Summertime Sadness: Drilled Wells, Completions: New Lows; DUCs: New Highs -- August 20, 2020

Re-posting.

A reader sent me a spreadsheet of the number of wells drilled, completed, and drilled/not completed (DUCs) on a monthly basis from December, 2013, through July, 2020, and including six oil and gas shale basins and one region in the continental US.

His analysis:

• July, 2020 saw a new low for completions and wells drilled.

It was not feasible to post the entire spreadsheet of all six basins and one region on the blog, but I have produced the data for the two basins that interest me the most: the Bakken and the Permian. Note: in the spreadsheet below, the gap between the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2017. As usual, there may be typographical and/or content errors. If I find them, I will correct them later:

	Permian	Permian	Permian	Bakken	Bakken	Bakken
	Drilled	Completed	DUCs	Drilled	Completed	DUCs
Dec 13			659			570
Jan 14	581	590	650	178	143	605
July 14	613	601	813	250	243	709
Dec 14	634	577	1042	226	207	728
Jan 17	352	259	1299	63	52	811
July 17	414	313	1711	96	103	765
Dec 17	474	382	2037	79	65	774
Jan 18	489	403	2123	107	72	809
Jul 18	568	512	2468	135	155	781
Dec 18	538	416	2951	109	70	793
Jan 19	585	469	3067	121	71	843
Jul 19	546	515	3500	117	124	869
Dec 19	449	453	3351	95	86	866
Jan 20	449	438	3362	100	86	880
July 20	138	98	3520	19	13	902

Comments:

• DUCs in the Permian have surged between 2013 and 2020;
• DUCs in the Bakken have remained fairly constant, in comparison, though roughly doubling since 2013;
• part of this is due to the fact that the NDIC doubled the length of time, from one year to two years, that a well could "go" without being completed;
• rates:
• January, 2017: annual rate, drilled wells: 756; number of DUCs: 811: think about that; ratio, rounded: 1
• July, 2020: annual rate, drilled wells: 240; number of DUCs; 902; ratio, rounded: 4
• anecdotally, it appears that operators shut in 80% of Bakken wells in May and June, 2020; July, 2020, data not yet available;
• natural gas production in the Bakken surges; the Bakken is not a natural gas play; occurred despite very, very little drilling and almost no completions;

***************************************
Summertime Sadness

Best social media line:  Lana del Rey should be a sexual orientation.

What a great visual of driving down the California coast. Hunter S. Thompson would have loved it.

Summertime Sadness, Lana Del Rey

Sophia Second Day Of School -- August 20, 2020

************************************

Mask by Kathy.

You have no idea how excited Sophia was to get this mask and another, made especially for her by Kathy, and made child-size so it would fit her perfectly. We immediately put both masks in her backpack to take to school.

**********************************************

It will be fun to continue wearing these masks when we visit our local bank when the pandemic is long forgotten. Something tells me they will be frowned upon. But, hey, seasonal flu comes around every year.

New Reporting Method For The NDIC? -- August 20, 2020

Updates

12:06 p.m. CDT: this is very interesting. Readers have been very, very helpful. In fact, "AL" is routinely used here (see original post), but generally that appears after the operator has reported an IP.

What caught me off guard with the well in the original post was the fact that no IP has yet been provided. So, by most readers' opinion, this is nothing unusual. 

For me it was. This is what I expected to see when "AL" or "F" was provided under "completion data":

Note that in the above examples, perforations, dates, and spacing are included. In the scout ticket below, the method of extraction is provided ("AL") but we don't see perforations, dates, and/or spacing. The data above tells me that the well is off the confidential list. I can't tell from the scout ticket below whether it's still on the confidential list or not. The well file associated with the scout ticket in the original post (below) shows it as still confidential, but #35872 is not on the confidential list. 

This is all incredibly trivial but for some of us it is important. Discussion closed. Time to move on. Life is short.

Original Post

From the NDIC scout tickets:

NFL arrest tracker: link here. Huge "thank you" / shout out to a reader.  

Why does it not surprise me, with all that is going on in Minneapolis, that the Minnesota Vikings lead the pack? LOL. Disorderly conduct (oh, give me a break); drugs; and, domestic violence are top reasons for arrests. Good news for these guys: defunding police will leave a lot of "domestic violence 911 calls" unanswered. I've always said, if something doesn't make sense, google it or follow the money.

Speaking of football, the big fumble. As college football games vanish, so do their millions. The WSJ. 

This is going to be a huge story before it's all over. A year from now, college and university administrators are going to be asking, what were we thinking? 

Canceling college football will not change anything with regard to Covid-19; in fact, the case has been made, that without a doubt, things will actually get worse, with the tens of thousands of young men with a propensity for violence now without any adult supervision (and I use the term loosely -- think Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky). But I digress. Back to the linked story:

When college sports shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic last spring, university athletic departments started trimming expenses like they were peeling an apple. Now that the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences have postponed the fall season entirely, budgets could be slashed to the core.

Many departments in those conferences, and others that are now postponing fall sports, had already laid off staff and reduced salaries. Stanford eliminated entire teams, citing financial strain, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Without football, they’re now looking at radical changes to how they run college sports, and some are considering borrowing tens of millions of dollars to make ends meet. The pain will expand to the rest of college football’s giants if the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences ultimately postpone football as well.

Oregon, the reigning Pac-12 football champion and philanthropic darling of alumnus and Nike co-founder Phil Knight, is looking at an unprecedented revenue drop. The Ducks could lose $50 million of a projected athletics budget of up to $130 million for the upcoming year, athletic director Rob Mullens said. That could rise to as much as $80 million if the postponed games aren’t played in the spring.

The schools collectively have a lot to lose. Pac-12 athletic departments generated a total of $1.3 billion in revenue in 2018-19, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Big Ten athletic departments generated almost $1.9 billion. Football accounts for the bulk, if not the overwhelming majority, of athletic revenue at most of those schools.

Stanford announced before the loss of 2020 football games that it was cutting 11 varsity sports at the end of the coming academic year to manage an anticipated $25 million deficit on a budget of nearly $120 million—due partly to the pandemic, and partly to longer-term financial woes.

And that's the bigger story: colleges and universities will use the Covid-19 pandemic as "cover" to eliminate Title IX-mandated programs that were losing huge amounts of money. 

The first "volunteers" to take the coronavirus vaccine: college football players.

Not that I care, but is anyone even watching the DNC convention? My wife is but that's about it. Please don't respond, it was a rhetorical question for the archives. 

**************************************
The Literature Page 

Anemospilia: somehow that looks like a deviant sexual fetish. Whatever. Link here. Minoan Crete. 

Minoan sealstones or seal-stones. Wiki link here.

Bakken Natural Gas Production Surges -- RBN Energy -- August 20, 2020

First things first: Xilinx to supply chips for new Subaru vehicle, Grovel spelled backwards. Are you kidding me? Huge, and XLNX up 0.6% in pre-market trading. Go XLNX! First good news for XLNX in a long time.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

An a-ha! I think one of the reasons investors/traders don't talk about their biggest investing/trading mistakes is because the "rest of the story" is never told. I can kick myself for not holding certain investments through the pandemic, but such discussions fail to take into account what I bought instead. Some of my new positions have been more than stellar, and I bet that's true for many folks who lament having sold off some of their previous holdings.

Geico Rock Award nominee: Steven Liesman notes that the pandemic is hitting mom-and-pop retail really, really bad. That was also the discussion in the swimming pool last night: mom-and-pop retail may not be able to hold on much longer, and with another lock down advocated by the Biden/Harris campaign will be the final nail in that coffin. Geico Rock Award nominees for 2020 are tracked here.

ZeroHedge was on a roll overnight:

• Saudi Arabia embraces Israel-UAE peace deal; amazing, all the things Trump accomplished in less than four years, despite impeachment efforts, constant media lies and fake news;
• bait-and-switch: from "flattening to the curve" to "not one single death" to "cases count, not deaths"
• toeing the line: Sweden refuses to mandate masks; Nordic neighbors re-impose restrictions;
• the vaccine, a fool's errand: Covid-19 pandemic is rolling over; number of US hospitalizations declining at rate of 1% per day; but having said that, Bill Gate is going to really, really, really get rich on this; but that's fine;

Chicago: apparently pandemic hasn't affected government employees yet; but without bailout, mayor threatens furloughs and layoffs;

Biggest non-story of the week: rolling blackouts in southern California. Didn't amount to a hill of beans in the big scheme of things, and entirely preventable. 

Didn't see this coming: world's largest offshore rig owner by fleet size, Valaris Plc, files for bankruptcy. Seeks to offload $7 billion in debt.

OPEC basket, link here: $45.19.

************************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$42.50	8/20/2020	08/20/2019	08/20/2018	08/20/2017	08/20/2016
Active Rigs	12	63	58	53	32

Three wells coming off the confidential list -- Thursday, August 20, 2020: 59 for the month; 130 for the quarter, 576 for the year:

• 37077, drl/NC, BR, Cleofill, 1E, Croff, no production data,
  
• 36541, drl/NC, XTO, Marilyn 21X-23A, Capa, no production data,
  
• 35872, AL/NC, Whiting, Fladeland 13-10TFH, Sanish, t--; cum 49K 6/20;
  

The Fladeland wells are tracked here.

RBN Energy: Bakken gas production rebounds, but will it last?

Archived.

Bakken associated gas production volume, after falling to its lowest levels in three years in early May and remaining depressed through June, has surged by 500 MMcf/d, or about 45%, in the past month and a half to 1.7 Bcf/d. 

However, the gains have occurred in the absence of a meaningful change in rig counts or well completion activity, which remains sluggish. 

Similar to the Permian, the Bakken production recovery has been almost entirely driven by existing wells returning to service after being shut in earlier this year in response to the oil price collapse. With little in the way of new drilling and completion activity, how long will it be before natural declines of existing wells begin to take a toll on Bakken output? Today, we examine prospects for continued strength in Bakken gas production volumes.

I think the bigger story, here, is profitability for the oil companies. Read that again:

Natural gas production surged 45% in the past month.   

However, the gains have occurred in the absence of a meaningful change in rig counts or well completion activity, which remains sluggish. 

Huge story. Rigs don't matter. Now, even frack spreads didn't matter. Wow. 

The other big story line: the Bakken is not a natural gas play. 

New record low for well completions and wells drilled in the Permian and the Bakken, Focus on Fracking.

Gasoline Demand Flat For Fifth Consectuve Week -- August 20, 2020

 Link here.