Monday, September 8, 2014

Active rigs:

	9/8/2014	09/08/2013	09/08/2012	09/08/2011	09/08/2010
Active Rigs	194	184	191	198	143

RBN Energy: stocks and PADDs and export rules -- gulf coast crude supply / demand balance.

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Propane Preparation In The Northeast

ValleyNews is reporting:

Montpelier — Northeast propane dealers are urging customers to fill their tanks this summer to help prevent shortages linked to last winter’s record high prices.

Residential propane prices have dropped from the more than $4 per gallon peak last winter, but the infrastructure challenges in the region that drove those shortages remain, industry representatives say.

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The Wall Street Journal
News and Comment
Not Necessarily Fair, Certainly Not Balanced

ISIS calls for ceasefire, admits defeat -- after listening to President's three-year plan to defeat Islamic State. I made that up, except for the part about the three-year plan.

A Commerce Department reading has become one of the consequential reports ... with the power to roll [massage?] estimates on the impact of ObamaCare.

Harvard University gets largest-ever donation: $350 million from Hong Kong-born, Harvard-educated investor; to the university's School of Public Health.

US natural gas fuels Mexican boom. Link here.

Bumper crop expected for US corn. Link here. Mostly likely due to global warming, less acreage for necessary, with that 0.85 degree increase in global temperature over the past century.

The nation's corn crop is in prime health thanks to near-perfect weather this year, and farmers could see the highest yields in history, according to forecasts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a handful of private firms.

"We've reached a point where supply is swamping demand, and because of that we're having a price adjustment like we haven't seen for years," said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities, a brokerage in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Corn for delivery in September fell to $3.35 3/4 a bushel last week, the lowest closing price since June 29, 2010, on the Chicago Board of Trade.

The USDA predicts the U.S. will produce 14.03 billion bushels of corn this year, eclipsing last year's record of 13.93 billion bushels. This is despite farmers planting fewer acres this year. Corn acreage in the spring was down 4% from a year earlier to 91.6 million acres..

The Los Angeles Times

Even as Metrolink (the LA metropolitan light rail system) ridership plunges, the state pushes on with the bullet train. What was Einstein's definition of insanity? One major reason for ridership decline: not arriving on schedule.

Santa Ana to be sprayed with insecticide amid big West Nile outbreak.

Another good news story: 30% of California schoolchildren either "undocumented" or don't speak English -- these are the folks that will be needed for the jobs "Americans" won't take, and to staff McDonald's.  But "they" blame US companies for failing to develop a skilled workforce. LOL. The AP is reporting:

U.S. workers face a dim future, with stagnant or falling pay and fewer openings for full-time jobs.

That's the picture that emerges from a survey of Harvard Business School alumni.
More than 40 percent of the respondents foresee lower pay and benefits for workers. Roughly half favor outsourcing work over hiring staffers. A growing share prefer part-time employees. Nearly half would rather invest in new technology than hire or retain workers.

At the same time, it's becoming harder for the executives to find skilled workers, according to the survey results being released Monday.

Jan Rivkin, one of the survey's lead authors, suggested that a failure by companies to develop a skilled workforce could ultimately hurt those companies and the competitiveness of the U.S. economy.

It's hard to develop a skilled workforce, I assume, when 30% of your pool is "undocumented" and/or don't speak your company's language.