Thursday, June, 2, 2016

Updates

Later, 10:05 a.m. Central Time: weekly energy data tweets are starting:

• US commercial crude oil inventories down 1.4 million bbls
• refinery utilization: 90%
• gasoline production hit 9.9 million bbls/day -- just shy of the 10 million bbl threshold
• gasoline delivered was about 9.7 million bbls/day -- up about 4% YOY
• crude oil imports up slightly, to almost 8 million bopd; about an 8% increase YOY for past few weeks

Later, 10:02 a.m. Central Time: four of eight French refineries remain shut down; strike spreads; involves ports.  Just in time for tourist summer season. Paris shuts down in August.

Later, 9:58 a.m. Central Time: I thought it felt cooler. Wow, it seems like it is taking forever for summer to arrive here in North Texas. Another day of thunderstorms with a high of 79 degrees, and tomorrow only 78 degrees. It turns out the same thing in London. From Bloomberg: is it really summer? Natural gas trades like it's winter.

The only evidence it’s summer in Britain is the calendar.

The U.K. is as chilly as it was in parts of December, pushing the price of the nation’s main fuel for heating to the highest level in six months.

Same-day gas on the U.K.’s National Balancing Point market rose for a fifth consecutive day, gaining as much as 4.3 percent to the highest level since December 11, 2015.

Temperatures in the U.K. are forecast at 56 Fahrenheit for Thursday [today], colder than what it was six days before Christmas last year.

Later, 7:58 a.m. Central Time: first time claims for unemployment insurance dropped 1,000 to seasonally adjusted 267,000. Four-week average fell to 276,750. The spinmeisters though the numbers would be much worse due to the Verizon strike, previously posted. So, good news all around. 

Later, 7:41 a.m. Central Time: job growth "cooled" (their word, not mine, over at CNBC) in May -- private companies added 173,000 jobs; forecast by Reuters analysts "hoped for" (my word, not theirs) for 175,000 new jobs. May's numbers were slightly higher than the April numbers which were revised upward to 166,000 new jobs. These two most recent numbers are significantly below the 2016 average of 188,000.

Original Post

 

The following was done quickly; there will be typographical and factual errors. Some links may be broken. I will fix this post when I get some time.

After this post, my usual morning posts/blogging may be delayed until later today. Family commitments as the school year starts to wind down.

I might not see the jobs data until later today; or because of Memorial Day on Monday, maybe the government delays the data release until tomorrow. Same with "gasoline demand." So, we'll see. But we will eventually get to everything.

In the meantime, one might enjoy looking at some of the other websites/blogs I have linked at the  very bottom of the sidebar at the right. I completely missed that one of my favorite sites, "Grantland" was discontinued back in 2015. Google "grantland wiki" to find out why. Other links:

• this link is highlighted because it also highlights another blog I really like; quite coincidental
• this link has an interesting comment on North Dakota shale oil industry from an unexpected source
• a great, great post on Bill Nye, the Scientism Guy
• I loved this blog from the very beginning and it looks like this guy is still going strong
• Kaitlin took down her blog (I think when she got into law school, and/or got married; not sure of the backstory; I do have an idea why her blog traffic picked up for awhile); her blog, at one time, made my top 5 list

The "Obama video" that hit the internet yesterday -- and I posted earlier -- has gone viral. I will be posting it again. The video will get a lot of attention across talk radio today. The question is whether the president did this on purpose. I don't know. One can be sure he won't talk about it. He lost his teleprompter and couldn't get a sentence out. At least that's what "they" are saying down here in Texas. A Harvard-trained lawyer.

I see Sanders continues to ask Californians to ban fracking; to stay competitive, Hillary will have to hold her position on fracking -- in which she said in Detroit, she wants to do to fracking what this administration did to the coal industry. 

Active rigs:

	6/2/2016	06/02/2015	06/02/2014	06/02/2013	06/02/2012
Active Rigs	27	81	188	187	215

RBN Energy: would the Marcellus/Utica benefit from in-region ethane storage?