Top "personal" story:
surgeon donates $50 million to my alma mater.
USC will be constructing a new building for bioscience research,
thanks in part to a $50-million gift from Gary K. Michelson, a retired
orthopedic surgeon and inventor of spinal implants and other medical
devices, the university is announcing Monday.
The new,
190,000-square-foot USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience will
house up to 30 labs investigating a range of biomedical topics. With
groundbreaking expected later this year and completion in three years,
it will be located at the southwest quadrant of the main campus south of
downtown Los Angeles. Michelson’s $50 million is less than half of the
total anticipated cost but was needed to move the project ahead,
officials said.
Michelson’s gift is unusual since the 64-year-old West
Los Angeles resident did not graduate from USC and previously had little
contact with the university. Much of his medical career was spent at
Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood.
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or what you think you might have read here.
There is
a nice post on MLPs over at SeekingAlpha this morning, strictly from an investment point of view. I don't know/follow the contributor. Kinder Morgan is in the news; that's the reason this
SeekingAlpha article caught my attention; more on KMI later.
One of several companies the contributor talks about is EPD, a company that has nothing (?) to do with the Bakken:
EPD is exceptionally conservative with its payout, and it now sports a
coverage ratio of 1.6x. In other words, while the company only pays out
$0.69 a quarter, it has the capacity to payout $1.10 quarterly. Over the
past five years, EPD has been growing its cash flow faster than its
distribution, so its coverage ratio has continued to climb to higher
levels. In 2009, the coverage ratio stood at a more reasonable 1.2x, but
thanks to modest distribution growth despite excellent operating
performance, investors are getting a smaller share of cash today. As a
consequence, EPD yields a more modest 4.3%.
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Speaking of Kinder Morgan,
RBN Energy continues its excellent series on the company. Kinder Morgan caught my interest a couple of weeks ago after reading a post at
SeekingAlpha suggesting that KMI getting into oil tankers was a strategic mistake for Kinder Morgan. Since then, it looks like my original thoughts are probably not too far off the mark. Here's
the RBN Energy link for today's installment.
In December 2013 US Midstream giant Kinder Morgan agreed to spend nearly
$1 Billion to get into the oil tanker business by buying two companies
that own 5 US registered “Jones Act” vessels and are in the process of
building 4 more. These tankers are part of an exclusive fleet of just 42
self propelled ocean going vessels that deliver oil or refined products
between US ports. Booming US crude production along with constrained
onshore delivery infrastructure have increased demand for tankers that
can ship oil along coastal waters. Long-term charter rates for these
tankers jumped to over $100,000/day in 2013 compared to an average of
$56,000/day in 2012. Today we begin a blog series looking at the US
flagged tanker fleet and plans to expand it by 35 percent in the next 2
years.
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The Wall Street Journal
Arctic passage opens challenges for US military. Thinning polar ice expected to give way to new commercial waterways and resource-rich frontier. As previously reported in the blog, the Obama administration has pretty much ceded the Arctic to the Russians, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Canadians, and just about anyone else who might have a claim. Fortunately presidents come, and presidents go.
The 40-year-old Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Star returned to the Arctic Ocean this summer after seven years in semiretirement, charging into a thinning polar ice sheet that U.S. defense officials predict will give way to new commercial waterways and a resource-rich frontier by midcentury.
Navy officials say the Arctic will give the U.S. its first new ocean to police since the annexation of the Pacific Northwest in 1846. As the ice surrounding the North Pole retreats, officials say, commercial shippers will be able to eventually move goods faster between Asia and Europe. More open seas will also give energy companies greater access to offshore oil and gas in regions controlled by the U.S. and estimated by military officials to be worth $1 trillion.
"The inevitable opening of the Arctic will essentially create a new coast on America's north," said Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the Navy's top officer.
Even though the anticipated change is years away, Navy and Coast Guard officials say the U.S. needs to prepare now to patrol and defend the new waterways—designing ice-resistant ships and expanding Arctic naval exercises—when military scientists predict a new expanse of water freed of ice.
Wow, this is incredible. Front section news:
a $100 million impressionist gift for Denver.
The Denver Art Museum is set to announce Monday the largest donation in its history—a gift of 22 paintings worth more than $100 million that will nearly triple the size of its Impressionist collection.
The gift, bequeathed by Denver philanthropist Frederic Hamilton, includes what will be the museum's first Vincent van Gogh canvas, "Edge of a Wheat Field with Poppies," as well as four works by Claude Monet and paintings by masters such as Paul Cézanne, Edouard Manet and Auguste Renoir.
"It's a game changer," said museum director Christoph Heinrich. "It adds a lot of value and prestige to the museum."
The gift, which increases the museum's tally of Monet canvases to six, makes this one of the strongest Impressionist collections in the West, Mr. Heinrich said. It's still no rival to institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, whose Impressionist collections can compete with those of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
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Now that Michelle's cronies have made their millions, President Obama will turn over the "troubled" government healthcare website to the professionals.
Accenture is tasked with fixing HealthCare.gov website. Good luck.
Christie not sure when he learned of bridge lane closures. He will know more once the shredding is completed. Remember: the debacle occurred over a four-day period. Certainly by the second day he was asking questions. If not, he was derelict in simply not trying to fix the problem immediately.
Has Italy figured it out?
Italy plans to step up its drilling program. Apparently Italy has the third-largest crude reserves in Europe.
Lots of automotive news in the second section but the automotive industry has never captured my attention, much. The general gist of all the articles suggest a) not much movement toward all-electric vehicles; b) lots of movement toward more automobile manufacturing in US; c) Ford seems to lead the pack among US manufacturers (yes, there are two: GM and Ford), but most everyone else is now building in the US, probably because a) lots of cheap energy; and, b) the US economy, along with China's, is about the only economy that shows any life.
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From "
Overheard":
The oil business is no stranger to hedging. Neither are the analysts who track it.
Sanford C. Bernstein has been consistently bullish on oil prices even as others, notably , foresee weakness.
Yet with oil prices down 6% this year, even Bernstein seems to be entertaining some doubts.
On Friday, it put out a report called "What a Conceivable (but Still Unlikely) Bear Case for 2014 Global Oil Price Looks Like."
As the caveats indicate, Bernstein is nowhere near reversing its positive view. Rather, it analyzes how three big swing factors—Libya, Iraq and Iran—might, just might, add to oil supply this year, moderating prices. Examining potential outcomes, Bernstein estimates they might boost the world's effective oil capacity by 450,000 barrels a day. That would be meaningful: Effective spare capacity stands currently at about 3.4 million barrels a day.
Hence, Bernstein sees "considerable volatility for shorter-term investors"; in plain English, oil could fall in 2014.
But it remains "bullish long term oil price." In Wall Street-ese, that is a way of saying this year is a buying opportunity. Who says doubt discourages investment?
I always like buying opportunities.
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The Los Angeles Times
Disclaimer: this is not an entertainment site. If you want to read about Diane Keaton's bizarre outburst at the Golden Globes, google it.
There are a lot of stories on Jacqueline Bisset's speech last night at the Golden Globes. I, for one, enjoyed it, and was intrigued by her. I don't know her well; I doubt I have seen her in more than one or two movies; I really don't know anything more about her than what I read at wiki, but she is clearly a survivor. It was back in 1968 that she replaced Mia Farrow to play opposite Frank Sinatra. Anyone who learns to speak French fluently as a second language and is educated in French in London is pretty high on my list.
I wish Mr Dern had won over Mr DiCaprio. Mr Dern and I have a lot in common. Mostly he is old and he shares my first name.
Tina Fey and Amy P. were so much more subdued than I expected. I was pleasantly surprised. Is it just me or is Tina Fey getting prettier with age?
The Los Angeles Times is correct: "Matthew McConaughey was in a zone of his own." I could have listened to him for another 30 minutes.