Catching Up -- April 24, 2015; ObamaCare Could Be Dead -- Financially -- In California

I have about one hundred links waiting to be looked at, read, posted at the blog -- links sent to me by readers.

This is the first such link; it will take awhile to catch up.

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

From Seeking Alpha:

• Denbury Resources has a very low operating cost of $22.64 a barrel, and this has allowed the company to remain profitable despite weak energy prices.
• Denbury's top line has dropped in the past year, but that could change as tensions in the Middle East and increasing oil demand could push prices to $80 a barrel.
• Denbury has hedged 75% its production for 2015 at $85 a barrel, which will shield the company in case of a drop in oil prices.
• Denbury's interest coverage has increased significantly and its debt-equity ratio has dropped, signifying that the company is strengthening its balance sheet. 

Also from the story:

Looking ahead, the trend is expected to continue as industry experts are of the opinion that Brent crude might trade at $78-$80 a barrel by the end of the year. This target does not look entirely out of reach, as several factors will support the improvement in oil pricing going forward, namely production cuts in the U.S. and an increase in demand across the globe.

More importantly, Saudi Arabia's war on Yemen could disrupt supplies from the region, lending more support to oil prices.

If Saudi continues to carry on airstrikes against Yemen, crude oil prices can rise further as "the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Yemen's southern coast controls access to the Red Sea, Suez Canal and the ports of western Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest crude exporter."
Meanwhile, demand for crude oil is also anticipated to increase in the coming months as per OPEC's latest monthly market report. According to a Saudi Gazette report:

"OPEC forecasts demand at an average of 29.27 million barrels per day in the first quarter 2015, a rise of 80,000 bpd from its previous prediction made in its March report. At the same time, it said, OPEC's own total output will increase by only 680,000 barrels per day, less than the previous expectation of 850,000 barrels per day, due to lower US and other non-OPEC production."

Now, an increase in demand, coupled with lower supply, will mitigate the supply glut in the oil industry to some extent. In addition, tensions in the Middle East are another factor that could drive oil prices.

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House Of Cards

The OC Register is reporting:

After two previous extensions, the open enrollment period for Covered California ends April 30. That deadline just might prove to be the tipping point for the state’s two-year-old health insurance exchange.

That’s because this is the year Covered California is supposed to become completely self-sustaining.

Indeed, there’s no more money coming from Washington after the state exhausts the $1.1 billion it received from the federal government to get the Obamacare exchange up and running. And state law prohibits Sacramento from spending any money to keep the exchange afloat.

That presents an existential crisis for Covered California, which is facing a nearly $80 budget deficit for its 2015-16 fiscal year. Although the exchange is setting aside $200 million to cover its near-term deficit, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee acknowledged in December that there are questions about the “long-term sustainability of the organization.”

This is why the GOP is pretty much ignoring ObamaCare.

The OC Register is a very, very conservative newspaper. The Los Angeles Times now appears to be the most liberal major newspaper in the US, far more left-leaning than even the New York Times. I assume the Los Angeles Times will have a different perspective. More from the linked story:

Mr. Lee’s disquieting assessment actually jibed with a 2013 report by the state auditor, which stated that, until the state’s health insurance exchange actually started enrolling Californians in health plans, its “future solvency” was ”uncertain.” Thus, Covered California was listed as a “high-risk” issue for the state.

The state auditor’s warning appeared prescient as of Feb. 15, which was supposed to be the close of open enrollment for 2015: Covered California had fallen 300,000 enrollees short of the goal set by Mr. Lee and the agency’s board of directors.

Indeed, Covered California’s enrollment growth for 2015 was a mere 1 percent, according to a study this month by Avalere Health. That was worst than all but two other state exchanges.

Meanwhile, California’s Obamacare exchange managed to retain only 65 percent of previous enrollees, the nation’s fourth-lowest re-enrollment rate.

We look forward to next week’s enrollment numbers from Covered California; to see if there is another near-miraculous, 11th-hour spike in enrollments enabling Mr. Lee to claim a successful enrollment period (and for opinion writers around the country to once again hail California as prima facie evidence that Obamacare is working.

I would assume the 65% retention rate -- fourth lowest in the country has much to do with early enrollees learning that the IRS was cross-checking past federal tax filings with estimated income for the years folks enrolled in ObamaCare.

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House Of Cards

The Telegraph is reporting: Top scientists start to examine fiddled global warming figures.

Last month, we are told, the world enjoyed “its hottest March since records began in 1880”. This year, according to “US government scientists”, already bids to outrank 2014 as “the hottest ever”. The figures from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were based, like all the other three official surface temperature records on which the world’s scientists and politicians rely, on data compiled from a network of weather stations by NOAA’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).

But here there is a puzzle. These temperature records are not the only ones with official status. The other two, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama (UAH), are based on a quite different method of measuring temperature data, by satellites. And these, as they have increasingly done in recent years, give a strikingly different picture. Neither shows last month as anything like the hottest March on record, any more than they showed 2014 as “the hottest year ever”.

Back in January and February, two items in this column attracted more than 42,000 comments to the Telegraph website from all over the world. The provocative headings given to them were “Climategate the sequel: how we are still being tricked by flawed data on global warming” and “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest scientific scandal”.

My cue for those pieces was the evidence multiplying from across the world that something very odd has been going on with those official surface temperature records, all of which ultimately rely on data compiled by NOAA’s GHCN. Careful analysts have come up with hundreds of examples of how the original data recorded by 3,000-odd weather stations has been “adjusted”, to exaggerate the degree to which the Earth has actually been warming. Figures from earlier decades have repeatedly been adjusted downwards and more recent data adjusted upwards, to show the Earth having warmed much more dramatically than the original data justified.

So strong is the evidence that all this calls for proper investigation that my articles have now brought a heavyweight response. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has enlisted an international team of five distinguished scientists to carry out a full inquiry into just how far these manipulations of the data may have distorted our picture of what is really happening to global temperatures.

Meanwhile, based on the weather report for the weekend, the Kennedys may be in Colorado skiing this weekend.