Wednesday Morning Links; LA Is In A $600 Million Pickle

Active rigs: 186

Wells coming off confidential list today have been posted.

RBN Energy: CBR. As much as 240 Mb/d of light sweet crude from North Dakota is currently being shipped from the Bakken to St. James LA in what has become a pipeline on wheels. More crude is also moving to the Gulf Coast from Western Canada by rail and new destination terminals are being developed along the Mississippi River. But increased pipeline capacity to the Gulf Coast is a growing competitive threat to these rail destinations. Today we survey rail destination terminals East of the Mississippi.

WSJ Links

Section D (Personal Journal):

• For the granddaughters, can girls' building toys improve math skills? Once a well-intentioned but unsuccessful part of the toy industry is now blossoming.
• Cars ditch familiar shift levers for knobs, push buttons, or small levers, freeing up room for all kinds of gadgets and extra space for storage.
• Barbecue accessories: a look at popular tools in five US cities.
• Cartography: a look at the prevalence of maps in the daily life of the US as we became a nation. This hits home: I grew up with maps. And today my wife, sister-in-law, and two granddaughters are on a cross-country trip. Whoopee! 
• Marathons ponder the future; winning Boston never felt so empty.

Section C (Money & Investing):

Section B (Marketplace):

• Computer outage shuts down American Airlines for an entire day; still not back to 100%. Time to go Apple.  
• The cupcake craze is crumbling.
• Boeing has completed all tests for its battery fixes.
• FBI raids biggest owner of truck stops. I linked this story ("thank you, Don") two days ago. I was surprised not to see the story in the WSJ. It made me think that maybe it wasn't a big story. But here it is, in Section B of the WSJ today. It was probably in an earlier on-line edition of the WSJ.
• A Federal Bureau of Investigation raid brought the headquarters of Pilot Flying J, North America's largest truck-stop chain, to a standstill this week.

The investigation appears to be part of a broader probe of rebate payments owed to Pilot's trucking customers, Chief Executive Jimmy Haslam III said Tuesday. It "appears to be centered on a very insignificant number of customers and the application of rebates," Mr. Haslam said at the chain's headquarters in Knoxville, Tenn.

An FBI spokesman confirmed the raid had occurred but would say only that it was "part of an ongoing investigation."

Investigators seem to be focused on whether Pilot sales representatives offered volume-based rebates to trucking companies, but then "rebates that were owed to the [trucking company] customers were not paid," Mr. Haslam said. "We of course disagree with that." He denied that the company has been involved in any wrongdoing.

This has all the hallmarks of the Obama administration. The FBI works for Mr Holder. I'm not saying where there's smoke, there's not a fire, but something feels a bit overplayed here. But I could be very, very wrong. 

• Wow, this worked out well for Purdue Pharma: the FDA bars generic OxyContin -- worries about abuse. The patent expired yesterday, Tuesday. Not only does the FDA bar generic OxyContin but the company and physicians can market the brand name OxyContin as safer than alternatives.

Section A:

• The Boston Marathon bombing is, of course, the lead story. 
• NFL broadcaster Pat Summerall dies at 82. 
• North Korea turns down offer for US-NK talks. I assume NK is holding out for a better deal.
• Too little, too late: the Obama administration now concedes that the Islamist-dominated Syrian opposition will pose a bigger danger for the US. Who wudda guessed?
• Op-ed: how JCP laid an egg. This is a great analysis. All should read; most won't.

LA Times Links

• "Arab Spring": once an inspiration, now a more cautionary tale. MDW has had that opinion from the get-go. 

• And more reality: LA's commitment to killing coal will cost them at least $600 million:

Fred Pickel, the ratepayer advocate at the Department of Water and Power, said Monday that eliminating coal from the utility's power mix ahead of a state-mandated deadline is projected to cost more than $600 million.

He added that it was unclear how much the charge would increase the electricity bills of ratepayers.

Pickel, who will present a report on the plan to the City Council's Energy and Environment Committee on Wednesday, said he will urge city and utility officials to look for ways to lower the cost.

With much fanfare last month, Villaraigosa announced plans to make the city coal-free by 2025 by dumping the utility's interest in a coal-burning plant in Arizona and converting another one in Utah to natural gas.