For Investors Only -- June 23, 2014 -- US Existing Home Sales, Inventory Surge In May; North Dakota Farmers To Be Paid More For Planting Bee-Friendly Crops -- Obama; North Dakota Big Winner In Bee-Friendly Program

Mid-day trading, trading at new 52-week highs so far today (I think a lot of these were at their highs at the market open and have since pulled back): APA, APC, BHI, BK, BP, CFN, CHK, CLR, COP, CVX, EOG, ERF, HAL, HK, KOG, MPO, MRO, NFX, NOV, OXY, PSX, PXD, TPLM, TSO, WFT, WIN, WLL, WPX, XOM.

Early trading: oil down slightly, market down slightly. Shares in publicly traded oil and oil service companies generally up:

• HK: up 1%
• TPLM: up almost 2%
• AMZG: flat
• SD: flat, up slightly
• CHK: up 1.5%
• OAS: up 0.8%
• KOG: up over 1%
• WLL: up almost 1%
• CLR: up 1%
• CVX: up .6%
• COP: up over 1%
• XOM: up about half a percent
• BHI: down slightly
• SLB: flat

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

AXAS has been a big winner. Zack's is reporting:

AXAS was a big mover last session, as the company saw its shares rise nearly 7% on the day. The move came on solid volume too with far more shares changing hands than in a normal session. This breaks the recent trend of the company, as the stock is now trading above the volatile price range of $4.65 to $5.42 in the past one-month time frame.

Other than the headline, I did not read this story over at Seeking Alpha. It seems fairly obvious and high oil prices won't help only KOG but every oil company out there. However, beware of the hedging issue. Some smaller companies could actually get hurt by high oil prices if they didn't hedge correctly or hedged too conservatively.

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Honey

Could a colder climate (the earth has not been warming for 18 years) PLUS putting all that acreage into corn-for-ethanol be causing the demise of the US honey bee industry? 

After years of taking bee-friendly crops out of production in the midwest, to plant corn for ethanol, the US government -- through an Obama initiative -- will now pay farmers to plant bee-friendly crops in land, in a last-ditch effort to stem the impending demise of the honeybee.

North Dakota farmers:

• some of the best cropland to begin with
• plenty of moisture past few years -- due to global cooling, perhaps?
• encouraged to plant more corn for ethanol -- better prices than wheat
• income from wind farms
• surface rights income from oil companies
• mineral rights in the Bakken
• and now, getting paid for planting bee-friendly crops through a new Obama farm program -- what's not to like?

The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

Farmers and landowners who plant forage for North Dakota’s bee population are now eligible for federal funding.

The program is designed to help preserve what is left of the declining honeybee population in the United States.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has allocated $8 million as part of the Conservation Reserve Program for producers in five states that serve as homes to bees during the summer — Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

More than half of the commercially managed honey bees are in those five states.
North Dakota is the nation’s No. 1 honey producer with half a million colonies.

I remember seeing an article on this issue a couple days ago; while Iraq was imploding, Mr Obama was making a bee-friendly speech for North Dakota. One can only assume it was brought to his attention when he visited North Dakota ten days ago.

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Honeybee Paradox

This is the problem with activist environmentalists. By being splintered and trying to save every species (generally only if the species is located where the Koch Brothers want to lay a pipeline), "we" lose sight of the really important species that we don't want to lose. For example, call me crazy, but I wonder if we lost the "snail darter," would anyone really notice. On the other hand, if we lose the honeybee, ....

And that's the problem; money spent litigating the snail darter's future would have been better spent studying the impending demise of the honey bee.

Likewise, environmental activists were jubilant replacing bee-friendly crops in North Dakota with corn for ethanol.

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Going It Alone

As regular readers know, Canada was the first country to renounce the Kyoto Protocol, "taking back their signature," after being one of the original signers of the protocol.  Now Australia announces yet another country turning its back on this scam:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott reintroduced legislation to the Australian Parliament on Monday that would repeal a carbon tax that the nation's worst greenhouse gas polluters have to pay.

The opposition center-left Labor Party and minor Greens party used their Senate majority in March to block the bills that would remove the 24.15 Australian dollar ($22.79) tax per metric ton of carbon dioxide that was introduced by a Labor government in July 2012. The bills were defeated 33 votes to 29.

But with new senators to take their seats on July 7 for the first time since Abbott's conservative coalition government took power in an election in September, the bills are expected to be passed by a narrow margin. Coal mining magnate and carbon tax critic Clive Palmer leads four new senators who have promised their allegiance to his influential Palmer United Party.

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But Things Might Be Changing In The United States

The AP is reporting:

The Supreme Court on Monday placed limits on the sole Obama administration program already in place to deal with power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

The justices said that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority in some cases to force companies to evaluate ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This rule applies when a company needs a permit to expand facilities or build new ones that would increase overall pollution. Carbon dioxide is the chief gas linked to global warming.

Carbon dioxide makes up about 3 tenths of a percent 350ppm = 0.035% (more like three one hundredths) of the atmosphere or something like that. Water vapor is the major greenhouse gas.