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Thursday, July 4, 2013

Fake Democrats -- All Over The World

Bloomberg is reporting:
A few months ago, King Abdullah II of Jordan told me about his meetings with Mohamed Mursi, the now-deposed president of Egypt. The king wasn’t fond of Mursi, both because the Egyptian was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and because Abdullah found Mursi exceedingly stupid.
“I see a Muslim Brotherhood crescent developing in Egypt and Turkey,” the king said. He despises the movement, partly because it is revanchist, fundamentalist and totalitarian, and partly because in Jordan it seeks his overthrow. “The Arab Spring highlighted a new crescent in the process of development.” 
The saving grace in Egypt, he said, was that Mursi seemed too unsophisticated to successfully pull off his vision. “There’s no depth to the guy,” he said of Mursi. The king compared him unfavorably to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Islamist prime minister of Turkey. Like Mursi, the king asserted, Erdogan was also a false democrat, but one with patience. “Erdogan once said that democracy for him is a bus ride,” Abdullah said. “Once I get to my stop, I’m getting off.”
Unlike Mursi, however, Erdogan was masterful at manipulating a system that didn’t trust him, the king said. “Instead of the Turkish model, taking six or seven years -- being an Erdogan -- Mursi wanted to do it overnight.” Recent events in Turkey, including the government’s miscalculated response to mass protests, have shown that perhaps even Erdogan isn’t an Erdogan anymore.
 There's a kind of a hush all over the world tonight --- you know what I mean?  ...

There's a Kind of Hush, Herman's Hermits

1967, the summer of love.

From wiki:
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, initiating a major cultural and political shift. 
Although hippies also gathered in major cities across the U.S., Canada and Europe, San Francisco remained the epicenter of the social earthquake which would come to be known as the Hippie Revolution. 
Like its sister enclave of Greenwich Village, the city became even more of a melting pot of politics, music, drugs, creativity, and the total lack of sexual and social inhibition than it already was. As the hippie counterculture movement came farther and farther forward into public awareness, the activities centered therein became a defining moment of the 1960s, causing numerous 'ordinary citizens' to begin questioning everything and anything about them and their environment as a result.

Happy Fourth Of July And Happy Energy Independence; The Central Corridor

Happy Fourth of July North Dakota Story of a Real Hero, The Dickinson Press is reporting:
The native son of Dunseith was one of the country’s top fighter jocks in the 1960s. The man who went by the call sign “Hoz” lived the philosophy of one engine, one pilot and go get the bad guys.
BillHosmer, now 82, flew 240 combat missions in Vietnam, rising to the rank of colonel.
And he was a superb pilot, serving a tour as the “left wing,” the No. 2 flier in the famed Thunderbirds — very likely the only North Dakotan ever to have flown with the red, white and blue precision flying group.
********************** Back to the Bakken ***********************

For newbies: the "big story" regarding America's energy revolution on America's Independence Day

Much of the energy revolution has to do with "the Central Corridor":
Of course, some in the US have declared a war on coal. It will be a short war:
Another reminder of natural gas coming from North Dakota: the Great Plains Synfuels Plant, Beulah, ND --
  • recent maintenance, now back up and running
  • natural gas from ND to Iowa (of all places) and then east to eastern and southeastern US
  • for newbies:
the plant was built in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s to make natural gas from lignite, a low-grade coal abundant in North Dakota
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Happy Independence Day

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By the way, the "central corridor" supports the "Big 3" automakers, according to Yahoo!News: Leading the way is Michigan, the birthplace of the American auto industry and where the Big 3 still have a huge presence. More than three-quarters of the new vehicles bought in Michigan carry a domestic badge. Here's how the rankings, ranked by the percentage of cars made by U.S. manufacturers that were sold in each state:
  • Michigan 79.2% 
  • North Dakota 68.1% 
  • South Dakota 65.6% 
  •  Iowa 63.2% 
  • Wyoming 62.6% 
  • Montana 61.1% 
  • Nebraska 59.7% 
  • Oklahoma 59.0% 
  • Arkansas 55.7% 
  •  Indiana 54.5% 
Looks pretty much like the "central corridor" to me. 

WTI/Brent Spread -- Goldman Sachs

Platts is reporting:
Goldman Sachs said earlier this week it had closed its Brent/WTI spread trade recommendation after the ICE Brent premium to NYMEX crude fell below its target of $5/b, adding short-term scope for further narrowing remained, but pipeline and refinery economics are expected to see the spread push back out again.

At 1700 GMT Tuesday, the August ICE Brent contract traded at a $4.64/b premium to August NYMEX crude, having earlier narrowed to $4.53/b, the lowest level since January 18, 2011.

The spread had traded as wide as $28.07/b on October 14, 2011, and $23.44/b as recently as February 8 this year.

"It is important to note that while the narrowing of the spread likely happened in anticipation of the turn in the Cushing balance, inventories are still near record highs, as continued refinery turnarounds and weaker pipeline flows owing to both planned maintenance and repair works have held back a more meaningful decline in Cushing inventories since May," Goldman Sachs said in their Energy Weekly newsletter.

"This is now coming to an end with the return of the Tulsa East refinery, the start of the new 250,000 b/d sour CDU at Whiting, the Ozark pipeline returning from maintenance, the start of the Permian Express pipeline and the ramp up of the Longhorn pipeline, which are all due late June or early July," it said.

As a consequence, the Goldman Sachs analysts said they expect a sharp draw down in Cushing inventories in the coming months that, provided the US Gulf Coast does not become oversupplied with light crude oil, could result in an narrower spread.