddaughter, the third grader was all excited. She had just finished all of her "advanced" arithmetic on her laptop: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. She scored 100% in all modules. And was quite excited. She got the task accomplished, and her mother was able to devote quality time to the six-month-old whom she had not seen much today. She was at the city library working on her Ph.D. in nursing.

And now to competitive swimming with the older granddaughter.

More On The Storage Issue Of US Crude Oil -- January 13, 2015

More from the Reuters article linked earlier:

Since September, U.S. commercial stocks have risen by about 22 million barrels.

Assuming all of that fed into tank farms, rather than refineries or pipelines, whose inventory levels generally don't fluctuate much, more than half of the nation's tanks still stand empty, the data show.

The historically large volume of empty tank space may also herald a pause, if not an end, to an unrelenting rout in global markets, as traders embark on a sustained campaign to buy physical crude to stockpile, analysts said -- at least until stocks rise so high that space once again becomes scarce.

"We're at an inflection point" in the oil market, said Philip K. Verleger, an energy economist who has closely tracked oil storage economics for three decades. "Prices can stay at these levels as storage fills. But if demand doesn't pick up or supply go down, then prices will fall again."

The figures may surprise traders who have been thus far focused on the atypical build in stockpiles this winter, with inventories reaching record seasonal highs at a time when they normally decline due to heating demand and year-end tax issues.

Williston Permits, 2014 Vs 2013

From City Of Williston (the chart is undated, but I posted it this date). The most interesting thing I noticed: in 2013, total number of permits did not require a "000-comma" designator, whereas a "000-comma" designator was required in 2014.

Y-T-D Comparison of Building Permit Totals
2013 vs. 2014

 

Type of Permit	No. of Permits 2013	Value of Permits	No. of Permits 2014	Value of Permits
New Dwellings	124	$ 19,144,004.00	333	$59,899,126.32
Apartment Buildings	49 (1501 units)	$200,525,259.00	48 (1290 units)	$170,824,656.93
New Duplex	5 (12 units)	$ 1,693,019.00	3 (7 units)	$  1,029,924.05
Manufactured Homes	35	-	177	-
New Commercial/Industrial	58	$70,251,294.00	38	$203,411,832.96
Commercial Alteration	99	$46,893,382.00	143	$48,770,132.00
Garage & Accessory Bldgs.	58	$10,592,218.00	64	$  13,149,727.18
Residential Alterations	186	$ 3,663,934.00	155	$  3,256,726.16
Demolition	19	-	19	-
Moving	1	-	6	-
Site Grading	23	-	32	-
Temporary Structure	39	-	29	-
Total Year-to-Date	696	$352,763,110.00	1,047	$500,342,125.60

Articles And Links I Will Come Back To Later -- January 13, 2015

Initial production data has been posted for wells coming off confidential list today. 

Bakken economy:  Rapid City reports more than $200 million in building permits in 2014. Compare this with Dickinson and Williston for 2014:

Dickinson, as of November: permit values stood at just over $205 million, behind the roughly $309 million at the same time in 2013.

Williston, year-end: slightly more than $500 million.

By the way, in that linked Dickinson Press article, the writer noted that permits had slowed year-over-year in both Dickinson and Williston. Here is Williston, 2013 and 2014:

Total Year-to-Date

696

$352,763,110.00

1047

$500,342,125.60

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A reader alerted me to a new presentation over at the North Dakota Industrial Commission website.

Enerplus has a new presentation. 

This is another great article about the real winner in the oil price collapse, from Bloomberg.

Active rigs:

	1/13/2015	01/13/2014	01/13/2013	01/13/2012	01/13/2011
Active Rigs	156	193	182	199	163

RBN Energy: Expansion plans in the Eagle Ford and the Permian.

This is a most interesting story; a reader sent me the link. This caught me by surprise based on everything I've been reading over at RBN Energy. Either I've misread RBN Energy or their reports were focused elsewhere. Regardless, another great link sent by a reader. Thank you.  Reuters is reporting that U.S. oil tanks are barely one-third full, beckoning a crude contango play:

The U.S. oil storage trade is back - and may be bigger than ever.

Six years ago, the financial crisis led to a sudden surplus of oil and a collapse in prices, spurring a classic low-risk trade that's set to make a comeback: buying crude to store in onshore tanks or floating tankers, since oil costs $8 a barrel less now than what futures buyers will pay in a year.

OPEC's decision not to cut output in the face of slower demand and growing U.S. shale has traders scrambling to cash in on the return of a market structure known as 'contango,' by securing storage that could yield an almost guaranteed return of 8 percent or more. This year, they'll have more scope than ever before to take advantage of the contango play: the capacity of U.S. commercial oil storage tanks has expanded by a third since 2010, while months of strong demand for domestic crude from North American refiners has prevented inventories from swelling too far.

As a result, those onshore tanks are barely a third full, with less than 150 million barrels of the nation's total 439 million barrels of shell storage capacity occupied as recently as October, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. data. That's by far the highest vacancy rate since the Energy Information Administration began a bi-annual survey of tank farm capacity -- which exclude refinery stocks and oil in pipelines - in 2010. 

Much, much more at the link.

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Death Watch

The AP is reporting:

A high-profile Venezuelan opposition leader is calling for protests while President Nicolas Maduro travels abroad seeking help for the financially struggling country.

Tensions have escalated in recent days as the socialist administration has deployed troops and implemented a rationing system to control lines for groceries.

Henrique Capriles, who nearly defeated Maduro in the 2013 presidential election, said Monday that it was time for public demonstrations.

"We are in a state of emergency," he said. "This is the time to mobilize in the streets"

The official state press in Venezuela says there is more than enough bread and diapers; it's simply a distribution problem. 

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Sayonara To OPEC

A reader suggests to me that it is very likely that WTI could become the global benchmark once again after losing that status in 2007.

Oil's "race to the bottom" shows OPEC's irrelevance --  Yahoo!Finance. This is a most interesting article. One forgets that Saudi is propping up at least three other countries: Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan.

The crude crash was arguably the biggest story of 2014 (and now the start of 2015) in part because it caught almost everybody by surprise.

Almost. In early January 2014, Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia group, told Yahoo Finance that oil could "crater" in 2014 and OPEC could "fall apart."

He was right -- even if he now admits the depth of the decline caught him by surprise.

Bremmer’s call last year had a lot to do with the fact that the geopolitics were “overpriced."

“People said that the Middle East was falling apart and that was going to lead to a lot of oil coming off the market,” says Bremmer. “We agreed the Middle East was coming apart but it wasn’t going to affect oil production.”

Bremmer says the misunderstanding of energy and the politicial landscape has now come out of the market and prices dropped dramatically as a result.

Then there's the question of if or when the Saudis are going to pull back production.

“I have a hard time seeing the Saudis going through 2015 without [any cuts] on the production side, “ Bremmer says, pointing to the Saudi's budget concerns and the country’s growing population.

Also, he notes they have a lot of commitments to places like Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon that "really need Saudi money."