Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Sorry for the late start today. For some reason, four of the five wells scheduled to come off the confidential -- data not yet posted -- still listed on the confidential list, with release date of today (a dynamic link).

Active rigs:

	12/3/2014	12/03/2013	12/03/2012	12/03/2011	12/03/2010
Active Rigs	189	193	182	199	164

RBN Energy: announcement for next energy school, Calgary, Canada.

Mike Filloon: most of Oasis' acreage in North Dakota will be uneconomic if oil prices remain low.

The Keystone is dead. I think I've said that for over two years now. Whatever. Yahoo!Finance is reporting:

The extensive delays — prompted by the requirement that the U.S. government sign off on the project, since it crosses an international border, and the fierce battle waged by environmentalists to stop that from happening — have driven up the project’s costs. TransCanada says building the Keystone link across Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska would now cost some $8 billion, up from the originally estimated $5.4 billion, with shippers covering much of the additional charges.

Meanwhile, oil prices are plunging, with Saudi Arabia clearly taking aim directly at Canada’s oil sands projects as one of the chief threats to its global market dominance. The so-called sour crude that the Saudis are selling to the U.S., doesn’t compete head-to-head with the light, sweet crude oil produced in Texas and Oklahoma.

Rather, Saudi Arabia has taken aim at making Canadian oil sands output too costly in the American marketplace. That’s why Saudi Arabia has initiated a price war, slashing prices to the U.S. and pressing OPEC to keep production at its current levels.

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JOBS

Expectations: 233,000. Reality: 208,000. MarketWatch is reporting:

Private-sector hiring slowed in November, as employers added 208,000 jobs, ADP reported Wednesday. Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires had expected a November gain of 223,000, compared with an originally reported increase of 230,000 in October.

For newbies, remember, these are the "magic numbers" for

• First time claims, unemployment benefits: 400,000 (> 400,000: economic stagnation)
• New jobs: 200,000 (< 200,000 new jobs: economic stagnation)

We are five, six, seven years into the Obama recovery, and this is the best we can do, 208,000 new jobs?

Remember, less than 200,000 new jobs is consistent with economic stagnation. These numbers were "defined" prior to the Obama administration and have been used at the blog since 2009. Not only is 203,000 bad on the face of it, but:

• we are in the fifth, sixth, or seventh year of recovery
• we have an Obama administration that defined its success by jobs recovery 
• trillions in stimulus; $18 trillion in debt; much of it under Obama administration; nothing to show for it
• holiday season hiring (although, perhaps, seasonal hiring is not included in the ADP number
• analysts expected a much better number

Does Wall Street care? Nope, the gap between Wall Street and Main Street continues to widen -- the Dow is up 31 points, and is trading at new highs. I see the headline story: Wal-Mart sees "perpetual" 2% to 3% growth.

By the way, and I'm rambling: immigration/amnesty is "the key to economic growth" (CEO of Caterpillar) and retailers like Wal-Mart, Dollar Store, McDonalds will continue to grow.

Back to jobs. The story is everywhere. I'm curious how Bloomberg reported this story. Here it is:

Resilient domestic demand, supported in part by falling energy costs, is encouraging employers to add to headcounts even as global economies struggle. Faster wage gains would help provide an added boost to household spending, which makes up almost 70 percent of the economy.

“The labor market is looking pretty good,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics Inc. in White Plains, New York, whose projection for a 210,000 gain was among the closest in the Bloomberg survey. “The labor market’s in pretty good health. The only issue really is the hourly earnings numbers, which remain stubbornly depressed.” 

LOL.  This sentence was a non sequitur and says much about the writer:

Faster wage gains would help provide an added boost to household spending, which makes up almost 70 percent of the economy.

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Global Warming

Extreme Weather

Ice Age Now

I guess it depends on where you put your thermometers, and which thermometers you want to "read." For Chicagoans, who read their own thermometers, it's been the coldest winter in 110 years. Eleven decades. Five score and ten years. More than a century. Liberal CBS Chicago local is reporting:

This year has not only been one of the coldest in Chicago, it is also one of the few places on the entire planet that was colder than average this year.

In fact, none of us have never experienced a year as cold as 2014.

The last time the average annual year-to-date temperature was this cold was back in 1904.

According to the Gerontology research group, there is nobody from Illinois born before 1904 that is still living. Nationwide, there are 18 people older than 110 years old.

Perhaps a good reason why not to put the Obama Presidential Library there. Maybe Ferguson.

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Won't Call In the A-Team

Behind in the war on ISIS, the Obama administration remains opposed to calling in the A-Team ("A" for atomic). Thomson Reuters is reporting:

The White House reiterated U.S. policy against cooperating with Iran in the fight against Islamic State on Wednesday in the wake of Iranian air strikes in Iraq.

Doesn't want to get upstaged, I suppose, by yet another JV team in the mideast.