Friday, April 4, 2014

A Re-Entry Well; Problems With Fracking Earlier Wells

This is kind of interesting. In today's daily activity report:
  • 28071, loc, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24C-13-2HR,
This will be a re-entry well for this earlier well:
  • 19359, TA, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24C-13-2H, t9/11; cum 32K 1/14 (in last month of production, on-line for only one day); TA - temporarily abandoned; 6 stages; 674K lbs sand frack;
There are two other wells on confidential status on that 3-well pad.

Other completed wells in this section, running north:
  • 24438, 527, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24D-13-5H, t8/13; cum 74K 2/14;
  • 24439, 1,733, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24E-13-6H,t8/13; cum 74K 2/14;
  • 25048, 1,759, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24D-13-7H, t8/13; cum 91K 2/14;
  • 21714, 1,626, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24C-24-4H, 21 stages; 2.7 million lbs sand, originally planned to be 27 stages; 6 stages were omitted due to problems, t4/12; cum 222K 2/14; 2,500 bbls/month
  • 20476, 840, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-24C-13-3H, t3/12; cum 194K 2/14;
This well ends in this section but is sited in the section to the north:
  • 18308, 1,562, Petro-Hunt, Sorenson 152-96-13B-24-1H, t1/10; cum 290K 2/14; 2,500 bbls/month 
For newbies, it might have taken awhile, but these wells with cumulative production greater than 150K have probably paid for themselves, and continued production costs are relatively minimal.

Re-entry wells are tracked here.

This is what I find interesting: this drilling unit is held by production; nevertheless, Petro-Hunt is going back in to complete a well that had problems earlier on. 

Sixteen (16) New Permits, Including Four More Helling Trust Federal Permits -- The Williston Basin, North Dakota, USA

Active rigs:


4/4/201404/04/201304/04/201204/04/201104/04/2010
Active Rigs192186207172102


Sixteen (16) new permits --
  • Operators: CLR (6), Oasis (4), MRO (2), BR (2), Hess, Petro-Hunt
  • Fields: Stoneview (Divide), Alkali Creek (Mountrail), Moccasin Creek (Dnn), Keene (McKenzie), Antelope (McKenzie), Union Center (McKenzie)
    Comments: Four (4) more Oasis Helling Trust Federal permits;
Wells coming off the confidential list today were posted earlier; see sidebar at the right.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

I look forward to the day that the older granddaughter becomes interested in Amelia Mary Earhart.

I have just begun the centennial biography of Amelia Earhart, c. 1997, by Donald M Goldstein and Katherine V Dillon.

The biography was published by the "first name in aviation publishing," Brassey's. I have read many, many publications by Brassey. I first came across Brassey while stationed in England. I suspect I still have some of their books, though I threw away most of my aviation books away after I retired from the USAF. As noted earlier, when I retired from the Air Force, I cut almost all links with the military.  I have fond memories of the Air Force, but I wanted to make sure I moved on. But I digress.

The background to the book is interesting. At the time of publication, Donald Goldstein was a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and former air Force officer. Katherine Dillon was a retired Air Force chief warrant officer who had collaborated with Dr Goldstein and the late Dr Gordon W. Prange on eight bestselling books, including At Dawn We Slept and Miracle at Midway (both of which I read while assigned overseas). I don't know if I still have my copy of Miracle of Midway but I know that I have At Dawn We Slept still in some packing box.

It turns out that Goldstein and Dillon were provided some incredibly good material, previously unpublished by two remarkable men: the late Captain Laurence F Safford, USN (Ret.) and John F. Luttrell, a Georgia businessman.

It turns out that Safford had been Chief, Naval Communications Security, in 1941. Prange had interviewed Safford for his book, At Dawn We Slept, and after publication they kept in touch.  Safford eventually sent Prange a copy of a manuscript concerning Amelia Earhart for comments and suggestions. Prange was too busy with other commitments to work on the Safford/Earhart project. The manuscript languished in Prange's files until after his death and Goldstein/Dillon "discovered" them again.

In retirement, Safford had discovered that the US Navy had installed a high-frequency direction finder on Howland Island in the Pacific in 1936. Amelia Earhart buffs will recognize Howland Island; it was in the immediate area that Earhart was presumed to have been lost. As Chief, NCS, Safford should have been apprized of the high-frequency direction finder on Howland Island, but he was unaware of it until his research during retirement. One thing led to another, including details that might help solve the Amelia Earhart mystery.

Safford's manuscript was an engineering manuscript meant for engineers written by an engineer. Goldstein and Dillon needed the human touch to round out the Amelia Earhart story.

Enter John Luttrell.

Safford had tried to solve the Amelia Earhart mystery from an engineer's point of view, "on the basis of such factors as radio wavelengths, fuel capacity, the aircraft's capabilities, air routes, strip maps, weather, and preparations for the project. In contrast, Luttrell was and is a romantic, fascinated by the mysterious, the bizarre. It was not his nature to accept the idea of a simple if regrettable accident. He plunged deep into the various theories -- some of them indeed weird -- as to what might have been Amelia's fate. Like Safford, he gathered an enormous amount of material, much of it unpublished."

The library is closing. I will have to continue later. Sorry.

Remaining Drilling Locations -- Random Update -- Oasis

Oasis, according to its March, 2014, corporate presentation, on slide 5, says the company has 3,590 gross operated locations on a slide titled "Remaining Drilling Locations."

That was year-end 2013, 3,590 gross operated locations on 506,960 net acres. One year earlier, the number of gross operation locations was 2,020. At the end of 2012, Oasis had 335,383 net acres.

For 2013:

506,960 / 640 = 792 sections.

3,590 wells / 792 sections = 4.5 wells / section.

That means an average of 8 to 9 wells / 1280-acre drilling unit.

On that same slide, Oasis says it is comfortable with estimating ~ 10 wells per drilling spacing unit in their inventory.

[For newbies: in the very best Bakken, a drilling spacing unit might equate to 640 acres (one section); the majority of the Bakken is administratively permitted on 1280-acre units. In the past year, there are more and more 2560-overlapping units being permitted which were designed to capture "orphan" acres along section lines that would otherwise be lost due to "setback rules." Based on recent dockets, it appears that there may be far more wells permitted in these 2560-acre overlapping units than just the four that should be required to capture those "orphan" acres. At least that's how I see the DSUs (drilling spacing units) in the Bakken. So, the very best Bakken areas are projected to 8 wells per section; but generally, it appears the projection is closer to 8 wells per 1280-acre unit spacing unit. On top of that is the wild card: the additional wells that will be drilled on the same surface locations but at 2560-acre spacing.]

Let's see what the projected density was at the end of 2012:

335,383 net acres / 640 acres = 524 sections

2,020 operated locations / 524 sections = 3.85 wells / section.

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A Note to the Granddaughters
Birds

It's a beautiful day in the Dallas area. A bit cool, but sunny and clear, and not much wind. It has been a great day for cycling and I've been running a number of errands. The highlight of the day: spotting a male cardinal. Wow, they are beautiful birds. I can only imagine thousands of years ago, an-otherwise-colored bird underwent a mutation, resulting in the red coloration. Regardless, they are very, very pretty birds, perhaps my favorite neighborhood bird, unless there are woodpeckers in the area.

I mentioned that to a friend at Starbucks this morning. He agreed, saying that his wife's favorite bird was the cardinal.

He went on to talk about the blue jays -- how there seem to be so many this year, and so healthy looking. My granddaughter and I noted that the other night. It appears a pair of blue jays are moving into a tree near our apartment. Blue jays are a welcome break from sparrows, but in the big scheme of things, blue jays are bullies. Cardinals seem to be much more gentle and pleasant. 

On a completely different note, rarely I get a chance to listen to talk radio in the afternoon. Recently, "Savage Nation" was added to the afternoon lineup on some radio station here in the DFW area. I've never cared for Hannity -- maybe, many, many years ago, I listened to him, but lost interest in him quickly. I still think Limbaugh is the most politically astute of the talk radio shows, but over time I find myself listening to him less often. I may listen to a few minutes on any given day, but that's about it.

Surprisingly, Mike Savage has been quite a surprise (wow, that's poor writing). I thought he would have been a right-wing nut after being banned from England some years ago but he's a Libertarian. He can't stand Hannity or Rush. He can't stand most of the politicians of either party. But it's the banter, the music, the phone calls that make him interesting.

But I would rather watch for cardinals and blue jays than listen to anyone on talk radio.

For Investors Only

Updates

Later, 4:46 p.m. Central Time: it appears WTI closed at about $101.08. 

Later, 1:05 p.m. Central Time: WTI-Brent spread at $5.39. WTI up $1.04, to $101.33; Brent up only 62 cents to $106.77. 

Later, 11:05 a.m. Central Time: trading at new highs -- BHI, CRR, ECA, EOG, EPD, ERF, HAL, HES, HP, MDU, PSX, SLB, SRE, WLL. 

Later, 10:46 a.m. Central Time: that's a surprise -- oil is up over a full percent, and the market has now turned negative. I would not have expected that. Everyone was so happy with the "Goldilocks" employment numbers and the hourly wage numbers that I thought the market would have stayed green throughout the day (it's now down about 25 points); and I never expected oil to be back up at $101 today, after it started turning down earlier this week. Something geo-political going on, Crimean, Ukraine, North Korea, California? An Obama speech would have resulted in both the market and oil going down. What's natural gas doing? Down almost a percent; that's unexpected also.

Speaking of "Goldilocks," when Corporate America looks back on 2014, they might realize this was the "Goldilocks" era (I'm thinking of COP's announcement of a $6 billion ethane cracker project in Texas):
  • "we're" well past all that talk of a double dip recession; the economy should keep improving
  • energy costs / access to energy in the US should remain a huge bargain vis a vis global energy 
  • an incredibly well-trained underemployed work force in the US with little wage pressure
  • wars for the US winding down
  • Putin's cat-bird seat looks more and more like a house of cards
  • ObamaCare (one-sixth of the economy) baked into CFO's projections
  • really low-cost credit
  • credit markets loosening up
  • mid-term elections; gridlock in Washington; lame-duck presidency  
  • trickle-down wealth effect 
Original Post
 
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you think you might have read.

Oil is up about 3/4ths of one percent.

EOG is up $1.00 in pre-market trading. KOG is up 31 cents; one doesn't often see KOG in pre-market tradking. T is up 13 cents. HAL is down 38 cents.

Merrill Lynch initiated coverage on KOG: a BUY rating with a price objective of $16.

A reader once told me -- maybe two years ago -- that once "Wall Street" discovers the Bakken, investment in the Bakken will take off. I don't know about you, but with this BUY recommendation on a small Bakken operator like KOG is made by Merrill Lynch, I would argue that "Wall Street" has discovered the Bakken.

UBS discovered Newfield the other day, I believe. I'm starting to forget.

I said KOG was a "small" Bakken operator. I track the Bakken operators here.

This might be a good day to note the market capitalization and debt of some names in the Bakken and other shale plays I follow (data from Yahoo!Finance, this date; many figures rounded, arbitrarily):
  • EOG: $55 billion; $6 billion
  • KOG: $3.4 billion; $2.3 billion
  • WLL: $8.8 billion; $2.7 billion
  • CLR: $24 billion; $4.7 billion
  • OAS: $4.4 billion; $2.5 billion
  • NOG: $0.9 billion; $0.6 billion
  • TPLM: $0.7 billion; $0.3 billion
  • AMZG: $0.2 billion; $0.07 billion
  • HK: $1.8 billion; $3 billion
  • MDU: $7 billion; $2 billion
  • SD: $3 billion; $3 billion
By the way, three of those data points surprised me (negatively); two of those surprised me (positively).
Disclaimer: I often make typographical errors; these were not double-checked as much as they should have been. I could have occasionally transposed market cap and enterprise value (though I think I did not). These are for my use only; look at them at your own risk; go to the source for "the truth."

And The Number Is: 192,000; Cognitive Dissonance

Exactly what ADP expected. Tepid.

Politico: "jobs numbers improve." -- that was the headline in the google search, but I sure didn't see it at the article itself:
The economy added 192,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate remained at 6.7 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday.
The report slightly missed expectations, with most analysts predicting an addition of around 206,000 jobs last month, according to a Bloomberg survey.

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Cognitive Dissonance Run Amok
Sent To Me By A Reader
A google search would probably give one the source of these six "thoughts":
1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.
This is an over-simplification and should not be taken out of context. They would be some interesting points from which to begin a discussion. Smile. 

The one that bothers me the most, and may be most accurate is #4. This country has so much potential it just amazes me that the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" seems to be widening. I can't back that up with statistics. I may be wrong. Perhaps the gap that is widening the most is the gap between the top 0.1 percent and the top 1 percent as noted by others as recently as last month.

Perhaps it is the gap between the middle-middle class and the upper-poor that is narrowing. And not in a good way.

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Random Update On The American Energy Revolution; Global Warming And "Cognitive Dissonance"

We may not be able to build new refineries in this country, but we can sure expand cracker units. FuelFix is reporting:
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. broke ground on the first component of a $6 billion expansion Wednesday that executives say could be transformative for the company.

Crews are preparing a site at the company’s Baytown facility for a massive new ethane cracker, which company officials say will be the first new major facility of its type built in the U.S. in a decade.

The investment, which officials say will contribute to the creation of about 400 jobs, represents a huge step for the company that’s jointly owned by Chevron and Phillips 66.
Part of the American Energy Revolution.

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Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you think you may have read here.

I post not less than ten stand-alone posts on any given day, and update countless more earlier posts. It's hard to separate the chaff from the wheat with so much posting.

This $6 billion ethane cracker expansion is wheat, not chaff.

Granddaughters need to be thinking about what careers they can be looking forward to only ten years from now. Petroleum engineering is going to be around for a long, long time.

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The Minneapolis StarTribune is reporting:
Heavy snow walloped the metro area and surrounding communities Friday, persisting into the morning commute and making travel challenging during this unusual but not unprecedented dose of winter in April.
The amount of snow so far — 12 inches or close to it mostly along the metro’s western and northern edges — combined with below-freezing temperatures and strong wind gusts to leave motorists with a most unpleasant end of the week travel scenario. Across from Duluth, Superior, WI, was pounded with nearly 18 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.
I love that "unusual but not unprecedented" dose of winter in April ... journalists have fallen hook, link, and sinker for all that global warming talk, when they see this much winter in April, it causes "cognitive dissonance." 

For Investors Only -- Climbing The Wall Of Worry

"Everyone" is looking forward to a great jobs report today (posted at 7:26, April 4, 2014). Regardless of the numbers, it is the "spin" I look forward to. ADP estimates 191,000 new jobs added (estimate published two days ago). For newbies, anything below 200,000 is a disappointment at this point in an economic recovery, though 190,000 would be a bit more than the recent 12-month average.

Ah, here it is, the spin. Reuters headline: US maintains solid job growth as winter fades. LOL. By any reasonable measure, this was a disappointment. The ADP predicted this number, but a Bloomberg survey suggested 206,000. Anything below 200,000 is a disappointment, and it's a huge disappointment at this point in a six-year recovery. The worse thing a government can do in a recession is institute a tax increase, and ObamaCare was one of the biggest tax increases -- and a new tax, at that -- foisted on the unassuming American public.  

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This is a great article. After reading Sylvia Nasar's Grand Pursuit, this "conflict" between the Fed and the Obama administration makes all kinds of sense. 
Political gridlock is slowing U.S. economic growth, impacting the confidence and budgets of businesses across the country, a top Fed official said here on Friday.
Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher took a swipe at U.S. politicians and their inability to cooperate, and accused them of impeding jobs growth.
In a question and answer session following a speech he gave at the Asia Society on forward guidance, Fisher referred to "our feckless Congress and poor government leadership" needing to get their act together.
It's been my impression that the Fed has been fighting the Obama administration very step of the way trying to move this economy along. 

I don't know if Fisher will address this, but it's generally agreed that that the worst thing a government can do during a depression/recession is raise taxes. ObamaCare, not only a tax, but easily one of the biggest taxes ever foisted on the Americans in one fell swoop.

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Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you think you may have read here. This site is for my own personal use but if you stumble upon it, feel free to read it at your leisure. 

Wow: despite new S&P 500 records for the past several days, futures are up again today. And WTI is up almost a buck; again, over $100. The kind of market I like, climbing the wall of worry. 

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An Inconvenient Truth

When these stories start to show up in mainstream media, one knows the tide has begun to turn. Finally, some unemotional scientific discussion.

Yahoo!Finance is reporting:
A Sad Truth: there is ample evidence that suggests private scientists and public servants have been manipulating the basic raw data that most everyone relies on to calculate climate change. (This story has great timing as the IPCC–International Panel on Climate Change–just released Part 5 of their most recent major assessment on climate science (even they can’t bring themselves to call it Global Warming anymore).)
There are some investment trends that come out of this new Truth, and some of it is as simple as get long snowmobile makers and get short lawn mowers. One trend is that Global Cooling should bring more seasonality in oil and gas prices, making energy ETF and commodity traders happy.
All of this is part of a new ground-breaking study completed by Unit Economics, an investment think-tank from Boston. They are a non-partisan group with no axe to grind on this issue; like me, they are here to make money for their clients. Show us a trend and we’ll figure out how to profit from it.
In Part I, you’ll understand the big swings in temperature the earth has experienced in the last million years, and the last thousand years, and the last 50 years. In Part II I’ll explain how sunspot activity directly correlates to ALL these temperature changes. And I’ll give you a hot, near-term investment trend to capitalize on this cool idea.
I've always maintained that there are multiple "arenas" on any issue. With both global warming and ObamaCare there are political arenas, scientific arenas, and investing arenas, to just name a few. I've pretty much moved on from the political arenas -- my points have been made -- and have moved on to investing arenas. If today, the president, by executive order, banned all gasoline engines, I would probably recommend selling all GM stock, for example. I wouldn't agree wit his politics, but I wouldn't purposely lose money trying to make a point. [By the way, Gartner said the biggest lesson he has learned in 40 years of investing: don't fight the Fed. That was posted this past week over at CNBC.]  

Natural Gas Storage Drops To 11-Year Low; Cold Weather Continues; Natural Gas Prices Jump

Don said this was gonna happen -- he told me this yesterday: natural gas prices rise on concerns about dwindling supplies.
Natural-gas prices rose for a second day on concerns about producers' ability to replenish stockpiles that were depleted over the winter. Thursday's gains came after government data showed U.S. gas inventories dropped to an 11-year low last week. The decline also was unusually large for late March, when warmer temperatures typically reduce demand for the heating fuel. 
The operative word in the previous sentence? "Typically." I still need to wear a  heavy jacket when I ride into Starbucks. It should be shirt-sleeve weather by now in the Big D.

Don sent me this link to show me how big the natural gas draw was this past week.

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A Note to the Granddaughters
The 1948 Willys Jeep

I mentioned my 1948 Willys Jeep to Don the other day. That jeep we my first vehicle; my dad bought it for me when I was a junior in high school, about 16 years old, just after I got my driver's license. He mentioned that one could never get a jeep stuck and they were quite safe for a new driver because they could not go very fast:

I replied:
It's funny you should bring that up. That was how I spent much of my free time; trying to get the jeep stuck.

I would drive it perpendicular into the four-foot ditches off the side of the highway, winter or summer. The ditches were just as wide as the jeep was long. Once in the ditch, the front bumper was on the berm of the ditch on one side, and the back bumper was on the berm of the highway side of the ditch. I was eye-level with the top of the ditch.

I put the jeep in four-wheel drive and the front wheels would climb the wall and I would be out of the ditch. I was careful never to roll the jeep, partly for my well-being, but mostly I didn't want to hurt the first vehicle I ever had.

Yes, on the open highway, it might have gotten up to 50 miles per hour.

Had I been a mechanic, it would have been the simplest vehicle to maintain.

Years later, I came home from college, and my younger brother had lifted the engine out of the jeep using a block and pulley (block and tackle?) over a 2x4 beam in the garage; re-building the engine or some such thing. I don't recall if it ever ran after that.

You know, I never recall my dad or mom ever telling the kids to get their projects out of the garage. Wow, the things they "didn't do" were as important as the things they "did do." They put so few restrictions on us, it was amazing.

Natural Gas Draw Puts Storage At 11-Year Low; Prices Jump; Ethanol Shippers Mad (As In "Upset/Angry")

Active rigs:


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Active Rigs190186207172102


RBN Energy: continuation of the series on diesel and gasoline exports.
Increased refined product exports from US Gulf refineries are being driven by diesel refining margins but a lot of by-product gasoline is being produced as a result.  Domestic demand for diesel and gasoline has declined over the past 5 years. Fortunately for refiners there is strong demand for diesel and gasoline in Latin America as well as for diesel in Europe. Important cost advantages stemming from the shale revolution are helping Gulf Coast refiners secure these markets against international competitors. Today we conclude our analysis of booming Gulf Coast exports.

This blog is the second in a two part series looking at the drivers behind increased US exports of refined products from the Gulf Coast region. In Part 1 our analysis showed that the volume of Gulf Coast diesel exports is generally correlated with refinery operations. That means that the more crude Gulf Coast refiners process the more diesel exports increase. And because refineries typically produce more gasoline than diesel then ramping up diesel supplies brings with it an increase in by-product gasoline supplies. But diesel is the primary driver because diesel margins at the Gulf Coast have remained consistently robust even when gasoline margins turned negative. This time we look at the impact of domestic demand for diesel and gasoline on exports, where US exports are headed and how US refineries are competing to win export market share.
The Wall Street Journal

Fort Hood officials focus on suspect's mental health. Yeah, that's a good place to start. Or, to quote, Hillary, "what does it matter?"

US trade gap widens, spurring downshift in GDP projections; US exports fell 1.1% in February. "What does it matter?" -- Barack

Dems shift debate on minimum wage: raise tipped workers' minimum wage to $7.10 from $2.13.

Health-law tweak proposed; bipartisan: 40 hours instead of 30 hours; nice headlines, but the article says it won't happen anytime soon. Dems are pumped with excitement now that more than 7 million enrolled.

States grapple with fixing problem-plague health exchanges.

Young workers not signing up for ObamaCare. "Take-up rates under 30 show unexpected decline."
Companies had been bracing for a big bump in the number of workers signing up for workplace plans because of the new government mandate that most American adults buy health insurance or pay a penalty. But new data on worker behavior for the 2014 coverage year from payroll-services company Automatic Data Processing Inc. suggest that surge of enrollment never happened, at least broadly across large companies. 
That Democratic excitement will last until October, 2014, when the new premiums come out. 

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Oooohhh, say it ain't so -- ethanol and railroad groups clash over shipment snarls.
U.S. ethanol and railroad industry groups clashed Thursday over transportation constraints that have triggered soaring prices for the biofuel in recent weeks.
Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen said in a letter to the Association of American Railroads that the "sheer chaos" of the rail system has pushed up prices for ethanol—a corn-based biofuel that is blended into gasoline—and caused consumers to pay more at the pump.
The higher costs, he argued, have damaged the image of the ethanol industry. Ethanol prices have jumped in recent weeks as supplies have declined amid transportation snarls.
A bitterly cold winter and rising crude-oil shipments have slowed rail traffic in the Midwest.
Most ethanol is made from corn grown in that region. The backup of railcars has prevented ethanol from making it to coastal refineries that blend ethanol into gasoline, analysts say. Ethanol futures at the Chicago Board of Trade on Tuesday reached a nearly eight-year high, but have tumbled over the past two sessions. 
Hey, ethanol folks -- call Mr Obama -- he started this by delaying for six years his decision on Keystone XL. Six years is a long, long time to get oil and gas industry switched over to rail. The tipping point was probably in March when Canada shipped its first western sands oil all the way to the Texas coast by rail. Previously posted. 

Warren is laughing all the way to the bank. When he gets home he will write a thank you note ot his friend in the White House.

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Don said this was gonna happen -- he told me this yesterday: natural gas prices rise on concerns about dwindling supplies.
Natural-gas prices rose for a second day on concerns about producers' ability to replenish stockpiles that were depleted over the winter. Thursday's gains came after government data showed U.S. gas inventories dropped to an 11-year low last week. The decline also was unusually large for late March, when warmer temperatures typically reduce demand for the heating fuel. 
The operative word in the previous sentence? "Typically." I still need to wear a  heavy jacket when I ride into Starbucks. It should be shirt-sleeve weather by now in the Big D.

Don sent me this link to show me how big the natural gas draw was this past week.

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The Los Angeles Times

I'm always negatively impressed with the LA Times. It's mostly sports, a little Hollywood, and almost no news. The only news today: something about Brazilian music (that was the headline story, if you can believe it); meningitis among the alternative lifestyle folks; and two separate stories on two very, very small earthquakes in California, that would never have made the news had it not been for all the tectonic action along the Pacific Rim this past week. 

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The Dickinson Press: News You Will Nowhere Else

The UN weighs in on CBR derailments.
International rules for handling the kind of petroleum shipments involved in several recent fiery derailments may need to be revised, the United Nations said, in a move that could rattle the fast-growing oil-by-rail sector.
"This is massive," said Lawrence Bierlein, a veteran transportation lawyer in Washington.
"If it succeeds, this is going to change the definition of flammable liquids in a way that is going to hit the oil industry and many others."
Yes, massive. For the lawyers. 

My hunch: you won't find this story anywhere except in The Dickinson Press. [A quick google search did not reveal this story in the NY Times or The Washington Post, but The Dickinson Press had it.]