Tuesday Morning News and Links; On A Day That The Market Surges, ENB Is Down

Active rigs: 185 (steady, on the low side)

Wells coming off the confidential list are starting to be posted for the day.

RBN Energy: NGL storage issues while we wait for infrastructure to be put in place.

We’ve been talking about growing natural gas liquid (NGL) production in recent weeks from the Williston Basin, the Eagle Ford, the Northeast and other geographies.  We have also previously discussed the mismatch between NGL production growth and incremental domestic demand, but we have yet to answer the question: are we likely to run into storage issues with NGLs while we are waiting for infrastructure and demand side projects such as export terminals and petrochemical facilities to be built out?  Today we start a series of blogs examining regional storage capacity and the mismatch between expected U.S. NGLs supply - an incremental 1.5 MMb/d between 2012 and 2018, and demand growth.  In today’s blog, we set the stage for the series and take a broad look at NGL Storage.

For investors only: ENB is down on a day when the market is surging. Why? Issuing preferred shares to raise C$300 million.  That represents about 1.4% of outstanding shares. With an operating cash flow of more than $3 billion, this doesn't seem like a lot of cash.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you read here. 

Red Cross or Salvation Army? Salvation Army. Hands down. Like a discount airline, the Red Cross seems more interested in collecting money than focusing on needs. Today, another story: much of Red Cross fund for Sandy aid still unspent. The AP is reporting:

Seven months after Superstorm Sandy, the Red Cross still hasn't spent more than a third of the $303 million it raised to assist victims of the storm, a strategy the organization says will help address needs that weren't immediately apparent in the disaster's wake.

Some disaster relief experts say that's smart planning. But others question whether the Red Cross, an organization best known for rushing into disasters to distribute food and get people into shelter, should have acted with more urgency in the weeks after the storm and left long-haul recovery tasks to someone else.

It certainly seems the Red Cross has the same philosophy as the Obama administration: never let a good crisis go to waste. Call me cynical.

Peak Oil: some interesting data points from an article at The Oil Drum:

• Germany will open more coal-fired power plants this year than at any time within the past twenty years
• in rough numbers, Germany has a peak demand of 85 GW of electricity with coal and lignite capacity of around 47.6 GW in 2011
• from then until 2015, an additional 10.7 GW of coal-fired plant will come on line
• Russia is closing in on a record post-Soviet oil production reaching a level of 10.49 mbd (the Soviet peak was 11.48 mbd in 1987)
• it is going to take a significant and ongoing investment in order for Russia to have any hope of sustaining those numbers 
• how close did the British come to running out of natural gas this past winter: 6 hours

US Postal Service "on its last legs" -- LA Times:

But his future, and that of the U.S. Postal Service, is in doubt. The Postal Service lost $1.9 billion between January and March, and $15.9 billion last year. The 238-year-old institution loses $25 million each day, and has reached its borrowing limit with the federal Treasury. Daily mail delivery could be threatened within a year, officials say.

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WSJ Links
Section D (Personal Journal):

• A house museum that oil riches built. 

Section C (Money & Investing):

• East coasters drive down gasoline demand.

• Invesco manager's death roils Texas investors.

Section B (Marketplace):

Section A:

• US oil boom divides OPEC (previously linked)