Tuesday Morning Links, News, And Views -- Part III; NYMEX Oil Solidly Above $110; Market Recovers A Bit

Wow, the oil price link at Yahoo! Finance is still broken; it's been a week, I think. CNBC is reporting that NYMEX oil is up another $1.28 and now solidly over $110.  It will be interesting to see if Iran tries to close the strait if the Great Satan launches missiles. My hunch: no. And looking around Starbucks it appears no would care one way or the other. And so it goes.

Oil and Gas Journal is reporting:

Weekend inventory reports showed crude stockpiles rising after having fallen for 7 of the last 8 weeks. The American Petroleum Institute reported Aug. 27 that oil inventories increased 2.5 million bbl for the week ended Aug. 23.

In its weekly oil inventory report released Aug. 28, EIA said US commercial crude oil inventories, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased by 3 million bbl to 362 million bbl, which is near the upper limit of the average range for this time of year.

Crude import averaged 8.4 million b/d, up by 423,000 b/d. Over the last 4 weeks, crude oil imports averaged over 8 million b/d, some 723,000 b/d below the same 4-week period last year.

The IPs for the wells coming off the confidential list have been posted.

 

WSJ Links

Didn't we just report this yesterday: the war plans for Syria? The WSJ is reporting that Mr Assad can relax: the bombing will be brief and it will be limited.

Oil hits an 18-month high and that's saying a lot, considering how high oil has been for such a long time. By the way, for newbies, if producers have trouble getting their product to market, it's going to be very, very expensive to buy oil on the spot market to meet their contracts.

Heard on the street: Syria is the oil market's crisis du jour but:

But supplies are there, ultimately, to meet demand or, in the context of a potential war, replace net imports. On that basis, rising U.S. domestic oil supply and weak demand growth have changed the equation profoundly. The U.S. has inventories of crude oil and refined products, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to cover 269 days of net imports, based on a rolling 12-month average. That is up from 150 days five years ago.

Now, consider that a big chunk of U.S. oil imports come from Canada, where any supply constraints are more likely to result from weather or U.S. domestic politics. Excluding those barrels, the U.S. had enough oil stored to cover 415 days of other net imports, as at the end of May, up from 179 days five years before.

I find that somewhat amazing: the US has essentially a year and a half of oil stored to cover imports, up six months from five years earlier. I could say something, but I won't.

Global warming: 400 new coal-fired plants in China and France is worried about a/c units in cars -- 

Air conditioning units in Mercedes-Benz cars are blowing an ill wind into European environmental policy—and into relations between France and Germany, the euro zone's two largest economies.

France's highest administrative court Tuesday struck down a three-month-old French ban on new Mercedes-Benz cars using R-134a, an air-conditioning coolant regarded as a potent greenhouse gas, the latest twist in a dispute that mashes together protectionism, climate politics and European bureaucracy.

The ruling hands a temporary victory to Daimler AG, which has suffered from France's ban. A final decision on whether Daimler continues to use the controversial coolant will fall largely to the European Commission, the bloc's executive body. 

France wants tighter overall emissions standards, a stance that effectively favors small cars made by French manufacturers. Germany by contrast has fought to delay some emission targets for fear they will hurt domestic heavyweights like Daimler and BMW AG, which make fuel-thirsty cars. Both countries have labored to turn European rules to their ends.

"It is more political arm-wrestling than anything else," Carlos da Silva, an analyst at IHS Automotive, said of the dispute over the air coolant. "Mercedes is in a way the scapegoat in an affair that is about a bigger issue."

 Wal-Mart to offer health benefits to domestic partners: retailer creates nationwide policy to avoid state-by-state differences. Awesome.

The extension of health benefits marks a major change for the country's largest private employer of 1.3 million U.S. workers, which has been targeted by gay-rights advocacy groups for failing to do so.

Previously, Wal-Mart had offered benefits to the domestic partners of employees in states that required the retailer to do so by law.

Rather than go state by state, the Bentonville, Ark., retailer decided to adopt a companywide approach to ensure consistent treatment of its employees, spokesman Randy Hargrove said.

The move comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, which had denied federal benefits to gay couples married under state law. Earlier this month, the Pentagon unveiled plans to extend the full range of benefits given to opposite-sex spouses to married same-sex couples starting in September and said it would allow military personnel to take "non-chargeable leave" to travel to states where same-sex marriage is allowed.

Previously reported, Vermont's Yankee Nuclear Power Station will close. Can you say "cheap natural gas"?

This is an incredible story, the outbreak of measles 30 miles north of Ft Worth, TX. It was all preventable.

• the most preventable of all diseases
• the vaccine has been used since the 1960s (fifty years plus)
• the local church fell for claims that the measles vaccine was linked with autism
• measles is miserable; pneumonia; deafness; rarely death -- all preventable

The church is about 30 miles west of where I am currently having Starbucks coffee.

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Note To The Granddaughters

While hanging out in Starbucks I meet some of the most interesting people. I ran into "Tony" some weeks ago, when I first got to the Grapevine, Texas, area. I asked him today how he always seems to look so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed since it appears he has no time for sleep. I was at Starbucks at 7:50 a.m. and he was already through his first large cup having driven up from Ft Worth earlier this morning. He says he was up by 4:30 and I believe him. Putting the story together from bits and pieces he raises his younger children by himself and manages a pretty big trucking business as a contractor. I asked him if there was anyone in the Ft Worth area that he did not know or did not know him. He laughed. And agreed. He knows most everybody. He says he's been in the area for about 14 years, having come here with his dad from New York City, first generation Italian.

He says "hi" to Chelsea and Levi and Levi's younger brother -- they also have a full day scheduled, and again, so incredibly friendly. They've lived their entire lives in this area except for two years out-of-state for work-related travel, but the dad decided no more traveling and now works in the area.

I told Chelsea my story and she asked what I did when I was not taking care of our granddaughters. I mentioned that I love to read and enjoy blogging. It was coincidental that I would mention reading while doing the WSJ Links. I see The Journal has a great book review on a Ring Lardner biography. I didn't even know who Ring Lardner was several years ago; my wife knew him well, and enjoyed him. But I didn't. Another reading gap. But I've read "around him." From the review:

Nothing ages less gracefully than American vernacular humor. Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" is still read in American high schools resistant to political correctness, but George Ade, Will Rogers and even the later, more sophisticated S.J. Perelman are dusty relics. Ring Lardner, a luminary of the Jazz Age, lives on as a couple of titles—"Alibi Ike" and "You Know Me Al," and a deathless throwaway line, "Shut up he explained."

Starting out as an itinerant sportswriter in the Midwest, Lardner (1885-1933) wound up palling around in Paris with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and playing golf with President Harding. He wrote short stories, comic novels and plays and spawned sons who made their own names as magazine writers and left-wing firebrands. He died at 48 of a heart attack complicated by alcoholism and tuberculosis. Now the Library of America has put out a conscientious 961-page selection of Lardner's work that showcases both his distinct gifts and his flaws.

Wow. A 961-page book on Ring Lardner. A Christmas gift. (Don't get it for me. I've ordered it.)