Twenty-One (21) New Permits; BEXP WIth Three (3) Nice Wells; Newfield With Two New Permits; OXY USA - No New Permits

Bakken Operations

Active rigs: 186 (steady)

Twenty-one new permits for yesterday and today (Thursday and Friday):

• Operators: CLR (8), Triangle (4), Whiting (3), Newfield (3), Oasis (2), Baytex, EOG,
• Fields: Pleasant Hill (McKenzie), Bully (McKenzie), Rawson (McKenzie), Ambrose (Divide), Parshall (Mountrail),
• Comments: Finally some Newfield permits; another day with no new OXY USA permits;

Wells coming off confidential list:

• 19914, 489, OXY USA, Rebsom 1-23-14H-95, t4/12; cum 28K 9/12;
• 19950, 221, Petro Hunt, Grev 157-100-31D-30-1H, t7/12; cum 16K 9/12;
• 20524, 875, Whiting, Bell Lake Creek 44-23TFH, t5/12; cum 36K 9/12;
• 20748, 599, Liberty Resources, Lindy 156-100-10-3-1H, t5/12; cum 43K 9/12;
• 21517, drl, CLR, Omar 6-12H, North Tioga,
• 21652, 237, Petro-Hunt, Fort Berthold 152-93-18B-19-2H, Four Bears, t9/12 cum --
• 22609, 327, CLR, Kubas 1-22H, t8/12; cum 12K 9/12;

Producing wells completed:

• 21952, 4,293, BEXP, Sorenson 29-32 3H, Alger, t9/12; cum --
• 21954, 3,078, BEXP, Sorenson 29-32 4H, Alger, t9/12; cum --
• 22082, 3,058, BEXP, Smith Farm 22-14 2H, Cow Creek, t9/12; cum --

Energy Links for Friday -- No More Blogging Today -- Updates

No More Updates/Blogging Today -- Traveling --

WLL transcript.  SeekingAlpha.com. One of many analyses.


RBN Energy: How shale oil affects gasoline

Earnings: Statoil reports today; income up 4% compared to 3Q11;

Early look at Dickinson's projected growth; report/study will wrap-up next month;

“Dickinson is growing, I’m sure you’ve seen it,” said KLJ representative Thomas McMurtry, who is based out of the firm’s Bismarck office. “The city is at about 20,000 to 24,000 people today, We’re planning on it going to about 40,000 to 42,000 over the next 20 years, but the bulk of that growth is in the next 10 (years).”

Another look at Dickinson's growth; how to deal with it;

“One thing is for sure, you can never make predictions absolutely accurate, so we hope to undershoot more than overshoot with the goal to avoid negative outcomes later,” he said. “One of the big things is making sure that we have temporary housing to serve temporary workers, so we try to utilize things like crew camps and mobile housing to serve temporary needs and not have permanent structures left behind when those workers leave.”

Stark County officials have refrained from approving new subdivisions until the more than 100 already in the county are at least 65 percent full.

“We’re in a good position now and we don’t have any vacant subdivisions,” said Jay Elkin, Stark County commissioner. “We have denied some subdivisions for various reasons, but one of our greatest concerns is that we want to allow those developers to develop the subdivisions that have already been approved before we allow for new growth.”

Energy impact grants: $2.5 million for housing for teachers in the oil patch; and for traffic safety; another $2.5 million to come in December;

Canadian Pacific Talks About Crude-By-Rail

Link here to SeekingAlpha.com.

Data points or quotes:

In energy, our strategy has delivered our fifth conservative quarter of double-digit revenue growth as our crude-by-rail program gains wider adoption by producers and marketers who are diversifying their supply chains by investing in a rail model. Change is underway at CP, and our focus on creating a better product for our customers and securing full value for our services.

We continue to execute our Bakken expansion strategy and gain traction in the implementation of our crude-by-rail model in both Alberta and Saskatchewan. This strategy will create a diversified mix of origination capability covering light, medium and heavy grades of crude. Crude volumes continue to trend upwards and we will hit the annualized 70,000 carload target in early 2013, more than a year sooner than expected. CP customer expansion plans are proceeding, and we expect to sustain our growth momentum. But I will speak to more about this market at our upcoming Investor Day.

Yes, I think what I would say here is that we've seen this volume in our crude by rail portfolio ramp up rather quickly. I mean, we've been talking before around 13,000 carloads last year, and we've moved ahead our target, the 70,000 carloads, by just about a year. Clearly, we do have franchise capabilities, and we look at that, certainly, marketplace in the Eastern part of the United States, it's a very, very positive market. We started with, certainly with ethanol moving it into that market. We basically filtered our crude by rail model starting -- looking at select locations on the light sweet crude side out of the Bakken. And now we're seeing volumes of this traffic starting to make it [indiscernible] in the East Coast, south of Saskatchewan, and possibly I know we have plans targeted for Alberta as well. So clearly this is a place where you take your franchise opportunities. You basically focus on running the best network and supply chain that you possibly can because that's how you run that play. So we look at that market as one of the areas for growth but again, we also look at the Gulf, we look at the West Coast, and we look at other locations as well because we think there's an opportunity to make our markets. And we feel confident that the product that we're putting there is putting value in the market. And I think the real test that we're seeing is, not only are we providing it to Hunter's point where you're seeing this volume increase, but we're seeing real investments by the customers in crude by rail, in cars and in facilities and in terminals. And that's where we really see the upside in this market.

Another Pipeline Expansion From D-J (Colorado) to Cushing

Link to Oil & Gas Journal here.

Data points

• operator: White Cliffs Pipeline LLC
• Platteville, CO, to Cushing, OK
• expansion of the 527-mile pipeline; D-J basin to Cushing
• increasing capacity to 150,000 b/d from 70,000 b/d
• expected to be in service by first-half 2014
• White Cliffs is owned by subsidiaries of SemGroup; Plains All American, Western Gas Partners LP, and Nobel Energy; SemGroup's MLP, Rose Rock Midstream LP, will continue operating the pipeline

OXY USA: Sounds LIke OXY Will Minimize Ops in North Dakota for the Foreseeable Future -- Transcript

Link here to SeekingAlpha.com.

In the Williston basin in North Dakota, we currently have over 310,000 net acres of significant resource potential, which we estimate to be about 250 million net barrels. Our production in the basin has tripled since we entered the area over 1.5 years ago. We have recently slowed our drilling activity and significantly reduced our rig count in the basin as a result of cost pressures. While well costs have subsequently declined modestly, we will only increase our rig count when costs come down enough to make returns competitive with the rest of our portfolio. We believe that over the long term, our resource base in the Williston basin represents a significant opportunity for the company.

A question (taken out of context):

You've added acreage in the Bakken. You've got a huge acreage position in California. Presumably, it doesn't make sense to just sit on these assets. Asset sales, joint ventures, bringing in others to drill this stuff, is that part of the plan? Or practically speaking, what does it really mean to cut CapEx when you've been building up these big acreage positions over the years?

Answer (taken out of context):

So I view it as sort of a deferral mechanism, rather than just sort of cutting it. But if they can't -- if they can't generate the returns in some of the assets, we might farm some out to people who might operate more efficiently.

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

Question (taken out of context):

And I think it was a couple of years ago, you were pretty honest about -- classically, you guys are an EOR company, not a shale drilling company. You're now kind of again going after that same operational execution ability. Do you have to acquire a company that can do this stuff for you?

Answer (taken out of context):

No, I don't think so. It was 2 years ago, we had this exact conversation in New York. And I said that, we were shifting the business from a -- for want of a better word, an EOR acquisition company/acquisition company to something that was more operational and more traditional. And I said that was not going to be easy, and I was right. And we've lowered -- I don't know how to say it, the average experience level, I guess is the politically correct way of saying it, of the people. And so some more mistakes have been made than might otherwise have been made. But I think we're getting there, I hope we're getting there. I'm just in a hurry because I'm older than the average.

Go to the link to see the entire Q&A exchange. The analysts seemed concerned about OXY's experience in California. No real questions about North Dakota because OXY was more direct about that. But California leaves one with more questions, I think.