John Kemp's Weekly Energy Tweets -- January 13, 2016; Gasoline Demand Has Plummeted; Signs Of Severe Recession In Store? POTUS Promises Even More Fossil Fuel Regulations This Year

Updates

Later, 11:12 a.m. Central Time: shortly after writing the subject link, a reader sent me a long Bloomberg Gadfly article (which I highly recommend). There was much, much in the article, most of which we have touched on many times before. Germane to this particular post was this paragraph in the linked article (I've divided it into two paragraphs):

For example, Summers puts the probability of a recession in the U.S. within three years at 63 percent once the country is already three years into a recovery. We are currently more than six years in.

Verleger, meanwhile, calculates that since 1970, U.S. annual economic growth has tended to run between 1.8 and 2.6 percentage points higher than the country's oil demand growth, in expansions and recessions, respectively. The implication is that the U.S. looks overdue for a slowdown. And if economic growth were to slip to 2 percent or less, then oil demand in the world's biggest market could actually fall. 

If we move into a recession it's very likely it could be much more severe than even the "Great Recent Recession." We might need a businessman in the oval office to lead us through the downturn. We don't need someone who solves problems with more rules, regulations, and revenue enhancements.

Original Post

 

GE will move to Boston.

The conglomerate has been weighing a move out of Connecticut since the summer, when lawmakers passed a budget that included $1.2 billion in tax increases despite protests from some of the state's biggest corporations. In earlier 2015 comments, Immelt claimed GE's state taxes had increased five times since 2011.

At last tally, GE employed about 5,700 people in the state of Connecticut, with about 800 people in its Fairfield headquarters. 

It will be interesting to see which other corporations follow GE's lead.

At the international level, we have "inversions." Just saying.

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John Kemp's Weekly Energy Tweets

With regard to John Kemp's weekly energy tweets, we will start with gasoline demand and refer you back to this link.

Shocking! Not only is current US gasoline demand significantly below demand for gasoline one year ago; the current demand is even below the ten-year median, a period in which the ObamaCare economy was mostly in need of “critical care.”

This has severe recession written all over it, unless things change dramatically over the next few months. It's very possible the combination of what is going on in the oil and gas industry and ObamaCare going into full implementation this year will create the perfect storm. And it won't be pretty. 

From John Kemp:

US distillate demand (diesel fuel) has dropped off the chart (okay, almost):

 
Meanwhile, gasoline stocks have soared:


And look at this, US refineries processed a seasonal record -- and almost an all-time record --16.4 million bopd, up over a half-million bopd compared with 2015: 

US distillate stocks soared 6.1 million bopd, close to a 10-year seasonal max set in 2011:

 
I really don't want to post all these graphs, but they are so incredibly amazing I don't want to lose them. So, I'm posting them for the archives.

And if the graphs above don't get your attention, maybe this one will, the one that shows that US total refined product stocks rose almost 10 million bbls last week (I didn't mark the graph, hopefully you can spot the red line):

You get the picture. No more graphs, but they are all similar.

US commercial crude stocks were basically unchanged last week; still at record levels.

US total crude and product stocks rose an astounding 10 million bbls last week and so far above past records, a new chart will have to be generated.