Two drilling rigs, both running ’round the clock. Photo by James Ulvog.
A few more articles of interest from the Bakken.
10/14 – byline Amy Dalrymple of Forum News Service at Bismarck Tribune – State celebrates $150 million solution to Williston traffic woes – Four lane truck bypass around Williston is complete. This is expected to reroute a lot of the truck traffic that would otherwise be going through town. Construction was still underway when I was in town in September, so I’ve not been on the road yet.
Not a mountain to be seen during flight across North Dakota. Photo by James Ulvog.
ABC has a new prime-time soap opera supposedly set in northwest North Dakota. Akin to the old show “Dallas”, the drama is set in the context of the oil industry, this time the booming Bakken region.
Initial reports make me wonder if the writers and producers have even been to North Dakota, let alone set foot inside the northwest part of the state in the last seven years.
There are six wells on that pad ready to start pumping soon. Enough room to the right of the current pumps for maybe another half-dozen wells or more to be drilled. Check out the storage tanks. I calculate there are 42 tanks! There are six rows of seven tanks. That is a huge amount of on-site storage. I count three wind socks. Photo by James Ulvog.
Here are a few more articles I read while on vacation in North Dakota during September.
Notice the large amount of empty space on that pad? There will be a lot more wells there eventually. Photo by James Ulvog.
Here are a few more graphs on crude production in North Dakota:
Here is the rig count info:
The count of rigs is not a big as deal today as it was a few years ago because the rig productivity has increased so much. Looking at the last 6 or 8 months seems sort of like a plateau. A slight downward trend but not a dropoff.
There are still a lot of drilling rigs visible on the drive from Minot to Williston in September 2015. Keep in mind that is one of the most productive areas. Photo by James Ulvog.
Crude oil production averaged 1,186,444 BOPD in August, which was down only 20,552 barrels a day from July. The high was 1,227,529 in December, which makes August the eighth highest production month on record.
One of the wells I noticed with flaring during our September trip to North Dakota. Seems to me there is a lot less flaring visible now compared to a year ago and two years ago. There is a drilling rig barely visible to the right of the left-most pump. I can pick out two other well sites in this wide view several miles off to the horizon. Photo by James Ulvog.
Here are a few more articles I read during our September vacation in Williston plus another article I’ve been holding since before vacation.
What do you see? I see gasoline so you and I can drive to the grocery store to get dinner. Photo by James Ulvog.
While in Williston a week ago, I saw massive amounts of housing under construction and a lot that had been completed since my last trip there in February 2015. The amount of apartments and houses that have been built in the last two years is staggering.
A lot of new shopping is online too. I walked through the new Menards and Sportsman’s Warehouse. Both are huge, well stocked, and seem to have prices that aren’t ridiculous compared to Southern California. Both stores had crowded parking lots every time we drove by.
Huge, new Sportsman’s Warehouse store in Williston. Large number of apartment buildings are under construction behind the store. Photo by James Ulvog.
Sure do wish the sporting good stores in SoCal had the wide selection of guns along with the several-hundred dollar lower prices I saw at the Sportsman’s Warehouse. Wish there was as good a selection of ammo on the shelves here.
Read a few articles while in Williston on the long-expected transition from temporary housing to permanent housing.
Photo of empty oil train returning to North Dakota to pick up another load of crude oil. End of the train is not visible around the curve. Photo by James Ulvog.
It is the volume of oil released in a railroad derailment that is the reason for massive fires we’ve seen in the headlines over the last few years, not the slightly higher volatility of crude from the Bakken shale oil.
9/23 – Minot Daily News print copy, from Bismannews – Oil company officials laud findings on crude oil volatility – Research from Dept of Transportation, Dept of Energy, and Federal Railroad Administration point toward the amount of fuel spilled as the biggest factor in whether an accident involving crude oil results in a fire or explosion. Volatility of oil is not the cause.
Yesterday I started explaining how an article at McClatchy DC on 9/9, Oil boom a loser for North Dakota cities, counties, study finds, had enlightened my previous ignorance. I now realize the worst thing about the oil boom in North Dakota is that city and county governments have actually found themselves under fiscal pressure. I had not know that before reading this article. In fact, as I explained yesterday, I was not aware of any governmental agency anywhere at anytime that had not been able to fund all desired projects. Only in North Dakota and only because of the oil boom has that happened.
Sarcasm alert
Do I need to repeat my sarcasm alert from yesterday? If that would help, please read the opening paragraph.
Housing shortage hits local governments hardest
The article explains to us that Williams County government actually had to buy apartments in order to provide housing in order to get people to go to work for them.
Employer provided housing. In North Dakota. Wow. That is breaking news to me.
(Sarcasm alert!!!! Sometimes ridicule is the only way to deal with foolishness. I dislike sarcasm because it is an unhealthy, corrosive humor. However, there are times when pointing and laughing out loud is the right way to call attention to slanted, agenda-filled bias. Think of all those Hitler-in-the-bunker videos.)
Okay, here we go with the sarcasm…
Ready?
…
I am so silly. Ever since I started paying attention to economics back in high school, I thought we wanted to see a booming economy in order to make life better for people. If we could grow the economy, everyone everywhere would have more money and enjoy a better standard of living. Work-a-day average Joes would have better health, more comfort, and a nicer life. I thought that was our goal.
50,000 more wells over the next 25 years? Drilling rig in North Dakota. Photo by Melisa Ulvog.
Guesses on the total number of wells expected to be drilled in the Bakken and Three Forks keep increasing.
8/14 – Amy Dalrymple at Oil Patch Dispatch – 10,000 Bakken wells drilled, 50,000 to go, Helms says – Try this on for size – The wells drilled to this point in Bakken field are one-sixth of the total that will eventually be drilled.
For every well in place, there are five more that will be drilled.
Production of crude in the state increased to 1,211,180 bopd (prelim) in June from 1,202,615 bopd (final) in May. That is up 8,565 bopd. Only month with higher average production was December 2014 at 1,227,529 bopd.
Keep in mind the goal of the Saudis when they kicked off the price war was to take Bakken production off the table. I don’t think the results above are quite what they had in mind.
Ras Tanura oil terminal in Saudi Arabia. Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
VERSUS
5 oil pads in North Dakota, 1 with drilling rig. Each pad may eventually have 3 or 10 wells. Photo by James Ulvog. October 2014. Yeah, yeah, I’m not much of a photographer.
Three fascinating articles to give some perspective on global oil market. Might want to get a fresh cup of coffee, this will be a long read.
From immediate appearances, Saudi Arabia is in financial distress because of low oil prices. On a longer-term perspective they are in extremely severe trouble. OPEC as an organization is essentially done. Entertaining to watch one writer tried to blow off all of the above information.
First, the immediate indication that Saudi Arabia is having serious trouble now.
8/5 – Financial Times – Saudi Arabia plans $27bn in bond issues– Saudi Arabia has already borrowed $4B in the bond market. They are floating ideas of borrowing $5.3B a month through the end of the year for an additional $27B debt.
With selling around 10.3M barrels a day at price of around $50 which produces somewhere around $188B a year, why are they tiptoeing back into the debt market?
(Photo of drilling rig on North Dakota plains that will bring us half a million barrels of oil by James Ulvog.)
The falling rig count in Bakken is getting lots of attention. The importance of the number of rigs has dropped a lot in the last few years as the drillers created increasing efficiencies. The importance of the drop in rig count is less significant than it seems since the best crews are working with the best locations, which means the productivity of each of the current 70+ working rigs is far higher than the 190 in the field a year ago.
