Halcon Reports; RBN Energy; WSJ Links; How Serious Is The President About Working The Issue? A 7-Minute Photo-Op

The first face-to-face meeting between the president and Congressional leaders to discuss the sequestration is scheduled for Friday: a) hours before the deadline; b) again, the first meeting between the two on this subject; and, c) schedule time: 7 minutes -- three minutes to file in; 1 minute for photos; three minutes to file out. A reminder: this is playing out as expected when the president first suggested a sequestration some months ago. [Later, 1:01 pm: CNBC video with Congress adjourning for the weekend and heading home. It looks like they are not even waiting around for the meeting scheduled tomorrow.  CNBC says the next deadline is "government shutdown, a week and a half from today."]

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WPX reports: Yahoo! In-Play: WPX Energy misses by $0.11, misses on revs: Reports Q4 (Dec) loss of $0.20 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.11 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate of ($0.09); revenues fell 8.0% year/year to $572 mln vs the $634.69 mln consensus. Press release here. 

Halcon reports: Yahoo! In-Play: Halcon Resources reports EPS in-line, beats on revs : Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $0.02 per share, excluding non-recurring items, in-line with the Capital IQ Consensus Estimate consensus of $0.02; revenues rose 387.1% year/year to $124.7 mln vs the $114.09 mln consensus.

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Wells coming off the confidential list have been posted (only two, and one was put on DRL status).

RBN Energy talks about the natural gas situation, the pipelines, Canada and the US in the northeast.

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal):

Section C (Money & Investing):

• Gasoline falls as supply worries ease
• Chevron's Australian shale-gas option; Heard On The Street; very interesting

Section B (Marketplace):

• JC Penney's losses snowball 
• Groupon lands with a thud
• FDA will go to 4-flu vaccine cocktail next year, from current trivalent vaccine
• Boeing, battery supplier at odds over fixes; subscription may be required
• Shell puts off drilling in Alaska's Arctic; reported elsewhere but not previously linked
• Isn't this interesting? Turnabout is fair play? Argentina's YPF inherits New Jersey River mess; New Jersey wants Argentina-run oil company to pay for cleanup of dioxin dumped in Passaic River decades ago; doesn't statute of limitations ever run out?

Section A:

• The sequester: identical to "going over the fiscal cliff"; go over the "sequester cliff" and then, get serious: both sides bet they'll have a stronger hand after deadline expires; this should catch one's attention: "The first face-to-face meeting on the issue between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders won't happen until Friday—the deadline for Mr. Obama to set in motion $85 billion in broad spending cuts." Question: why couldn't the president simply ignore the law on this one; plenty of other laws of much more importance have been ignored; I wonder what FDR or Reagan would have done?
• Gas boom projected to grow for decades. More discussion here.
• Quietly, SecTreasury confirmed; no links; story everywhere.
• State gun laws being passed faster than ever; no links; stories everywhere.