The Speech -- Was The Deadline Extended 24 Hours -- 1:11 P.M. CT -- April 6, 2026

Locator: 50442EPICFURY.

The speech was devoted to the rescue of the two airmen.

It took awhile, but what most interested the press finally came up in the Q&A. 

In the Q&A after the speech, President Trump clearly said the Iranians have until 8:00 p.m. ET tomorrow night April 7, 2026.

Prior to the speech, President Trump clearly said that Iran has made a significant offer, but it was not enough.

That sounds like President Trump has extended the deadline.

Later in the Q&A, a reporter suggested that President Trump had extended the ultimatum 48 hours and the president did not "correct" that.  

Later, the president reiterated the extension for 24 hours, until tomorrow night, April 7, 2026, 8:00 p.m. ET -- no bridges, no power plants. He extended the deadline/ultimatum by 24 hours, he said, because he felt it was not appropriate to "do this" the day after Easter.  

Tea leaves: Trump will keep his word if anything short of Iran saying clearly:

• we have opened the strait; and,
• we will quit firing on our Arab friends in the Mideast 

Tea leaves: Trump said he could take out all bridges and all power plants by 12:00 midnight -- four hours after the deadline tomorrow night ... and then paused ... saying he could; not that he would. The tea leaves suggest such escalation would be step wise.  

President Trump raised the possibility if the US might put tolls on the strait. Not Iran.  

Most interestingly, the president connected the "extraction" of the two airmen with the extraction of Maduro. Two incredible successes; no one asked the question which "extraction" was more dangerous. Both were equally successful. 

He ended the press conference with absolute contempt for the countries that refused to help the US in OperationEPICFURY.  In order, he mentioned: South Korea, Australia, and Japan. (NATO was a given: he reiterated multiple time that NATO was a "paper tiger." He is particularly upset with Great Britain but did not mention that at the end; that was implied early on in the Q&A.

Most pleasantly, earlier in the Q&A he dissed The NYT. It appears the writers / editors of The NYT were not aware of what the 8th Air Force bombed during WWII. And, it appears they missed the history of the bombing of Japan in WWII, also. 

Turning to the "breaking news stories": all about Artemis II -- that the astronauts gave now traveled farther than any human beings before. I'm serious. Not one "breaking news" to my inbox about EPIC FURY or Trump's remarks.

Meanwhile, over on x, Tehran Ted: 

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The Market

WTI:
 

LNG (Cheniere):

Monday Morning -- April 6, 2026

Locator: 50441B.

WTI: $112.70. Very volatile. One-half later, 9:31 a.m. CT, down to $111. 

Wells coming off confidential list:

• Tuesday, April 7, 2026: 13 for the month, 13 for the quarter, 170 for the year,
• 41985, conf, Formentera Operations, Wildcat Hollow 16-16-PGN N115DW, 
• Monday, April 6, 2026: 12 for the month, 12 for the quarter, 169 for the year,
• 42371, conf, Kraken, Charity 3-10-15 5H, 
• 41926, conf, Oasis, Anderson 5402 12-18 3BJ,
• 41925, conf, Oasis, Anderson 5402 12-18 2BJ,
• Sunday, April 5, 2026: 9 for the month, 9 for the quarter, 166 for the year,
• 42175, conf,  BR, Omid 1-8-7-TFH, 
• 41502, conf, Hess, RS-Sorenson-155-92-0105H-2, 
• Saturday, April 4, 2026: 7 for the month, 7 for the quarter, 164 for the year,
• None.

RBN Energy: upgrader repairs could offer surest route to higher Venezuelan crude oil production. Link here. Archived. 

There’s no shortage of work to be done to revive Venezuela’s crude oil industry, much of which suffered from years of poor management and minimal investment. One rehabilitation effort that may well provide a lot of bang for the buck would be to repair and restart the industry’s crude upgraders, which process Venezuela’s extra-heavy oil to produce a lighter synthetic crude that can then be piped, shipped and refined. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss how improving the upgraders could make a massive difference for U.S. Gulf Coast refiners.

We’ve written extensively this year about Venezuela’s oil sector in the wake of the U.S.-backed removal of President Nicolás Maduro, starting with Take Me Money and Run Venezuela, where we recapped how the country went from supplying more than 1 MMb/d of heavy sour crude to Gulf Coast refiners in the late 1990s and early 2000s to overall production of less than 1 MMb/d today — roughly one-quarter of its former output. We then dug into the unique characteristics of Venezuela’s crude slate in Orinoco Flow, noting that most reserves lie in the 21,000-square-mile Orinoco Belt and are extra-heavy (API as low as 8-14 degrees), making the oil difficult and costly to move and refine. In When Love Comes to Town, we compared Venezuelan and Canadian heavy crudes. Finally, in Round and Round (which previewed our first Drill Down Report of 2026, which is available here), we laid out the practical steps Venezuela would need to take to boost crude production.

This is the second in our new series on Venezuela. The first piece focused on the refining sector, which is so far gone that we see little interest from Western companies in making the large investments needed to restore it, especially given the growing surplus of refined products from the Gulf Coast. (Check out our biannual Future of Fuels report, where we discuss this in more detail.)

But the situation with Venezuela’s crude upgraders is quite different from the country’s refiners (black pentagons in Figure 1 below). While the country’s four upgraders (white pentagons along the coast) are also dilapidated after years of underinvestment and barely operable — if at all — they are critical to increasing production from the Orinoco Belt (blue-shaded area). The extra-heavy crude produced there must be either upgraded into synthetic crude oil (SCO) or blended with a diluent like condensate or natural gasoline before it can be exported. Given that the vast majority of the diluent used in Venezuela needs to be imported, the lack of operable upgrading capacity is a major constraint on crude production.

Figure 1. Venezuela’s Crude Upgraders. Source: RBN

Amazon's Lowest Price For Apple's M5 MacBook Air -- April 5, 2026

Locator: 50440APPLE.

Link here. 

Tempting. Unfortunately my "old" MacBook Air works just fine.

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The Soy Sauce Page

I did not know this.

This is simply brilliant.

Link here. 

I can't wait to share this secret with my extended family.  

American Airlines -- Amazon's Project Kuiper -- SpaceX's Starlink -- April 5, 2026.

Locator: 50439SPACEX.

Tag: American Airlines Amazon Project Kuiper SpaceX Starlink 

For the record / archives.

Link here. 

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The Book Page

From Everyman's Library, the two journals:

• A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Samuel Johnson; and,
• The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, James Boswell.

See notes here. 

One of my few "top shelf" books. 

Editor Allan Massie. 

Boswell's work first published in Everyman's Library in 1909;
Johnson's work first published in Everyman's Library in 2002.
This book with both works appears to have been published in 2002.

Arizona State University's Partnership With TSMC Deepens -- April 5, 2026

Locator: 50438TSMC.

Too many story lines here -- just broke over the weekend.

Link here. 

A reader sent this link / story to me. Thank you very much. I will come back to this. Many dots to connect. 

Once this war is over and its after-effects are ameliorated, the market is going to take off, and the Mag 7 are going to lead the pack. It may be six months from now; it may be a year from now. 

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Disclaimer
Briefly

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.

Longer version here.