Part 2 -- August 12, 2026

Locator: 51389ARCHIVES.
Pageviews: running at 1.6 million views / 24 hours. 

Norway: nation's wealth fund posts record $184 billion; reveals SpaceX stake for first time.

Mideast: Houthis are becoming increasingly active. This seems to suggest the Iranians are becoming more desperate by the day. The fact President Trump is so sanguine with regard to the war, he knows what is going on. More cargo ships targeted; more deaths. Trump seems uninterested. Mideast turning to pipelines. 

Allies to cut Iran out of global oil. By Simon Watkins -- so you know it's accurate and it's good. Link here. 

K-Cups: it appears K-cups have increased in price significantly and, at least on Amazon, Bustello has dialed back its promotions. Where in the past, K-cups less than $0.60/cup were easy to find, it's becoming more and more standard for K-cups costing more than $1.10 / cup. 

 

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Locator: 51388ORCL.

WTI: after going over $84 late last night, WTI is back with an $83-handle.  

More bad news over at Oracle: more layoffs, stock hits 52-week low at time most others surging -- 

Lego: apparently shipping / supply chain all caught up -- I could not find one product on back order. Link here.

Coal in China: growing. 

A Musical Interlude -- August 11, 2026

Locator: 51387MUSIC.

11:00 p.m. CT August 11, 2026 -- WTI has just gone over $84, trading at $84.07.  

Link here. 

In her "Hey, Ho" she sounds a lot like Amy Winehouse. I don't care for this particular video but the song is great.

*********************************
Just How Big Is Texas?

On this map, I live in Sioux City, Iowa. Look at all the states I have to drive through just to get out of the state of Texas.

[I don't know how accurate this map is.] 

********************************
The Book Page

Tonight's late reading: The American Language, Supplement Two, H. L. Mencken, c. 1948; seventh printing, 1978. 

I just picked this book up a week ago in Portland, Oregon, for $4.00 -- hardcover, 890 pages with an additional 43 pages of index.  

The American Language, Supplement Two, H. L. Mencken, c. 1948. $4.00 (original: $28.00). The Definitive Edition of "The American Language was published in 1936. A single copy of the second supplement is available at Amazon for $49.99 but one can get the 3-volume set for $18.99. Or one can get the two-volume supplement set for $12. I've long wanted the 3-set series. 

***********************************
Back to the Music

"Queen of Hearts."

Link here. 

For Wednesday Morning -- August 11, 2026

Locator: 51386B.

New England, natural gas, and Enbridge: update here. The blog at that site will soon go dark. Link here.

Finances: without question, that one-half trillion dollar financing announcement announced yesterday is an incredibly huge development. The only reason it garnered such little media attention: a) it was Jensen Huang / Nvidia again; and, the money involved in AI deals is already measured in tens of billions of dollars.  

So, we'll see. My little understanding of this, in addition to everything else, this is huge for CoreWeave, and, of course, Oracle. 

**********************************
Back to the Bakken 

Activity in the Bakken: new permits announced:

Five new permits, #43200 - #43204 --

• Operator: BR
• Field: Haystack Butte (McKenzie County)
• Comments:
• BR has permits for five HBU Sandstone wells, SESE 15-148-98, 
• to be sited 763 / 1051 FSL and 126 FEL.

Look at what's going on in the area:

Haystack Butte.

• to the west: new permits for five BR HBU Sandstone wells.
• I forgot to add the arrow -- the new Sandstone wells will be in section SESE section 15. 
• to the NNE: multi-well BR HBU Hazel wells.
• to the SE: multi-well BR Badlands wells.

 The BR HBU Badlands wells.

 The BR HBU Hazel wells. 

***************************************
Continuing in the Bakken

WTI: $83.93. 

New wells reporting:

• Wednesday, August 12, 2026: 27 for the month, 68 for the quarter, 412 for the year, 
• 42167, conf, Slawson, Shad Rap Federal 3-2-3H, 
• Tuesday, August 11, 2026: 26 for the month, 67 for the quarter, 411 for the year, 
• None.

RBN Energy: new rule on decommissioning offshore assets aims to ease burden on US producers. Link here. Archived.

Long-standing U.S. rules around decommissioning offshore oil and gas platforms were rewritten by the Biden administration in 2024, a move designed to ensure that owners of those assets bear the often significant cost of deactivating them. But the Trump administration paused their implementation in early 2025, promising to revise or overhaul them as part of a broader effort to reduce federal regulations and boost domestic energy production. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll examine the issue and the changes included in the administration’s proposed rule, which aims to reduce the regulatory burden without shifting decommissioning liabilities to taxpayers.

As we noted in Back to Life, most U.S. offshore E&P business occurs in the U.S. Gulf, which generates about 14% of U.S. crude oil output. The federal government regulates most of that activity along the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). Its oversight begins about 3.5 miles off the coast of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi; for Texas and Florida, its jurisdiction starts about 10 miles offshore (see black line hugging the coast in Figure 1 below). The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) are tasked with managing Gulf activity, from overseeing lease sales to expanding production areas to issuing rules on what E&Ps must do with wells, platforms and associated infrastructure once their projects have run their course. (Note: Yellow dots in Figure 1 indicate active leases.)

A New Asset Class?To Push The AI Revolution Along? August 11, 2026

Locator: 51385COREWEAVE.

Has Jensen Huang arranged a half-trillion dollar backup to his AI buildout? 

"This model is a massive win for specialized GPU providers like CoreWeave. By opening up deeper, cheaper private credit via Wall Street, these firms can finance heavy capital expenditures without relying solely on risky corporate debt or direct equity dilution." See below.

I would assume this helps answer the "circular financing" meme and the financing concern talking heads have.  

Bringing in six "lending" institutions was particularly interesting. This is not a small deal. 

Is this a home run for Jensen Huang? 

Is this a new asset class or is it simply securitization of one huge data center.  

Some talking heads on CNBC toay suggested that much of AI success requires that OpenAI and Anthropic also succeed.  

Link here. 

 

 

Is this a new asset class or is it simply securitization of one huge data center.  

Query:

A new asset class? $500 billion: Nvidia, GS, BlackRock. Blackstone, Brookfield, Apollo, KKR. What's going on? How did this happen? Who called whom to get the ball rolling? What's new?

Query:

What's the impact of smaller cloud providers (neoclouds) like CoreWeave. 

Ticker: CoreWeave -- up 14% after earnings announcement -- 

 Query: I think Oracle is doing the same thing as CoreWeave -- the middle-man supplying Nvidia chips to LDCs. This new asset class (the $500 billion deal announced yesterday) seems to favor organizations like CoreWeave and Oracle)? Thoughts?

*********************************
Disclaimer

Briefly: 

I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.

I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.

See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.

If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 

Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 

And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution. 

I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom. Now, I've added Amazon. And QCOM.

Longer version here.