PetroBras Can't Buy A Break; It's One Thing To Drop A Wrench Into A Bakken Well; Can You Imagine Dropping $2 Million Worth Of Pipe Into The Ocean? PetroBras Can; A Day In The Life

I find this so incredibly interesting.

I invested in Petrobras some years ago, but held the stock less than six months when I realized the challenges facing the country. I have blogged often on the failure of Petrobras to live up to the initial hype.

Now this update. Reuters through Rigzone is reporting:

Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA suffered a setback in its effort to boost oil output last month when Italian contractor Saipem SpA dropped a 2.3 km steel pipe into the Atlantic Ocean.

On March 16, rigging failed as it was being used to wrangle the pipe into position on a floating oil platform. The high-grade, metal-alloy tubes plunged about 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) to the seabed, a total, crumpled loss.

The pipe itself was worth about $2 million, but the cost of the accident will be much higher, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters. By setting back efforts to expand Roncador, Brazil's No. 2 oilfield, by at least a month, Petrobras will lose tens of millions of dollars in oil output, salaries and equipment leases when it can least afford it.

The accident was the latest in a series of setbacks as Petrobras has struggled to transform giant new offshore discoveries into increased output, despite a $221 billion five-year investment plan.

I love the next quote:

"The series of management and engineering problems the company faces is flabbergasting," said Cleveland Jones, a professor and researcher with Brazil's National Petroleum and Gas Institute at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.

Just yesterday I posted that a $10 million well in the Bakken is a bargain from a global perspective. That seems especially true when one looks at Petrobras and Kashagan.

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A Note to the Granddaughter

A Day In The Life

My only responsibility today was to get our younger granddaughter to soccer on time this morning. Moments ago I was called by my daughter; she was at work but she wanted me to know that my son-in-law / granddaughter's father would be taking the granddaughters to soccer and I was free. I will still go to the soccer game but due to picture-taking, etc., I don't have to arrive as early as expected.

I was given the best gift of all: time:

One extra hour.

I was on my way out of Starbucks when I got the call so I pressed on. I rode to Target to see what was new; nothing. I headed home. Toast for breakfast. The Beatles' Abbey Road.

The "Review" section of the weekend edition of the WSJ.

Wow, this is a great section this week. Look at these book reviews:

In Paradise, Peter Matthiesen. The atrocity exhibition: how much cheapening of the Holocaust are we willing to accept in the name of art?

Updike, Adam Begley; and, The Collected Stories, John Updike. What made Rabbit write? Updike confessed he 'drank up women's tears and spat them out / as 10-point Janson, Roman and ital.'

Faisal I of Iraq, Ali A Allawi. A king worthy of the title. Faisal carried authority whether wearing a kaffiyeh or a Chesterfield coat.

The Most Dangerous Man in America, Mark Perry. The ungovernable general. In 1932, Douglas MacArthur personally led troops to expel a group of protesting veterans from the city of Washington and burn their encampment.

Delphi, Michael Scott. Go ask Apollo. Cities in the 8th century BC confronted new problems: Should we found a colony? Allow this one man to rule?

Encounters at the Heart of the World, Elizabeth A. Fenn. The Okipa combined the sun dance with sexually charged re-enactments of Mandan origin stories. The article includes a photo of a Mandan-style lodge at North Dakota's Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. The article begins:

The opinions of chauvinistic New Yorkers and geographical nitpickers notwithstanding, the exact center of North America is the Cornerstone Cafe in Rugby, ND, where a rock obelisk marks the spot. About a hundred miles to the southwest lies the ancestral homeland of the Mandan people, where the Heart River empties into the Missouri. Maybe 150 miles northwest of that confluence, and an equal distance west of Rugby, is the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where Mandans live today. For them, these landscapes have always been "the heart of the world."

The review takes up half a page. Awesome. 

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Along with these reviews, some regular columns including Amanda Foreman, "Historically Speaking." Her column today: the lesson of the last passenger pigeon. She died in what scientists call the Sixth Extinction. I can't wait to read the column. I hope she includes the North American bison which was on its way to extinction well before the white man finished him off.

A review of fine art by John Wilmerding, "Ship Starlight in the Fog," Fitz Henry Lane, about 1860. Best known for recording the nuances of early-morning light and sunset, Fitz Henry Lane produced just a half-dozen foggy views. "Ship Starlight in the Fog" was considered one of his most beautiful.

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In addition to all that there are two long, long articles, the first, "What Have All The Workers Gone?" The second: "The smart way to do fracking. Plug leaks, run more tests and build better wells." I just love these armchair experts (sort of like me, smile). The author of this article, Russell Gold covers the energy industry for The WSJ and is the author of The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World to be released April 8, 2014.

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And now, off to that soccer game.