Thursday Morning Links, News, And Views; ONEOK Shares Surge

The Yahoo!Finance oil price is still not corrected -- at Bloomberg:

• WTI: down 54 cents, $104.85 
• Brent: up 3 cents, $107.22 

Still traveling. Minimal blogging throughout the day.

For investors only: ONEOK shares surge --

8:46 AM ONEOK plans to spin off its natural-gas distribution business into a standalone publicly traded company called ONE Gas, which will be headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and consist of Oklahoma Natural Gas Company, Kansas Gas Service and Texas Gas Service. Shareholders will receive an as yet unspecified number of shares in ONE Gas in a transaction that is expected to be tax-free. The new company will trade on the NYSE under the OGS ticker symbol. Shares +7.4%

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

Active rigs: 184 (trending down)

RBN Energy: CBR maintenance --

In a couple of short years, there will be over 375,000 tank cars hauling hydrocarbons in North America. A large majority will be moving crude and NGL’s from the shale production plays. New plays have hit the market like a storm, and like everything else, the infrastructure for handling and maintaining tank cars is trying to keep up. We think this situation is creating yet another new issue, or shall we say opportunity, for the energy and rail industries.  

You see, tank cars, like any asset that’s in short supply, must be utilized as efficiently, effectively and safely as possible. .... Tank cars have been running harder and longer than ever, shuttling long distances between places like North Dakota and the East, West and Gulf Coasts. In the Bakken alone, new crude oil production has been responsible for the construction of 22 new crude oil loading terminals and will be the destination for a big chunk of the new tank cars on the way.  

In the last year, there has been an increase in tank car rail traffic of about 35 percent, and there has not been a repair facility of any significant size added to the infrastructure since the shale explosion started. And on top of that, most existing maintenance shops are not certified to do extensive repair. This implies that not only do we need to catch up to take care of all these new cars, we also need to have a more efficient repair system in place—the industry simply can’t afford not to.

Wells coming off confidential list have been posted.