Sixty Active Rigs In North Dakota -- April 23, 2018

North Korean initiative setback? From twitter this morning:

CNP: to buy rival Vectren in $6 billion deal; $72/share. Will extend CNP's reach beyond AR, MN, MS, OK, TX, to Vectren's core markets of Indiana and Ohio. Interesting.

BHGE: 9 cents vs 7 cents forecast; due to one-time tax benefit and an increase in oil prices. Net income (not excluding anything) was $70 million (17 cents/share) vs $31 million (7 cents/share) the prior quarter. FWIW, BHGE closed up about a percent last Friday; now slightly in early morning trading today.

Disclaimer: this is not a investment site. See disclaimer.

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Back to the Bakken

Where Fracking Is Always In Fashion

Active rigs:

$67.41↓	4/23/2018	04/23/2017	04/23/2016	04/23/2015	04/23/2014
Active Rigs	60	49	29	86	187

RBN Energy: new Louisiana gas pipeline capacity needed from north to feed Gulf Coast LNG exports. Wow, it never quits --

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Back To Albuquerque

While refreshing my memory regarding the conquistadors and southwest America I learned a bit about whilte acorns (alba - querque) and the Iberian pigs that eat them. Fascinating story. A google search results in a gazillion hits. I was looking for the source that suggested that the quality of the ham increases based on the percentage of white acorns the wild pigs eat to the rest of their diet, and as the quality of the ham increases, so does the price. Of course.

Two links. First a nice one from the NY Times, from 2010. And, of course, a wiki link.

On a side note, as I've aged, I've grown accustomed to eating less -- much less -- but enjoying better food. Right now, my favorite noon lunch: Cheesecake Factory: passion fruit mojito and grilled artichoke. And that's it. That's all I need.

Speaking of the Cheesecake Factory. Until last week I don't recall ever visiting a Cheesecake Factory. If I did, it was more than thirty or forty years ago when I was going to school in southern California -- did Cheesecake Factory even exist then? -- if not, I had never been in one ... until last week. Our daughter / son-in-law often go. The Cheesecake Factory in Southlake, TX, is huge. I could not believe that there would ever be a line --- I asked our waiter if the restaurant ever got busy. He said every weekend -- lines at the door; people waiting upwards of an hour (maybe more) to get in. Amazing. It's not like there aren't a gazillion restaurants in north Texas, and scores in that small neighborhood.

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Back To China

I'm still in my "China phase." I know nothing about the "opium wars." Time to learn. A quick look suggests that it's timely time to begin considering Trump's tariffs; the legalization of marijuana and a more "open" attitude regarding drugs in general (in the US); North Korean negotiations; etc.

This book seems to be not particularly "literary" -- just reading a  few pages suggests it's going to be dry and not particularly interesting, but it's all this library has on the subject -- at least that I found quickly:

The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another, W. Travis Hanes III, Ph. D. and Frank Sanello, c. 2002.

My hunch: Travis Hanes III, Ph.D. might be brilliant, but he may not be a good author. And, so Frank Sanello was called in to assist. Just my hunch.

Two Opium Wars (1839 - 1842; and 1856 - 1860): both before the US Civil War

Climactic act of the second war: the destruction of the Summer Palace -- what little I know about the Summer Palace suggests this might be equivalent to destroying the White House, the Capitol building, and the Smithsonian all in one fell swoop.

This is how the book begins:

Imagine this scenario: the Medellin cocaine cartel of Colombia mounts a successful military offensive against the US, then forces the US to legalize cocaine and allow the cartel to import the drug into five major American cities, unsupervised and untaxed by the US. 

The American government also agrees to let the drug lords govern all Colombian citizens who operate in these cities, plus the US has to pay war reparations of $100 billion -- the Colombians' cost of waging the war to import cocaine into America. 

That scenario if of course preposterous and beyond the feverish imagination of the most out-there writers of science fiction. However, a similar situation occurred not once, but twice in Chine during the 19th century. 

In both cases, however, instead of thuggish Colombian drug dealers, it was the most technologically advanced nation on Earth, Great Britian, that forced similar conditions on China.

And so I begin. To be continued elsewhere.