Thursday; RBN Starts An Excellent Series On Natural Gas To NYC, Boston -- The Tale Of Two Cities; MRO To Invest $1 Billion In North Dakota In 2014

Active rigs: 191

RBN Energy: This is going to be a very interesting series -- a three-part series on natural gas to NYC and to New England. Two different markets. NYC is well supplied; New England is not (think Boston). We might see how this plays out in February, 2014. This is the first part in a 3-part series:

The hopes of Marcellus gas suppliers to move more of their product east are playing out in very different ways in metropolitan New York City and in New England. New pipelines to deliver gas from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio to the Big Apple and its environs already are installed and operating, easing the metro area’s supply crunch and shrinking regional price “basis”. But plans to expand gas-transmission capacity to New England are stalled, and some gas users there are facing another potentially supply-constrained expensive winter. Today we begin a new series looking at why—for the foreseeable future at least--it’s better to be a gas user in New York City than Boston.

The Wall Street Journal

Picking the wrong horse again? Top western-backed rebel in Syria is forced to flee.

White House works to attract younger health-plan users - and that's the metric that's important to follow. The insurers say they need 7 million folks to enroll AND pay premiums, but if the 7 million are predominantly senior citizens, folks with AIDs, folks with cancer, and folks need heart transplants and liver transplants, this house of cards will topple fast. From the linked article:

Insurers and others fear that the initial group of enrollees will skew toward older people with medical ailments, who are motivated to overcome website problems because they need health insurance, while younger, healthy people may decide to stay on the sidelines.

On another note, yesterday when I checked, the federal government website was "down" -- at least one was not able to access it when I checked. So let's see what it is doing today.... it's up.

It won't happen, but it's worth the link. Exxon presses for oil exports. LOL. 

Predicted: businesses stung by $15 /  hour minimum wage. Who wudda thought?

With 40 employees and less than $5 million in annual revenue, the franchise hotel in SeaTac, Wash., could be the typical American small business. But the Holiday Inn Express will soon have to give most of its staff pay raises that are anything but routine. Officials in SeaTac, which is 10 square miles nestled between Seattle and Tacoma and consists of an airport and its surroundings, confirmed this month that it will raise the minimum wage for many workers to $15 an hour starting in January. That's a 63% increase and the highest municipal minimum wage in the nation. The original vote in November was so close that a recount had to be ordered.

Posted earlier at the blog: a long article in The WSJ -- MRO to increase spending, focus on North America; including another $1 billion in the North Dakota Bakken (and that's just one company operating in North Dakota).  

Marathon plans to invest $2.3 billion next year in the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, where up to 400 new wells will be drilled. The company will put $1 billion into Bakken prospects in North Dakota, and another $236 million toward work in Oklahoma's Woodford basin. 

This is so cool. I suggested this several years ago, but focused on Wal-Mart. It appears other retailers have figured it out. Several big-box / mall anchor stores will offer same-day delivery: 

Four of the nation's largest mall operators are turning their properties into mini-distribution centers for rapid delivery, meaning shoppers can ditch their bags and keep spending. The service promises set delivery times for purchases consumers make at the mall or online from mall tenants, facilitated by a Silicon Valley startup, Deliv Inc.

Pensions make most of stock-market surge.

A roaring stock market and rising interest rates are fueling the strongest recovery in the $2.4 trillion U.S. corporate-pension sector in more than a quarter century, giving companies new flexibility in dealing with some employee-benefit costs.

*******************************

This is a most interesting story -- holiday shopping figures, retail sales are going to be hard to sort out this season. November's numbers are very, very blurry. Why? Internet shopping. 

Changes in retailers' opening hours, the surge in online commerce and calendar quirks are combining to make it unusually tricky to gauge the holiday-shopping season's vitality from one of its most important months.

Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal see data for retail sales excluding autos, due Thursday, having increased 0.2% in November over the previous month. That would bring year-over-year growth to 2.7%.

That is fairly tepid and is supported by some private-sector surveys. One, from Thomson Reuters, says same-store sales at retailers it polls rose just 1.8% from last November. This survey covers a narrower band of spending than the government report. But it doesn't bode well since its forecast was for 2.7% growth.

Another wrinkle almost certainly depressed November sales. The surging online equivalent to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, fell in December, the first time since 2008.

Weak retail data in November need not signal a lousy holiday season. Possibly a better snapshot of the period—or at least retailers' expectations for it—comes from international freight data. Since most apparel, toys and electronics are imported, the National Retail Federation's "Global Port Tracker" looks at the number of containers as a proxy for dollars likely to be spent. There was a 4.3% rise in volume from August through October from a year earlier; a preliminary reading for November was 3.6% higher.

Yesterday, I did 90% of my Christmas shopping. It took about 15 minutes. All on Amazon. Over the past year, I kept a Christmas list on the "Apple desktop yellow legal pad." Then yesterday, I simply ordered each item on the list from Amazon and had them mailed to the appropriate addresses. Without question, it would have taken two to three days of driving around town, putting the items together, and then wrapping and shipping it. Wow, what a chore. And I won't see a huge bill on my Mastercard. I paid for it directly from my checking account.

By the way, for Apple users, the "Apple desktop yellow legal pad" is indispensable for me. I post all sorts of memos there.

***********************************

And here's another example of how Bakken fracking changed things: how shale helped frack Mexico's energy impasse.

After decades of inertia, the energy-reform proposal given general approval by the Mexican Senate late Tuesday goes even further than many had expected. The country's rapidly changing energy relationship with its northern neighbor helps explain why.

Mexico's dismal decline in oil production, to 2.94 million barrels per day last year from 3.85 million in 2004, is the obvious impetus for trying to coax in more foreign money and expertise.

The reason is all that competing oil and gas in the U.S. drawing the global oil industry's investment dollars toward it. Barclays estimates U.S. exploration and production spending will rise by 8.5% next year, accounting for nearly a third of the increase in global E&P budgets. Meanwhile, oil majors face calls from investors to rein in spending anyway and distribute more cash—even Exxon Mobil borrows to fund its share buybacks these days.

The Los Angeles Times

Mysterious space plane spent one year orbiting the Earth on "secret mission." 
ery.

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which looks like a miniature unmanned version of the space shuttle, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Dec. 11, 2012.

At the time of launch, Air Force officials offered few details about the mission, saying that the space plane simply provided a way to test new technologies in space, such as satellite sensors and other components.

It was set to land on a 15,000-foot airstrip at Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara. But the Air Force has never announced an exact landing date.

Although the X-37B program is classified, some of the particulars are known.

More than 10 years ago, it began as a NASA program to test new technologies for the space shuttle. But when the government decided to retire the aging fleet of shuttles, the Pentagon took over the program and cloaked it in secrecy.

Fascinating story; read the rest at the link.