Unemployment Claims Well Above Forecast -- January 14, 2016; Three Words Elon Musk Does Not Want To See In Same Sentence -- Solar Industry Collapses

This is an old story; regular readers have already seen it, but it's on the front page of The [London] Guardian: Nevada solar industry collapses after state lets power company raise fees.

There are 36 solar panels sitting in a row behind Richard Stewart’s home in north Las Vegas. The panels cost about $40,000 – most of his savings, he said. He made the investment with his wife, who has since died, hoping to save money heating and cooling their high desert home. The retiree worried then, as retirees on fixed incomes often do, about rising energy costs.

Now he regrets the investment entirely. “I’ll be lucky to get my money back in 20 years,” said Stewart, 69.

Although Nevada is one of the sunniest places in the world, there has recently been a dark cloud hovering over the rooftop solar industry in the state. Just before Christmas, Nevada’s public utility commission (PUC) gave the state’s only power company, NV Energy, permission to charge higher rates and fees to solar panel users – a move that immediately shattered the rooftop solar industry’s business model.

In addition to the new monthly fee, which will increase to $40 from $12 over the next five years, customers like Stewart will get less back from the utility for energy their solar panels capture and feed into the main power grid. Whereas previously they received full retail value for their surplus electricity, soon NV Energy will only pay a third of that price for exported electricity.

The uneven effect would be that during dark hours and cloudy days, solar customers could pay full price for energy, even after contributing two or three times as much electricity to the power grid during the same day. As the Alliance for Solar Choice frames it, the $40 fee eliminates the $11 to $15 solar users typically save on their monthly electricity bills.

I remember growing up, going to the carnival that came to Williston every year, it set up on the northeast side of town, if I have my directions correct; probably up where the bypass is now, near where Gloria Dei church is. Whatever. I remember all the snake-oil salesmen trying to sell folks carburetor additives to increase mileage. That's what the residential solar panel industry seems to me. Folks spending their life savings on solar panels -- in this case, $40,000 -- to try to cut their monthly utility bills from $75/month to $65/month. Yeah, I know those figures are wrong. That's my worldview; it's wrong, but it is what it is. But spending $40,000 to cut monthly utility bills seems ... well, it looks like we have a third nominee for the 2016 Geico Rock Award. 

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No Spin Zone -- The Spin Will Come Later

Unemployment claims (we will get the Reuters/Bloomberg spin later):

From FXStreet:

• 284,000
• up 7,000
• expected figure: 275,000
• 4-week average: 278,750
• 4-week average increase: 3,000 

Later: yup, there it is -- the Reuters spin: "labor market still healthy."

Front page Wall Street Journal: story on Boomtown, USA.

JPMorgan's earnings rise, hit annual record: 4Q15 beats expectations. Pocahontas distraught? Citigroup and Wells Fargo will report Friday.

RBN Energy: the future of master limited partnerships.

Too many to list; links everywhere -- terrorist attacks around the world. USSecState John "I served in Vietnam" Kerry condemns attacks.

North Dakota's Hugh Glass documentary leads Academy Award nominations with 12 bids. No links; stories everywhere for those interested; I'm not. When you look at this year's list, oh-oh. The Danish Girl not nominated?

Deaths come in threes: David Bowie, 69; Alan Rickman, 69. Glenn Frey, 67.

We have a second nomination for the 2016 Geico Rock Award, reported in The Dickinson Press:

Original plans called for three drilling rigs to operate in the unit. In April 2015, that dropped to two rigs due to falling oil prices, Luk said.

More recently, the company has had just one rig in the unit due to unforeseen problems encountered while drilling four wells in the north part of the unit, Luk said. The company is still evaluating its options with that rig, but plans to bring it back this year, Luk said.

Royalty owner David Schwalbe, who was among those who opposed developing the area as a large unit, was the only member of the public who spoke at the hearing.

“Why are there so few rigs working when the rigs are available? They’re stacked out all over,” Schwalbe asked.

I would not have won the Powerball Lottery had I played. Two of the five-plus-one numbers were single-digit numbers. I never pick single-digit numbers. I had even forgotten there were single-digit numbers, I see them so infrequently. But apparently a lot of folks will share the big prize and many lesser prizes.

Active rigs in North Dakota at 51 as we start the day. My hunch is we go to the low 40's before we get back to 58.

	1/14/2016	01/14/2015	01/14/2014	01/14/2013	01/14/2012
Active Rigs	51	158	188	184	200

Oh, by the way, did y'all? hear? Al-Jazeera America calls it quits, after less than three years on the air.  I saw that yesterday; forgot to post. Sorry.

I may have to put together a list of the Top Ten personalities that have over-spent their fifteen minutes of fame. At the top of the list: Chelsea. Three peas in a pod. The acorn does not fall far from the tree. Who's your daddy? Legally blonde. Clueless. The good news is that six individuals running for the GOP presidential nomination got their fifteen minutes and have now left the building. Nikki Haley may join Chelsea on my list.

US sailors held hostage by Iran: a lot of unanswered questions. And they will remain unanswered. Along with Hillary's Benghazi "stand-down"order.

Four words GoPro does not like to see in a headline, in bold:  GoPro cuts jobs and warns its sales are a disaster. Was it just one big -- and very short -- fad? I bought one of the original GoPro cameras. The manual was thicker than the camera; that's when I knew this was not going to be easy.

What is he/she smoking, who wrote this story? War Between Saudi Arabia And Iran Could Send Oil Prices To $250. Oh, that's right -- it's an oil hedge fund masquerading as a media outlet. The general consensus is that oil stays in a $30-trading range through Memorial Day and then trends up towards $60 by the end of the year.

There does seem to be a feeling in the mass media -- generally written by 20-somethings -- that oil is like an Apple iPhone or a GoPro camera. A lot of 20-something journalists seem to suggest that buying oil is a discretionary expenditure. If times are tough, I can hold off buying an iPhone for another year. I can hold off buying a GoPro camera for decades. But oil? It ain't going away. When there was too much milk decades ago, I remember dairy farmers pouring milk down drains to make their point. That doesn't happen with oil. It all gets sold. All bleeding stops. I haven't seen anyone pouring oil down a drain to protest low prices. It does appear that oil is finally being traded as a true commodity now that both cartels -- the US cartel, and OPEC -- have come to an end. Of course, OPEC never was a cartel -- at least not a successful cartel except for one or two short terrifying periods -- its members never stayed within quotas. The emphasis will now switch to a) quality of oil; b) dependability of source; c) ease of dealing with source; d) type of oil for which the refineries are optimized. Nigeria scores a bit lower than, say EOG, on many of those parameters. A reader reminded me, I had forgotten, America's light, sweet oil -- WTI -- is the gold -- or should we say, the "black gold" -- global standard when it comes to oil. Bakken oil might be even slightly better but the difference is so slight it doesn't matter; Bakken oil doesn't even need to be refined; it burns on rail. (BOR). That might be the reason that Vitol is shipping WTI to Europe. This is going to be interesting to watch. The  point is that no one knows what the price of oil will be going forward. In the past, one could look at historical trends, but times have really, really changed. One might have to go back to the 1950's to compare the current situation.

• a glut of oil, worldwide
• a resurgence in US (actually North America, and even western hemisphere) oil production
• no cartels

By the way, how's Hubbert's peak oil theory working out? I guess the global curve moves to the right. 

But I digress. About the only thing we have when trying to figure out the price of oil going forward is looking back at historical trends. So, time for a poll. This is going to be really, really difficult. This is a really, really difficult poll to set up. It's difficult because the graph I'm using is "very busy." But I think most readers can figure it out.

The question is this. Going forward, for the next 10 years, let's say, do you see the price of oil and the volatility of the price of oil to reflect what we saw in Period A, Period B, or Period C on the graph?

One caveat: this precludes a major geo-political event in the Mideast, such as a) Saudi Arabia imploding; b) the Strait of Hormuz closing; or, c) an all-out shooting war across the peninsula.

I'll probably re-post this poll in a stand-alone post later, since it follows a very long post that rambled incoherently. The graph is from Macrotrends.