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Department of Interior approves ANWR O&G leasing plan

I say let them drill. ANWR is a huge place. Liberal Environmentalist will cry the world is going to come to an end just like they did with the pipeline. The drilling industry is under enormous regulations and scrutiny they can’t just drill and leave. Or, pay our enemies for their oil at their price some time down the line. Keep America strong...Drill !
Not just “Liberal Environmentalists” against this........
 
The OG industry is inherently a boom/bust industry. At least in the last 50 years it would seem. Price manipulations by foreign Countries has left us (the US) vulnerable in the past and that is a concern of many. Wasn’t the last big drop in oil prices caused by Saudi Arabia flooding the market with cheap crude to cut into the Russian market share? There is no simple answer.
Prices fall and rigs shut down. Prices rise and drilling increases. No argument from me that there are areas that should remain untouched and that old drill sites should be cleaned up.
I don’t know what the Houma Ship canal or the area around Port Fourchon looks today but I was speechless the first time I saw the abandoned wells and marine equipment in what seemed like every backwater and cut.
 
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For starters most of the infrastructure is already in place to exploit ANWR. The Alaska pipeline starts at Prudhoe Bay which is just to the west of ANWR.
Incidentally ANWR was a contentious issue when I hunted Dall sheep in the brooks range at age 15. I am 43 now..20200315_113248.jpg
 
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Un needed,unnessessary and totally irresponsable. Screw the OG's. Find a job,a needed job.
Go to work cleaning up the crap left all over our lands you made,at your cost out of your pocket! Fix one of your screwed up pipelines,on your dime!
 
For starters most of the infrastructure is already in place to exploit ANWR. The Alaska pipeline starts at Prudhoe Bay which is just to the west of ANWR.
Incidentally ANWR was a contentious issue when I hunted Dall sheep in the brooks range at age 15. I am 43 now..View attachment 150928
Yeah I was 14 when be the rain came out. Can vividly remember my dad learning it then proceeding to blast it on his Les Paul in the basement
 
Wonder what Bullock's take on this issue is?
he’s a Democrat in a state of Republicans. He would be considered right-wing in most blue states, but a pragmatist nonetheless. No different than Danies on public land transfer. But that is all irrelevant to the point. The question is why sell the lease when you are guaranteed to get the worst price for it? Someone is getting paid and someone is getting screwed. I feel like we are the latter.
 
he’s a Democrat in a state of Republicans. He would be considered right-wing in most blue states, but a pragmatist nonetheless. No different than Danies on public land transfer. But that is all irrelevant to the point. The question is why sell the lease when you are guaranteed to get the worst price for it? Someone is getting paid and someone is getting screwed. I feel like we are the latter.
Couple of ideas/guesses on the timing. Sell them before a Democrat president can veto them or perhaps there is a time sensitive mechanism in place.
 
he’s a Democrat in a state of Republicans. He would be considered right-wing in most blue states, but a pragmatist nonetheless. No different than Danies on public land transfer. But that is all irrelevant to the point. The question is why sell the lease when you are guaranteed to get the worst price for it? Someone is getting paid and someone is getting screwed. I feel like we are the latter.
The lease process will be litigated and it will be years before anything happens. You have no idea what oil prices will be at that time and are just speculating. :)
 
he’s a Democrat in a state of Republicans. He would be considered right-wing in most blue states, but a pragmatist nonetheless. No different than Danies on public land transfer. But that is all irrelevant to the point. The question is why sell the lease when you are guaranteed to get the worst price for it? Someone is getting paid and someone is getting screwed. I feel like we are the latter.
The lease itself isn’t worth that much all things considered, first tranche will probably be in the 400,000 acre range. Looks like since 1999 the highest price per acre paid was in the ~$60s low winning bids on tracts were $5.

So probably max of 24MM state gets 1/2.

Royalty rate on a lease is 12.5% + 4% gross min excise tax so 16.5% per barrel.

At current prices that’s ~$7 a barrel. Alaska produced 400,000 barrels a day in May. So $86Million in public revenue for the month.

Very clearly the money is in the taxes and royalties.

In Texas a GLO (state land) lease is typically 20-25% and then there is a + 5% tax.

To your original point though, more leases when companies are dramatically cutting back on AK production. Makes 0 sense.
 
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I spent a long winter and early spring walking along the W side of ANWR (89/90) which is the Canning River. We also walked W in many places away from ANWAR and out onto the ice. We saw exactly no sign at all of oil infrastructure, must not have been a good place. Big dome thing from cold war days, empty cooking oil can cache with a name and a date on it from the 60s, ground sloped down towards the river and bits of willow poked up through the snow, hard to tell you were out on the ice, more flatness. When there was any breeze at all things got cold, very dark, didn't start lightening up until February, by April almost too much sun.

I'm not real worried, drill or not, lots of land up there. To tell the truth I'm a lot more concerned about everyone flying about to go fishing and hunting hither and yon. World's getting hot. Time to stop burning that stuff.
 
I seem to remember that leases were let on the rocky mtn front in the 80s but when it came time to drill they couldn't get permits. With horizontal drilling limits at 2 miles then drill site density would be something in the every 3-4 mile range. That will hardly impact much of anything.

It's been a long time since I looked at O&G projects but after a life of natural resource projects I can say that there are environmental standards inposed by state and federal agencies. The real issue is in making sure those agencies are doing their job.

Of the things I have been exposed to within the industry in nearly all cases the environmental damage was done prior to a reasonable understanding of techniques and solutions. In north central Montana major problems have occurred in cross aquifer contamination befween fresh and saline aquifers while drilling gas wells in the times previous to the 70s. It always made more sense to me to charge a small tax on production and consumption dedicated to the cleanup of those legacy problems as opposed to current lawyer funding procedures we have been observing for some time. I really don't care who was at fault and when- I just want it taken care of.
 
Keep drilling and pumping. Just please stop putting those big wind turbines all over wyoming.
 
I seem to remember that leases were let on the rocky mtn front in the 80s but when it came time to drill they couldn't get permits. With horizontal drilling limits at 2 miles then drill site density would be something in the every 3-4 mile range. That will hardly impact much of anything.

It's been a long time since I looked at O&G projects but after a life of natural resource projects I can say that there are environmental standards inposed by state and federal agencies. The real issue is in making sure those agencies are doing their job.

Of the things I have been exposed to within the industry in nearly all cases the environmental damage was done prior to a reasonable understanding of techniques and solutions. In north central Montana major problems have occurred in cross aquifer contamination befween fresh and saline aquifers while drilling gas wells in the times previous to the 70s. It always made more sense to me to charge a small tax on production and consumption dedicated to the cleanup of those legacy problems as opposed to current lawyer funding procedures we have been observing for some time. I really don't care who was at fault and when- I just want it taken care of.
There are a ton of factors that will influence pad density. I’ve worked the Marcellus, Uinta, Permian, Anadarko, and Barnett. Definitely some similarities, but lots of differences as well. Uinta was mostly oil and vertical wells were actually the most economic (2015), Marcellus surface sites were a major issue given the terrain so we built slightly bigger pads and really tried to utilize every inches. Many of the Marcellus pads were on top of coal mines, so we had to drill the wells through the pillars definitely an interesting mapping project. Barnett was in the middle of Arlington, TX so we were drilling in the middle of neighborhoods, pad sites could be a couple million so again we used every inch, plus wells were shallow and rock was easy to drill so you could get away with some pretty ridiculous kicks. Anadarko, pad sites are usually pretty easy to get, the rock is harder to drill and wells can be very deep, so often fully developed unit might have 3 or more pads.

I’ve never worked the north slope, but depending on the operator, how similar this part of the basin is to the developed area, economics, development could look very different.

Chevron for instance might come in and immediately start pad development, they may have a good idea how the basin performs, spacing, etc. Chevron has the scale to completely cover its capex in AK. Hillcorp on the other hand 70,000 Boe/d they are going to have to work with banks in all likelihood. Wouldn’t surprise me if they start with a bunch of locations, just drill parent wells which have the best ROR, and essentially try to prove up their asset. That’s going to be a lot more impactful.

One thing I worry about is the insanely slow growth of the tundra. We plugged a well in OK, I went back to the pad site 3 years later and could barely find the well head. Roads, pad sites, pipeline right-of-ways will scar the tundra forever, 5 generations from now, hundreds of years after these wells are plugged you will still see exactly where the pad was.

As far as pollution only occurring in the 70s... let’s see we had a contractor dump a load of water (clean) and completely erode a pad site and choke a creek, lightening struck a tank on a site in Denton TX and it burst into flames, a main broken on a site and it filled a church with 10 million gallons of water, etc. Not to mention the DCP and Dixie pipeline explosions that killed people.
Pennsylvania has a website where you can pull all the fines operators have accrued for various environmental violations, they happen and are a part of doing business.

I do like the idea of a Boe/d excise tax that goes into a fund that’s used for remediation.
 
All about the $$$, funding has dried up for O&G in general, ANWR is just a terrible buy.

Drilling is super expensive, public market doesn't want to fund it, banks wont touch it...

You read article after article about Permian companies and it just boggles the mind why anyone would bid on those leases.
 

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