New Term For Me: Drill Out Date Vs Spud Date -- December 26, 2915

This is a new term for me: "drill out date." I noted it with this well which will come off the confidential list this weekend and will be reported Monday when everyone gets back to work:

• 29868, conf, Whiting, P Wood 154-98-13-22-16-12H, Truax, 

On the geologist's report, the well summary, at the file report, instead of the "Spud Date," the geologist uses the term "Drill Out Date." The drill out date for this well was March 17, 2015, and total depth was reached April 22, 2015.

The narrative states that they reached total for the vertical and the curve in six days and that the lateral was reached (total depth) 13 days from spud. It appears in general, they drill the vertical at two to three feet per minute, whereas drilling the lateral slows to about a foot every two minutes in reports I've seen elsewhere. In this particular well, they reported rates as high as 200 - 250 feet / hour. Trip gases reached as high as 6,926 units in the middle Bakken target, with a a quick 15' to 20'-flare reported on day 4. On the final day of drilling a 15' to 20' steady flare was reported. In this particular file report, the geologist provides a day-by-day summary, again raising the bar on narrative reports (a Neset geologist, by the way).

The well has been fracked; production runs are as follows:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
10-2015	13236	18733
9-2015	17518	13996
8-2015	24671	10957
7-2015	30466	1601
6-2015	4397	0

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Bakken 101

In addition to the change noted above, I am also noting more wells going from DRL status back to CONF status. In these cases, the wells have reached total depth but they have not been completed, or if they have been completed, that information is unavailable because the well is back on CONF sttus. If the well has been fracked, that information would be available at FracFocus.

It also appears that well on DRL status returning to CONF status is often very, very temporary and the well is moved to SI/NC status. I noticed this while updating the Spotted Horn oil field but I think I have seen it elsewhere. 

Closing Out The Poll On Number Of Rigs In 2016 -- December 26, 2015

I'm going to close out the poll in which we asked if we will see less than 50 active rigs in North Dakota this winter?

• Yes: 48%
• No: 21%
• No, but it will be close: 31%

I am closing it out because we are now starting to see articles discussing the same question.

For the record, my hunch is we get close to 51 active rigs in the first half of 2016, and then rebound to near 60 at the end of the year (2016). I assume drillers are contracting rigs for six months at a time, so whatever the number is at the end of January, 2016, it will be close to the number we see at the end of June (winter weather will result in some day-to-day volatility short term, but that will be background noise). The roughnecks have shown their ability to work through some difficult weather. Fracking is a different story, however.

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News

Update, 5:34 p.m. Central Time: Texas panhandle faces 15 inches of snow; historic blizzard.

NWS says 'historic' blizzard could hit Amarillo, Lubbock and parts of the Texas Panhandle, December 26, 2015, 10:30 a.m. Central Time.

Happy Boxing Day -- December 26, 2015; Kirk Johnson's Alaska Beat For The NYT

If you hit a paywall, google as oil prices fall, Alaska's new governor faces a novel goal, frugality.

If you hit a paywall, google as oil money melts, Alaska mulls first income tax in 35 years.

Now that we are all on the same page, see if you can spot the ten differences between those two stories. One was published yesterday, December 25, 2015. The other was published almost a year ago, January 25, 2015.

Both were written by Kirk Johnson.

The only difference I found was the additional information in the more recent article that Alaska has $14 billion set aside:

In one respect, Alaska is also extremely lucky: lawmakers set aside about $14 billion in savings during the fat years, which Mr. Walker has called “a bridge,” which must be trod gingerly. Tapping too little of it, he said, would force even more drastic spending cuts; spending too much could deplete the fund before the crisis has past (sic).

Should it be "past" or "passed"? Whatever.

The state has a population of around 750,000. Each resident gets upwards of $2,000 annually from oil revenue, but to collect it, one must physically be in the state to collect it. This payout is off-budget. Sort of like in a "lock-box."

It will be an interesting story to watch.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

In an earlier post I talked about the fascination our youngest granddaughter has for anything with buttons:

Sophia's favorite items are anything with buttons: remote key fobs, smart phones, clam shell phones, iPads, computers, automatic timers inside the house, automatic timers outside the house, remote controls for televisions, remote controls for Bose radios, and I'm sure there are some I've forgotten.

The granddaughters flew into Denver Christmas Eve for a long weekend of skiing, based out of Avon, Colorado.

The first night, 17-month-old Sophia somehow managed to set off the carbon monoxide alarm. The hotel staff rushed up to the room, turned off the alarm, but were at a loss to explain how she managed to set it off. My understanding is that most of these devices, like fire alarms, are designed in such a way that if the intake port is obstructed the alarm goes off by default, as a precaution, to alert users that the alarm has been disabled.

They have now moved the alarm to an undisclosed location, somewhere in the bathroom, well out of her reach.

Sophia also was the first one to figure out how to use the hotel room's phone to call down for room service. Because the front desk staff was unable to interpret her "Minion-like" language, they sent someone up to check up on them.

"Room service?"

"Yes, two large pizzas, a banana, and a cup of whole milk in a tippy cup."   The phone has now been disconnected from the base and Sophia walks around the room chatting into a disconnected hand-held receiver.

Week 51: December 20 -- December 26, 2015

Operations
DUCs -- The New York Times  perspective 
Snapshot of Bakken DUCs
5,120-acre spacing units in the Bakken; and, here

Miscellaneous
Vitol to transport US crude oil to overseas ports unknown
WTI-Brent at parity
BP to buy all of Devon's San Juan Basin assets in New Mexico
Barnett natural gas shale reserves twice as large as originally estimated
Is the global crude oil supply and demand gap narrowing?

DUCs -- The New York Times Perspective -- December 25, 2015

The link is here. If you hit a paywall, google Hoping for a Price Surge, Oil Companies Keep Wells in Reserve.

I will likely post a note regarding this story later. But before I post my thoughts, I want readers to take a look at the story and feel out some of their own thoughts.

But this offers the opportunity for a new poll, whether one thinks that Bakken DUCs are a big deal? Yes or no.

Obviously it depends on the definition of "big deal" and it depends on who you are (a driller, a consumer, a mineral rights owner, or a candlestick maker) but think of it this way: you are on a debate team and you are given that question to defend, yes or no, defend.

So, the poll, "do you consider Bakken DUCs a "big deal"?

• Yes
• No

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 DICs And Other Acronyms

Completely unrelated, but of interest, is a bit of trivia. From the article:

• " ... the deferred completions — known in the oil business as D.U.C.s (an acronym for drilled but uncomplete) ..."

Should the word be "incomplete," uncomplete," or "uncompleted"?

My 2001 edition of Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2230 pages exactly, lists both "uncomplete' and "uncompleted" as legitimate words. The dictionary unfortunately does not provide a definition for either. They are simply listed and identified as their part of speech.

There is a fine distinction between "incomplete" and "uncomplete" but I will leave it up to others to come to their own conclusion which word is more appropriate. Perhaps one way to think about the use of the two words is to associate them with an artist's painting when noting that a painting is "incomplete" or "uncompleted." Just to add a bit of fun to this, I think one can look at a painting that has been completed by an artist and is hanging in the museum and say that the painting is "incomplete."

All I will say is this: the acronym that would result from "drilled but incomplete" is an acronym that the NDIC probably did not want to associate with a word like "fracking."