Active Rigs Steady At 40 -- February 21, 2017

Active rigs:

	2/21/2017	02/21/2016	02/21/2015	02/21/2014	02/21/2013
Active Rigs	40	38	127	182	184

RBN Energy: will US natural gas avoid a collapse this year?

Scott Adams: de-hypnotizing a climate science zombie.

Too Early To Tell How Long The "Bump" Will Last -- February 20, 2017

Two wells on the same pad; these were older wells.

The first one off-line for less than two months (10 - 11/2016): "bump" was four-fold, from 500 bbls to 2400 bbls:

Monthly Production Data:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	12-2016	31	2417	2493	4166	3012	2403	517
BAKKEN	11-2016	13	1077	1030	3708	1200	1039	122
BAKKEN	10-2016	11	154	51	176	748	714	2
BAKKEN	9-2016	30	501	561	604	2772	2666	18
BAKKEN	8-2016	31	641	633	954	2220	2132	0
BAKKEN	7-2016	31	539	518	924	1945	1642	211
BAKKEN	6-2016	30	589	602	923	2228	2079	59
BAKKEN	5-2016	31	691	700	688	1987	1606	288
BAKKEN	4-2016	30	690	698	587	2058	1966	2
BAKKEN	3-2016	31	819	870	599	2315	2215	7
BAKKEN	2-2016	28	955	846	707	2168	2076	8

The second one was off-line during the same two months: "bump" was similar, about four-to-five fold, from 2,000 bbls to 10,000 bbls:

Monthly Production Data:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	12-2016	31	10355	10256	22083	15995	13087	2815
BAKKEN	11-2016	7	2425	2145	6068	3571	3176	374
BAKKEN	10-2016	3	163	199	139	788	777	3
BAKKEN	9-2016	30	1944	2151	1775	8832	8685	57
BAKKEN	8-2016	31	2341	2207	1627	7522	7429	0
BAKKEN	7-2016	25	1451	1392	926	3242	2808	362
BAKKEN	6-2016	30	1573	1575	968	3871	3678	103

I'll follow up on these wells in a few months to see how long the increased "bump" in production lasted.

The wells are #19651 and #19301, both Whiting Koala wells in Poe oil field.

The Closer, T+31 -- Futures Are Up Almost 50 Points -- After A 3-Day Weekend -- February 20, 2017

US shale oil production: US shale oil production could surge by 3.5 million bopd over next five years -- Bank of America.

• the story doesn't go into specifics, but to grow by 3.5 million bopd, one could opine
• 1.5 million bopd increase in the Permian
• 0.75 million bopd increase in the Bakken
• 0.50 million bopd increase in the Eagle Ford
• 0.50 million bopd increase in STACK/SCOOP
• 0.25 million bopd increase in the Niobrara
• when you break it down like that, one could see an increase in production greater then 3.5 million bopd five years from now

Iran "finds" 2 billion bbls shale oil in its western province, Reuters, data points:

• two billion bbls of original oil in place (OOIP)
• compare to 500 billion bbls OOIP in place in the Bakken
• light oil; Bakken oil is also light oil
• Iran's proven oil reserves: 160 billion bbls, about 10% of the world's total; ranks it fourth among petroleum-rich countries (among US states it would be third or fourth)
• with proven reserves of 160 billion bbls, another 2 billion bbls is a rounding error

Market after 3-day weekend: futures mean squat ... but right now, Dow futures are up 46 points. The market must be thrilled with:

• the Boeing 787 Dreamliner rollout
• the Florida rally
• the Swedish incident clarified
• the appointment of a new National Security advisor
• that Hillary is not president
• that term limits prevented Obama from running again

Other indices: NASDAQ futures up 14 points; S&P up almost 6 points.

Apple: this is what I'm waiting for -- the new iPad Pro lineup -- to be announced in March. I'm looking at the new 10.5 inch, edge-to-edge iPad Pro. Apple is firing on all cylinders right now.

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RIP

Brenda Buttner: Perhaps the saddest story of the day. Just another reminder to live life to the fullest. From Fox News:

• Brenda Buttner, 1961 - 2017; ten to twenty years younger than most of my readers
• succumbs to cancer
• Fox News "Bulls and Bears"
• CBNC "The Money Club"
• CNBC's Washington correspondent
• BA in social studies: Harvard University
• Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University; graduating with high honors in politics and economics
• KT McFarland and Brenda Buttner at this clip 

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Trail of Tears: Casino On The Rocks

Link here. Data points:

• Prairie Knights Casino on Standing Rock Reservation
• $6 million shortfall ... and growing
• tribal council has "supplemented" a portion of the income lost from the casino with $3.2 million in donations raised from its NoDAPL  (sic) -- "GoFundMe" -- account

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How Irrelevant Has Mainstream Media Become?

A reader sent me the link to this article in Newsweek earlier today. I thought it was pretty good; might have had some comments, but debated whether it was worth posting. I went back to the article a few minutes ago, still debating whether to post it. I decided to see what others thought about the article. Comments: zero.  Nada. Zilch. Goose Egg. Nil. [February 21, 2017, 7:51 a.m. Central Time -- still no comments. Truly amazing.]

This article was published over 12 hours ago in a national media outlet on a topic one would think would be quite thought-provoking. And here it is, 12 hours later, and not one comment.

I remember back in the late 60's and all through the 70's Newsweek  was among the top three news periodicals. Now it's not even available in hard copy, only digitally. [The cheesy, trashy ads, and the very, very slow re-fresh also suggests how really badly the digital Newsweek is doing.]

The silence is deafening.

So, Now We Switch To Coal-Powered Cars In Europe -- February 20, 2017

See also: the global warming scam. 

President Trump has a voracious appetite for current events. He says he gets most of his news from Fox News. In print media, my hunch is he gets much of his news from The Wall Street Journal. This article will be filed under "Global Warming" by Steve Bannon and placed on the president's desk. The article is a Holman W Jenkins, Jr, op-ed in TWSJ earlier this week.

I don't know if folks recall but recently Paris, and I think London, also, had poorer air quality than Beijing (China). It was either Paris or London or both.

The reason:

Contrary to usual practice, we’ll begin with the punch-line: less than 4/1,000ths of a degree Celsius.

That’s how much warming might be spared half a century from now thanks to Europe’s decision, starting after the Kyoto treaty in the late 1990s, to switch more than 50% of its passenger cars to diesel.

For this negligible result, Europe got significantly dirtier air. Paris, on some days, suffers worse smog than Beijing. Though his methodology may be questionable, a U.K. government scientist estimates that thousands of citizens die each year because of increased nitrogen oxide and soot emissions.

The word “microcosm” was invented for Europe’s diesel snafu—a microcosm of the governance failures that are breeding political revolt in much of the advanced industrial world. Europe has gone overnight from pushing and subsidizing citizens to adopt diesel vehicles, to punishing them with taxes and excluding them from downtown areas. Britain is contemplating a scheme to pay owners to scrap their diesel cars.

And a bit more.

Europe’s entire auto industry was led down the primrose lane of adopting a technology that now appears to be a commercial and regulatory dead-end. More than 70% of BMW and Daimler cars made for the European market last year were diesel. When honestly tested, one study shows the latest “Euro 6 Standard” vehicles miss their pollution targets by a whopping 400%.

Virtually everyone agrees Europe’s “dash for diesel” was a monstrous policy error, not to mention the proximate cause of the emissions-cheating scandal that has engulfed Volkswagen and other auto makers.

Yet the overarching imperative today is to vilify the car companies and insist they do better at achieving meaningless reductions in CO ₂ emissions, now by forcing them to build electric cars that customers must be bribed and pressured into buying. Not to be questioned, though, is the green agenda or the competence of Europe’s political class.

We'll stop there. I think we get the picture. As smoggy as it is.

Via Twitter -- New National Security Advisor -- February 20, 2017

Just named General H.R. McMaster National Security Advisor -- @realDonaldTrump.

From The New York Times:

General McMaster is seen as one of the Army’s leading intellectuals, first making a name for himself with a searing critique of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for their performance during the Vietnam War and later criticizing the way President George W. Bush’s administration went to war in Iraq.

As a commander, he was credited with demonstrating how a different counterterrorism strategy could defeat insurgents in Iraq, providing the basis for the change in approach that Gen. David H. Petraeus adopted to shift momentum in a war that the United States was on the verge of losing.

General McMaster’s challenge now will be to take over a rattled and demoralized National Security Council apparatus that bristled at Mr. Flynn’s leadership and remains uncertain about its place in the White House given the foreign policy interests of Stephen K. Bannon, the former Breitbart News chairman who is the president’s chief strategist.

It will be interesting to see how Fox News rewrites that third paragraph. LOL. 

With regard to the others:

Keith Kellogg, another retired lieutenant general, will remain as the N.S.C. chief of staff. Mr. Kellogg has been acting national security adviser since Mr. Flynn’s resignation a week ago and one of the four candidates interviewed by Mr. Trump on Sunday for the permanent job. Mr. Trump made no mention of K.T. McFarland, the top deputy national security adviser, and whether she would stay.