I'm not exactly sure what it means to "stop production to focus on reducing costs." Stopping production will certainly cut costs. Maybe I'm missing something. I think what they meant to say:Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that was awarded a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee, will suspend operations and file for bankruptcy because its panels were too expensive to compete.Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Delaware, next week.
The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year.
Abound stopped production in February to focus on how to tell the President it aint' gonna work and to start writing press releases to blame it on the Chinese.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 386,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week's figure was revised up to 392,000 from the previously reported 387,000.I don't know what "slipped" means in this context. Did the number (386,750) get worse or get better? Of course, it doesn't matter: "750" is a rounding error, neither reproducible nor significant.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims easing to 385,000 last week. The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, slipped 750 to 386,750.
CN expects to begin moving the bitumen from Fort McMurray to Natchez beginning in the fourth quarter. Volumes will ramp up to more than 12,000 carloads per year as production increases, CN officials said.A unit train is 100 - 120 tank cars, so 12,000/100 --> 120 unit trains, or about one unit train every third day. But look at how huge that ramp up has been: from 5,000 loadings last year to around 25,000 loadings this year.
The pact represents an important milestone in the Class I's growing business of shipping crude oil by rail, said James Cairns, CN’s vice president-petroleum and chemicals. The year, the railroad expects to move about 25,000 carloads of crude oil, up significantly from about 5,000 loads last year.
Operators: Oasis, Baytex, and MarathonComing off confidential list today:
Fields: Baker (McKenzie), Skabo (Divide), Werner (Dunn)
One well result to watch is Whiting's Tarpon Federal 21-4H. This well has been by far the best in the Bakken with respect to its 24-hour IP rate. It produced 4,815 barrels of oil and 13,163 Mcf on the first day. This well was approximately 17 miles northeast from Kodiak's best wells in the Koala Prospect.Other posts regarding the Tarpon Federal:
Leonardo Maugeri’s recent paper Oil: The Next Revolution on the presumed future abundance of oil supplies rejects the pessimistic outlook of limited increases in oil capacity over the next decade. It suggests global oil capacity will exceed 110 million barrels per day by the end of the decade, putting an immediate end to concerns regarding constrained long-term oil supplies. This conclusion is based on an assessment of new projects with a reported capacity of 49 million b/d before a downward adjustment to 29 million b/d to allow for completion risks and reserves depletion. Maugeri holds two PhDs, one in Political Science and one in Economics, and has extensive executive experience with ENI in strategies and developments and in petrochemicals.Sada al-Huseini's bottom line:
In putting forth this optimistic thesis, Maugeri apparently sets aside a variety of technical realities, including the difference between natural gas liquids (NGLs) and conventional oil, reserves depletion versus capacity declines, and proven reserves as opposed to speculative resources.
Not surprisingly, many oil executives have stated publicly that incremental oil supplies are now in a precarious balance with capacity declines and will remain so for years to come.
Much as all the stakeholders in the energy industry would like to be optimistic, it isn’t an oil glut by 2020 that is keeping oil prices as high as they are. It is the reality that the oil sector has been pushed to the limit of its capabilities and that this difficult challenge will dominate energy markets for the rest of the decade.
Yesterday a report by Leonardo Maugeri created big buzz in the oil and gas community. The Oil and Gas Journal actually used the ridiculous 17 million number in a headline. The executive summary forgets about price. The WSJ and economist Mark Perry tease the peak oil idea in their headlines.For me, the Bakken was important for two reasons:
a) the productionThe second reason was the most important. I started the blog simply to help me understand what was going on in the Bakken. I was surprised by all the naysayers out there, suggesting the Bakken was not that important. I responded by saying that perhaps for the global economy, the Bakken was not a big deal, but for a small region in North Dakota it was huge. It appears I was wrong by giving in, saying that perhaps for the global economy the Bakken was not a big a big deal. As an industrial laboratory, it has had a significant impact on how the oil and gas industry developed.
b) the lessons learned and development of horizontal fracking
Consumers are using less gasoline this year just as they have done since 2005. When we last looked at the data from 2005 to 2011, we noted that the decline was primarily caused by Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA, 2007) regulations. These regulations require the substitution of increasing quantities of renewable fuels into gasoline and they continue to be the cause of declining gasoline demand. Most of that renewable fuel is ethanol. The effects of the EPA and EISA regulations are still working their way through the market and each November the EPA publishes new rules to increase the percentage of renewable fuel required in gasoline up to a total of 36 Billion gallons by 2022. As of 2011 the required percentage was 8 percent. Renewables substitution will therefore continue to chip away at gasoline demand for the next decade.Go to the link for the graphic, as well as for links to previous presentations that support the argument.
