What Time Is It? Where Am I? -- December 30, 2015

Updates

December 30, 2015: perfect timing. See note below. I've been suggesting for some time Bakken operators need to start looking "west" rather than "east." Now this article, sent by a reader: bizjournal is reporting --

Companies are responding fast to the lifting of the U.S. ban on crude oil exports, and a first shipment is to leave Texas early in January.

Fred Felleman, a longtime opponent of crude oil shipments through Northwest ports and a newly elected Port of Seattle commissioner, said oil exports through Washington state could follow.

Key to his concern is the fact that Washington’s five refineries are just as able to load crude onto tankers from their terminals as they are to receive it. While the terminals were built to receive crude oil from Alaska, an increasing amount of crude is coming from the North Dakota Bakken oilfields by train. Some of that, Felleman said, could be exported.

The lifting of the 40-year ban on crude oil exports was included in the federal omnibus spending bill that passed earlier this month.

As proof that the export capacity exists in the Northwest, Felleman shared data gleaned from the Washington State Department of Ecology showing that Washington's five refineries, and one Tacoma terminal, shipped out 4 million barrels of crude to domestic customers during 2013, and about half that much last year.

Original Post

 

Things are so slow today, I'm not even going to post John Kemp's weekly energy tweets. If interested, go to Twitter and search John Kemp.

However, this is a pretty cool graphic over at EIA, celebrating fifteen accomplishments in 2015:

Which PADD is underserved? And that, folks, is spelled O-P-P-O-R-T-U-N-I-T-Y. Back on November 12, 2015, I suggested Bakken operators need to be looking west, not east.

At the EIA link above, slide 6 is also interesting as is slide 9. 

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The Apple Page

Say what you want about Apple, but this is quite incredible. Many, many story lines. For now, from Macrumors:

One of the Apple Watch features Apple often highlights is the device's precise timekeeping, which Apple says is within 50 milliseconds of the global time standard.

Apple Watch is so accurate that the hands of two Apple Watches placed next to one another will move in perfect unison.

This is achieved primarily through 15 Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers that Apple has around the world, kept inside of buildings with GPS antennas that connect to GPS satellites broadcasting time data from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The Observatory houses an ultra accurate atomic clock, which uses electronic transition frequency to measure time.

Apple's time servers communicate the time to iPhones across the world, and the iPhone in turn syncs with the Apple Watch via Bluetooth to provide the exact time.

Communicating a GPS signal from a server to an iPhone to an Apple Watch over Bluetooth has its own delays, which Apple corrects for via software. Apple's NTP servers make sure iPhones and Apple Watches keep time at "Stratum One" accuracy, within milliseconds of "Stratum Zero" devices.

Each Apple Watch has a temperature-controlled crystal oscillator inside to combat time drift that clocks and watches see. The oscillator also makes sure the Apple Watch remains warm enough to keep accurate time in very cold climates. Thanks to this hardware, the Apple Watch is even more accurate than the iPhone.

I know that's something I need in retirement: a timepiece accurate to within 50 milliseconds of  the global time standard. Actually, what I really need is something to remind me what day it is. Fortunately my computer desktop has the day-time stamp in the upper right-hand corner.