Monday -- January 21, 2014; Oil Is Back

Active rigs:

	1/21/2014	01/21/2013	01/21/2012	01/21/2011	01/21/2010
Active Rigs	186	186	203	165	82

RBN Energy: the future of ethane. A continuation of the series.

There simply is not enough petrochemical demand to absorb all of the ethane that the U.S. can produce.  The result is rejection - ethane sold as natural gas at fuel value rather than being extracted and used as a petrochemical feedstock. Today around 250 Mb/d of ethane is being rejected, and that number could increase by 200% over the next three years.  Yes, you read that right.  Rejection could triple.  As NGL production from the big shale plays increases, the U.S. petrochemical industry will not be able to use most of the incremental ethane - thus rejection.  But it may not play out that way.  All that ethane could be exported - perhaps as liquid ethane. Or is there another possibility: Spiking ethane into the soon to be exported volumes of LNG from terminals like Cheniere Sabine Pass, Freeport, ETP/Southern Union at Lake Charles and Dominion at Cove Point?  Today we continue our exploration into the possibility that surplus ethane could be exported in the form of “hot” LNG.

The Wall Street Journal

Target tried antitheft cards.

Target Corp. TGT -1.98% Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel is calling on retailers and banks to adopt chip-based credit-card technology to better protect shoppers. But the debate was different a decade ago, when the executive was on the other side of the issue as Target pulled the plug on a $40 million, three-year program that did just that.

Chip-based credit cards—in which a smart chip in the card works with special readers installed at stores—are widely used in Europe and Canada, making it more difficult for thieves to profit from the sort of massive data breach that hit Target over the holidays. 

Executives in Target's credit-card division tried to keep the program but lost out to the concerns of executives responsible for store operations and merchandising, a group that included Mr. Steinhafel, who worried the technology slowed checkout speeds and didn't offer enough marketing benefits, according to a person familiar with the decision.

It's interesting. I've always been amazed at check-out speeds at Target. One never shows an ID, one never signs anything. It comes as no surprise Target was hacked. I will never use a credit card at Target again, and will seldom shop there any more.

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High-tech monitors often miss oil pipeline links.

Energy and pipeline companies like to point out they use high-tech sensors and remote-monitoring systems to automatically alert engineers when a pipeline starts to leak oil.

However, most leaks usually aren't discovered that way, according to a review of four years of liquid pipeline accident records. The overwhelming majority of these pipeline spills, ruptures and leaks were discovered by somebody near the accident site, a Wall Street Journal review of a database of more than 1,400 accident reports collected by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration found. 

Most are found by farmers harvesting or seeding their fields. 

The Los Angeles Time

Oil demand increases.

Worldwide demand for oil will increase 1.4% this year as developed economies strengthen, building off a strong final three months of 2013, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

The projections in the organization's monthly oil market report add to forecasts of a global economic pickup in 2014.

Unexpectedly higher demand in the U.S. in the fourth quarter of last year helped boost global oil deliveries by 135,000 barrels a day to an estimated 92.1 million barrels, the report said.

The increase meant that, after declining 1.1% in 2012, oil demand grew 0.2% last year in the 34 advanced economies that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The last time the OECD nations had recorded a yearly increase in oil demand was 2010, the agency said.

Just before I left the house I heard a report on NPR that US oil demand now exceeds that of China, the first time this has happened in many years. I can't find a source yet to confirm that. I will watch for it. But oil is back.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

The blog is full of references to the current political climate. It turns out that what is happening in the United States is not new. From Athens: A Portrait of the City in its Golden Age, Christian Meier, c. 1993, pp 58 - 59.

In this situation Solon, son of Execestides, tried to convince his fellow citizens that their society was fundamentally flawed, that they were living in "misorder" (dysnomia). Indded, he said, they were heading toward catastrophe, but they were not helpless. He reportedly urged all parties to entrust the city to a wise man who might reestablish order.

There are no equivalents in English for the Greek words katartister or euthynter, used to describe a person given the powers Solon was given. "Arbitrator" would come closest, if the term were not so closely associated with mediation. In this case, however, mediation was at most a fortunate side effect of the reforms, because what mattered to Solon was the establishment of a new "right order," not a mere compromise between conflicting interests. (Solon considered improper the very notion that these interests could be at odds.) The best translation is the cumbersome "he who puts things right again."

Solon was ultimately elected to public office, possible directly to the post of archon (chief magistrate), mostly likely in 594 BC (although it may have been as late as 575). When elected, he was given almost unlimited powers as well as a substantial treasury, which could have been procured only by taxes on the wealthy. He was almost certainly allowed to hire a staff and may have undertaken to build a rudimentary police force.

This marked the beginning of something entirely new in Attic history. Previous efforts to bring about a better and more just social order had been limited in scope. Now, for the first time, the entire structure of the polis underwent reform.

Nothing comparable had ever happened  in world history: a profound transformation of existing conditions, initiated not by a monarch, or an aspiring monarch, but by an individual chosen by the citizenry. Solon did not relieve the citizens of their own responsibility but merely enacted what they seemed to want. In all likelihood people were willing to entrust their fate to him because their fear of violence and murder left them no choice. But whatever their motivation, they placed immense trust in Solon.

Just as there are no equivalents in English for the Greek words katartister or euthynter, used to describe a person given the powers Solon was given, there are no English words to describe ObamaNation.