Chevron To Increase Asset Sales By 50% -- March 10, 2015; Emerald Oil Meets Earnings Expectations

Reporting tomorrow:
Crescent Point Energy, forecast 21 cents; before market open;

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Emerald Oil reports earnings:

Emerald Oil Inc. (EOX) on Tuesday reported a loss of $62.2 million in its fourth quarter.
On a per-share basis, the Denver-based company said it had a loss of 92 cents. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 3 cents per share.

The results met Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was also for earnings of 3 cents per share.

The independent oil and gas company posted revenue of $29.8 million in the period, which topped Street forecasts. Five analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $25.2 million.

From SeekingAlpha:

• Chevron will increase asset sales by 50% to $15B and curtail new investment for the next two years, adjustments that are necessary to address near-term market conditions, Chairman and CEO John Watson says during an analyst presentation.
• Capital spending will decline through the period as construction of mega-projects such as the $54B Gorgon gas export development in Australia winds down, Watson says.
• CVX made 35 oil and gas discoveries and added 1.4B boe to its portfolio during 2014 - “an excellent year for our exploration program around the world" - Vice Chairman George Kirkland says.
• Watson also says CVX has seen interest among prospective buyers for the company's 54K bbl/day Kapolei refinery in Hawaii.
• Earlier: Chevron says positioned for 20% production growth to 2017

Kemp over at Reuters / Rigzone: OPEC winning its battle with the US --

U.S. shale producers are falling behind in the Red Queen’s Race as the downturn in drilling means that new oil production is failing to offset falling output from existing wells.

The famous race is named after the scene from Lewis Carroll’s novel “Through the Looking-Glass,” in which the Red Queen warns Alice: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast.”

The race is a metaphor for the relationship between increased oil production from newly drilled wells on the one hand and declining output from old wells on the other.

The net result is that the downturn in drilling is threatening to cut output for the first time since the start of the shale revolution.

Other forms of oil production, notably from offshore fields in the Gulf of Mexico, will continue to increase in the next few months. But in the shale sector, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has won its battle with U.S. shale producers and forced output growth to a standstill.

A Pyrrhic victory. 

But one has to put this in perspective. In 1973 - 1974, the outcome was just the opposite. An OPEC oil embargo quadrupled the price of oil in less than a year, from $3/bbl to $12/bbl. Ask the average American which he/she would prefer.

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Gotcha!

The AP is reporting -- a sting in Williston caught ten men -- two with human trafficking, and eight soliciting.

Cool.

Forty-two-year-old Rasheed Abdul Rahim is probably not a native Willistonite. Don't know about 44-year-old Charles David Norton. I don't know either of them; they must have graduated from high school after I left Williston.

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Think Of The Possibilities

Macrumors is reporting:

Women's Wear Daily has shared some more information on the locations where we will see the $10,000+ Apple Watch Edition and other versions of the Apple Watch shown off around the world. Described as "shop-in-shops" in high-visibility locations, each of Apple's pop up stores will ensure customers looking to make major purchases will get the best service possible.

At Selfridges, the Apple Watch will be displayed in the aptly named Wonder Room, which houses high-end jewelry and watches in a brightly lit room decked out with treasure-filled glass cases. At Galeries Lafayette, the Apple Watch will be displayed among European brands on the first floor of the facility, and at the Isetan Department Store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, the Apple Watch will be displayed on the ground floor.

Other speciality fashion stores will also sell select Apple Watch models, including Colette in Paris, where the Apple Watch had its fashion world debut

, Dover Street Market in London and Tokyo, Maxfield in Los Angeles, The Corner in Berlin, and Lane Crawford in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu. All of these are fashion-oriented upscale stores.