Monday, July 25, 2016
ExxonMobil, Saudi Arabia In Discussions To Develop A Petrochemical Complex Along The US Gulf Coast -- July 25, 2016
I normally don't post these stories this early in the "cycle" -- but this helps understand Prince Salman's strategic plan for Saudi Arabia. Oil & Gas Journal is reporting that ExxonMobil and SABIC (Saudi Arabian Basic Industries) are in discussions to develop a jointly-owned "grassroots" petrochemical complex to be built along the US Gulf Coast, either in Texas or Louisiana.
Update On CBR -- July 25, 2016
The Wall Street Journal has an update on declining CBR. It has a fair number of data points for the archives, and is probably a human interest story, certainly for many on the east coast, but regular readers probably won't find much new in the article.
But this data point is very interesting:
The changes are evident in North Dakota, once the epicenter of the crude-by-rail trend. Oil output from the state’s Bakken Shale formation has fallen by 180,000 barrels a day from its 2014 peak. Meanwhile, pipeline takeaway capacity has more than doubled since 2010.
EOG Resources Inc., one of the first oil companies to see the potential for trains to relieve pipelines, opened its first rail loading terminal in Stanley, N.D., in 2009. But that terminal hasn’t loaded a train in more than a year, according to Genscape, a data provider that tracks activity at U.S. rail terminals.
“New pipeline infrastructure has been put in place to move significant volumes of oil to market,” an EOG spokeswoman said.
Enough pipeline capacity is coming online to replace all of the current volume BNSF Railway Co. is shipping out of North Dakota, said David Garin, the railroad’s group vice president of industrial products.
BNSF used to transport as many as 12 trains daily filled with crude primarily from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, carrying about 70% of all rail traffic out of the area. Now it is down to about five a day.And along with the decline in coal shipping volumes, this is probably not a good-news story for Warren Buffett who owns BNSF.
But this data point is very interesting:
Even at its height in 2014, crude-by-rail accounted for less than 2% of total rail volumes, according to Association of American Railroads data. But its decline threatens what was once viewed as a sizable driver of growth for the railroad industry, one that many rail companies, along with oil and gas producers, made investments to support.
Between 2010 and 2015, 89 terminals were built or expanded in the U.S. and Canada to load crude on trains, and nearly as many to offload it, according to consulting firm RBN Energy LLC.Back to the Bakken:
There could soon be more than enough space to carry away all Bakken oil through pipelines now in the works. Phillips 66 is partnering with pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners LP to develop a pair of pipelines that will bring North Dakota crude to Illinois and then down to Texas.
The endeavor, which will cost close to $5 billion, is expected to take a major bite out of oil train traffic, even though the pipelines will ultimately bring oil to the Midwest and the Gulf of Mexico, rather than to the East and West coasts, where trains have primarily taken it.
Phillips 66 said earlier this year it may still be cheaper to take that oil and put it on a barge for delivery by sea to the coasts than to send it directly there by train.Something tells me this rail and these loading terminals in North Dakota won't go unused.
Eight Permits Renewed; Only One New Permit -- July 25, 2016
Active rigs:
Wells coming off confidential list Tuesday:
| 7/25/2016 | 07/25/2015 | 07/25/2014 | 07/25/2012 | 07/25/2011 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 32 | 73 | 192 | 208 | 179 |
Wells coming off confidential list Tuesday:
- 32011, TASC, MRO, McMahon USA 14-34H, Reunion Bay, no production data,
- 32092, 1,503Three Forks B1, 32 swell packers proposed
- Operator: North Range Resources
- Field: Rough Rider (McKenzie)
- Comments:
- Whiting (2): two P Bibler permits in Williams County
- Hess (2): two EN-Jeffrey permits in Mountrail County
- Petro-Hunt (2): two Kostelnak permits in Dunn County
- BR: a Ranvan permit in McKenzie County
- Crescent Point Energy: a Legacy et al Berge permit in Bottineau County
Market Down 100+ Points On WTI Pullback -- July 25, 2016
The market is down because of the pullback in the price of WTI, now under $44/bbl. Even though the market is down 100+ points in mid-day trading, there are 225 new 52-week highs on the NYSE, including:
I used to think the Christian Science Monitor was a reputable publication. But it appears they, too, have gone a bit bonkers. It's bad enough the UN sponsored this research but it goes beyond the pale that the CSM would actually publish the results and the conclusions. The UN now blames "agriculture" for rising "emissions" that contribute to global warming. [Yes, I understand their "reasoning" -- the fact that forests are being cut down.]
But look at that conclusion again. Remember, this was written by really smart people:
But regardless, we're doing all this to prevent an average increase of only two degrees. Over the next century. Yesterday it was air conditioners; today, it's agriculture. Tomorrow it will be cattle farting. Oh, we already had that one.
As Queen says: "When the temperature outside rises ...
I'm Going Slightly Mad, Queen
- CenterPoint Energy
- El Paso Electric
- Exelon
- FirstEnergy
- Murphy USA
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Going Bonkers
I used to think the Christian Science Monitor was a reputable publication. But it appears they, too, have gone a bit bonkers. It's bad enough the UN sponsored this research but it goes beyond the pale that the CSM would actually publish the results and the conclusions. The UN now blames "agriculture" for rising "emissions" that contribute to global warming. [Yes, I understand their "reasoning" -- the fact that forests are being cut down.]
Food production accounts for approximately 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, 21 percent of these emissions come from deforestation and land use changes that are a result of agriculture.The report concludes:
The report concludes with words of caution: “If we depend on current yield trends alone to meet future demand for food, we will need the entire global emissions allowance for keeping global average temperatures below two degrees Celsius. That would leave virtually no emissions for all other sectors, including energy production, industry, and transport.”As Don has noted: we're all going to have to quit eating if we want to stop global warming.
But look at that conclusion again. Remember, this was written by really smart people:
"We will need the entire global emissions allowance for keeping global average temperatures below two degrees Celsius."Obviously they did not mean that, and this report would have been proofread a gazillion times before publication. If we get the average global temperature down to below two degrees Celsius it's going to be awfully cold. Unless things have changed, I believe water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius at one atmosphere pressure.
But regardless, we're doing all this to prevent an average increase of only two degrees. Over the next century. Yesterday it was air conditioners; today, it's agriculture. Tomorrow it will be cattle farting. Oh, we already had that one.
As Queen says: "When the temperature outside rises ...
Bakken DUCs Rise To Nearly 1,000 -- July 25, 2016
The Emergent Group is reporting today that Bakken DUCs rise to nearly 1,000. See graph and data at this link. A reminder: CLR said fracking operations would resume when oil returned to $50 to $55. Not only is oil back in the mid-$40s, oil is a) now below $43; b) trending down; and, c) talk on the street suggesting the price of oil could go significantly lower (again).
The tea leaves certainly suggest we won't see $60 oil by the end of the year, and there is even question whether we will get into "CLR's fracking range."
In the July, 2016, Director's Cut (May, 2016, data), the NDIC reported that after falling a bit earlier this year, DUCs in the Bakken did increase slightly, by 39 from last report, up to 931.
This story was a front page story over at the on-line edition of The New York Times.
The tea leaves certainly suggest we won't see $60 oil by the end of the year, and there is even question whether we will get into "CLR's fracking range."
In the July, 2016, Director's Cut (May, 2016, data), the NDIC reported that after falling a bit earlier this year, DUCs in the Bakken did increase slightly, by 39 from last report, up to 931.
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LUCA: The Ancestor Of All Living Things
This story was a front page story over at the on-line edition of The New York Times.
A surprisingly specific genetic portrait of the ancestor of all living things has been generated by scientists who say that the likeness sheds considerable light on the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth.
This venerable ancestor was a single-cell, bacterium-like organism. But it has a grand name, or at least an acronym. It is known as Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, and is estimated to have lived some four billion years ago, when Earth was a mere 560 million years old.
Genes that do the same thing in a man and a mouse are generally related by common descent from an ancestral gene in the first mammal. So by comparing their sequence of DNA letters, genes can be arranged in evolutionary family trees, a property that enabled Dr. Martin and his colleagues to assign the six million genes to a much smaller number of gene families. Of these, only 355 met their criteria for having probably originated in Luca, the joint ancestor of bacteria and archaea.Genes are adapted to an organism’s environment. So Dr. Martin hoped that by pinpointing the genes likely to have been present in Luca, he would also get a glimpse of where and how Luca lived. “I was flabbergasted at the result, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
The 355 genes pointed quite precisely to an organism that lived in the conditions found in deep sea vents, the gassy, metal-laden, intensely hot plumes caused by seawater interacting with magma erupting through the ocean floor.
Deep sea vents are surrounded by exotic life-forms and, with their extreme chemistry, have long seemed places where life might have originated. The 355 genes ascribable to Luca include some that metabolize hydrogen as a source of energy as well as a gene for an enzyme called reverse gyrase, found only in microbes that live at extremely high temperatures, Dr. Martin and colleagues reported in Monday’s issue of Nature Microbiology.
Until the book comes out (which I am sure will happen), this is a great book that will bring you up to speed regarding LUCA: The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, Nick Lane, c. 2015. Bill Martin figures prominently in Nick Lane's book.
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