Drillin' And Frackin' -- Look At The Number Of Actively Drilling Rigs In North Dakota -- Spring Thaw Will Slow Things Down A Bit -- But It Will Be A Huge Summer

Small dusting of snow -- up to an inch or so -- forecast for much of the Bakken; up to four inches over the Three Forks. Smile. The Spearfish area will be mostly spared. As will the Tyler - and that's your oil/weather forecast for the day. 

Active rigs:

	3/26/2014	03/26/2013	03/26/2012	03/26/2011	03/26/2010
Active Rigs	198	186	206	170	104

RBN Energy: US LPG exports.

At our School of Energy International LPG session earlier this month, Kelly Van Hull presented RBN’s outlook for global liquified petroleum gases (LPG)  production – showing the US poised to become the world’s top exporter of LPGs within the next year or two - displacing Qatar. While most U.S. LPG exports go to Latin America today, a growing portion will move to Europe and Asia in the future. The limited fleet of very large gas carriers (VLGCs) used to ship LPG is growing rapidly with a record new build order book of 72 ships – 45 percent of today’s fleet of 161 vessels. Spot freight rates assessed daily by London’s Baltic Exchange are also at record levels of $82/MT this week. Today we take a closer look at international LPG ship chartering.

She Used To Love Me A Lot, Johnny Cash

The Wall Street Journal

Top story, front page: EU Central Bank worried about "dangerously low inflation"; considering dramatic steps.

US new-home sales fall 3.3%; the latest sign of severe weather and rising mortgage rates undermining the housing recovery.

Houston ship channel partially re-opens; 100 ships in queue. That's a funny-looking word, isn't it?

Supreme Court debates ObamaCare's contraceptive mandate. This is so interesting, it will get a stand-alone post of its own. Later.

Obama extends health-insurance deadline. Again. This will be included int he ObamcaCare stand-alone post. Later.

This is a critical, critical issue for many reasons. In fact, it is so important that I will make it a poll. Done.

The EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers are proposing new rules limiting discharges into smaller streams, waterways, and wetlands.

Obama moves to reassure allies. LOL. His words are about as empty ...

Venezuela continues to implode...

Fewer Americans go to the movies ... but this is really, really cool .... theater owners are considering a radical idea -- cut ticket prices. I advocated that a long, long time ago. It's counter-intuitive, but ....

And the question of the day, as a headline, I cannot make this up: Did Regulator Drop Ball in GM Recall? LOL.

Shell Gas will focus on large ventures where it has more control as it continues trimming holdings and unprofitable investments as part of a cost-cutting program.

Hmmm. Interesting. I did not expect this. Walgreen to close some stores as profit slips. Blame it on a slowdown in generic drug introductions and a milder flu season. One flu season and they end up closing stores. That seems a bit harsh. Generic drug slowdown? Goes counter to what I thought ObamaCare would encourage. I'm glad this is not an investment site.

The Los Angeles Times

Two fossil stories (no, this is not about Barack and Michelle). First, bizarre rib bones show woolly mammoths were vulnerable to extinction (now they tell us -- Far Side cartoon); and turtle bone found in 1800s had been missing its other half -- until now.

The mammoth story:

Unusual rib bones that grow out of the neck are giving scientists new clues about what caused the woolly mammoth to become extinct roughly 10,000 years ago.
The so-called cervical ribs – extra rib bones that protrude from the vertebrae at the base of the neck – were about 10 times more common in mammoths living in the Late Pleistocene than they are in elephants alive today, according to a study by Dutch researchers published Tuesday in the journal PeerJ.

The cervical ribs themselves aren’t necessarily dangerous, but they tend to appear in animals that failed to develop normally during the early stages of pregnancy, and other problems associated with abnormal development can be fatal. In humans, for instance, about 90% of babies born with a cervical rib die before they are old enough to reproduce, according to a 2006 study in the journal Evolution.

The authors of the new study became interested in cervical ribs in mammoths after mammoth fossils were dug up in the Netherlands during a public works project to extend Rotterdam Harbor into the North Sea. Three of the bones were from the lower portion of the neck, just above the part of the spine that connects with rib bones. But two of the three specimens showed signs of having been connected with ribs. (You can see the mark on the bones in the photo gallery above.)

That chance discovery made the researchers wonder just how common cervical ribs were.“We knew these were just about the last mammoths living there, so we suspected something was happening,” study leader Jelle Reumer, a paleontologist at Utrecht University and director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, said in a statement.

The Dickinson Press

A Nabors Industries rig caught fire yesterday, near Watford City, at a Whiting Petroleum site.

North Dakota abortion law puts the state among the strictest.

North Dakota's lone representative introduced federal bill to curtail flaring. If passed, the Presidnet is likely to delay implementation of the law just as he has delayed implementation of ObamaCare. LOL. Just joking.

Activists want Enbridge Sandpiper pipeline removed from "pristine lakes country." Since that is the entire stte of Minnesota...