Update
Later, 8:20 pm: be sure to note the first comment -- back in 1997, "they" were concerned with a glut of oil from Canada, when they noted that the WTI/WCS spread had doubled to $7. That was back in 1997. They were concerned about adequate pipelines back in 1997. Fast forward to 2013: the WTI/WCS is now as much as $40. And the Keystone XL is still not approved.
Original Post
I think this article says it all: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100417697?__source=yahoo|headline|quote|text|&par=yahoo
"In other words, because of the Bakken and the Eagle Ford shales and so many other terrific domestic prospects, one of our major refinery powers no longer needs to import expensive oil from other countries to feed its refineries, and this trend is only going to get stronger," Cramer explained.I thought the easy money had been made in the Bakken but it looks like for investors, still opportunities. I'm thinking of Hess, as another example.
Anyway, back to Valero, this from their press release:
Valero reported net income attributable to Valero stockholders of $1.0 billion, or $1.82 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to net income attributable to Valero stockholders of $45 million, or $0.08 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2011. Included in the fourth quarter 2012 results was a noncash asset impairment loss of $37 million after taxes, or $0.06 per share. For the year ended December 31, 2012, net income attributable to Valero stockholders was $2.1 billion, or $3.75 per share.So, how did investors react to the news?
Up a whopping 13% in after-hours and continuing to rise.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Ewart+Dire+predictions+become+self+fulfilling+prophecies/7885949/story.html
ReplyDelete""The bitumen bubble may not have burst ..." was the opening line of a June 1997 story in the Herald after Howard Dingle of Imperial Oil told the annual Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers investment conference there was more bitumen on the market than refineries could process.
At the time, the discount on bitumen from benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude had doubled from the previous year to more than $7 a barrel. In comparison, this winter the differential has regularly been between $30 and $40 a barrel.
It was at the 1997 CAPP conference that Neil Ca-marta, a vice-president at Shell Canada, warned the company was concerned about adding supply to the "bitumen bubble" when its oilsands projects came on stream in 2005.
Then, as now, a lack of pipeline capacity to the United States was a big issue."
anon 1
Wow, isn't that incredible? Back in 1997 the discount doubled to $7 and folks were concerned about the "glut" that far back. Think how easy it would have been to get approval for the Keystone XL back in 1998 or 1999 or 2000, I suppose, just before the first bubble burst. Amazing. A $7 discount was troubling, and now we see a discount of $40.
DeleteOne sometimes wonders if some refiners shut down / sold out a year too soon. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Polar bears are almost extinct. Well, almost.
ReplyDeletehttp://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/01/latest-uphere-magazine-polar-bear.html?spref=tw
The comments are worth a read.
The original:
http://uphere.ca/node/850
"He recalls that he didn’t know much about anything else, either. His father was a white man who took off and left him to be raised by his Inuit mother and various Inuit uncles and grandfathers. “I wanted to be a hunter and trapper like them, but I was very stupid and I nearly died, many times. I would swamp the boat at sea, or get whited out, or get lost on the tundra. I bought a GPS, thinking I could go anywhere now. But the elders just smiled. ‘Will that little thing teach you where the thin ice is?’”
The first time Darryl Baker saw a polar bear, he was on his snowmachine, checking his fox traps. A snowdrift alongside the trail reared up and became a large polar bear. “I took off out of there,” he said. “But it was very scary because my snowmachine wasn’t running good and I was afraid I was going to have to walk back to town with that polar bear on my trail.”
He wanted to emulate his Inuit mentors, so he got himself some sled dogs. But he says polar bears are a constant problem for dog mushers. “There’s lots of polar bears now. They come right into town, and they hate dogs. A couple of years ago my neighbour phoned me one morning and said, ‘there’s a big polar bear coming down the street and he looks like he’s in a bad mood.’ The bear was heading right for my dogs. I opened the kitchen window and fired a shot to scare it off but it ignored me and killed one of my dogs with one slap. So I shot the bear.”
The CBC interviewed him, and qallunaat – white people – criticized him on the web site. “People were saying a polar bear is more valuable than a sled dog. Well, I work hard and I spend a lot of money on my dogs. A good dog is worth from two thousand to five thousand dollars. They said you should put your dogs in a ‘safe location.’ We don’t have safe locations. The bears walk right into the hamlet. Am I supposed to just stand there and watch when a bear starts killing my dogs?”"
More there.
anon 1
Wow, it never quits. Now I have to add a "PolarBearCentral" to my list of tags at the bottom of the page so I can start keeping track of all these polar bear stories.
DeleteIt looks like the smart polar bears are hanging around humans (and feasting on canine buffets); whereas the "more mentally challenged" polar bears are finding themselves stranded on shrinking ice floes. Darwin's survival of the smartest.
That last note (by me) sounds harsh. If you want harsh, read Anne Sexton's comment when she heard that Sylvia Plath had committed suicide (probably an inadvertent suicide, unfortunately).
Delete