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Bakken production numbers posted for past several days. When I get caught up I will point out a story regarding these numbers that might interest newbies. We know the overall production numbers for latest reporting period (May, 2014) but we are waiting for the Director's Cut which will be out today or tomorrow.
Unemployment numbers posted; things are not improving in the job market, five years into the "recovery," no matter what the spin. Even The Los Angeles Times is surprised, their headline: jobless claims take surprising jump to 6-week high. (That headline was on the front page of the day's news summary; the headline at the story: "Jobless Claims Rise to 6-Week High, But Remain Relatively Low." I can't make this stuff up. Relatively? UC Irvine? Really?
Sent to me by readers while I was out-of-touch (literally and figuratively).
Bullet Train To Nowhere. California unable to get the land needed for 29-mile opening section in Fresno, California. Fresno? Really?
The state has yet to start full-blown, sustained construction of permanent structures — including bridges, tracks and train stations — at least partly because it lacks most of the Central Valley land needed for an initial 29-mile segment that will pass through Fresno. The state has acquired 71 of 526 parcels needed for the segment, about 13% of the total, according to figures provided by the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
The start of heavy construction is not only symbolically important but could help weaken political and legal opposition to the project. However, slow progress could threaten the state's ability to meet funding deadlines.RBN Energy: Canadian efforts to export LNG slip-sliding away.
RBN Energy: part 3 of the Enbridge story. Must-read; must-save.
Enbridge own and operate the longest liquids pipeline system in North America extending from Fort McMurray in Alberta to Montreal in Eastern Canada and south through the US Midwest to Freeport on the Texas Gulf Coast. Although the major purpose of the pipeline is to deliver heavy western Canadian crude, it also carries light crude to eastern Canada and the US Midwest. Projects underway that are expected to be completed at the end of 2014 will expand flows of light crude to the east by 400 Mb/d. Today we continue our series reviewing the Enbridge initiatives with the Light Oil Market Access (LOMA) projects.
In Episode One of this series, we reviewed the 9 refineries in eastern Canada with combined capacity of 1.3 MMb/d. These refineries mostly process light crude that until recently has come from offshore Atlantic seaboard production and imports, but they are processing growing volumes of US shale oil today. Extensive upgrades, reversals and expansions to the Enbridge network have begun to change the dynamics of crude supply to these refineries. In Episode Two we began with an overview of the Enbridge system and the two huge expansion projects underway to increase eastbound flows. Then we described the Eastern Access project to rebuild and expand Line 6B by the end of 2014. In this episode we cover the second major Eastern Access initiative - the reversal and expansion of Line 9 and start our description of the light oil market access (LOMA) initiative with the Sandpiper project.RBN Energy: dead-cat bounce? Is Gulf of Mexico gas production set to rebound?
Natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has been falling for 15 years, hurt first by hurricane-related rig damage, then more recently by the side effects of the BP/Macondo disaster, the on-shore sale boom, and the resulting sag in gas prices.
But GOM gas production is about to uptick, due largely to two big, long-planned oil and gas projects finally coming online. Is the upcoming increase in gas production in the Gulf the first sign of resurgence, or is it the energy-sector equivalent of a “dead cat bounce.”
In this blog, we consider what is ahead for gas production in the GOM.
The few of us old enough to remember the Houston Astros winning more than 100 games in a season (it has only happened once, in 1998, and as of late July is mathematically impossible in 2014) also can recall a time when wells in the GOM produced a significant portion of US natural gas needs. In 1998, total GOM gas production marketed averaged more than 14 Bcf/d, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), providing 23% of the 61 Bcf/d the US consumed that year.
Fast-forward to 2013. US gas consumption was up 17%, to 71 Bcf/d, but GOM gas production was way down—off 71% to 3.6 Bcf/d. Two events tell much of the tale.
First, in the summer and fall of 2005, two major hurricanes—Katrina and Rita—wreaked havoc on gas (and oil) infrastructure in the Gulf; then, three years later, hurricanes Gustav and Ike did serious damage of their own.
Yet another big hit to GOM gas production came in the aftermath of the BP/Macondo blowout in April 2010, which brought well permitting to a halt and slowed exploration activity. But perhaps the biggest hit of all came from the boom in the production of onshore shale gas, which rose from 5.5 Bcf/d in 2007 to 28 Bcf/d in 2012. In July 2014, the Marcellus region alone produced 15 Bcf/d, several times the Gulf’s total production.
The shale boom resulted not only in ample gas supply and lower, more stable gas prices, but also in gas production nearer to consumption population centers. The model of piping GOM, Louisiana and Texas gas to the Northeast, for example, is now a thing of the past.
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The Bakken
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Global Warming
The warmists predicted this: more snow. CTVNews is reporting:
It may be the middle of summer, but in Winnipeg, a little shred of winter just won't go away.
A filthy, muddy, massive snow pile has defied the seasons and survived the summer heat at the Kenaston snow dump site on the edge of the city. The 18-metre snow pile is the largest of a handful of snow piles still lingering at Winnipeg's four snow-dumping sites, where the city stores the snow it collects in the winter.
Jim Berezowsky, Winnipeg's manager of streets maintenance, says it's not unusual for snow at the dump sites to survive into August. But this year, he's seeing more snow than usual.
"It is significantly higher than in years past," Berezowsky told CTV's Canada AM on Friday. "We didn't receive the extreme heat that we usually do."
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File Under: You Have Got To Be Kidding
From fantasy land as reported by Reuters:
EU regulators have begun legal proceedings against 24 member states, including Germany, for failing to enforce a law on energy efficiency, the European Commission said on Wednesday.
Energy saving has risen up the list of EU priorities since the conflict with the European Union's biggest oil and gas supplier Russia over its actions in Ukraine increased concerns about energy security.
Commission spokeswoman Marlene Holzner told reporters proceedings began automatically against Germany because it had not enforced EU legislation on saving energy. She only named Germany, but the Commission said that in total, 24 of the bloc's 28 member states missed a June 5 deadline for fully transposing the European Union's Energy Efficiency Directive into their national laws.
The directive was agreed by member states in 2012 to enforce an existing target to cut energy use by 20 percent by 2020 compared with projected use. The Commission now says the bloc is broadly on track to meet that target through measures such as building insulation.
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On The Road To New England
Hey, Maybe Fossil Fuel Isn't So Bad, After All
Better than freezing:
PORTLAND, Maine — Wyman Station, the state’s largest power plant, is no longer on the market as its owners saw increasing profits from the oil-fired power plant in the first quarter of 2014, when winter constraints on natural gas supply for electric generation resulted in greater demand for power from the oil-fired generator.
After logging a loss from its Maine fossil fuel assets in 2013, Florida-based owner NextEra Energy — which owns Wyman Station — revealed in an earnings statement that it would keep the 796-megawatt portfolio of oil-fired generation resources in Maine.
“During the first quarter of 2014, based on a reassessment of valuation in light of new market information, the company reversed its earlier decision to sell its 796-megawatt merchant fossil portfolio in Maine,” the company said in its first-quarter earnings statement.It looks like the environmental nuts got their wish: stop the transmission lines from the hydroelectric power from Canada and stop the NG pipelines, and continues burning oil for electricity.
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Renewable Energy
Plenty of corn for ethanol: this year's corn production should exceed government forecasts.
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Secular Stagflation
Cheap Money
Real cheap money: GE borrows $1.2 billion for ten years for 4.25%
New theory concerning the Fed: secular stagflation:
Recent comments by the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer, indicate questions within the central bank about whether the slow growth that has followed the recent recession could reflect, or at least could potentially morph into, longer-term issues within the economy. And while Fischer avoided the phrase "secular stagnation" in his Monday speech, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota is planning to host a November symposium that directly addresses the issue of secular stagnation by name, CNBC has learned.
The theory of secular stagnation was first developed by Alvin Hansen, who wondered in the midst of the Great Depression whether diminishing investment opportunities in a maturing economy would stunt economic growth and permanently prevent full employment—at least in the absence of robust government intervention, which soon came in the form of the second world war.
These theories have found a new life in the aftermath of the so-called Great Recession, as the U.S. is experiencing (albeit to a much less dramatic degree) slow growth over a relatively long time period.
In November 2013, noted economist Larry Summers (who was considered, alongside current Chair Janet Yellen, a leading candidate to head the Fed) began to invoke the same phrase in arguing that the interest rate that the economy requires has fallen below zero.
he problem is that it is very difficult for nominal interest rates to fall below zero due to a constraint known as the zero lower bound. The upshot? Even with the Fed keeping short-term rates just above zero, market interest rates cannot possibly create adequate demand for loans, and thus the economy stagnates.
Without embracing the secular stagnation thesis, in Sweden on Monday, second highest-ranking Fed official Fischer gestured toward those concerns.
Noting slow growth in "labor supply, capital investment and productivity," Fischer warned that "This may well reflect factors related to or predating the recession that are also holding down growth" and noted: "How much of this weakness on the supply side will turn out to be structural—perhaps contributing to a secular slowdown—and how much is temporary but longer than usual lasting remains a crucial and open question."
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From The Land of Fruits and Nuts and Peaches
And so it goes:
A group of California farm workers for the nation's largest peach operation voted on whether to kick out or accept representation by the United Farm Workers. That was last November.
They still don't know the results of the vote.Why?
The state's Agriculture Labor Relations Board (ALRB) won't reveal the vote pending the outcome of an investigation into the voting. The investigation has been going on for months, and no one knows when it will be completed.
In the meantime, the ALRB appointed a mediator who wrote up a three-year contract that, under California law, can unilaterally be imposed on the farmer, Dan Gerawan. He's gone to court to stop that.
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And That's The Way It Is
With regard to global warming, shut up and color: the debate is over. We're all doomed.
With regard to the president's Syrian policy: any criticism of that policy is "horseshit." The president's words, not mine.
The funny thing is this: I was unaware that President had a Syrian policy. Hillary said the same thing: the emperor has no clothes. I never understood that idiom until this president came along.
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Broken Promises
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