Monday Morning News, Links, And Views

Active rigs: 185 (nice trend, up)

RBN Energy: today's RBN Energy essay will get its own stand-alone post. For now:

Light sweet crude is flooding the market; refiners along the coast are optimized for heavier crudes and sour crudes. Eagle Ford is "too" light. Bakken is better for the refiners than Eagle Ford, and RBN Energy will have a stand-alone essay on Bakken pricing in the near future. Interestingly enough, the US refiners, particularly the refiners along the Gulf coast, are looking for sour cruces. And, just coincidentally, North Dakota has sour crude also: the Spearfish. Two things are converging nicely for Bottineau County: Corinthian Exploration is reporting some very nice wells, and refiners are looking for sour crude.

On Friday, ten companies announced increased dividends, including Whiting's trust I and II. 

Wells coming off the confidential this past weekend and today have been posted. Some huge wells; four (4) make the "high IP" list; many outstanding well.

Over the weekend, some nice posts, in case you missed them:

• the Tara Jo wells in Reunion Bay
• huge QEP wells in the "Helis Grail"; 50,000+ bbls in first month of production
• a more detailed look at EOG's recent earnings presentation; better than folks might realize 
• huge new heavy oil play possible in Alabama, Mississippi

WSJ Links

A corn boom starts to wilt. -- a stand-alone post has been posted. This was the headline, front page story in Section C, "Money & Investing."

For investors only: there is a nice article about major oil companies and investing in "Heard On The Street," -- reserving a spot in the shifting oil world.  Some data points:

• 50 - 60 billion boe in reserves: Shell, Rosneft, PetroChina, ExxonMobil, Petroleo Brasileiro
• 30 - 40 billion boe: Chevron, Total, BP
• 25 billion boe: Eni, Statoil, COP
• Two homebody elephants with 90% of their resource base at home: Rosneft and Petrochina
• Only truly global integrated majors: Exxon and Shell; but they won't break up
• But smaller majors with reserves in only one or two regions (Statoil, Eni, Conoco) are in a quandry: either bulk up or break up
• state-run companies like Statoil and Eni unlikely to break up
• that leaves Conoco: a split is possible -- a) North American growth; and, b) international deepwater and LGN projects

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

Another article on Chinese car sales. It seems we've talking about Chinese automobile market quite a bit lately. Today, passenger-car sales pick up pace in China even as economy slows.

China's passenger-car sales picked up pace in July, signaling healthy consumer confidence and continued strength in the world's No. 1 auto market even as the nation's economic growth moves toward a 20-year low.

Sales of passenger vehicles, including sedans, sport-utility vehicles and minivans, were up 10.5% from a year earlier to 1.24 million vehicles, the semiofficial China Association of Automobile Manufacturers industry group said on Friday. That exceeds June's 9.3% pace and May's 9%, both over a year earlier. 

While most economists expect the growth rate for China's economy to slow to about 7.5% this year, the weakest since 1990, analysts and industry groups expect passenger-car sales gains to accelerate past 10%. That would be well short of the high double-digit figures of the previous decade, but still the highest level since 2010.

Emerging world loses economic growth lead to Japan, US, and Europe. Front page, headline story, above the fold.

Protests grow in Egypt. This was also on NPR news this morning. Every day the military does not crack down on the protestors, their numbers grow, organization improves, and the military has a bigger problem. The biggest problem Mediterranean military senior officers face is a lack of sophisticated strategic thinking.

Op-Ed: the budget sequester is a success -- the Obama spednign blitz is over, and the deficit is heading below 4% of GDP. And the best news: the president is on vacation.

The deficit drop is also being reported by the AP:

The government is on track to record a significant drop in the budget deficit this year with stronger growth helping to boost tax revenues.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the deficit for July will total $96 billion and that will bring the total for the first 10 months of the budget year to $606 billion, an improvement of $368 billion from the same period in 2011. The Treasury Department will release the July budget report at 2 p.m. EDT Monday.

Through June, the deficit totaled $509.8 billion. That was an improvement of 43.6 percent from the same period a year ago and kept the country on track to post the first deficit below $1 trillion in five years.

 Elsewhere

ObamaCare will probably sink a Democratic senator. 

An internal poll conducted in Arkansas for the National Republican Senatorial Committee puts GOP Rep. Tom Cotton head of incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor by 2 percentage points.

The freshman congressman led the two-term senator 44 percent to 42 percent in a survey taken two weeks ago, ahead of his official campaign launch.

Of course, this is way too early to tell, but my hunch one of two things will happen.