Ten (10) New Permits Issued Yesterday -- The Williston Basin

I don't recall listing these new permits issued yesterday, so a day late. Sorry.

Here they are, ten (10) new permits

• Operators: SM Energy (3), OXY USA (2), KOG (2), MRO, Whiting, Enduro Operating
• Fields: Sanish (Mountrail), McGregory Buttes (Dunn), Truax (Williams), Mouse River Park (Renville), Manning (Dunn), Siverston (McKenzie)
• Comments: KOG has two more permits in Truax oil field which is turning out to be a huge field for KOG. Mouse River Park is a Madison oil field; it is very, very active right now with several wells on confidential status and two Enduro Operating rigs operating in this relatively small field.

Mouse River Park has a high well density supporting about a dozen wells in each section. How good are these wells? Three non-random selected examples:

• 4388, 200, Murex, Schmitz A 2, Mouse River Park, t3/68; cum 289K 10/12;  
• 4416, 28, Murex, Brekhus A 1, Mouse River Park, t5/68; cum 182K 10/12; 
• 4563, 196, Murex, Clarence M Ness 1, Mouse River Park, t11/68; cum 287K 10/12;

Chevron Moving Employees From California to Texas

Updates

December 23, 2012: the link to this story was sent by a reader. Without question, it is one of the best stories I've seen in the past few days. See my original post below and then compare to the story being linked now. It will be interesting to follow this story over the next twelve months. Without further ado, here's the story: green California to vie with Texas as U.S. oil heartland: energy.

Original Post

Link here to Rigzone.com.

Chevron Corp. (CVX) will move up to 800 of its California positions to Houston to strengthen its upstream business, the U.S. oil major told employees in an e-mail made public Friday.

The move would over two years shift more than 10% of the employees from Chevron's San Ramon, CA, headquarters to Houston, considered the capital of the U.S. Gulf Coast energy industry. Chevron, the third-largest oil and gas producer in the U.S., is moving to increase its oil production operations in the ultradeep area of the Gulf of Mexico, where rigs must drill holes in a seafloor thousands of feet below water.

"The positions are to support a variety of global upstream projects that are based in Houston," said Chevron spokesman Morgan Crinklaw.

Okay. Sounds plausible.

Folks may recall Chevron experienced a fire at one of their refineries in northern California earlier this year. I'm probably wrong, but it's my impression Californians in the local area of the refinery have never been happy with Chevron.

It would be interesting to know the "back" story of Chevron's decision of moving 800 of its employees out of state.  San Ramone, CA, is the headquarters of Chevron. There are about 3,500 employees in San Ramone according to the link which seems at variance of the press release (800/3,500 --> almost 25%).

Construction Keeping Pace Through Various Schemes in the Bakken and The Eagle Ford

Link here to Rigzone.com.

The surge in oil and gas exploration and production activity in North Dakota's Bakken shale play and the Eagle Ford play in South Texas have drawn thousands of workers to areas which previously had small populations, creating a demand surge for housing as well as emergency services, schools, roads and stores.

Responding to the high demand for housing that is in short supply in both regions, three different housing development schemes for oil and gas workers are either under construction, announced or have just opened for business.

These are the three schemes:

The first: the 90-day hotel: The "Shut Eye Hotel," the first of its kind, is expected to begin operations at the end of this year.

Construction began in October on the 70-unit facility, which is located 20 miles south of Williston, N.D., and 19 miles west of Watford City, in the town of Alexander. The hotel site is an ideal location along Highway 85, a major highway connecting Williston with Watford City.

The hotel offers an innovative lodging solution that allows stylish, high-quality hotels to be constructed in 90 days instead of the typical two years or longer, Banyan said in a statement. The final product looks comparable to traditional construction at a fraction of the cost.

Traditional hotels are stick-built, using lumber bricks and mortar. Instead of this traditional approach, Atlanta-based Proteus On-Demand provides custom-made modular buildings made of sturdy structural steel that provide security and comfort, configured to a customer's specific space and capacity needs, said Proteus On-Demand CEO Theo Den Bieman in a statement.

The second is Harvest Hills, talked about frequently on the MDW.

The third sounds like a crew camp in the Eagle Ford.

Bakken Oil To Canadian Refinery Hits A One-Off Speed Bump -- Hopefully

Link here to a most interesting Bloomberg article.

A very, very long story; read it through to the end. I am impressed that the "back" story is more important than the headline story.

A huge "thank you" to a reader for alerting me to this story. 

New Poll

Time for a new poll. I really dislike doing these things, as I mentioned the other day. But ...

I said this current poll would be up for only a couple of days. This one had to do with the severe Russian weather storm, one of the worst on record. I was curious if folks were even aware of the storm prior to seeing the story linked here.

Results of the poll (of the 52 that even bothered to vote):

• Yes, 12% said they were aware of the storm prior to seeing it on the blog;
• No, 56% said they were not aware of the storm prior to seeing it on the blog; and,
• 33% asked, "what storm." (Due to rounding, numbers add up to 101%).

So, for lack of anything more interesting tonight, here's the question. The active rigs in North Dakota hit an intra-boom low of 180 a few weeks ago, but the number of active rigs has gradually melted back up to 188, which has surprised me. I thought we would head to 175 and level off there.

The other day, Lynn Helms (Director, NDIC) opined that "we" would eventually get back to 200 rigs which would become the new "norm."

So, knowing that there are a lot of folks who have their collective ears close to the Bakken ground, I'm curious if you agree with Lynn Helms.

Do you think there will be 200 active rigs in North Dakota by September 30, 2013?