Monday Evening News, Views, And Links

Active rigs: 185 (rising, but remains within narrow range)

Not the Bakken, but important nonetheless: a 7-part series on the Utica at MarketRealist.

Keystone XL -- regardless of its outcome -- will have little impact on imported oil from Venezuela, according to Bloomberg.

The U.S. last year imported an average of 906,000 barrels of crude per day from Venezuela, a 35 percent decline from a four-decade high in 1997, according to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Energy Department’s statistical arm.

The U.S. imported 2.4 million barrels per day of Canadian crude last year, a 1,368 percent increase from the low of 164,000 barrels per day in 1981. Imports from Mexico and Saudi Arabia are down from levels a decade ago, due in part to a boom in U.S. production from formations such as the Bakken formation in the upper Midwest. At the same time, production from Venezuela has fallen.

So, the 30-second soundbite: the Keystone XL capacity was projected to be 850,000 bopd; Venezuela imports to the US about the same amount. It looks like the US wouldn't miss either (either Venezuela's oil or the Keystone XL).

Tea leaves: O'Bama administration supports natural gas; says there is no war on coal. Speaks with forked tongue, kemosabe. 

New at the newsstand -- nothing about the Bakken. It's pretty obvious that print media is struggling. It's pretty easy to find almost any print article on the internet; sometimes it takes a bit of work but generally one can find it. At worse, a digital subscription. But either way, print media is struggling. However, it looks like some publishers might be coming up with some clever ideas. I'm seeing more examples of print media published special editions, or collector's editions.  For example, Time Magazine might publish a very thick glossy on Martin Luther King. What made me think of this at the moment: my wife just sent me an absolutely wonderful Scientific American collector's edition on quantum physics, with great graphics on subatomic particles. The problem with a typical issue of Scientific American, there are too many articles -- including politically correct articles on global warming -- that don't interest me. Don't ask me why, but I have a subscription to BloombergBusinessweek. Every issue I am almost guaranteed two long articles in the magazine but the rest is filled with fluff, including a regular-occurring page on "what I wear to work." You have got to be kidding. That's the problem with weeklies: a few good stories, but then filled with fluff. But I would be the first to stand in line to pick up a Bloomberg Businessweek glossy with an in-depth special on the oil and gas industry.