Reminder: Wells Coming Off Confidential List Over The Weekend, Monday Have Been Posted -- November 30, 2014

Active rigs:

	11/30/2014	11/30/2013	11/30/2012	11/30/2011	11/30/2010
Active Rigs	185	191	182	198	163

Reminder: wells coming off the confidential list over the weekend, Monday have been posted with their IPs.

Updating 3Q13 wells: it really is incredible all the wells that are reaching 100K in the first year. This is an example of a nice Fidelity well, for example:

• 23913, 1,223, Fidelity, State 30-31H, Stanley; t3/13; cum 191K 10/14;

Slump in oil price continues: futures down $1.60 to under $64.

War of words: The Telegraph (link here).

Saudis risk playing with fire in shale-price showdown as crude crashes A deep slump in prices might heighten geostrategic turmoil across the Middle East

Saudi Arabia and the core Opec states are taking an immense political gamble by letting crude oil prices crash to $66 a barrel, if their aim is to shake out the weakest shale producers in the US. A deep slump in prices might equally heighten geostrategic turmoil across the broader Middle East and boomerang against the Gulf’s petro-sheikhdoms before it inflicts a knock-out blow on US rivals.

Caliphate leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has already opened a “second front” in North Africa, targeting Algeria and Libya – two states that live off energy exports – as well as Egypt and the Sahel as far as northern Nigeria. “The resilience of US shale may prove greater than the resilience of Opec,” said Alistair Newton, head of political risk at Nomura.

Chris Skrebowski, former editor of Petroleum Review, said the Saudis want to cut the annual growth rate of US shale output from 1m barrels per day (bpd) to 500,000 bpd to bring the market closer to balance. “They want to unnerve the shale oil model and undermine financial confidence, but they won’t stop the growth altogether,” he said.

There is no question that the US has entirely changed the global energy landscape and poses an existential threat to Opec. America has cut its net oil imports by 8.7m bpd since 2006, equal to the combined oil exports of Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.

The country had a trade deficit of $354bn in oil and gas as recently as 2011. Citigroup said this will return to balance by 2018, one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in modern economic history.

“When it comes to crude and other hydrocarbons, the US is bursting at the seams,” said Edward Morse, Citigroup’s commodities chief. “This situation is unlikely to stop, even if prevailing prices for oil fall significantly. The US should become a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products combined by 2019, if not 2018.”

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Non-Bakken

St Louis: the "universal" posture for Ferguson protestors has been "raising arms/hands, signaling 'don't shoot.'" It looks like the new posture will have to include holding hammers.  

Reason #24,560 Why I Love To Blog -- The Real Cost Of Electricity -- November 30, 2014

A few days ago a reader provided a great link and some really good research on the real cost of electricity, as provided by the provincial government of Ontario, Canada. That source is about as un-impeachable a source as one can find. If you can't believe a provincial government, whom can you trust?  So, before reading further, go back and look at at that post.

Now, Forbes is getting in on the act. Here's the link.

The concern is that the Obama administration is now trying to re-define how we determine the cost of electricity:

In the most recent Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA began using the “levelized avoided cost of energy” (LACE) as an alternative to the LCOE for assessing the economic competitiveness of different generating technologies. The LACE metric estimates what it would have cost the grid to generate the electricity otherwise displaced by a new generation project. (wow, sort that one out)

The LCOE is like a bad line of code in a software program used to develop other software programs. It has dangerously skewed investors’ understanding of the economics of generating electricity from renewable energy resources. It has also had perverse and difficult to undo impacts on local, state and federal energy policies.

This Forbes story would have made less sense to me had another reader not sent me the Ontario, Canada, study. And that's why I love to blog. 

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A Note To The Granddaughters

One of the most fascinating books I have ever read is Brenda James' The Truth Will Out: Unmasking The Real Shakespeare, c. 2005.

It is nice to have google at my side to help me cross-reference some of the data points Brenda James provides. Her book is absolutely fascinating.

In my freshman year at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, my courses were pretty much all required courses, to get them out of the way. One of the courses was western literature; the professor was perhaps one of the most interesting, most striking professors I ever had in college. I hardly recognize him in this picture taken way too late in his life. He was tall, and had the most striking red hair of anyone I can recall: perhaps a descendent of Eric the Red.

I assume we studied Shakespeare for about two months during that freshman year but I recall nothing else about his class. The only think I recall was studying Shakespeare. Dr Huseboe was incredibly animated and obviously very, very passionate about the dramatist and poet. I remember, very well, the paper I wrote for that subject; it was definitely out of the ordinary, which Dr Huseboe recognized, and, I suppose, appreciated, after reading scores of papers with the same theme. It was a mediocre paper at best, but the thesis at least was different.

My Shakespeare library is extensive, but if I had to narrow it down -- to share with the granddaughters -- it would be several of his plays; one or two books on Shakespeare by Harold Bloom; W H Auden's lectures on Shakespeare; and, Brenda James' book.

Oasis Picking Targets South Of Williston? POTUS Picking Targets South Of Kabul? -- November 30, 2014

Updates

Later, 10:12 a.m. CT: see first comment. My original post identified the wrong "waste water plant." I was unaware of a waste water plant south of the depot. The post has been updated.

Original Post

A small story coming out of the Bakken to start the day. The Dickinson Press is reporting that Oasis will buy water from Williston's wastewater plant to use for fracking an Oasis well-pad site just west of the wastewater plant.

The Oasis site is just west of the wastewater facility. More than 440,000 barrels of water is expected to be sold to Oasis and bring in approximately $110,000 of revenue to the city. 

“This will help with our volume issues,” said Public Works Director David Tuan. “We have far too much wastewater coming into the plant that we can deal with.”

According to a reader, the "wastewater plant is south of the Amtrak depot."

At risk of being wrong again, this looks like the four-well Oasis pad, currently with a rig on site:

• 29264, SI/NC, Oasis, Harrier 5401 44-23 T2, Todd, 2nd bench, Three Forks; background gas was "very low"; 
• 29265, drl, Oasis, Harrier 5401 44-23 3B, Todd,
• 29266, loc, Oasis, Harrier 5401 44-23 4T, Todd,
• 29267, drl, Oasis, Harrier 5401 44-23 5B, Todd,

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Non-Bakken Stuff

Tongue-in-cheek: I posted this back on October 15, 2014, as a bit of tongue-in-cheek stuff:

The younger generation won't remember how the Vietnam War ended for US: a) the president was picking bombing targets; and, b) US loyalists were air evacuated out of Saigon on helicopters.

I don't know if I should be surprised or dismayed to see that we were repeating the past. The AP is reporting that apparently POTUS was picking the bombing targets in Afghanistan, but this time, even the Pentagon did not know:

On a trip to Afghanistan during President Barack Obama's first term, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was stunned to find a telephone line at the military's special operations headquarters that linked directly back to a top White House national security official.

"I had them tear it out while I was standing there," Gates said earlier this month as he recounted his discovery. "I told the commanders, `If you get a call from the White House, you tell them to go to hell and call me.'"

On another note, this headline ("new momentum to stop global warming") made no sense to me last night, so I left it to come back to it this morning. It still makes no sense. The AP is reporting:

Abbott tried and failed to keep the issue off the agenda of the annual G-20 summit of wealthy and emerging countries that was hosted by the Australian city of Brisbane in mid-November. An agreement between Washington and Beijing to curb emissions, announced days before the summit, suggests he had misjudged the international mood on the issue.

Next week, attention turns to the next round of international climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru. For a nation of just 23 million, Australia has played a significant role in past talks, but this time it's unclear what kind of role its delegation, led by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, will play.

Abbott's conservative coalition won a landslide election victory last year over the Labor Party, which had grown unpopular in part because it had approved one of the world's highest taxes on major carbon gas polluters. Abbott not only ended that tax but years earlier helped scuttle an effort by his own Liberal Party to reach a bipartisan deal on a carbon-trading scheme, intended to encourage industries to produce less emissions.

Let's see:

• Canada rejected the Kyoto Protocol
• China gets to keep doing for the next 20 years what is has been doing for the past 20 years (on an Obama handshake)
• Germany is going brown (burning lignite coal)
• "Global Warming" is the last thing on their list of things Americans worry about

I don't see the momentum. I see AP spin.

All's Well That Ends Well -- Shakespeare's Philosophy On Drilling In The Bakken -- November 29, 2014

Updates

October 8, 2016: it was noted that these three incredible wells were taken off-line in mid-July, 2016, and remained off-line all of August, 2016. 

December 16, 2015: production update here. 

September 6, 2015: a reader sent two photos of the first at Flatland Federal #27522. The reader noted that one individual (a male) suffered burns but recovered fully. The Williston Herald story is here, with one of the two photos sent me.

September 5, 2015: the three Flatland wells have been updated through July, 2015. The Flatland wells have been updated through July, 2015; note that all three wells are still flowing without a pump; also note the the wells have not been on-line the full time; in fact, #27520 was off-line the entire month of July, 2015; in July, for #27520, there was a report that the gas capture unit originally installed was removed; the wellpad is now selling to ONEOK's pipeline. The form said all three Flatland wells were affected.

May 5, 2015: production numbers for these three wells have been updated through February, 2015.

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The tables below are not being updated. The updates are at the links above.

Later, 9:05 p.m. CT: silly me. I didn't think of looking at the scout ticket(s) for the other well(s) on this pad. Here they are:

NDIC File No: 27520  (Whiting considers this the best well in the Williston Basin, May, 2015)
Location: LOT4 4-152-97     Latitude: 48.023199     Longitude: -103.109482
Current Operator: WHITING OIL AND GAS CORPORATION
Current Well Name: FLATLAND FEDERAL 11-4TFH
    Field: TWIN VALLEY

Monthly Sales Data:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	4-2015	30	36976	37084	4012	67961	67354	547
BAKKEN	3-2015	31	46708	46286	4808	181103	180141	900
BAKKEN	2-2015	28	46881	47420	4187	146103	143797	2250
BAKKEN	1-2015	31	52430	52198	4093	141901	128516	13323
BAKKEN	12-2014	31	52103	51904	3664	123971	115165	8744
BAKKEN	11-2014	30	50823	51268	4155	112069	42428	69581
BAKKEN	10-2014	31	61727	60615	12213	117291	11381	105860
BAKKEN	9-2014	27	0	0	0	44	0	0

And here's the third one:

NDIC File Number: 27521 -- t10/14; cum 402K 12/16;
Location: LOT4 4-152-97    Latitude: 48.023199     Longitude: -103.109605
Current Operator: WHITING OIL AND GAS CORPORATION
Current Well Name: FLATLAND FEDERAL 11-4HR
    Field: TWIN VALLEY

Monthly Sales Data:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	4-2015	30	19908	20005	2296	34620	34282	278
BAKKEN	3-2015	31	26998	26811	3157	100230	99670	498
BAKKEN	2-2015	28	31865	32428	3174	92376	90898	1422
BAKKEN	1-2015	31	45023	44921	3898	104257	94408	9787

Original Post

From the well file for a Whiting well still on confidential, but some information had been previously released. From the Geologic Summary:

The Whiting Oil and Gas Corporation Flatland Federal 11-4TFHU is a Twin Valley field well ... the initial phase ... is a coring pilot hole, followed by a vertical and curve, landing in the Three Forks Cycle 2 formation.

The Flatland Fed 11-4TFHU spud February 23, 2014, and reached a total depth of 21,640' MD on May 9, 2014. A month-long delay occurred when Nabors B08 caught fire on the afternoon of March 25. Nabors B15 was moved on locations April 27, 2014, and finished drilling the well.

So, how did things turn out? 

The well is still on confidential; it should come off the confidential list April 7, 2015, but here is the scout ticket (you may want to be sitting down when you look at the first month production):

NDIC File No: 27522, t12/14; cum 395K 12/16
Location: LOT4 4-152-97     Latitude: 48.023199     Longitude: -103.109728
Current Operator: WHITING OIL AND GAS CORPORATION
Current Well Name: FLATLAND FEDERAL 11-4TFHU
    Field: TWIN VALLEY

Monthly Sales Data:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	4-2015	30	20039	20889	3286	527	467	0
BAKKEN	3-2015	31	26002	25795	3936	105743	105681	0
BAKKEN	2-2015	28	30709	30975	4245	99837	98664	1117
BAKKEN	1-2015	31	36223	35960	3947	88222	70289	17871
BAKKEN	12-2014	31	37293	36740	3799	92836	57816	34958
BAKKEN	11-2014	30	43157	43841	4865	96900	40708	56132
BAKKEN	10-2014	25	45350	44087	17581	108040	11410	96582
BAKKEN	9-2014	27	0	0	0	44	0	0

This should be a full month of production; the scout ticket shows no production in the month of September. Yes, the scout ticket says this well produced 44,111 bbls of oil in the first month of production.

Gas in the upper Three Forks was unremarkable, ranging from 11 units to 724 units. However, in the target zone, in the Three Forks Cycle 2 target zone, gas ranged from 17 to 8,500 units while drilling and in excess of 9,500 units during trips.

Nabors B08 was deemed unfit to continue work and had to be cut apart and removed from location. I am hoping that no one was injured in the fire, but nothing was said. This well is the first of two wells drilled on this pad.

The permit application states this is a Three Forks B1 well on a 2560-acre spacing unit. 

By the way, note the oil field: Twin Valley, where Whiting is setting some records with production. I track the Twin Valley oil field here.

For newbies, 44,111 bbls in the first month is huge, but it's not unprecedented for monthly production; here is what EOG has done as just one of many EOG examples.

By the way, this is what the first few months production of a Whiting record-setting well was in the same oil field, Twin Valley:

• 20589, 4,815, Whiting, Tarpon Federal 21-4H, said to have a 7,000 boepd IP; record middle Bakken (as of Feb, 2012); Twin Valley; s8/11; t10/11; cum 587K 12/16; 30 stages; 2 million lbs sand/mesh (the fourth column is monthly oil production in bbls)

BAKKEN	4-2012	30	17731	17767	1073	43340	33629	9652
BAKKEN	3-2012	31	21492	22221	1237	51368	37957	13349
BAKKEN	2-2012	29	22545	21679	1126	49092	36158	12876
BAKKEN	1-2012	31	27145	27422	1256	51227	9449	41716
BAKKEN	12-2011	31	35016	35708	1639	68022	10077	57883
BAKKEN	11-2011	30	44240	43468	2512	87053	49455	37538
BAKKEN	10-2011	20	26264	25544	13974	53817	0	53779

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Well, If This Will Keep 'Em Out Of The Malls

Being tweeted now:  'Journey for Justice' marchers pass St. Louis airport on 1st leg of 120-mile trek to state capital; the 7-day march is organized by the NAACP - @huyMach.

They could drive it in an hour and a half, and gasoline is really inexpensive now. I wonder if Al Sharpton will walk, ride, or helicopter?

Following Up On A Re-Frack -- November 29, 2014

Update, February 17, 2017: FracFocus data -- 

• Only one frack shown: 9/21 - 23/2014
• 1.6 million gallons
• 87% water by mass
• 13% sand by mass

Production profile since last update:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	12-2016	31	4859	4876	1750	4169	3305	164
BAKKEN	11-2016	30	4304	4313	1662	3369	2484	249
BAKKEN	10-2016	29	3724	3775	1312	2685	1603	516
BAKKEN	9-2016	30	3961	3900	1371	2784	1676	505
BAKKEN	8-2016	31	4108	4072	1446	3031	2082	323
BAKKEN	7-2016	31	4085	4124	1445	2936	1632	683
BAKKEN	6-2016	30	4175	4231	1503	2966	1746	593
BAKKEN	5-2016	31	4423	4335	1553	3185	1822	704
BAKKEN	4-2016	30	4476	4508	1574	3219	2424	138
BAKKEN	3-2016	31	4707	4709	1643	3318	2358	270
BAKKEN	2-2016	29	4451	4482	1564	3165	2236	279
BAKKEN	1-2016	31	5031	4947	1744	3520	2523	273
BAKKEN	12-2015	31	5034	5123	1759	3590	2340	525
BAKKEN	11-2015	30	5164	5111	1792	3679	2565	381
BAKKEN	10-2015	31	5653	5633	2005	4009	2641	577
BAKKEN	9-2015	30	5613	5975	2001	4130	2052	1298
BAKKEN	8-2015	31	6024	5903	2632	4240	3156	254
BAKKEN	7-2015	31	6076	6108	2263	4465	3094	539
BAKKEN	6-2015	30	6375	6480	2345	5019	3068	1089
BAKKEN	5-2015	31	6800	6672	2633	4905	820	3175
BAKKEN	4-2015	30	6918	7133	2730	5270	1631	2721
BAKKEN	3-2015	31	7670	7408	3390	5486	1320	3159
BAKKEN	2-2015	28	7375	7316	3206	5831	2406	2468
BAKKEN	1-2015	31	10114	10144	5408	7407	4226	1914
BAKKEN	12-2014	17	8699	8735	5160	5689	3033	1627
BAKKEN	11-2014	18	4062	4068	1995	2443	1133	772
BAKKEN	10-2014	29	10727	10682	6558	6850	3832	1699
BAKKEN	9-2014	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

Update, July 12, 2015: unfortunately no frack data has been scanned into the NDIC file. Production has been updated below. 

The original note:

• 17314, 431, MRO, Brown 24-9H, Killdeer, API: 33-025-00769, a 10 - 30' flare for fifty minutes; this is a bit confusing for me, but I believe this well was spud/completed in 2008, but it was re-fracked in August, 2014, and that's why it shows up in today's report; the re-frack data was not yet scanned in; last full month production was in July, 2014; it will be interesting to see what new production numbers are and what the re-frack data is; t8/08; cum 316K 12/16;

Here is the latest production data, pretty self-explanatory:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	10-2014	29	10727	10682	6558	6850	3832	1699
BAKKEN	9-2014	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	8-2014	4	219	230	9	154	23	124
BAKKEN	7-2014	31	1109	1099	200	894	516	196
BAKKEN	6-2014	30	1102	902	260	867	473	214
BAKKEN	5-2014	31	1120	1360	231	913	588	139
BAKKEN	4-2014	30	1115	1102	245	912	559	173
BAKKEN	3-2014	31	1153	1136	242	942	577	179

By the way, look at the consistency of production between 3/14 and 7/14 -- amazing what "nature" can do. LOL.

But on a serious note: from a sundry form received on May 20, 2014, "MRO has decided to run a liner with frac sleeves in this well prior to re-frac'ing this well. The liner will be run approximatley 10,000' MD to TD at 20,190' MD." Number of stages, amount of proppant not yet scanned in.

When last seen, the geologists and roughnecks were opening a bottle of champagne. (I made that part up.)