Spaceholder For Tomorrow's First Post

Update

June 3, 2014: how hilarious -- I am running late. The one thing I did not count on was my wife missing her alarm, which then resulted in me jumping out of bed (for an old man, "jumping" might be a bit of hyperbole), running over to the granddaughters' house and getting them to school. So, everything will be delayed.
 

Original Post

Every weekday morning I have a standard North-Dakota-active-rig post, an RBN-Energy link, and a quick look at the day's Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other headline stories. So this post will be a place holder for tomorrow morning's post, assuming the sun comes up, I get up, and I have a wi-fi connection. Two out of three are sure to happen. And that ain't bad:

Jack Nicolson in Mars Attack
With Congress ceding legislative power to the EPA, we have but one branch of the government working for us, and sometimes I wonder about that group of nine in robes.

The GM Saga: But this story might have legs. There are a lot of ambulance- (and hearse-) chasing lawyers out there. Reuters is reporting that those 13-government-motor deaths attributed to a faulty 67-cent ignition switch may be the tip of the iceberg:

At least 74 people have died in General Motors cars in accidents with some key similarities to those that GM has linked to 13 deaths involving defective ignition switches, a Reuters analysis of government fatal-crash data has determined. Such accidents also occurred at a higher rate in the GM cars than in top competitors’ models, the analysis showed.

NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman told Reuters: “The final death toll associated with this safety defect is not known to NHTSA, but we believe it’s likely that more than 13 lives were lost.”

After all, this is government motors, and Mr Friedman is a government employee, so we're sticking to "our" story.

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Apple: This was an incredibly busy day. I'm not going to talk much about Apple's WWDC right now: there is just too much to digest, but it's easy to find. Suffice it to say, for developers it was a game changer, and for consumers, we will see how it plays out over the next 12 months. Yosemite is free, by the way.

The other big story today: the new EPA rules on the war on coal. The fact that the market actually hit a new high, and oil and natural gas were essentially flat, told me the movers and shakers "blew this off." The real question is this: if things are this dire, why did the EPA stop at 30-30 (cut emissions by 30% by 2030)? Why didn't the EPA go for 90-20 (cut emissions by 90% by 2020)? If the Earth turns into Venus in 2020 it really won't do much good to blame President Obama and the EPA then; it will be too late. The rules are completely arbitrary. 30-30; 90-20; 10-50; 40-20; whatever. If the Earth is on its way to becoming another Venus, we needed a bit more leadership from the president, and 90-20 would have been the least he could have done. Maybe Schwinn wasn't represented at the EPA.

Be that as it may: natural gas is the winner in the US. Coal is the winner everywhere else.

The Taliban exchange. One word: "snookered." Actually two words: "Snookered, again."

I still have to go through the June NDIC hearing dockets, but if you haven't seen them, look at all the requests by Continental Resources for 32 wells on one spacing unit, 2560-acre units. But EOG has a request for 32 wells on a 640-acre spacing unit. Do the math.

More to follow tomorrow. This is a spaceholder for tomorrow, but didn't want to forget this news.

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My condolences go out to his family so do not take this out of context. But really, a full-page story at Rigzone from Reuters on a death of one individual working in the oil sands? Actually, I guess it makes sense. At the end of the story we learn that this is the fourth death at Suncor's site this year; the four deaths  include one woman attacked and killed by a bear. I can't make this stuff up. I must have missed the earlier story on the bear attack. But that's the problem with ending global warming: the bears are making a comeback.

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The other day I got a note from a reader suggesting our oil companies are short-sighted, worried about executing their game plan every quarter (every three months) to keep the shareholders happy. Fortunately the reader doesn't have to despair. Reuters via Rigzone is reporting the price of oil (and by extension, the price of gasoline) could go up by 2035 (I can't make this stuff up):

A potential shortfall in investment in production in the Middle East could create a $15 spike in the oil price by 2035, the energy arm of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said. The world will need to be a total of $40 trillion invested in energy supply and $8 trillion on energy efficiency by 2035 to meet growing demand and falling output from mature sources of energy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report.

The price of oil might spike from $110 to $125 without a $40-trillion investment by 2035. Memo to self: send a letter of concern to my congresswoman.