Nine (9) New Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA -- To Be Completed Later

Active rigs: 189 -- quite a drop over the past few days.

Nine (9) new permits --

• Operators: Whiting (3), SM Energy (2), OXY USA (2), CLR, Petro-Hunt
• Fields: Clear Creek (McKenzie), Twin Valley (McKenzie), Crooked Creek (Dunn), Sanish (Mountrail), Ukraina (Billings), Colgan (Divide)
• Comments: SM Energy has a permit for a wildcat in Divide County

Wells coming from off the confidential list were posted earlier; see side bar at the right.

Five (5) producing wells were completed:

• 25434, 62, Williston Hunter, MMU 3H, Mohall, a Madison well, t9/13; cum 3K 10/13;
• 25383, 0 (no typo), XTO, Allie 31X-24H, Capa, t9/13; cum --; possibly not fracked yet; 24 stages planned; Three Forks;
• 25326, 887, XTO, Olson 34X-19H, Arnegard, t11/13; cum --
• 25327, 877, XTO, Olson 34X-19G, Arnegard, 30 stages; 2.7 million lbs; geology report not promising; t11/13; cum --
• 25025, 1,164, Oasis, Folda 5393 43-4T, Sanish, t7/13; cum 34K 10/13;

ConocoPhillips Donates $1 Million For New Dickinson Hospital; Matches Marathon's Early Contribution

The Dickinson Press is reporting:

Bakken operator ConocoPhillips has pledged $1 million to Dickinson’s under-construction St. Joseph’s Hospital, the hospital announced Tuesday.

With the latest gift, the foundation has raised nearly $10 million of its $15 million goal for private fundraising St. Joseph’s Hospital spokeswoman Stephanie Fong said.

The other $85 million for the project is coming from parent company Catholic Health Initiatives.

Minor Point For The Archives: BNSF Requires Coal Shippers To Suppress Coal Dust

The Billings Gazette is reporting:

The federal Surface Transportation Board has decided that BNSF Railway can require coal shippers to use certain methods to reduce the amount of coal dust lost from rail cars leaving coal mines in Wyoming and Montana.

In a decision last Wednesday, the board said shippers challenging the railway's coal-loading rules had not shown the measures were unreasonable. It did, however, find one provision related to liability unreasonable.

BNSF spokeswoman Courtney Wallace said Tuesday the board's decision ensures coal dust stays in railcars where it belongs.

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Speaking of coal, and killing the coal industry....

Business Insider is reporting that President Obama has worse polling numbers since Richard Nixon. 

President Barack Obama is ending his fifth year in office with the lowest approval ratings at this point in the presidency since President Richard Nixon, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll released Tuesday.

Obama's approval rating in the poll stands at 43%. By comparison, President George W. Bush had a 47% approval rating at the end of the fifth year of his presidency. And all other Post-World War II presidents had approval ratings above 50% — with the exception of Nixon, who, amid the Watergate scandal, had a dreadful 29% approval rating.

The brutal numbers underscore what has been something of a lost year for the President. His approval ratings have been plunging recently as a result of the botched implementation of the Affordable Care Act. In the Washington Post/ABC poll, only 34% approve of how Obama is handling his signature health law's implementation. 

34% is not a whole different than 29%, especially onsidering we're talking about the president mainstream media loves the most since JFK, this is really quite shocking. And then look at the outlet that provided the polling: Washington Post/ABC.

Another Inconvenient Truth

Rigzone via Reuters is reporting:

U.S. crude oil production, rejuvenated by the advent of "fracking" shale formations, will approach historic highs by 2019, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday, raising its forecast to levels that would have been unforeseen just a few years ago.

The U.S. oil and gas industry has been a bright spot in recent years as the economy struggles to recover from a financial crisis and growth stagnation. The energy renaissance has prompted some large U.S. oil companies to sell foreign assets and come home to focus on shale, leading to a upsurge of infrastructure projects. Cheap gas, meanwhile, has reinvigorated the refining and energy-heavy industrial sectors

by lowering costs. The EIA said production in the world's largest oil consumer will rise by 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) every year until 2016, when it will total 9.5 million bpd. By 2019 it will peak at 9.61 million bpd, nearly matching a 1970 record of 9.64 million bpd.

This still remains one of my favorite posts. Jane Nielson says:

Frequent Internet users are getting emails about the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana, supposedly a great oil bonanza just waiting to be tapped if only nasty enviros would let it happen. The emails and websites say that Bakken would solve all our petroleum “needs.” (What, me worry about  global warming?)

Don’t believe it. There’s some oil to be gotten out of Bakken, and it’s going to be exploited. But the “bonanza” is nothing but hype.

 Jane has not updated her post. Another inconvenient truth.

Just How Good Is The Three Forks? Just How Good Is EOG's Completion Technique? Forbes Mentions Oasis

Early on, NDIC, Lynn Helms said the Three Forks might be better than the middle Bakken; and EOG has said they are getting 100% internal rate of return within one year.

In the old days (back in 2010, many of us considered a well that produced 100,000 bbls of oil in the first full year -- i.e., twelve months -- was an exceptional well).

Look at this one: more than 110,000 bbls in less than four full months (in about 3 1/3 months).

For newbies, also note the legal name for this well -- "....130-2526H." The "130" designates this as a Three Forks well by EOG.

• 24855, 1,981, EOG, Van Hook 130-2526H, Parshall, 35 stages; 11 million lbs, Three Forks, t7/13; cum 111K 10/13;

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	10-2013	31	26734	26712	8645	13774	13467	161
BAKKEN	9-2013	30	33240	33204	11194	17274	16742	387
BAKKEN	8-2013	26	29840	30264	13902	16347	14100	2130
BAKKEN	7-2013	10	21130	19696	9504	10540	8306	2184

Look at that: 35 stages.

Look at the length of the horizontal: much shorter than the usual "two-section" standard "long" lateral.

For 30-second sound bite, Bakken wells are generally drilling around 9,700 feet vertically and then driling a total of 20,000 feet, or about 10,000 feet of horizonal.

In this case, the vertical depth was 9,540 feet (the Three Forks target was 9,527 feet) and the total depty was 16,601 feet, much shorter than the standard 20,000 feet of total depth for a standard "long" lateral in the Bakken. About 3,000 feet shorter than the standard long lateral.

Generally speaking, most operators are using about 100,000 lbs of proppant per frack stage; it would not be unusual to see about 3 million lbs of proppants for a 35-stage frack. In this case, EOG used a whopping 11 million lbs for just 35 stages. EOG has been using 12 to 14 million lbs of proppant for 60-stage fracks.  So, even for EOG, an exceptionally large amount of proppant (sand) was used to frack this well.

If the usual is about 100,000 lbs/frack stage, then 300,000 lbs of proppant/frack stage is three times what others are using.

The spacing unit is the standard 1,280 acres. 

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For Investors Only

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you think you may have read here. 

Forbes provides seven names for skeptical investors who look through rose-colored glasses. Of the seven names, one is very well known to readers of the blog: Oasis.