Ten New Permits; EIght Permits Renewed -- July 21, 2017

Active rigs:

$45.60	7/21/2017	07/21/2016	07/21/2015	07/21/2014	07/21/2012
Active Rigs	58	31	68	196	207

Ten new permits:

• Operators: BR (6); XTO (4) 
• Fields: Corral Creek (Dunn County); Siverston (McKenzie County)
• Comments: BR has permits for a 6-well Gopher pad in SWNE 15-147-95; XTO has permits for a four-well Lund pad in SESE 8-150-97

Eight permits renewed:

• Crescent Point Energy (5): four Legacy Et Al Berge permits, Bottineau County; and, one CPEUSC Makowsky permit in Williams County
• Oasis (3): two Jensen permits and one O M Erickson permit, all in Williams County

Legacy Fund Data Through June, 2017

Source here.

• most recent deposit, June 21, 2017: $37 million
• total deposits since inception: $3.9 billion
• net assets in the fund, as of January, 2017: $4.3 billion 
• height of the boom: $90 million / month being deposited
• currently: about $30 million / month being deposited

Meanwhile, on June 5, 2017, The Grand Forks Herald reported that for the first time ever, ND legislators will tap the earnings from the fund.

• purpose: to help balance the budget; 2017 - 2019 budget
• amount: $200 million

Options for strategic management of the fund:

• one option -- spend all the earnings; deposits would still total $20 billion by 2060 -- no one advocates this option
• second option -- at the other extreme: reinvest all earnings; doing so, the fund would balloon to $102 billion by 2060
• middle of the road options
• reinvest 75% of the fund's earnings; spending 25%; balance of $65 billion by 2060
• other option: "reinvest, replace, and spend": $50 billion by 2060

Typical political talk: "no one advocates the option of spending all the earnings." LOL. Total earnings to date in the Legacy Fund: $400 million. In its first move on these earnings, the legislature will spend 50% of these total earnings on one item: balancing the budget. It appears no one advocates spending all the Legacy Fund earnings  but it's already happening. 

Week 29: July 16, 2017 -- July 22, 2017

Folks are making a big deal out of the fact that OPEC production will increase in August, suggesting the cartel deal to cut production is falling apart. The deal is probably falling apart (Ecuador was the first to publicly leave) but the Mideast always increases production in August. So, we move on.

For the archives, in less than five years, the US could produce 40% of the world's total natural gas. For the archives, this was also the week that Senator McCain was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

The biggest story for me this past week was the DAPL update; the fact that this story was not easy to find suggests it may not be all that significant. Be that as it may, for me, someone who is inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, this was a huge story. 

Operations
High production jump for #23279
Analysis of oil production by field

• greatest decline month-over-month
• greatest increase month-over-month 
• oil/well/month
• top producing oil fields in North Dakota 

Bakken 2.0
Much more oil is recoverable

Fracking
Random look at several high-intensity fracks
CLR getting ready to frack several wells in Divide County?

Bakken economy
Paving project west of Williston awarded to Northern Improvement
Hallmark Card on Main Street, Williston, will close 

Every Arab For Himself -- Oilprice -- July 21, 2017

From Oilprice.com via Yahoo!Finance: OPED deal at breaking point as compliance falls.

OPEC data was mixed this week reminding us of two important themes - 1, OPEC members are pushing the limits of the current output agreement and 2- recent gains in Libya and Nigeria could be hard to maintain. 

On the first item, preliminary estimates see July OPEC production +145k bpd m/m which would represent a new YTD high in the cartel’s output and sow additional doubts about their ability to coordinate supply cuts. 

Meanwhile Iraq is publicly promoting its plan to ramp production up to 5m bpd by year-end (from 4.4m bpd in June) and Ecuador stated that they will no longer participate in cuts in an effort to strengthen their finances. 

As for the second item, Nigeria’s production and export woes were headline news this week due to pipeline vandalism. All-knowing prompt brent spreads digested the week’s news flow and moved slightly higher. Brent rallied to -55 cents on Friday forecasting a reasonably strong supply/demand balance in coming month.

Oilprice.com was the "original" peak oil site.

Finally. Clearing Out The In-Box -- Update On The DAPL -- Previously Posted -- July 21, 2017

I've posted this link twice, but never did the usual "cut and paste" nor did I make any comments. I was hoping folks would read the linked article for themselves, and then later I would come back and post it at length.

This will probably be the top story coming out of the Bakken this week, when I post the top stories for the week tonight or sometime over the weekend.

I am more than a little surprised that this news item was hard to find. It is a huge story and yet it received almost no coverage.

So, again, here it is, from indianz.com, the headline regarding DAPL, posted July 18, 2017: Trump administration officially rescinds pro-treaty rights legal opinion.

Now remember, the story is being posted at an anti-DAPL "news site":

The Trump administration has quietly killed a legal opinion that tribes were using to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline.

On February 6, the Department of the Interior put a "temporary suspension" on the M-37038 opinion. A day later, the Trump team approved the final portion of the pipeline over the objections of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

Both tribes had relied on M-37038 -- which was issued by the Obama administration -- in their legal battle against the controversial Dakota Access crude oil pipeline. One of the key findings in the opinion was that the final portion in North Dakota impacts their treaty rights and that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers "must consider" those rights before moving forward.

"Since the tribes retain rights associated with Lake Oahe, the Corps must consider the possible impacts of its DAPL permitting decisions on these reserved hunting, fishing, and water rights," the 35-page opinion stated.

And even though a federal judge concluded that the Army Corps in fact failed to fully consider those rights, the "acting" Solicitor of the Interior rescinded M-37038 earlier this month. A July 7 memo said the opinion offers little value in light of the ongoing lawsuit.

I'm sure one can spin the story a gazillion different ways but the headline and the lede seem to make things fairly clear where this "lawsuit" stands. Again, a huge "thank you" to the reader who sent me the link.