Flaring Update -- October 22, 2014

From Bakken.com:

This July, North Dakota set goals to reduce flaring in the state significantly by 2020. The state planned to gradually reduce the amount of natural gas that each well site is allowed to burn off each quarter. According to the U.S. Energy Department, North Dakota was on track to meet these goals as of August. 

In August, the state reported flaring 28 percent of its natural gas, getting pretty close to its goal of a 26 percent flare-rate by the fourth quarter of 2014. Oil production itself rose in August as well, making it more difficult to reach its flaring goals.

From the Director's Cut for August data (October 15, 2014):

• NDIC now breaks down location of captured gas: statewide (72%); statewide Bakken (72.5%); non-FBIR Bakken (74.4%); FBIR Bakken (64.5%)

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Toward A Cashless Society

To be brutally frank, I never thought Apple would deliver on ApplePay in my lifetime. I thought there were too many hurdles. Even if Apple did it in my lifetime, I thought it would be another decade. But here it is, seemingly overnight, and folks are now paying with ApplePay on their iPhones. I saw one transaction today.

I'm sure everyone saw the amateur video in which a customer paid with ApplePay at a McDonald's.

A couple of minutes ago a reader said he received an e-mail from Wal-Greens saying they were now accepting ApplePay.

I replied:

I think Apple will change the way things are paid for in this country.

There are some glitches, to be sure (Bank of America / Apple reported a glitch today), but those glitches will be worked out.

The glitch, by the way, "proved" that there is no way for anyone to hack one's credit card number: neither Bank of America or Apple could verify a glitch had occurred; neither could access the credit card number. In the end, they had to take the word of the customer and the "evidence."

Apple may have the only"really" secure way to pay right now. The banks all went along, but the scuttlebutt is they had no choice. Once one credit card signed on with Apple, they all had to.

And that will be the same for retailers. I have a soft spot in my heart for Apple for many, many reasons, but none of them have to do with investing. I have never invested in Apple (I missed that one).

Maybe I should re-phrase that first sentence: Apple has, in one stroke, changed the way we will pay for things in the future, not just in the US, but worldwide. Literally overnight. I don't know when we first heard about ApplePay -- two years ago? Whatever.

This is revolutionary. 

I remember two or three years ago, after every quarter, the headline on some business page: What will Apple do next? I haven't seen that headline in a long time.

By the way, this speaks volumes about "focus." Either Tim Cook or someone else at Apple talked about "focus." Paraphrasing Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, or someone else: focus is when you can remain on task even when confronted with something else that is so much bigger and better. Apple put aside tablets some years ago to focus on phones. Then they got back to tablets. Or maybe it was the other way around, I forget. I think they put aside ApplePay until they got the phones and the tablets right. Then they worked on ApplePay. Sure, they can do all this in parallel, but some things have to be developed first, and ...