Friday -- Global Warming Kills Three In Michigan City, Indiana

RBN Energy: a continuation of the series on the future of natural gas -- a coming surplus in the United States. Laws with regard to exports of these hydrocarbon products that we are living with today were all put on the books during the decades of shortage. Things have changed.

Here at RBN, we have an often repeated view that the flood of oil and gas being produced from unconventional plays will change everything we once knew about energy markets.  One such fundamental change is that the U.S. is now producing more natural gas, NGLs and some grades of crude oil than we can use (except for the past three weeks of Polar Vortex weather, of course). 

Consequently the U.S. has shifted from a position of hydrocarbon shortage to one of surplus.  That is great news.  But just down the road there are potential problems developing – distortions in the markets.  Some of those surplus products can be exported, some can’t.  The rules regarding exports of these hydrocarbon products that we are living with today were all put on the books during the decades of shortage.  When you look closely at what those rules really say, you’ve got to scratch your head.  Today we begin a series to examine those rules.

And, of course, that in bold will be the issue.

Active rigs in North Dakota:

	1/24/2014	01/24/2013	01/24/2012	01/24/2011	01/24/2010
Active Rigs	187	188	203	164	87

The Wall Street Journal

Investors flee developing countries. 

Safety Boad asks for tougher standards for shipping crude oil.

Federal safety investigators called on railroads to route oil-filled trains around heavily populated areas as part of a series of recommendations to reduce risks from the growing business of shipping crude by rail.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that transportation regulators should work with railroads to reroute oil trains and should ensure that railroads have plans in place to handle "worst-case" accidents or spills. It also called for new testing practices for oil being shipped by rail, in the wake of several serious accidents recently in which crude oil exploded after trains derailed.

Keystone decisionas

The Obama administration is set to complete a critical phase of its Keystone XL pipeline review next month, setting the stage for President Barack Obama to make a call on the politically charged decision in the thick of the midterm campaign season.

The State Department, which has been studying the project for years, aims to release on the environmental impact of the proposed pipeline extension in early or mid-February, people inside and outside the government familiar with the decision said Thursday. That would put Mr Obama on track to make a decision by May or June.

LOL.

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Microsoft reports better-than expected results: 

The software giant posted surprisingly strong sales of its Xbox videogame consoles and Surface tablet computers, helping drive quarterly revenue and earnings that topped Wall Street expectations. In response, Microsoft's shares rose about 4% in after-hours trading Thursday.

The numbers were good.

For the fiscal second quarter ended Dec. 31, Microsoft's revenue rose 14% to $24.52 billion. Net income climbed to $6.56 billion, or 78 cents a share, compared with $6.38 billion, or 76 cents a share, a year earlier.  

Analysts, on average, estimated Microsoft would post earnings of 68 cents a share on revenue of $23.7 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Target data breach adds to CEO's sack of woe. One misstep after another. Where's Mr Icahn?

Shale boom forces Pemex to find new buyers.

For decades, Mexico's state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, had the best customer an oil company could want: the U.S. But now the U.S. energy boom is curtailing the country's demand for imported oil, and Pemex is being forced to look farther afield.

For the first time, the company is negotiating to sell its extra-light Olmeca crude oil in Europe, according to Pemex officials. The first shipment will go in the second half of February to the Cressier refinery in Switzerland, the company said.

Where's Jane Nielsen?

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McDonald's CEO concedes loss of relevance. I've blogged about that before -- based on what I've  seen on all my cross-country travels. The country has moved a long way since Ronald McDonald showed up. The CEO says its restaurants got "too complicated." Whatever that means. If it refers to the menu, compare McDonald's with In 'N Out: three hamburger choices, FF, and a few drinks. Each item averages about $2.00. They also have to figure out how to compete for Starbucks customers with regard to mobile access, my biggest complaint about McDonald's.

Chromebooks take other mobile PCs to school. The laptops now have about 20% of the school market after "coming out of nowhere." They're "cheap" and they are "inexpensive," but they work. I wouldn't be caught dead with one, but for a family with two children (or more) in elementary school, they make sense. Our granddaughters each have one and they love them: very, very lightweight; very simple; a bit clunky, but no complaints from them.

Wow, this is not good.

The software behind the attack at Neiman Marcus Group lurked in the luxury retailer's payment system undetected for months, scraping data from as many as 1.1 million accounts and ending its mission before it was discovered. The software was clandestinely inserted into the system and worked from July 16 to Oct. 30. Software to help the program work was slipped in even earlier. Neiman didn't even know the software was there until Jan. 1.

 The Los Angeles Times

40-vehicle pile-up snarls snowy I-94  in Indiana; Chicago to Detroit; 3 killed; 20 injured.

Los Angeles won't allow light trail to reach LAX (the Los Angeles Airport). Too hard to do, too expensive.

Socialists meet capitalists in San Francisco / Silicon Valley.

Percentage of Americans lacking insurance ticks down slightly in January.

The increase in insurance coverage reported by Gallup underscores the slow nature of Obamacare’s rollout. Initial projections by the Congressional Budget Office forecast that some 7 million people would sign up by the time the law’s open enrollment period ends on March 31. Enrollment nationally is behind that forecast, in part because of the breakdown of the enrollment website in October and November. Even if the law reaches the 7-million mark this year, several more years will be needed to make a big dent in the uninsured population. About 45 million people in the U.S. lack insurance, including roughly 29 million potentially eligible for coverage under the exchanges.