Wow, It Never Quits -- Now It's BP Exceeding Financial Expectations -- February 5, 2019

Bloomberg here. Data points:

• 4Q18: adjusted net income, $3.48 billion vs estimates of $2.64 billion
• full year: $12.7 billion -- as high as when oil was trading close to $100/bbl 

But look at this:

The better-than-expected earnings should give shareholders some comfort after BP took on more debt to pay for a swath of U.S. shale assets, its biggest deal in 20 years. The company’s facilities were still able to churn out cash even as the oil market turned south late last year.

While higher leverage gives BP less flexibility than its peers should the commodities cycle worsen again, so far prices have rebounded swiftly this year. Its willingness to spend money delivered six major new projects in 2018, increasing oil and gas output 2.4 percent to 3.683 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, the first of several years of forecast growth.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

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In Your Face
Don't Get Mad, Get Even

President Trump nominates former oil lobbyist David Bernhard to lead Department of the Interior.

The Dems are going to wish Ryan Zinke was still around. Pretty funny. Nothing like an oil lobbyist as Secretary of the Interior. Isn't the EPA part of the Department of the Interior? Teddy Roosevelt must be rolling over in his grave.

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The Book Page

From Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, c. 1992.

In 1963, physicists were still debating the concept of "time."  Twenty-two physicists, cosmologists, mathematicians, and others attended the Cornell conference. A philosopher, Adoph Grünbaum, argues that the usual notion of the forward flow of time was merely an illusion, a "pseudoconception."

From page 123:

Grünbaum: I want to say that there is a difference between a conscious thing and an unconscious thing.

Feynman: What is that difference?

Grünbaum: Well, I don't have more precise words in which to say this, but I would not be worried if a computer is unemployed. If a human being is unemployed, I would worry about the sorrows which that human being experiences in virtue of conceptualized self-awareness.

Feynman: Are dogs conscious?

Grünbaum: Well, yes, It is going to be a question of degree. But I wonder whether they have conceptualized awareness.

Feynman: Are cockroaches conscious?

Grünbaum: Well, I don't know about the nervous system of the cockroach.

Feynman: Well, they don't suffer from unemployment.

Even my 94-year dad would have laughed at that.