Only 1% Of California's Oil Supply Moves By Rail; California Has No Crude Oil Pipelines Coming Into The State -- What's Wrong With This Picture? -- October 7, 2014

The Wall Street Journal has two interesting stories, both on crude-by-rail, and both published today.

The first:

About a third of Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.'s expected revenue gains through 2018 will be driven by crude oil shipments aided by improvements at oil-loading terminals and track (CBR) in western Canada, the company’s chief operating officer said on Tuesday.

Last week, Canadian Pacific unveiled a series of aggressive financial targets, including a doubling of earnings per share by 2018 from this year, and revenue of 10 billion Canadian dollars (US$9 billion), from a projected C$6.6 billion this year.

The company’s bet on oil-by-rail (CBR) underscores the growing interdependence between North America’s oil and rail industries. The amount of crude moving by rail in Canada has quadrupled since 2012 and is expected to continue to surge.

The second:

For the past decade, the U.S. shale boom has mostly passed by California, forcing oil refiners in the state to import expensive crude.

Now that’s changing as energy companies overcome opposition to forge ahead with rail depots that will get oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.

Thanks in large measure to hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. has reduced oil imports from countries such as Iraq and Russia by 30% over the last decade.

Yet in California, the use of imports has shot up by a third to account for more than half the state’s oil supply.

“California refineries arguably have the most expensive crude slate in North America,” says David Hackett, president of energy consulting firm Stillwater Associates.

Part of the problem is that no major oil pipelines run across the Rocky Mountains connecting the state to fracking wells in the rest of the country. And building pipelines is a lengthy, expensive process.

Railroads are transporting a rising tide of low-price shale oil from North Dakota and elsewhere to the East and Gulf coasts, helping to keep a lid on prices for gasoline and other refined products. Yet while California has enough track to carry in crude, the state doesn’t have enough terminals to unload the oil from tanker cars and transfer it to refineries on site or by pipeline or truck.

Just 500,000 barrels of oil a month, or 1% of California’s supply, moves by rail to the state today. New oil-train terminals by 2016 could draw that much in a day, if company proposals are successful. Bakken oil since April has been about $15 a barrel cheaper than crude from Alaska and abroad, according to commodities-pricing service Platts. That would cover the $12 a barrel that it costs to ship North Dakota crude to California by rail, according to research firm Argus.

California: only 1% of California's crude oil supply moves by rail; there are no crude oil pipelines running into the state; and, Alaskan supplies are dwindling.

At the end of the day, adult leadership will be needed. If not, California is in a world of hurt.

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Cameras

I wrote this yesterday:

Folks looking to buy a new camera might want to take a look at Canon's PowerShot SX50 HS -- if you can find them. They are being discontinued, and prices are coming down significantly.  The camera was introduced in 2012, and may simply be one of the best Canon cameras for the buck, especially now that the price has come down significantly.

There may be many, many reasons for this camera to be discontinued, but the biggest reason might be the newer cameras "have" more megapixels. The SX50 has "only" 12 megapixels. The new Canons have 18 megapixels which are recommended if printing pictures bigger than 18 x 24. The largest I have ever done are 8 x 10's and I'm doing a lot more of those now with the granddaughters swimming and playing soccer.

I wrote that because after looking for a new camera for the past six years or so, I finally broke down and bought the Canon PowerShot SX50HS ... and love it.

Earlier today, without going into specifics, I was reading the October issue of Consumer Reports. CR reviewed digital cameras, giving the Canon GX1 the highest rating it had ever given a digital camera:

The November (sic) 2014 Consumer Reports says the Canon PowerShot G1X Mark II "not only outscored all of the other cameras in its category for image quality and video, it also outscored all of the SLR cameras in our Ratings."

The specs for the SX50 are almost identical to the G1X Mark II. Twelve (12) megapixels vs 13 megapixels is almost inconsequential/trivial.

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Global Warming

IceAgeNow is reporting:

The Daily News reported that an all-time (114-year) record was broken on September 13, 2014, when the thermometer dipped to 31 degrees F.

The low of 31 degrees not only was a new record for the day, but a new record for the first frost of the fall.

It also means this year’s growing season — at 134 days — is the third shortest on record in this bread basket of the U.S.. The shortest was 114 days in 1901, followed by 133 days in 1912.

Previously, the earliest fall frost in 117 years of record keeping at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center was Sept. 17, recorded twice in 1901 and again two years later in 1903.

That means this year’s first frost broke the previous 114-year-old record by five days.

This is just "weather," not climate.