May 12, 2016: Information Overload; Husky: Ka-Shing, Ka-Shing!

Every so often I am overwhelmed with "stuff" that needs to be posted, This is one of those days. On top of everything else, the Director's Cut should be out later today.

When I get overwhelmed, sometimes the best thing I can do is simply turn off the computer and come back later in the day (or even "better," wait a day, come back tomorrow, and start posting again) once the dust has settled.

We'll see.

The jobs report really blew me away -- that's probably what has overwhelmed me. Look at the history of the unemployment claims over the past few weeks. The numbers are bad enough, but the fact that analysts have been surprised suggests to me there is a huge disconnect between Wall Street and what is going on in the real world. Look at the history of these recent unemployment claims:

• most recent week: unexpectedly surges 20,000
• last week: unexpectedly jumps 17,000
• week before that: up 9,000
• March 31, 2016: surge unexpectedly; up 11,000 from previous week
• March 17, 2016: jumps another 7,000
• March 4, 2016: 242,000 vs 190,000 forecast 

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Other News

Oil demand. Reuters: global oil demand surprised on the upside.

Global oil consumption is growing much faster than most analysts expected at the start of the year but increases in demand remain very uneven geographically and by fuel.

World oil demand increased by 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first three months of 2016 compared with the same period in 2015, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday ("Oil Market Report", IEA, May 2016).

First-quarter consumption grew faster than the agency predicted at the end of last year, when it forecast growth of 1.2 million bpd between January and March.

For the time being, the IEA has left its forecast for average consumption growth this year at 1.2 million bpd, noting "headwinds" as a result of sluggish global growth, which implies a slowdown later in 2016.

But coupled with large crude supply interruptions from Canada, Nigeria, Libya, Iraq and Venezuela, and a slowdown in U.S. shale, the agency predicts the "the direction of travel of the oil market (is) towards balance".

The agency expects the global supply-demand surplus to narrow sharply from 1.3 million bpd in the first six months to just 200,000 bpd in the second half of 2016.

Oklahoma earthquakes. Reuters: insurers shun risk as oil-linked quakes soar in Oklahoma. If people understand the "nature" of insurance, they will understand this story.

As the number of earthquakes in Oklahoma exploded into the hundreds in the last few years, nearly a dozen insurance companies moved to limit their exposure, often at the expense of homeowners, a Reuters examination has found.

Nearly 3,000 pages of documents from the Oklahoma Insurance Commission reviewed by Reuters show that insurers and the reinsurers who cover them grew increasingly concerned about exposure to earthquake risks because of heightened frequency of seismic activity, which scientists link to disposal of saltwater that is a byproduct of oil and gas production.

Even as they insured more and more properties against earthquakes in the past two years, six insurers hiked premiums by as much as 260 percent and three increased deductibles. Three companies stopped writing new earthquake insurance altogether, state regulatory filings obtained by Reuters show. Several insurers took more than one of those steps. 

GE. TheStreet is reporting:

GE's Marine Solutions department recently signed a deal to provide electric systems to the world's largest container shipping business, Maersk Line.

The deal, announced Monday, is yet another sign that GE's CEO, Jeff Immelt, is pulling out all the stops to return GE to its more industrial roots as the company scraps the final remnants of GE Capital, leaving only a handful of financial operations integral in supporting GE's central businesses. 

Data points from Rigzone without links or excerpts:

• EIA sees Brent oil prices rebounding to $76 per barrel in 2017
• bulk of Canad's oil sands plants will be back up in days to weeks
• Husky nears deal to sell five (5) E&P packages for almost half-billion dollars; assets in southwest Saskatchewan to be sold to Whitecap Resources. There are additional Husky deals also. In all, the deals approach $1 billion in value. The five (5) aforementioned deals involve Crescent Point Energy as well as others. The latest rond of disposals would bring Husky's total gain from all three sales processes to about C$2.86 billion. The controlling shareholder in Husky is Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing.