The CLR Honolulu Wells, Indian Hill, Across The River, South Of Williston -- February 16, 2020

The Honolulu wells have been updated.

Based on the names of the wells, the three most recent Honolulu wells completed were middle Bakken wells. The earlier three wells were a middle Bakken well; a Three Forks first bench well; and, a Three Forks second bench well. I have not looked at the file reports to confirm.

The three older wells were drilled from the south to the north; the three newer wells were drilled from the north to the south.

It appears that the older middle Bakken well had a small jump in production after the newer middle Bakken wells were completed.

The well:

• 20947, 701, CLR, Honolulu 1-22H, Indian Hill, t9/11; cum 214K 12/19; stripper well status, January 29, 2018; 30 stages; 2.9 million lbs;

Recent production;

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	12-2019	29	1048	1137	2090	861	483	0
BAKKEN	11-2019	18	843	947	1239	800	561	0
BAKKEN	10-2019	31	1551	1363	2524	1373	954	0
BAKKEN	9-2019	30	1699	1858	2879	1501	1101	0
BAKKEN	8-2019	31	2409	2515	3390	2065	1646	0
BAKKEN	7-2019	31	2650	2742	4411	2157	1712	30
BAKKEN	6-2019	12	633	224	2133	559	380	36
BAKKEN	5-2019	15	241	336	550	337	143	0
BAKKEN	4-2019	30	502	461	504	732	327	0
BAKKEN	3-2019	31	545	608	527	610	191	0
BAKKEN	2-2019	28	503	475	503	528	150	0

This Week In Pictures -- Powerline -- February 16, 2020

My favorite:

It takes a village: no matter how many times YouTube removes this video, folks find a way to re-post it:

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- February 16, 2020

First things first: Air Force One has landed at Daytona. NASCAR race starts at 1:30 p.m. CT. Rumor: pace car -- Trump-Pence 2020 Camaro -- Chevrolet, making America great. How big is this. The Daytona 500 today is sold out. But look at this. In three decades of watching NASCAR, I've never seen a full-page "ad" in The Washington Post "advertising the Daytona race

The Daytona race: I've never seen so many Mike Bloomberg ads on Fox. But no matter how much he spends on ads, the visual will be Trump:

• Air Force One fly-over and landing;
• Trump-Pence 2020 pace car;
• Trump: first time a sitting president is a NASCAR grand marshall

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Back to the Bakken 

MDU: buys another company. Link here.

• Oldcastle Infrastructure Spokane, the Washington-based prestressed-construction business previously owned by Oldcastle Infrastructure
• the Spokane operation produces precast and prestressed concrete components for projects throughout Washington, Idaho and Oregon. It has become part of Knife River Corporation, the construction materials subsidiary of MDU Resources. The acquisition complements and expands Knife River's existing precast/prestressed operations in Oregon, Alaska and the growing Pacific Northwest.

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Non-Bakken Items

Ride-hailing: Uber, Lyft killed "Super Shuttle" airport service across the USA. That was just the start. From the weekend edition of "Exchange," The Wall Street Journal: "The Ride-Hail Utopia Got Stock in Traffic."

Predicted on the blog many, many years ago that this would happen.

From the full-page article that covers the front page of "Exchange":

• 2.2 mph: average slowdown in speed in downtown San Francisco due to ride-hailing apps
• 77%: share of ride-hailing trips that are requested for one party only, rather than pooled, Chicago
• 40%: the share of time ride-hailing cars in California and NYC cruise without passengers
• 309%: the rise in ride-hailing trips starting or ending in down Chicago between 2015 and 2018

Remember this prediction five years ago:

"If every car in San Francisco was Ubered there would be no traffic," Travis Kalanick.

What a doofus. I said that back then -- five years ago -- and voila (or as the French say, voilà).

Second things second: Another doofus: Amy Klobuchar, this week, was unable to name the president of Mexico. After that debacle, she doubled down, declaring that English should not be the national language of the US. Has she been to Miami?

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Lego Friends

I won't see Sophia today. She is with her mom at "Six Flags" just a couple of miles south of us.

Re-Posting A Warren Buffett Note -- February 16, 2020

Re-posting:

Click Bait

IBD: Warren Buffett Sells Apple, Buys Kroger 

This was the lede over at Investor's Business Daily, link here.

Warren Buffett bought shares of Kroger (KR) and Biogen (BIIB) in the fourth quarter, but the investing legend further pared his Apple (AAPL) and Wells Fargo (WFC) stakes, Berkshire Hathaway's (BRKB) latest quarterly 13F filings with the SEC showed. 

This was the internet "tease" that brought me there:

Wow, what a joke. Passes for news these days.

Prior to the sale, on a dollar basis, AAPL was Berkshire Hathaway's biggest holding, at 30% of the entire portfolio. In the last quarter, BRK sold 1.4% of his shares in AAPL, dropping from 248,838,679 to 245,155,566 AAPL shares (3,683,113 shares). If he sold on December 2, 2019, shares were selling at $264. AAPL shares are currently fetching $325.

Paper loss: $225 million or close to a quarter billion dollars.

Warren's move certainly seems to be ridiculous on the surface, but we don't know the particulars. But Investor's Business Daily headlining "Buffett pared his Apple stakes" certainly seems a bit over the top.

My hunch: there was a long, long discussion between Munger, Buffett, et al, about what to do with a stock (AAPL) that was now 30% of the entire Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. "Traditional rules" would have argued for a much bigger cut, maybe as much as a 50% cut in the portfolio's AAPL holdings, but that would have been beyond the pale.

A bit of irony: Warren Buffett sells AAPL but then buys Kroger, which also sells apples. Along with oranges and cauliflower.

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Williston Library

I remember spending a lot of time in this library when I growing up. What a great Williston treasure back in the 50s and 60s.

Key Data Points From The December, 2019, Oil And Natural Gas Production, North Dakota (Bakken) -- February 16, 2020

Key data points from the December, 2019, production data coming out of North Dakota:

• after the final figures came in, North Dakota set a new all-time production record in November, 2019;
• crude oil: 1,519,037 (but just barely; beating the previous all-time high, the previous month, by 1,101 bopd)
• natural gas: 3,165,585 MCF/day
• boe: 1,985,573 boepd
• note: these were all preliminary figures; final figures will be released in the March, 2020, Director's Cut;
• crude oil production in December was one of the bigger month-over-month decreases in quite some time; this was all about a) managing their assets; and, b) taking wells off line for operational reasons
• the number of producing wells dropped below 16,000, the first time that has happened since September, 2019, when it hit another all-time high at 16,115 producing wells; current all-time  high for producing wells: October, 2019, at 16,169 producing wells;
• price of oil was trending down; coronavirus scare was crushing demand
• continued pad drilling and new fracking
• number of wells coming off-line month-over-month (December/November) was 233 or an increase of 8.8%
• there are now 2,878 wells off line
• the actual number of wells off line any given month remains in a narrow range, probably about 2,500
• it appears, in raw numbers, September, 2019, hit an all-time high for the number of wells off line: 3,020; September, 2019, was a record-setting month for rain; it was a "disaster" in the oil patch; production fells 2.5% month-over-month;
• this is about twice as many as the number of new wells that will be drilled in 2020
• in fact, there were 111 completions in December, 2019, which is about average for the Bakken, but it means a lot of neighboring wells are taken off-line during fracking operations
• takeaway capacity is not an issue
• gas capture is trending, albeit slowly, in the right direction
• about a month ago there were any number of stories in the mainstream media about E&P companies, feeling the stress of low oil prices, were slowing their new drilling and focusing on completing DUCs; 
• I posted at the time that this was most likely (if accurate) occurring in the Permian
• anecdotally I was not seeing it in the Bakken
• and there, it was, in the December data, the number of DUCs in the Bakken increased by 39 wells, from 919 to 958 (preliminary)
• 958 is a high number but not the highest; the record was 985 in May, 2019;
• I haven't done the percentages; but on a raw number basis, the number of DUCs is increasing in the Bakken, not decreasing
• supports my "thesis" that when the mainstream media talks about trends in US shale, they are focusing on the Permian, not the Bakken