Thursday -- December 26, 2013

Active rigs:

	12/26/2013	12/26/2012	12/26/2011	12/26/2010	12/26/2009
Active Rigs	186	186	197	162	78

RBN Energy: Part 2 of the two-part series on natural gas alternatives for the northeast.

For peaking customers, the jury is still out.  Although New England and Atlantic Canada desperately need additional supplies of natural gas on peak (natural gas prices at Algonquin Citygate for January are currently trading up to $20 /MMBtu over Henry Hub), distributed CNG and LNG likely do not make sense to solve a winter peaking shortage of the magnitude facing the region.  

The infrastructure costs for the CNG “virtual pipeline” delivery system reside largely in the trailers that deliver the product.  Mobilization of these trailers to serve significant on-peak requirements for only a few days or weeks per year would be very expensive per unit.  LNG may provide more peak capacity, but, like pipeline capacity expansions, the liquefaction, storage and vaporization costs associated with LNG would have to be underwritten by the market.  Given the reluctance of power generators in New England to make investments in natural gas infrastructure (the generators remain at risk for cost recovery of these investments), on-peak LNG infrastructure will likely not provide a viable solution given current market structure.

The Wall Street Journal

This is an incredible story; I've been posting short notes on this for the past wek or so. It's really quite incredible: a surge in web buying blindsides UPS, retailers.

A surge in online shopping this holiday season left stores breaking promises to deliver packages by Christmas, suggesting that retailers and shipping companies still haven't fully figured out consumers' buying patterns in the Internet era.

United Parcel Service Inc. UPS -0.29% determined late Tuesday that it wouldn't deliver some goods in time for Christmas, as a spike in last-minute shopping overwhelmed its system. "The volume of air packages in the UPS system did exceed capacity as demand was much greater than our forecast," a UPS spokeswoman said. Consumers were reporting missing deliveries from FedEx as well, although a FedEx spokesman said the company wasn't experiencing significant delays.

There are at least three story lines here for savvy investors.
After years of cuts in state subsidies and growing resistance to rising tuition, U.S. colleges and universities are starting to unwind decades of administrative bloat and back-office waste that helped push up costs and tuition. The State University of New York system shaved $48 million in the past two years by cutting unused software licenses and consolidating senior administrators. Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. 

CarpeDiem has talked about this issue many, many time: colleges are trimming staff and administrative bloat. My hunch: the ObamaCare mandate pushed the colleges and universities into action. ObamaCare is not mentioned but if one reads between the lines, it's the 800-pound gorilla.

ObamaCare deadlines continue to slip. My hunch: insurers will use this confusion to deny claims.

Max Baucus to China; Mary Landrieu, a strong supporter of the oil and gas industry and a strong supporter of the Obama administration (talk about cognitive dissonance), to energy committee in the Senate.

Fake knee surgery as good as real procedure. My hunch: insurers will sent a fake reimbursement check.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Flashback, March 29, 2006

I've really come to enjoy Blu-Ray this Christmas season. Reflecting on this, I recall a note I wrote some years ago when two DVD technologies were competing to be the ONE system:

HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray. Toshiba will release HD-DVD next month, and Panasonic will release Blu-Ray in September – battle lines have been drawn.

This will be very interesting to follow. 

To summarize: 

• HD-DVD (15 – 45 GB): Microsoft, Intel (moved to Blu-Ray, Jan 06), Universal, Paramount (switching back and forth) 
• Blu-Ray (50 – 100 GB): Panasonic, Apple, Porn industry (as of Jan 2006), Sony, Disney, Sharp, Fox, MGM, Time Warner, Dell, H-P. 

Note: Microsoft has delayed – again – its new operating system, called Vista – many issues. 

EU unhappy with MSFT trying to imbed Google-like and PDF (Adobe)-like applications – trying to shut down Google and Adobe!! 

But now, I wonder – MSFT is delaying Vista until after 2007 – I wonder if MST realized Blu-Ray most likely – and either Blu-Ray has to be added to Vista or at least thought about.

It was clear to me, back in March, 2006, who would come out winning: HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

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The 2013 Salinger Biography

I have placed a review of this biography at Amazon.com.

I enjoyed Michael Clarkson's observations regarding same.