Earlier this week I received a note about a rumor that OXY had sold its North Dakota assets. OXY had announced last year (2014) that it was shopping its 330,000 acres in North Dakota. OXY also said in late 2014 / early 2015 (I forget) that it had no plans to do any drilling in North Dakota in 2015.
But nothing in the news ... until yesterday. And then, surprise, surprise. OXY has two new permits in southwest North Dakota, both for additional Stroh wells. The Stroh wells featured heavily in my early days of blogging about the Bakken.
Generally, a permit is issued with the expectation that the operator will begin drilling within a year of getting the permit. If not, it's easy to renew the permit, but generally operators don't go around applying for permits without plans to drill. So, it's a mystery.
And the only reason I'm posting this, is so I can post this:
She's A Mystery To Me, Roy Orbison
The two new OXY permits, both on the same pad, NWNW section 13-143-97, and 2560-acre spacing:
32047, loc, OXY USA, Raphael Stroh 7-13-24H-143-97L, Crooked Creek, Dunn,
32048, loc, OXY USA, Kenneth Stroh 8-12-1H-143-97L, Cabernet, Dunn,
As the area looks today:
There is a tag for the Stroh wells. In addition, although no updated in awhile, I track the Stroh wells here.
By the way, one of the OXY USA Stroh wells should go over 500,000 bbls of oil (cumulative) once the new data is posted.
The opening up of Mexico’s retail liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)
market could provide significant opportunities for U.S. propane and
butane producers, as well as midstream companies and exporters. If
exports of U.S.- sourced LPG are to increase, though, it would help to
have a more robust and efficient system than presently exists for
transporting the fuel to the U.S.-Mexico border and, from there, to key
LPG consumption markets within Mexico. Today, we continue our look at
Mexican LPG imports with a review of existing and planned pipelines.
As we said in Episode 1
of this series, Mexico is the world’s seventh-largest consumer of LPG;
it uses 280 Mb/d, on average, about 60% of that use is residential, 14%
commercial and 9% industrial, including petrochemical production
(another 10% is for LPG use as a fuel for trucks and cars). About
two-thirds of the LPG consumed in Mexico is produced within that
country; the rest (about 93 Mb/d) is imported, with about 70% of imports
(66 Mb/d; or nearly one-fourth of Mexico’s total needs) coming from the
U.S. We also discussed the Mexican government’s plan—part of a larger
energy sector deregulation effort—to eliminate (in January 2016) the
current mandate that state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) serve as
the middleman on all LPG imports to Mexico, and to end (in January 2017)
the long-standing practice of a government-set retail LPG price. In Episode 2,
we detailed the growing U.S. propane surplus headed for export markets
as well as the LPG export facilities in place or being developed along
the Texas coast, as well as Mexico’s increasing capacity to receive LPG
by ship.
For most New Hampshire residents, electricity should be less expensive this winter than last. At least, that's the indication based on recent rate requests from some of the state's largest electric utilities.
In New England, not enough natural gas pipelines feed a region that increasingly burns gas for its electricity. This means that electricity prices rise as the winter heating season arrives, when people are firing up their furnaces a lot more frequently.
But judging from the rates utilities are asking for so far, prices will be lower than last winter. Eversource energy, which serves most electric customers in the state, says its winter rate will be up 15 percent from this summer, but one and a half percent lower than last winter, at 10.39 cents per kilowatt hour.
Natural gas is so abundant and cheap in much of the U.S. that
producers want to export it overseas. Except in New England, where gas
is so hard to get that companies are importing it from as far away as
Yemen.
The U.S. shale boom that has produced a glut of gas—and
helped lower many Americans’ home heating bills—has largely bypassed the
energy-starved New England. Few pipelines are available to ferry gas from Pennsylvania and Ohio to Connecticut and Maine, and new lines proposed in the region won’t go into service until 2018, or later.
Gas
plants currently supply 44% of New England’s electricity, up from just
18% in 2000. Consumers and businesses are also swapping their old
furnaces that burn heating oil for newer models that run on gas.
So as the weather cools, problems loom.
When
brutal cold hits this winter, energy prices will soar. In
Massachusetts, the residential gas price was $14 per thousand cubic feet
last January, more than 50% above the national average. At nearly 21 cents a kilowatt-hour, average
first-quarter home electricity prices in New England were two-thirds
higher than the U.S. average.
The coming winter in New England is expected to be colder and snowier
than normal, similar to what the region has experienced the previous
few years.
As
a result, power plant operators are likely to increase the amount of
liquefied natural gas they import from faraway suppliers in Trinidad and
Tobago and the Middle East.
Imported gas can cost two to three times as
much as the gas that was pumped in the U.S.
John Flynn, a senior vice president at U.K.-based utility National Grid PLC, which serves parts of New England, said gas and power prices
in the region will keep rising until new gas pipelines get built to
bring cheap supplies to the region.
National Grid, based in Waltham, Mass., is developing a $3 billion pipeline with Spectra Energy Corp. and Eversource Energy that aims to bring 1 billion cubic feet of gas every day to New
England starting in 2018. The companies haven’t yet requested federal
approval for that project. A different Spectra pipeline project in
Massachusetts has faced opposition from some Boston officials and
residents.
And what is this doing for the environment?
New England’s lack of easy access to natural gas is forcing many
power-plant operators to burn dirty fuel oil and coal instead, which
ends up causing more pollution. The region’s overall emissions of
nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide have dropped since
2001, but those pollutants increased sharply from December 2013 to March
2014, according to the region’s power grid operator.
Apparently, "everyone" from the reporter to the engineers were surprised about the relative lack of sunshine in Minnesota, or at least the lack of predictability. [Note to engineers: the days get shorter in the winter in Minnesota. It's been that way for millenia.]
In Minnesota:
A state mandate requires investor-owned utilities to generate 1.5
percent of electrical power from solar by 2020, one way or another.
So, they have a "Twin Cities solar power demonstration" but it looks like there wasn't a lot of pre-planning.
“We’ve seen pretty significant output differences between December
and June and July, which is anticipated, though I guess we didn’t have a
firm concept of how large of a difference that might have been, when we
started the project,” said Andy Bergrud, senior engineering project
manager for Great River Energy.
GRE is owned by 28 member co-ops, making it Minnesota’s second largest electric power supplier to 650,000 ratepayers.
Great River installed a 240 kilowatt solar array at its Maple Grove
headquarters in 2014 to test how solar technology performs in Minnesota
to improve the design and operation of future projects.
And this is what they found:
GRE recorded ideal weather conditions — clear, sunny days from sun-up to
sunset — just 10 percent of the time. Surprisingly, none of the perfect
days came during typically sunnier, summer months.
I think everyone in North Dakota is very, very aware of the bright, sunny days we have most of the winter -- the days are short, but the skies are often clear as can be. That's why the UND aviation school is such a success -- so many clear, cloudless days. At least that's what I remember growing up in Williston.
So, how is the demonstration project going?
Overall, the solar facility produced power at an average of 13.6
percent of its potential capacity, generating enough electricity to
supply about 30 homes.
And then this profundity:
John Kearney, a staff representative from Minnesota Solar Industries
Energy Association, said the fluctuation of sunshine is factored in to
solar power planning. [LOL -- I can't make this stuff up.]
“Solar customers understand how the erratic nature of solar impacts
their energy requirements when they make their solar investment,” he
said. [Really?]
Is this what they were told? That it would take 17 years to pay back without state subsidies?
While Minnesota’s mandate does not apply to electric co-ops, 13 of
GRE’s members have installed small community solar gardens in response
to consumer interest.
Lake Region Electric Cooperative customers in Pelican Rapids, for
example, can buy a solar panel for 20 years at a cost of $1,400. The
investment takes 17 years to pay back without state subsidies, but the
co-op has sold out a 40 kilowatt solar set-up, and most of a new 20
kilowatt array.
"Most of a new 20-kilowatt array." Wow.
I don't know if I'm getting more and more cynical with age, or the more I learn about intermittent energy, the more discouraged I become.
Much, much more at the linked article.
Remember, this is all being done to help with global warming -- I have no idea how much Minnesota contributes to global emissions of anything, but mandating investor-owned utilities to generate 1.5
percent of electrical power from solar by 2020 in light of all the new coal plants in India and China (for around 3 billion people) seems incredibly naive. Whatever. All I know is that Minnesota has several world-class colleges and universities, and an incredibly educated and enlightened population with Al Franken as one of their two senators.
I always love these hurricane tracks. This storm is just days / weeks from hitting land (or not hitting land -- see track TVCN), and these are the projected / predicted tracks ...
... and yet Matt Damon can tell us that 100 years from now, if we do nothing, the earth's temperature will rise 2.4 degrees (Fahrenheit or centigrade, doesn't matter; the numbers are just made up, anyway).
It looks like the folks in Cleveland, Ohio, better start stocking up on bottled water.
[By the way, it appears that the "dots" on the map were generated by chimps throwing darts at the map.]
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Running Out Of Bullets
Updates
Later, 7:54 p.m. Central Time: a reader tells me what "Back of the Yards" in Chicago means --
American/Chicago History lesson for you... "back of the yards" refers to cattle stock yard in Chicago... Union Stock Yards...
Big thanks. I learn something new every day .. and "sort of like Kansas" wasn't too far off -- but just coincidence..
"Wherever you live, you should be able to get out of your car and go to your home," Emanuel told reporters on Tuesday after receiving news of the increased violence continuing on Monday evening, leaving six dead and at least eight injured.
"You can say this happened in the neighborhood of the Back of the Yards, but everybody (who) woke up this morning, or heard it last night, felt a pain of anguish, and it’s time that our criminal justice system and the laws as it relates to access to guns and the penalties for using 'em reflect the values of the people of the city of Chicago."
So, what is "the neighborhood of the Back of the Yards"? Is this sort of like Kansas in the Wizard of Oz.
