More Odds And Ends; Catching Up With The Day's Events

First, a huge thank you to all the readers who sent in multiple stories today. I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I am beginning a fairly extensive two-week cross-country trip which is occupying my time, both physically and mentally, errands to run and mixed emotions about leaving.

I will get to all the stories. I doubt I will be blogging as much as usual, and when I do, it will be at odd hours, during the next two weeks.

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This is an interesting story about the price of oil. I agree with the premise, the headline, but I have not read the entire article. I will get back to it later. The Dallas Business Journal is reporting:

One month after TransCanada opened the oil floodgates in Cushing, Okla., the West Texas Intermediate price of crude oil is over $100 a barrel and drivers are paying 10 cents more per gallon.

The opening of the Gulf Coast Pipeline cleared up the bottleneck of oil by moving it from the hub in Cushing to refineries in South Texas, said Patrick DeHann, a senior petroleum analyst with GasBuddy.com. The 485-mile, 36-inch diameter pipe, which passes 80 to 100 miles east of Dallas, can carry up to 700,000 barrels of oil a day.

Oil supplies in Cushing have dropped from 35.8 million barrels, down 6 million barrels since the pipeline first opened Jan. 22.

“It’s a sizeable drop. The bottleneck has been removed,” DeHann said.

He quickly points out that there are a number of factors beyond the pipeline that affect oil prices and supplies.

Regardless, gasoline prices in Dallas have shot up to $3.26 per gallon for regular unleaded, 10 cents higher than a week ago, according to AAA.com. They’re still cheaper than a year ago when drivers were paying $3.70 per gallon and some feared gasoline prices would reach $4 a gallon.

I noted the same in a post the other day that neighborhood gasoline went from $2.99 to $3.26 pretty much "overnight."

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Oil and gas boom, 2014. Forbes is reporting:

Where jobs are concerned, Texas has consistently outperformed the national economy in terms of job creation and rate of unemployment in every month since the advent of the Great Recession and the discovery of the Eagle Ford Shale play, both of which took place in October of 2008.  Indeed, during the 24 month period from July 2009 through June of 2011, Texas created 49% of all new jobs created in the United States, and the vast majority of those jobs were either directly or indirectly the result of the state’s oil and natural gas boom, centered in plays like the Eagle Ford in South Texas, the Permian Basin of West Texas, and the Granite Wash play in the Texas Panhandle.

And then it goes on from there.

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Update on the New England propane shortage. Background to this story at this post.  The Burlington Free Press is now reporting emergency propane is on its way:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has used for the first time emergency powers it has under the Interstate Commerce Act to try to alleviate a shortage of propane in the Midwest and Northeast, including Vermont.The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission first issued an order on Feb. 7 for the Enterprise TE Products Pipeline Co., which owns a pipeline that delivers propane and other refined products to the Midwest and Northeast from the Gulf Coast, to give propane top priority in the pipeline for a week.

The commission then extended that order for another week, ending today, sending an estimated 500,000 barrels — or 21 million gallons — of propane north from Houston to Cincinnati, then across Pennsylvania to New York.