Member Info for adoubleuk

Wellwell,

"It means you’re a prejudiced lot."

What an odd thing to write. It's almost as though you think there's some sort of hidden 'cartel' of posters writing here who've got together like a band of conspirators to deliberately besmirch Crystal Amber! And I don't reckon that's the case.

Plus also, your use of the word 'prejudice' is somewhat prejudicial in itself. I don't reckon the critical posters here are completely cloth between the ears (though one or two might be), but instead have observed RB's tweets over time, various CRS financial reports, and so on, and have reached certain conclusions through mulling over such information. And that's not prejudice, just rational thinking.

Btw, a question I haven't seen asked here. Was RB at the AGM? Or didn't he have any smart questions to ask this year?

Wellwell,

" I don’t see why it’s a joke just because they’re supporting MS figures."

I see the joke, and it's a pretty sick one. And to my mind, Morgan Stanley must be running a fever as well. 380p? Despite all the last eight months' work, the HUR SP is running below its high of a couple of years back, and that just seems wrong to me. What sort of catalyst is it going to take to push the SP to a quid, let alone three times that?

And WHEN might it reach 380p? Ten years' time doesn't interest me, having no dependent relatives, and the almost-sure fact that I'll be pushing up daisies by then.

Essentially RB's tweets are nothing but blatant ramping / deramping, according to how it helps him feather his own nest.

Where is Carnegie when you need him? (Another joke.) I remember when he was still around here, about four years ago, expressing his deep misgivings about having CA as a major 'investor'. And he's been proved right.

I can understand people writing gloomy posts here (even Thedriver!) during times like this. The company's doing everything right, the black gold is flowing, and the SP's still mooching around in the mid fifties like Eeyore. The weather doesn't help, either.

At times like this I feel like buying a good bottle of whisky, a Saturday-night special with one round up the spout, selling all my Hurricane shares, going to the casino and plonking all the proceeds on the red at the roulette table. If it works, fine. But if not I'll go sit on the beach, get drunk, and use the pistol for the purpose I bought it for.

And heck, unlike 'Thedriver' I'm nicely in profit! But it's still a depressing state of affairs.

Can't somebody start a 'takeover rumour', or something like that?

JK,

"Of course it's illegal, just pointing out it ain't piracy!"

I think in fact you're probably correct, in that Cromarty Firth can hardly be described as the 'high seas'. Though that might depend on what one's been smoking, and those Greenpeace people probably don't realise what they've taken on.

Anyway, shoot first, and ask questions later. They won't actually 'get onboard', and I reckon they're in for an uncomfortable and probably smelly night...

JayKay,

"Time to get the fire hoses out ??"

I'm sure the roughnecks would feel flattered by having their private parts refered to as 'fire hoses', but I bet that's what's happening now...

JayKay,

"Nah mate, was in UK waters )cromarty Firth), needs to be in international waters to be deemed 'piracy'..."

Balls.

And even if it's not 'piracy' in lawyers' terms, it's 'trespas' of some sort, or whatever and so forth.

But who cares about the legalese wording, anyway? One way or another, those people are comitting a criminal act of some sort by 'boarding the vessel' without permission to do so.

I suspect the rig crew will get rid of 'em soon, anyway. Dumping the contents of the sewage system on their heads springs to mind...

"off with their heads? That's hardly encouraging!"

Ah. So Wellwell knows his Charles Dodgson.

However if he re-reads that chapter closely, he'll note that it also represents the last chance for a tree-shake...

mrmisterfox,

".but if its of any use AD's Alice reference helped me decide... There's only a few folk worth listening to.... And posts over the last week by Diego, Laserdic, and Steve helped me decide to stay at the table..."

The next chapter is 'The Queen's Croquet-Ground'.

Don't know if that helps...............

JayKay,

"Which is? Buy or sell? The chicken or the beef? Window seat or aisle? Please share, we're all ears! ;o)"

Don't let anyone else know, please, but I think 'Wellwell' is actually Bob Dudley.

BlooBird,

"You mention DBNCs … I always thought that they were called DUCs ( Drilled UnComplete )"

You're absolutely correct. It's simply that I was uncertain about the acronym (a common problem) so just made one up as a stab in the dark to explain the concept.

Adds up to the same thing, anyway.

Wrist duly slapped, I'll go into a corner and write out DUC a few hundred times...

Wellwell,

"DrT isn’t (a Mad Hatter). Not so sure about you."

Point taken, and accepted with a wry grin. HOWEVER: I might wear a hat all the time I'm outside, but I didn't make the dam thing. A company called Stetson did that. Ergo, I'm not a 'hatter'. Plus I might be a bit mad, but I'm not crazy. (Though maybe it's the other way round, dunno.)

By the way, I haven't gone out on the streets with a machette eyeballing peoples' shoulderblades to obtain the nice little bits of info I do about the drilling (without asking). Maybe you should frequent the bagel-stall a bit less and obtain some different friends.

Wellwell,

"Someone is being naughty and I doubt your info is coming third hand from the bloke in the local boulangerie. "

Nobody's being naughty. Or at least, not me (for a change). Hey! You're the one living in the Granite City, not me. Maybe you should get out a bit and talk to taxi drivers.

Heck, I don't even live in the UK. But I like to know a wee bit about where my investment money's going.

In the very dim and distant past when my hair was waaay below my shoulders and I smoked left-handed cigarettes, I was involved with running a mobile disco. And every gig we did finished with 'Get by with a little help from my friends", the Joe Cocker version. And it still applies.

I tell you what, here's something to amuse you. Do you remember the Mad Hatter's tea-party in Alice in Wonderland, and the story the Dormouse started telling about the sisters who lived in a treacle-well? Try a google search about it. The thing is, Hurricane aren't drilling in Binsey, a tiny village now essentially enclosed (though still in 'countryside') by the city-limits of the place I was born. And there's no Fractured Basement there, or not to my knowledge, at least. And also (though I haven't ried the experiment), I doubt that even if you boiled treacle, you could get a flare like the one on the Aoka Mizu.

Nah, that's enough information from me. DYOR. But Dr Trice isn't a Mad Hatter.

Genghis,

There are times I see a question mark and can't help answering! Even if my post below might only go about 70% to answer your question.

"Rig count even declining for months but forecasts OF US shale production keep going up. Efficiency gains? Or conflicting signals?"

A sort of mixture of the two, or something called 'chickens coming home to roost syndrome'. (Which is a phrase I made up in my head between reading your post on my phone while having a coffee in a motorway service station and getting back home.)

The BakerHughes 'rig count' only applies to rigs actually in service, and drilling new holes in the ground.

Over the last five or six years since the 'slump', there have been thousands of DBNC wells drilled in the USA shale plays. DBNC stands for 'Drilled But Not Completed'. For an assortment of mutual-benefit reasons for both the oil companies involved, but also the drilling companies, service companies, et al. Related to bank loans, keeping the iron and the people in work, etc.. If this hadn't occurred, there would have been multiple bankruptcies, including some banks, with a knockon effect.

What's happening now is that such wells ARE being completed, fracced, and brought into production, now that the POO and 'petrogeopolitics' makes it commercially worthwhile to do so. But that involves completion / workover rigs, which AREN'T part of the BH 'rig count' tally! So hence the statistical imbalance.

Another thing is technological progress, especially in the field of 'refraccing', which is just what the word says, so I won't go into a detailed explanation.

As I said, this is only a partial answer to your question, there must be other issues involved as well. But the two I've mentioned sprung instantly to mind, and didn't require input from my local baker and tobacconist. And considering how to word this post gave me a welcome something to think about during the final half-hour's hammering down the motorway, for which thanks.

PS When I say thousands of DBNC wells drilled, that's not a typo. I might even be an order of magnitude out, ie more than ten thousand. The USA shale-country is not the UK onshore, where just one well being drilled makes the headlines and draws in the tree-huggers.

Wellwell,

"Tweet suggests he goes to the same butcher as AK. "

I very much doubt it...

Btw, it'd be nice to have a link to this 'tweet', if you'd be so kind. Some of us don't have twitter or facebook accounts.

Albi,

"As to quite where we are on WD, I have faith we'll hear what we need to hear soon enough."

Yes, exactly. It'll happen when it'll happen, and patience is a primordial virtue in the drilling game. Personally I might get occasional third-hand snippets of news about progress on WD gratuitously, but I'm not going to repeat them here.

" My eyes are on CMD at the moment."

Yeah, me too. People seem to be 'downthinking' that little occasion. Without considering what 'CMD' means. Essentially it's a bit of showing-off. Literally, a 'marketing' thing. But not to little PI's like ourselves.

Think on't.

The company is already essentially self-financed for the here and now. So to hold a CMD is to show what's next going to appear on the stall, and allow some priviledged people the first few slices of the cake. Giving 'em a taste of the sample-run, but without having bked the big one yet.

It'll be interesting to see how they want to sell the 'big one', and who's interested. The last part being the most pertinent, of course. It's not what's going to be presented at the CMD, it's who's going to attend...

"On that note, over and out, as in need of some serious rest myself."

Me too, but about six hours kip'll do me! Then four hours' 80 mph down the road, and then I'll really sleep.....

......before having to get up again and having to write a dam article about the weekend in just 800 words. Plus a few photos. It's the 800 words which is the bitch. If I were allowed 2000 it'd be easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGxSYOZVhlM&list=RDWGxSYOZVhlM&start_radio=1

DC,

"He is obviously performing, but probably not at Bishopsgate."

Correct, Sir.

However, if asked the question, I could tell you how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.

Dear Albi,

It's good of you to remind 'Wellwell' about what I'm up to because he can't be bothered to read my posts, otherwise he's already know it.

And if it's of any interest to him, yourself, or anyone else, I'm finally back in my hotel room after fourteen long hours at the circuit, a happy but weary bunny, desperately in need of a shower, but p*ssed-off because I've goy a massive bruise on my right arm in exactly the same place as the one which was there before, caused by the same thing. A flying rock. Fortunately it wasn't caused by the passage of the same truck, otherwise I'd start to get paranoid.

And when at such meetings , my phone is left in the car, switched off, because I've got more interesting, pressing, and 'enjoyable' stuff going on than the internet can offer, including this BB, price of oil, and similar freshwater fish.

I mean no offense, but please don't refer to me as a 'casing expert', because I'm not one. And of course in my career I've had to deal with a lot of 'casing experts', because that's what they're paid to be, and are very useful because of their expertise. But to be able to integrate their knowledge and advice into the comprehensive whole of an oilwell construct, one has to (a) understand their language and the things they're talking about and (b) understand that if somehow one can't get the casing to bottom, it's not the casing's fault! Nore that of the 'experts' who designed the string,its pressure-rating, what threads were used, and so on.

But I digress.

Wellwell suddenly piped up remarking on my silence about drilling on Warwick Deep. Saying " here we are close to TD "

Which is interesting.

Are we 'close to TD', Mr Wellwell? Please tell us more.

As it happens, and quite out of the blue, I got wind four days ago about how far along the horizontal section the drilling had progressed, but wasn't so stupid to have mentioned it here, because it might have been construed as 'inside information'. Which it wasn't, because I received it at third hand.

The point being, I don't know where the bit is right now, and almost don't care. Someone will see a flare on the TOL sometime, I hope, and I don't really give a monkeys what the flowrates are, either.

All this 'fish' is interested in right now is having a shower, hitting the hay for a few hours, and hitting the road home. And then having a 36-hour deadline to meet with a magazine article about the weekend's racing.

Interesting, as I say. Do fish get backache, like I have? Dunno. Do fish go truckracing? I doubt it, and never seen any there.

Mr Wellwell is once again trolling the wrong waters, I suspect.

SotB,

" but......in this horizontal pay zone the Mudman is just as important, don’t want to kill the well totally cause they did on the last well with the Spitsbergen. Of course that’s why the Doctor is on the TL"

Sorry, but once again I disagree with you entirely.

On Halifax the well got 'gummed up' partly (I suspect) due to bad hole cleaning / circulating practices (I've got no proof of that), but also (supposedly, or at least that's what the PR had us know) some 'interaction' between the mud and the minerals encountered in the formation. I also suspect losses may have been involved.

All this will have been investigated thoroughly, appropriate changes made to the mud formulation and also the practices to be observed, and such past issues underlined in the DWOP. If I were the co-man out there and felt that the company CEO came out to make sure I was properly 'running herd' on the Mud Engineer, I'd have quit instantly and taken a seat on the chopper that he'd just disembarked from.

Dr Trice is a geologist, not a mud engineer nor a company man, and he's never done either of those jobs in his life.

And in all the pictures I've seen so far of him on the rig, (though I haven't yet seen one of him on the TOL), he's still wearing a green hardhat...

Such stuff is NOT what the CEO is out there for. I reckon it's probably because he simply enjoys peering through the microscope at the rocks being drilled, the ongoing LWD, and he prefers being on the rig instead of wearing a suit and tie and talking finances.

SotB,

"Schlumberger doing the drilling therefore there patent !"

What the devil are you on about?

The downhole Bha may be Schlumberger's, but it's Transocean doing the drilling under Petrofac (SPD) supervision...

Sure, as the DD will be Schlumberger and it's their kit at the 'sharp end', he'll (or she) be giving assorted instructions to the Driller as to start / stop, pump cycling and so on, to tweak the trajectory, but that's it.

Never forget, it's still the Driller who's the most Important Man on the rig. Not the DD, not the Toolpusher, not the OIM, not the Company Man, and not the CEO of the oil company.

Snowcameron,

"...complete with a photo of the 2 CEO's with the flare in the background"

What? Flare on the TOL? Or just the flarestack of the FPSO in the middle distance?

If it's the former (flare on the TOL), that means the DST is in progress, in which case I can completely understand Dr T wanting to be there. But if simply the latter, I still don't.

Is there a link to this video?

shutts,

"If you need him to be there to hold your hand and make you feel better then you shouldn't be invested here."

I consider that a flippant remark of no value whatsoever.

I haven't been at the AGM. But on reading the presentation this morning I was extremely surprised to learn that Dr T was out on the rig. Because does the drillcrew need his presence to hold THEIR hands?

Call me oldfashioned if you like, but I feel it's a matter of principles and politeness. Without the shareholders, the company wouldn't exist. And the AGM is normally the only chance in the year for the shareholders who attend (or at least those other than the major institutional ones) to meet the BoD, and that includes the CEO.

It'll be interesting to see feedback about this from people who were actually there.

And on a technical note, I disagree with dspp's comment. True, the current well is called 'Deep', but that only refers to it being the deepest horizontal HUR has done so far. But they've drilled a lot deeper with the '7' pilot hole, the Lincoln well, Halifax, etc. And we know that at times 'Lost Circulation' caused problems. However LC is a Drilling issue, especially if it leads to 'well control' problems, not a Geological one, and thus the onus is upon the Drillers, not the Geologist, to call the shots.

Sure, as it's fractured basement being drilled, not 'conventional', the methods to deal with such issues may be different. But by now such methods should have been addressed during the pre-drilling DWOP, and anyway, there's always such a thing as the telephone...