Locator: 51204MARKET.
Mideast: continues.
Apple: wow, AAPL is down over 2%, has lost $6 / share so far today and yet .... AAPL is well over $300 / share.
YUM: US government to Taco Bell and. Taylor Farms. Sorry. Never mind.
Locator: 51203CAFÉ.
We keep two brands of K-Cups in our house: Starbucks Pike Place and Café Bustelo Espresso Style.
Gemini: I've never seen so many ads for Cafe Bustelo as I'm seeing now and promotions in stores, like Walmart. Is there something new going on at Cafe Bustelo?
Locator: 51202B.
S&P: could reach 8,250 from the current 7,500 by year end (2026) -- Ed Yardeni CEO. Generally an optimist. Wiki seems to highlight: that he is most known for: monetary, fiscal policy affecting inflation and bonds. Expected one rate increase in July (didn't happen). No Fed meeting in August. Now, says possible rate hike in September but didn't sound particularly sure about that -- CNBC this morning. Seemed to suggest the new Fed chair is talking the talk but it may be difficult for Warsh to actually make any headway on the inflation front by raising rates.
LCDs: as other states institute moratoriums on LCDs, Texas presses on:
WTI: now above $84. Later: early morning, Monday, July 20, 2026 -- $82.37. The strait becomes less relevant every day.
Cyclosporiasis -- Taylor Farms -- Taco Bell -- update: stories from various sources -- how AI interpreted the stories:
One wonders about Covid-19 and false positives?
**********************************
Back to the Bakken
WTI: $84.27. Up $1.78; up over 2%.
New wells reporting:
RBN Energy: new pipeline capacity unlocks supply potential for Permian natural gas. Link here. Archived.
Natural gas prices in the Permian spent the first half of the year in the red. Between the beginning of the year and mid-June, cash prices in the basin were above zero only 11 days, most of them during an extreme cold snap in January that caused production freeze-offs. Then, in mid-June, someone — well, Kinder Morgan, to be specific — flipped a switch and now Waha prices are once again in positive territory. The “switch” was a compression expansion on Gulf Coast Express (GCX), which added a desperately needed 570 MMcf/d of takeaway capacity. As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, the pace of Permian production growth and the timing of two greenfield pipelines that will come online later this year will help determine where Waha prices go from here.
When we wrote about the new infrastructure coming to the Permian in February (see Key to the Highway), we said this year would be “a tale of two halves.” The dashed oval to the left in Figure 1 below highlights the winter freeze‑off spike in Waha cash prices, which was followed by the subsequent slide into negative territory. To the right, the dashed vertical line marks the mid‑June startup of the GCX compression expansion, after which the cash price (yellow line) climbed back above zero and has, so far, mostly settled around $1.50/MMBtu. In other words, the dividing line between the two halves of the year isn’t magic, it’s new pipeline capacity opening up takeaway from the often-constrained Permian. (For more on the Permian Basin, see RBN’s monthly Arrow Model report, which tracks and forecasts shifting gas pipeline flows in Texas and Louisiana, and our weekly NATGAS Permian report, which focuses on key market drivers in the basin.)
Locator: 51201HEATINGOIL.
Heating oil:
I remember the days we lived in Germany, buying heating oil in the summer -- at which time it was the least expensive it would be -- for the next winter.
This is here in the US:
Locator: 51200ARCHIVES.
The OPEN, perhaps the most important golf tournament of the year, just ended. (An incredibly good tournament, and an incredibly ending.)
Now, championship soccer, FIFA World Cup.
And, when that's concluded, NASCAR at 6:00 p.m. in some western continent.
What a great country.