Random Update On Some NDIC Statistics -- July 28, 2015: Oh-Oh - US Consumer Confidence Just Tanked

NDIC has added another data page: the number of active rigs by month by county by operator. At this link, click on "Rig Statistics."

After hitting a recent high of 105 bopd on average from all wells in North Dakota, the number has slipped back to 98, under current price slump.

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Heat Map For The Bakken

Posted back on December 27, 2014, this is the heat map for the Bakken.

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NOAA's Fake Heat Map

Speaking of "heat," more evidence of global warming fudged data by NOAA. 

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EIA's Daily "Energy Cookie"

EIA:

Russia is a major producer and exporter of oil and natural gas, and its economy largely depends on energy exports. Russia was the world's largest producer of crude oil including lease condensate and the third-largest producer of petroleum and other liquids (after Saudi Arabia and the United States) in 2014, with average liquids production of 10.9 million barrels per day. Sanctions and lower oil prices have reduced foreign investment in Russia's upstream, especially in Arctic offshore and shale projects, and have made financing projects more difficult. However, these sanctions will have little effect on Russian production in the short term as these resources were not expected to begin producing for 5 to 10 years at the earliest. --- EIA 

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Intermittent Energy

By the way, take a look at this PDF. In all such presentations, to make renewable energy look "bigger" than it really is, the graphic designers and analysts lump solar and wind energy with hydroelectric power (like the Hoover Dam). The amount of hydroelectric power dwarfs whatever energy that is provided by solar and wind energy. But much more important is this little bit of trivia, an inconvenient truth: hydroelectric power is continuous and dependable. Wind and solar is intermittent and not dependable. Wind and solar energy needs conventional energy back-up; hydroelectric power does not.

By the way, installed capacity of the Hoover Dam: 2,080 MW. At $5 million / MW, it would take only $10 billion to build a solar farm to provide that much energy, assuming one could find enough land to build a solar farm that big, and, oh, by the way, that solar farm would still require the Hoover Dam to back it up during the night and during cloudy days. Renewable energy = intermittent energy = redundant energy = very expensive energy.

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Oh-Oh

Reuters is reporting:

U.S. consumer confidence took its biggest tumble in four years in July on a less upbeat jobs outlook, while home appreciation in major cities stalled in May, suggesting a spring pause in housing demand.

The disappointing data comes as Federal Reserve policymakers meet to consider whether the U.S. economy is strong enough to warrant an end to the Fed's near zero interest rate policy, perhaps as soon as September.

The Conference Board, an industry group, said on Tuesday its index of consumer attitudes fell to 90.9 this month from a downwardly revised 99.8 in June. It fell far short of a forecast reading of 100.0.

The latest figure was the lowest since September 2014, while the decline was the steepest since August 2011. The report's jobs hard-to-get index rose to 26.7 from June's upwardly adjusted 26.1. 

I assume the poll was taken minutes after Hillary's last speech.  

Meanwhile, GDPNow: The final GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2015 was 2.4 percent on July 27, unchanged from July 17.

Accompanying the article is a photo of a family eating in a New York restaurant ... on September 17, 2012. Must have been the writer's family and his birthday.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

After many, many cross-country trips between Texas (either south Texas [San Antonio] or north Texas [DFW]) and Los Angeles, California, in which we made the side trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, only once, Santa Fe is back on my list of things to do next summer.

I haven't discussed this yet with May but she asks about visiting Santa Fe every time we make the trip. So, next summer, I plan to leave a week earlier than usual for Los Angeles, and use that week to make a side trip to Santa Fe. Each month between now and next June, I will put $150 into an envelope marked "Lodging for the Santa Fe Trip, 2015." Let's say that's eleven months, and thus eleven nights of lodging -- but we will only need four or five nights of such lodging, so ....

The decision was made while reading The Harvey Girls (see below).

For those interested in touring the southwest, or the Grand Canyon, this is where I would start:

• The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened The West, Lesley Poling-Kempes, c. 1989
• Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest, Arnold Berke, c. 2002
• Mary Colter: Builder Upon the Red Earth, Virginia L. Grattan, c. 1992 
• Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civlizing the Wild West, One Meal at a Time, Stephen Fried, c. 2010
• Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and The Fate of the West, Judith Nies, c. 2014
• Route 66: Main Street USA, Nick Freeth, c. 2001, coffee table glossy hardcover
• A Naturalist's Guide to Canyon Country, David B. Williams, c. 2013

I would read The Harvey Girls last. What an incredibly good book.

If I had time to read only two books, it would be The Harvey Girls and Grattan's biography of Mary Colter.

Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest, Arnold Berke
Books on regional "color" are generally "hit or miss." The Harvey Girls is clearly a "hit." It's an easy read, but wow, the amount of history crammed into a relatively small book.

One bit of trivia. Although the destination was Santa Fe, the Santa Fe rail line from Topeka, Kansas, never made it to Santa Fe. From The Harvey Girls:

Coming from the north and Raton Pass, the Santa Fe directed its tracks toward the city of Santa Fe, where it seemed logical enough to create a major stop. But it was not to happen this way. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway never laid its main track into its namesake.

There are to supposed explanations for this: one claims that the citizens of Santa Fee supported a rival railroad before the Santa Fe was established in New Mexico, and that the Santa Fe later snubbed the little city, laying its main line substantially east of her; the other story claims that the the city of Santa Fe made an all-out effort to secure the railroad's consideration, but lost after the railway's surveys showed the route would be too mountainous. When the main line could not be laid into Santa Fe, a spur was promised, completed on February 16, 1880.

In 1880, Lamy, New Mexico, was the site chosen as the junciton from which a spur track from the main line would be laid into Santa Fe. Lamy became a town overnight. Fifteen miles southeast of Santa Fe, in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Santa Fe Railway built maintenance yards, section crew housing, and a depot and Harvey House. Lamy never boasted more than three hundred residents, but in 1910, it had the "oasis in the desert," El Ortiz Harvey House.