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| Active Rigs | 76 | 195 | 181 | 191 | 199 |
[F]or much of its time, Jamaica was a gemstone of the city's public-education system.
In 1981, the schools chancellor, Frank Macchiarola, decided to take on the additional role of an interim high-school principal, in order to better appreciate the daily demands of school administration.
He chose Jamaica, and was roundly criticized for picking such an easy school to lead.
Four years later, the US Department of Education named it one of the most outstanding public secondary schools in the nation. Alumni include Stephen Jay Gould (one of my "heroes"), Attorney General John Mitchell (one of RMN's "heroes" until things went badly), Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Walter O'Malley, Paul Bowles and three winners of the Pulitzer Prize: Gunther Schuller, Art Buchwald, and Alan Dugan. Bob Beamon, who set a world record for the long jump in the 1968 Olympics, graduated with the class of 1965.Sheila Jackson Lee, an alumnus, is the U.S. Representative for Texas's 18th congressional district, serving since 1995.
On Wednesday, the Nevada Health Co-Op announced that it will go out of business at the end of the year. This is the third out of the 23 ObamaCare-created nonprofit health plans to fail, but it isn't likely to be the last.
After getting $69.5 million in government-sponsored startup loans, Nevada's co-op saw enrollment come in far lower than expected, and claims costs far higher, resulting in a $15 million loss last year.
The co-op was seeing the same dismal results this year, making it impossible to provide "quality care at reasonable rates."
Democrats who designed ObamaCare created these nonprofit co-ops in the belief that they could provide price competition in ObamaCare exchanges. To get them off the ground, the federal government pumped more than $2.5 billion in startup loans and $355 million in solvency loans when things started to turn sour last year.More:
Before calling it quits, Nevada's co-op was asking for hikes as high as 27.53%.
A recent audit found that enrollment in most of the state co-ops was significantly below expectations, and costs were far higher. All but one of the 23 co-ops lost money in 2014 — more than half saw losses that were higher than Nevada's.
Earlier this year, CoOpportunity — which served members in Iowa and Nebraska — ceased operations, and the Louisiana Health Cooperative announced it would close its doors at the end of the year. Tennessee's coop had to freeze enrollment this year amid mounting losses.
The three failed co-ops received a total of $310 million in federal startup and solvency loans. Overall, $2.9 billion in federal loans is at risk.
For perspective, Solyndra — the solar panel company that famously failed early in the Obama administration — cost taxpayers $500 million.Anyone who doesn't think the current president will go down in history as the worst US president since WWII simply isn't paying attention.
A federal judge in North Dakota acted late on Thursday to block the Obama administration’s controversial water pollution rule, hours before it was due to take effect.
Judge Ralph Erickson of the District Court for the District of North Dakota found that the 13 states suing to block the rule met the conditions necessary for a preliminary injunction, including that they would likely be harmed if courts didn't act and that they are likely to succeed when their underlying lawsuit against the rule is decided.
The decision is a major roadblock for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers, who were planning on Friday to begin enforcing the Waters of the United States rule, expanding federal jurisdiction over small waterways, like streams and wetlands.
But the Obama administration says it will largely enforce the regulation as planned, arguing that the Thursday decision only applies to the 13 states that requested the injunction.Those who snooze, lose. The 13 states (sort of like the original 13 colonies): Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Wells underground in ND, TX & CO can be brought on line in few days are new kind of storage, says Dave Ernsberger.Regular readers have known this for ... like forever....
Hurricane-related risk to total U.S. crude oil and natural gas production has decreased over recent years as the share of total U.S. production originating in the Gulf of Mexico has declined sharply. In 2003, 27% of the nation's crude oil was produced in the Gulf of Mexico; by 2014, that share had declined to 16%. The Gulf of Mexico's share of natural gas production has also declined from a high of 26% in 1997 to 5% in 2014. --- EIAIf I did the math correctly, the US produces about 8.7 million bopd (2014).
Health insurers in Massachusetts will boost rates more than 6 percent for small businesses and individuals in 2016, a troubling sign that costs are once again accelerating.
The increase, approved by the state Division of Insurance last week, is more than double the rise in premiums at the beginning of this year and triple the rise in 2014.In case you missed that: the rates approved for 2016 will double the rise in premiums in 2014 and will triple the rise in rates that occurred in 2014.
The new rates will affect about 300,000 people who buy health insurance on their own or work for small businesses with 50 or fewer employees and will renew plans in January.
The increases will hit only a small slice of the state’s overall commercial insurance market of about 4 million, analysts said, but they may be a precursor to premium increases in the broader market, representing a setback to efforts to contain the state’s already high health care costs.
They far exceed the state’s goal of keeping total health care spending growth below 3.6 percent a year. Next week, officials will report whether the state’s health care industry is meeting that target.
“This could be a problem,” said Barbara Anthony, the state’s former undersecretary of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Pioneer Institute, a Boston think tank. “If the benchmark means anything, and if we’re trying to keep the growth of health care expenditures under control, a number like that presents challenges.”This report is in line with earlier reports this year about the horrific rise in premiums across the United States.
If there was any question over whether this year’s oil crash would give rise to a new era of energy megadeals, there isn’t anymore.
Schlumberger Ltd.’s proposed purchase of gear maker Cameron International Corp. for about $15 billion helped make the last 12 months the most active in decades for global energy mergers.
Three of the last five quarters have exceeded $160 billion in deal volume, surpassing even the late 1990s, a period when many of the world’s largest energy corporations were formed.
Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc, Chevron Corp. and Total SA all expanded by absorbing smaller rivals towards the turn of the century, becoming what some now call the "supermajors." U.S. crude averaged about $21 a barrel from 1998 to 2000, bottoming out in December 1998 near $10. Adjusted for today’s dollars, the fourth quarter that year saw about $157 billion in deals including the combination of Exxon and Mobil. In the second quarter of this year, there were about $258 billion in global energy deals announced.Active rigs:
| 8/28/2015 | 08/28/2014 | 08/28/2013 | 08/28/2012 | 08/28/2011 | |
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| Active Rigs | 76 | 195 | 181 | 191 | 199 |
There are four ways for U.S. sourced LPG to reach Mexico: by ship, by pipeline, by rail or by truck. Given all the expansions at U.S. export terminals, it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of the LPG being exported from the U.S. to Mexico is moved by ship, or that the future of U.S. LPG sales to Mexican distributors will likely involve bigger vessels (armadas of which are now being built).
The largest U.S. export facility is the Enterprise LPG export terminal on the Houston Ship Channel; the facility, whose current loading capacity is 300 Mb/d (or 9 MMb/month), was running flat-out, until the new ETP/Sunoco Nederland terminal came online. Now volumes are down slightly, but will probably be coming back up soon. Later this year its capacity will increase to more than 500 Mb/d (just over 16 MMb/month).
The second largest U.S. export dock is owned by Targa, that can export up to about 240 Mb/d of propane and/or butane (7 MMb/month) from its recently expanded Galena Park Marine Terminal, also near Houston, and third largest Sunoco’s new Nederland, TX export terminal (an element of its larger Mariner South project) can handle up to 200 Mb/d (6 MMb/month).
The newest entry in the Gulf Coast race to export is Occidental Petroleum’s new Ingleside LPG export terminal (near Corpus Christi), which when fully operational will be capable of loading up to 100 Mb/d, and then in the second half of 2016 Phillips 66 hopes to start up a new, 145 Mb/d export terminal in Freeport, TX.
There are LPG exports in the works on the U.S. West Coast. Petrogas Energy owns and operates an LPG export terminal in Ferndale, WA that is capable of handling up to 30 Mb/d, but two other proposed LPG export projects have hit major snags and may need to be re-sited. In March 2015, the plan by Sage Midstream’s Haven Energy Terminals subsidiary to build a 47 Mb/d export facility in Longview, WA, was rejected by port officials, and in May 2015 the mayor of Portland, OR withdrew his support for Pembina Pipelines’ plan for a 37.5 Mb/d terminal there. (Yet another project was unveiled on July 30, 2015; AltaGas said it’s considering a possible LPG export facility in British Columbia whose initial phase could handle up to 25 Mb/d.)