Seven New Permits -- January 14, 2019

Diesel: oilprice suggests it may be interesting to watch the price of diesel over the next few months. 

Active rigs:

$50.51	1/14/2019	01/14/2018	01/14/2017	01/14/2016	01/14/2015
Active Rigs	67	55	36	51	158

Six new permits:

• Operators: XTO (4); Whiting (2)
• Fields: Temple (Williams); Banks (McKenzie)
• Comments: XTO has permits for a 4-well Bronson pad in 14-159-96; Whiting has permits for a 2-well Renbarger Federal pad in 33-154-97;

Six permits renewed:

• Petro Harvester (2): two LIG1 permits in Burke County
• Lime Rock Resources (2): a Kary permit and a State permit, both in Dunn County
• Nine Point Energy (2): two Little Muddy permits in Williams County

One permit canceled: an EOG Austin permit --

• 34344, PNC, EOG, Austin 405-2919H,

Eight producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed: pending

• 32818, 1,176, CLR, State Weydahl 10-36H2, Corral Creek, t12/18; cum 24K 11/18:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	11-2018	14	23133	23017	35000	28697	26124	2573
BAKKEN	10-2018	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	9-2018	3	948	948	2057	936	0	936

• 32819, 1,392, CLR, State Weydahl 11-36H, Corral Creek, t12/18; cum 32K 11/18:

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
BAKKEN	11-2018	14	30761	30606	15321	19612	17853	1759
BAKKEN	10-2018	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
BAKKEN	9-2018	3	1207	1207	1810	866	0	866

• 34695, n/d, CLR, Rolf 6-17H1, Brooklyn, no production data,
• 34696, n/d, CLR, Rolf 5-17H1, Brooklyn, no production data,
• 34697, n/d, CLR, Rolf 4-17H, Brooklyn, no production data,
• 34698, n/d, CLR, Rolf 3-17H1, Brooklyn, no production data, 
• 34205, 2,215, Hess, BB-Chapin-151-95-0506H-9, Blue Buttes, t12/18; cum --; #16975; 
• 34206, 2,954, Hess, BB-Chapin-151-95-0506H-10, Blue Buttes, t12/18; cum --; #16975;

Two Nice MRO Wells On A 3-Well Pad Come Off-Line -- No Obvious Reason For The Wells To Come Off-Line -- January 14, 2019

Two wells:

• 16778, 354, MRO, Jack Pennington 21-28H, Reunion Bay, t8/08; cum 518K 11/18 with a huge jump in production in 5/17;
• 17502, 637, MRO, Mark Sandstrom 14-32H, Reunion Bay, t12/08; cum 514K 11/18 with a huge jump in production back in 8/14; perhaps a slight uptick in 10/18;

Neighboring wells:

Meanwhile, in that general area, two nice MRO wells are off line and I don't see any specific neighboring activity that would account for two wells on this 3-well pad to be off line. Note the first one is IA:

• 27152, IA/2,253, MRO, Cloon 14-32H, Reunion Bay, t8/14; cum 319K 11/18; off-line;
  
• 27151, 2,208, MRO, Glisar 14-32TFH, Reunion Bay, 8/14; cum 232K 11/18; off-line;
• The third well on that 3-well pad shows a slight uptick in production, but not much:
• 27555, 1,922, MRO, Keith 44-31TFH, Reunion Bay, t8/14; cum 249K 11/18; remains on line.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong wells.

Let's look at the APIs for #27151 (API: 33-061-02852) and #27152 (API: 33-061-02853). Nope, nothing over at FracFocus.

Sundry forms:

• 27151: nothing.
• 27152: nothing.

Will follow up in a couple of months.

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No Comment

Link here.

T+69 -- Day 24 Of The Partial Government Shutdown -- Dems Are In Puerto Rico -- Trump Is In DC -- Waiting -- January 14, 2019

Director's Cut: should be released tomorrow, Tuesday, January 15, 2019, 3:00 p.m. CT. 

The Super-Secure Quantum Cable Hiding in the Holland Tunnel. Link here.

Fossils. We're not talking about members of the US Senate. North Dakota may have the bones of the largest triceratops ever discovered. Barnes County, in the southeastern corner of the state is a long way from the valley of the dinosaurs in northeastern Montana, Hell Creek, famous for its T. rex skeletons.

Does Wisconsin have a "death penalty"? From wiki: Capital punishment in Wisconsin was abolished in 1853. Wisconsin was one of the earliest United States states to abolish the death penalty, and is the only state that has performed only one execution in its history. Fifty years from now, google Jayme Closs.

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Sucking All The Oxygen Out Of The Room

After looking at the graphic, note who is not even on the graphic:

• Beto
• Oprah
• Bernie
• Pocahontas
• and, the biggest name of all not on the list: Hillary!

This has to be very, very concerning for "mainstream" (and I use the term loosely) Democrats.

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The Literary Page

The Great Gatsby trivia never ends. Ms Corrigan has enough to last a lifetime in So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures, Maureen Corrigan, c. 2014.

One aspect of The Great Gatsby: hard-boiled.

At the beginning of the Baz Luhrmann movie, Nick talks about Jay Gatsby.

And what does Nick talk about with his precious breaths? He tells a story about his friend Jay Gatsby, who was a fellow soldier in World War I. As I've said, the modern use of the term hard-boiled came out of that war, and in almost every classic hard-boiled story, the most stable and intense relationship is not between the hero and the woman he loves, but between two men, comrades in arms. 

The 1949 Gatsby movie stresses the buddy element running through the story by surrounding Ladd's Gatsby with gangster underlings who had served with him in the Great War.

Hard-boiled novels and the noirs that were made from them are male buddy stories that explore what makes a man a man in a newly fallen world.

I find that very, very interesting, Corrigan continues:

Fitzgerald knew that he had created a story in which the primary relationship was between two men. 

Writing to H. L. Mencken in a letter dated May 4, 1925, Fitzgerald, in his typically spelling-challenged style, confessed that "the influence on it has been the masculine one of The Brothers Karamazof (sic) a thing of incomparable form, rather than the femineine (sic) one of The Portrait of a Lady. 

When Gatsy turned out to be a commercial failure, Fitzgerald quickly came to believe that he had "paid" for making Nick and Gatsy the focus of his novel. In a letter to Maxwell Perkins dated April 24, 1925, Fitzgerald bemoans weak sales and blames the title, which he says is "only fair, rather bad than good ... And most important -- the book contains no important woman character and women controll (sic) the fiction market at present.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was also a story in which the primary relationship was between two men. It's too bad Corrigan missed that one. 

Saudi Arabian Oil Reserves -- What It Means -- Bloomberg -- January 14, 2019

Bloomberg op-ed: the new assessment of Saudi Arabia's reserves. For the third graph, regarding Venezuela, throw out Venezuela's heavy oil and Venezuela is #8 on the list.

Three graphs:

Throw out Venezuela's heavy oil and Venezuela is #8 on the list. 

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A Most Distinguished Group

From Robert F. Bacher's short biography of Robert Oppenheimer, 1904 - 1967.
From pp 12+:

Fortunately several small groups that had been working on problems associated with the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago could be closed down now, and, if the personnel involved could be persuaded, might form a nucleus of a staff for Los Alamos.

Robert (Oppenheimer) was very persuasive. The largest number came from Princeton where Robert Wilson with a small group had been working on an alternative electromagnetic method of isotope separation.

Others came from Berkeley, Illinois, Cornell, Minnesota, Purdue, Chicago, and Wisconsin.

Robert (Oppenheimer) attracted a very strong theoretical group centered around those who had worked with him during the summer of 1942 and including Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskoff, Emil Konopinski, Robert Serber, George Placzek, Robert Marshak, Robert Christy, and Richard Feynman.

It was an outstanding group.

The Summer of '42, Michel Legrand

Talk about brilliant (and fortuitous) casting. Barbra Streisand headed the list; Jennifer O'Neill was selected. I can't even imagine Streisand in that role.

Bruin Reports A Huge Bakken Well -- January 14, 2019

See first comment with regard to the size of these wells.

Bruin reports a huge well (again):

• 31775, 3,193, Bruin, Fort Berthold 151-94-26B-35-15H, Three Forks, API: 33-053-07184, 12 million gallons of water; 87% water by mass, 55 stages; 14.6 million lbs, t8/18; cum 156K 11/18; Antelope-Sanish. For background, see this post.

Pool	Date	Days	BBLS Oil	Runs	BBLS Water	MCF Prod	MCF Sold	Vent/Flare
SANISH	11-2018	30	44405	44422	66530	67002	43193	23464
SANISH	10-2018	31	40293	40105	78884	62116	40721	21200
SANISH	9-2018	2	2345	2240	3612	2968	1603	1352
SANISH	8-2018	30	62854	63370	83442	50095	39587	10338
SANISH	7-2018	6	5721	5205	20304	3340	609	2715

Right now, these are the three exciting operators in the Bakken:

• MRO re-fracks, particularly in Bailey oil field
• Bruin's huge six-month IPs, the Fort Berthold wells in Antelope-Sanish
• NOG as a proxy for the Bakken

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

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The Literary Page

Wow, what a treasure! It's not (yet) behind a paywall. An essay on The Great Gatsby by Christopher Hitchens in the May, 2000, issue of Vanity Fair. Link here. The final paragraph:

Fitzgerald’s work captures the evaporating memory of the American Eden while connecting it to the advent of the New World of smartness and thuggery and corruption. It was his rite of passage; it is our bridge to the time before “dreams” were slogans. He wanted to call it Among the Ashheaps and Millionaires—thank heaven that his editor, Maxwell Perkins, talked him out of it. It was nearly entitled just plain Gatsby. It remains “the great” because it confronts the defeat of youth and beauty and idealism, and finds the defeat unbearable, and then turns to face the defeat unflinchingly. With The Great Gatsby, American letters grew up.

It's too bad Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us. It's worse that journalists can't connect these great works of literature with current events.

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Pancake Heaven -- Taos, New Mexico