Thursday Morning Links, News, And Views -- Part I

Active rigs: 182

RBN Energy: another great blog posting on the economics of drilling horizontal unconventional wells, using dry gas wells in the Haynesville as an example. Today's essay is simply the introduction, laying the groundwork and explaining where the $10 million goes to drill these deep wells. Later posts will look at the outcome of these wells and financial returns.

Global warming: Peru is reporting coldest temperatures in a decade.

Hundreds of families have been affected and more than 250,000 alpacas have died due to freezing temperatures and snow storms that have hit the southern highlands.

Global warming: Worst snowfall in Brazil in 13 years, maybe 22 years.

The dimension of the phenomenon on Wednesday was much larger than expected, said Rocha. I talked to the staff that makes the prediction in the city and this was the biggest snow in 15 years.

Mary Rosineris, 22 years old, has never seen so much snow in the town.

Global warming: rare snowfall in Chilean desert; first in three decades. 

Residents of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, a desert city 750 miles (1,200 km) north of Santiago, say the weekend snow was the heaviest in three decades.

Municipal bankruptcy: another city is granted bankruptcy protection -- San Bernardino, CA. Reuters is reporting:

A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday granted bankruptcy protection to the California city of San Bernardino, paving the way for a precedent-setting battle between bondholders and California's giant public pension system.

The case is being closely watched by other U.S. cities, including Detroit, which declared the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy last month, where budgets are burdened by soaring pension costs.

Judge Meredith Jury of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California ruled that San Bernardino was eligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection despite opposition by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers. The $260 billion pension fund is the city's biggest creditor and America's largest pension fund.

I track municipal bankruptcies here. I never imagined how this chronicle would evolve when I posted the first municipal concern back on February 4, 2010.  San Bernardino's tipping point came when the firemen's union refused to "play ball."

Syria: looks like everyone is backing down. One word: Putin. Okay two words: Vladimir Putin. Like Elvis, one only needs his first name to know who we are talking about.  President O'Bama comes off looking like another putz. I've never used that word before but I heard it (again) on "curb your enthusiasm" last night, and it seems to be an apt word in this case. The civilized world, and the Nobel-Peace-Prize winner won't even confront a dictator who uses chemical warfare on his own nation. Putz. Say what you want about George; he wasn't a putz.