Housekeeping -- The Bakken -- Misc Posts -- The Sage Grouse Loses -- Defense Dept Three-Ring Circus

Wells coming off confidential list have been posted.

I get an occasional comment from folks wondering about barges and Bakken oil, at the link above, there is another link that will take you to an article on barges and oil.

And finally, the number of active rigs in North Dakota has dropped to an intra-boom low -- a new low -- 180.

Other Links

Speaking of barges, the low Mississippi is threatening the Missouri.

Motley Fool's take on ONEOK's decision to cancel the Bakken Crude Express oil pipeline.

A link later, when I find a good one: the update on the Albion, NE, town meeting re: Keystone XL. Early reports suggest nothing unexpected.


Ah, yes, it never fails, another great Apple story, WSJ, page D1, iTunes gets an upgrade without missing a beat. I thought the same thing. There had been lots of chatter and excitement about iTunes 11; and then when I got the automated reminder it was ready for downloading, I clicked a few keys, and in seconds -- I think it took less than five seconds -- I had iTunes 11 downloaded. Apparently Walter S Mossberg was impressed, too. I haven't read the entire article yet. For newbies: this is more than just about music. It's my understanding that the entire Apple mobile IOS concept works off iTunes software; this is a huge deal, and it went off without a glitch.

Birth of a Gothic Fascination, the Civil War and photography, at the Huntington Library, in San Marino, CA, where I hope to be in two weeks.

Networks can only berate selves: prime-time ratings at the four major broadcast networks are down a combined 9 percent among viewers in the 18-to-49 age bracket most coveted by advertisers since the season began. Lots of excuses, but probably most responsible: a lack of appealing new programming. Cable is doing well; so viewers are there if the networks have something to offer.

Page B1, still the WSJ: clerks bring LA port to a halt. [Update: there is word that a deal has been reached; it just needs to be voted on; unions got everything they wanted, including their $200,000 salary, no layoffs, good for six years.]

Oil output near 15-year high, page B2, WSJ.

Detroit's unsold cars pile up, page B3, WSJ.  This story follows the story of GM's 140-day inventory of pickup trucks (health inventory is 70 days); the huge sales for Japanese cars this past quarter.

Canadian Pacific to cut 4,500 jobs; WSJ, page B4.

Google explainer-in-chief can't explain Apple, interview, page B7, WSJ.  Apple's biggest worry: Google CEO Eric Schmidt may get Cabinet post. Google's only competitor right now: Apple.

Does 11% unemployment sound good to you? That's where we are headed if Congress doesn't hurry.

Federal court to sage grouse: you are on your own; Fairfield (MT) Sun Times:

Two Wyoming associations in November celebrated the ruling by an Idaho federal district court rejecting demands by an environmental group to restrict federal land use following the court’s 2011 ruling that the Bureau of Land Management violated federal law in preparing two Resource Management Plans.  The Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, after days of hearings in April, filed a brief advising the court that the Western Watersheds Project may not tell the BLM how to perform its job nor is the group entitled to “interim measures” while the BLM acts because it did not demonstrate the likelihood of irreparable harm or that the balance of hardships tips in its favor.  

Defense layoffs coming: I was in the USAF for 30 years. Some of those years were spent in headquarters. Periodically -- actually it seemed quite often -- we went through exercises of sending out what amounted to "layoff notices" only to have them rescinded. It wasted a huge amount of time, but since a lot of headquarters folks didn't have much to do anyway, this gave them something to do while waiting to go home, or go to another meaningless meeting (think Dilbert).

And, so here we go again. The White House has directed DOD to start planning for the ObamaCliff.

This time the layoffs will occur. There is no chance that a deal to prevent going over the ObamaCliff will occur before the end of the year. By law, spending cuts take effect, spending cuts that are significant. So, folks will get layoff notices, and then January 1, 2013, if I understand the law, the cuts take effect immediately and people will be laid off.

Half of the automatic spending cuts would fall on the Pentagon. The $500 billion would be in addition to the $487 billion in cuts to defense spending mandated in the Budget Control Act. The department began implementing those reductions in its 2012 budget.

The Pentagon has repeatedly said over the past year that it had not begun planning for the automatic cuts because it had not received guidance to do so from the budget office. In recent months, at the direction of Congress, it had begun looking at the impact the cuts would have.

DOD has a knack for moving money around with smoke and mirrors. I can imagine DOD finding a way to delay layoffs if there is some assurance that a deal will be made. They will move the "spend plan" to the left, technically zeroing out the last three months of the year. When the deal is made, they move the "spend plan" back to where it was.