Week 38: September 16, 2018 -- September 22, 2018

Geoff Simon's top stories of the year:
McKenzie County continues to grow
Watford City will site new elementary school in the Fox Hills subdivision

International
TransMountain: Canada orders new environmental impact study; study due in 22 weeks (one-half year); then a half-year to debate; and then back in court
KMI to sell all Canadian assets; Canada is closed to new business;
Peak oil? Perhaps in Russia

National
Keystone XL won't harm environment; actually if they considered the decrease in rail traffic, the pipeline will make things better; operator will make final funding decision next year
WTI back to $71
Gasoline demand increasing. Finally.
Bakken beats Permian, Eagle Ford on percent growth month-over-month

Making America great again
Main Street intersects Wall Street: jobless claims at 49-year low; stocks at record highs 

Bakken 2.5
Eighteen new permits -- including a QEP 12-well pad -- and MRO reports six incredible DUCs
One example of many: an XTO Fenton Federal will with high jump in production
North Dakota flaring getting worse

Operations
EOG fracking in the Parshall; and, here; and, here;
EOG's monster wells in Clarks Creek
Coming out of nowhere: Oasis now the 4th largest producer in North Dakota
Life-cycle of a Bakken well
Bear Creek moves to the top of the list: crude oil production / well; and, here;
Update on MRO's Lars well
Update on CLR's Buelingo

Natural gas
Permian natural gas plunging to 50 cents/unit

Pipelines
DAPL in peril  

Bakken economy
Progress at Williston's new airport continues
Conlin's Furniture to close
Watford City posts largest jump in elementary school enrollment

Miscellaneous
Final Missouri River Study to be released next week

Commentary
The dreaded Bakken decline; and here;
Why the EU advocated for renewable energy; they had little choice
MRO likely to be names "North Dakota's operator of the year"; and, here;
Filloon on MRO
MRO corporate update

Trump's State Department Echoes Hillary's State Department -- Until Hillary Flipped -- September 21, 2018

Keystone XL will not have material adverse environmental impact.

TransCanada Corp plans to start construction in 2019, spokesman Matthew John said.
The company’s Chief Executive Russ Girling said last month that it could make a final investment decision on the project late this year or in early 2019, pending some regulatory approvals and court challenges.

My most recent "long" post on the Keystone XL was July 31, 2018.

Keystone XL milestones here.

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Friday Night At Barnes and Noble

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World, Steve Brusatte, c. 2018.

First note here.

Geologic time: the Permian Period, Paleozoic Era, immediately preceding the Age of Dinosaurs

Mesozoic Era: the Age of Dinosaurs -- Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous

Final 30 million years of the Triassic (252 - 201 million years ago)

• early dinosaurs struggling; competing with giant salamanders
• one huge continent: Pangea -- started breaking apart; volcanic eruptions
• Pangea splits: water rushes in to the void, becomes the Atlantic Ocean
• the volcanic lava and noxious gases: biggest mass extinction in the history of life
• a mass die-off that claimed at least 30% of all species
• paradoxically, the mass extinction favored the small dinosaurs
• the Palisades, western cliffs of the Hudson River, on the New Jersey side; a sill; formed with Pangea split; formed at the end of the Triassic
• age of Nixon: Riker Hill Fossil Site, Livingston, NJ; the story of Paul Olsen 
• Newark Basin; a rift basin
• smaller rift basins all along the eastern seaboard; the tearing up caused by Pangea splitting; think of pizza being pulled apart
• the Newark Basin: Morocco; Brazil
• the footprints of dinosaurs along the eastern seaboard
• then the volcanic eruptions went into high gear
• counter-intuitively: the rise of the big dinosaurs: they became more diverse; more abundant, and larger
• volcanoes run out of lava and the 600,000-year reign of terror ends
• the world (early Jurassic) is now a very different place than it was in the Late Triassic
• almost every animal alive had now disappeared; one exception -- the only pseudosuchians that made it through the great Pangean breakup were a few types of primitive crocodiles, a handful of battle-worn stragglers that would eventually evolve into the modern alligators and crocodiles but would never enjoy the same success they had in the Late Triassic; pseudosuchians: false crocodiles)
• somehow dinosaurs were the victors
• no good answer why they survived the earthquakes, the noxious gases, the lava
• the Jurassic Period marks the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs proper
• but remember, the first true dinosaurs entered 30 million years earlier, during the Late Triassic
• but with the break-up of Pangea, the dinosaurs pretty much had the world to themselves
• the evolution of the sauropods
• Ischigualasto (Argentina)
• sauropods: everywhere; but failed to achieve full potential because they could not survive the deserts
• roamed everywhere; now finding giant sauropods in Scotland, Isle of Skye
• Dugald Ross; Ellishadder; very Tokienesque; Gaelic; the Staffin Museum; Jurassic fossils
• p. 108; we'll stop there -- begins the story of the giant sauropods 

From wiki:

Pseudosuchia ("false crocodiles") is one of two major divisions of Archosauria and includes living crocodilians and all archosaurs more closely related to crocodilians than to birds (what are often called "crocodilian-line archosaurs"). Since 2011 it has replaced “Crurotarsi” when inconsistencies were found in the definition of the latter name.

The sister clade to the pseudosuchia: the Avemetatarsalia: bird-line archosaurs, including pterosaurs and dinosaurs (the latter including birds).

Archosaurs: ruling reptiles. Living representatives are crocodiles and birds. Archosaurs: diapsid amniotes.

From wiki:

The mammals represent the only living Synapsida, which together with the Sauropsida form the Amniota clade. 

The early synapsid mammalian ancestors were sphenacodont pelycosaurs, a group that produced the non-mammalian Dimetrodon.

At the end of the Carboniferous period, this group diverged from the sauropsid line that led to today's reptiles and birds.

The line following the stem group Sphenacodontia split-off several diverse groups of non-mammalian synapsids—sometimes referred to as mammal-like reptiles—before giving rise to the proto-mammals (Therapsida) in the early Mesozoic era.

The modern mammalian orders arose in the Paleogene and Neogene periods of the Cenozoic era, after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, and have been among the dominant terrestrial animal groups from 66 million years ago to the present.

Okay, enough of this.

One New Permit; WTI Finishes The Week Near $71 -- September 21, 2018

Active rigs:

$70.74😊	9/21/2018	09/21/2017	09/21/2016	09/21/2015	09/21/2014
Active Rigs	66	57	33	68	196

One new permit:

• Operator: Hess
• Field: Truax
• Comments:

Three permits were renewed:

• Hess (2): two TI-Beauty Valley permits in Williams County
• QEP: one Vegas permit in McKenzie County

Five producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 32380, 2,637, XTO, Werre Trust 21X-3A, Bear Creek, t8/18; cum 19K after 20 days;
• 33472, 1,953, Whiting, Wold Federal 42-1-3H, Sand Creek, t8/18; cum --
• 33470, n/d, Whiting, Wold Federal 42-1-2H, Sand Creek, t8/18; cum --
• 33485, 2,522,  Whiting, Wold Federal 43-1-1TFH, Sand Creek, t8/18; cum --
• 33469, n/d, Whiting, Wold Federal 42-1-TFH, Sand Creek, t8/18; cum --

Final Missouri River Study To Be Released Next Week -- September 21, 2018

Updates

Later, 5:31 p.m. CDT: lots of issues here and folks have strong feelings on both sides; I don't have a dog in this fight. I may not have all the facts, but it is what it is. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out. To say the least. And the obvious.

Original Post

Top stories: here.

2017: here.

The most egregious story to come out of the Bakken: North Dakota State wants a "stay" on the mineral rights case. This was the case:

The state legislature, in an attempt to resolve disputed mineral rights that are hampering development of minerals in the Lake Sakakawea area, had commissioned a study of the historical, high water mark of the Missouri River prior to building Garrison Dam, which created Lake Sakakawea. Their legislation would also restrict the state’s mineral rights to that historical ordinary high water mark.

Williston Herald, April 29, 2018. New 

Update, The Bismarck Tribune -- September 21, 2018.

At this site, there are several links. The two first two links are the ones you are most likely interested in. The "word document" pdf will take a few minutes to download; it is 223 pages long. There is also a PowerPoint presentation which also loads very slowly. The data is very, very well done -- from my cursory view.

It is funny. Forgetting about the mineral rights for a moment, prospective landowners don't want land that is underwater; whereas prospective sellers will downplay the amount of land they are trying to sell that is likely to flood or is not particularly useful -- unless one plans to raise ducks -- because it is underwater.

Some years ago, this topic introduced me to the "riparian" biome -- and something our oldest granddaughter now knows well. LOL.

Also, this has nothing to do with "water rights" -- the allotment of water partitioned out to surface owners along the body of water.

Last Beam Going Up Out At The New Airport --September 21, 2018

Another chapter begins ...

... meanwhile, this chapter closes: