Friday -- February 21, 2014

A picture (or a graphic) is worth a thousand words:

Let's hope the winter doesn't go on too much longer, and there's a bit of gap until global warming hits this summer and all the air conditioners are in use.


Active rigs in North Dakota:

	2/21/2014	02/21/2013	02/21/2012	02/21/2011	02/21/2010
Active Rigs	183	184	201	170	94

RBN Energy: exporting compressed natural gas to the Caribbean.

A brief sidebar on the mechanics and economics of CNG versus LNG. The compression process for CNG increases the pressure of the gas to about 3,600 psi—from about 300 psi in gas pipelines—and does not require any refrigeration. The process for converting pipeline gas into LNG, in contrast, involves cooling gas to a liquid form at about minus 260 degrees F and keeping it cool in cryogenic containers or specialized tankers with insulated walls; gas liquefaction also removes oxygen, carbon dioxide, sulfur, and water from the natural gas, making LNG almost pure methane (plus small quantities of other hydrocarbons like ethane and propane). That gives LNG about twice the energy density of CNG. The bottom line is that CNG compression/loading and unloading / decompression facilities—and CNG-carrying ships--are much less complex and less expensive than their LNG counterparts, with the trade-off being LNG’s much higher energy density and long-distance, high-volume economics. That makes CNG a more attractive alternative for smaller-volume, shorter-distance hauls like Emera CNG’s Florida-to-the-Caribbean plan.

Reuters is reporting, not all is going well for Statoil in the Arctic:
Norway's Statoil drilled a third disappointing well near its Johan Castberg find in the Arctic Barents Sea, casting further doubt on the $15.5 billion project that is already on hold because of high costs. Statoil said it found gas in a well near Castberg, a setback for the oil company as it looks for more oil as part of an ambitious exploration campaign aimed at securing more resources and improving the project's profitability.

The Wall Street Journal

Ah, finally some inflation. Just what the Fed ordered. Just in time for the 2014 elections. Consumer prices edge up, moving closer to Fed target. This is an interesting story coming at this particular moment. Two stores come immediately to mind: a) do you remember that story about the surging price in food/groceries -- just a few days ago; and, b) now, oil has melted up to $104, and if your gasoline has not increased by about 30 cents/gallon in the past two weeks, I would be surprised. The higher price of oil is going to trickle down through the whole economy. One almost wonders if the president hasn't been working toward this.  Later, there was an interesting story on NPR this morning suggesting there may be a grand plan coming together for the president to approve the Keystone. I still don't think it will happen this year.

Venezuela protests continue to escalate. The US refineries need their heavy oil to "cut" all the light oil being produced in the US. US refineries had counted on Canadian heavy oil but the president messed that up and Americans are paying the price.

Residents of Dallas fight construction of a water tower that would provide water for fracking. Exxon's CEO also fights to stop the water tower.

This was posted as a stand-alone post late yesterday; here it is again, in the WSJ: BNSF railway to buy new tank cars to transport crude oil. Warren must have gotten the green light from President Obama to press ahead.

Finally, Wal-Mart is doing what I suggested a long time ago: move toward smaller-format stores. Use bigger stores for warehousing, backfill for the smaller stores. Sears did the same thing years ago, moving to Sears catalog stores; we saw how that worked out. Amazon, CVS, Wal-Greens eating Wal-Mart's lunch at the low end; Amazon and Target eating Wal-Mart's lunch at the high end.

The Los Angeles Times

Nothing.