Miscellaneous Energy Notes -- Sunday, July 31, 2016

California gasoline prices.  Fortune magazine -- it must be a slow news week -- has yet another story on Californians "paying up" for gasoline. But even so, they are paying less than $3.00/gallon. They will do fine. Same ol', same ol' excuses, explanations, political talk. Bottom line: California is an island (when it comes to energy) and California plays by different rules than the rest of the nation.

$40 oil. Looking forward to this next week, the big question is whether WTI will go under $40/bbl. If it does, some would say that $40 is a critical floor and if oil crashes through that floor, oil could drop significantly more.

Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, I constructed five spreadsheet scenarios based on projected oil prices, by month, that would be required if Saudi Arabia was going to average $60/bbl/month in calendar year 2016. Saudi Arabia budgets for $100 oil, and clearly needs $100 oil. It continues to hemorrhage cash reserves. There has been talk that at $60 oil Saudi could manage, but early in the year, Saudi clearly was looking for $80 oil by the end of the year. I'm looking for stories this week about the situation Saudi is in right now. Of course, it's not a whole lot better for any of the oil producers anywhere.

CBR. Having said that, I thought yesterday's story on Canadian CBR was fascinating.

Rig counts. I can't remember if I've seen this story elsewhere. I've talked about this for so long, I've forgotten what I've linked and what I haven't linked. From Casper Start Tribune: Not what it used to be: Counting rigs and predicting production.

The number of rigs operating in the state has long been seen as an indicator of production. 

The weekly rig count from Baker Hughes, along with commodity prices and oil and gas inventories, still offers clues as to what is happening on the front lines. More recently, the number of rigs in Wyoming has been used to demonstrate the staggering effects of the current commodities bust.

But technology has changed, and the rig count might not be as indicative of production as it once was.

In a call with analysts last week, the CEO of Halliburton said the counting game has changed, as rigs operate with better productivity, speed and efficiency.

“In the next North America rig cycle, 900 is the new 2,000."

Update on an old post. This is deep into the weeds, but back in November, 2015, the production report for #26485, a Statoil Hawkeye well, caused so much confusion, I prefaced the post with "just ignore this entire page." It turns out there was a huge production profile error posted. I've updated the production profile for this well. I don't know if it will clear things up or not. I've quit paying attention to that page, but did want to post the current (and hopefully, correct) production profile.

Tesla. My wife was out in San Jose, CA, last week. She happened to end up visiting with a blue collar worker who had worked on the Tesla giga factory in Nevada, was laid off, then asked to come back. I couldn't follow the whole story but what I heard seemed in line with what I've been reading. Something suggests to me that things are not going all that smoothly out in Sparks, NV. I assume MuskMelon will announce another effort to raise more cash. Tesla, according to Yahoo!Finance will report a loss of 52 cents/share on August 3, 2016 -- Wednesday, this week, after the market closes. This was from the 1Q15 earnings call:

The electric automaker reported a first-quarter loss of 57 cents per share on $1.6 billion in revenue. The shortfall was wider than the 36 cents per share reported a year earlier, while sales climbed 45 percent from the prior-year period.

Analysts expected Tesla to report a loss of 58 cents per share on $1.6 billion in revenue, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. The company's shares rose as much as 8 percent in after-hours trading before retreating slightly.

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Showing Up Is 80% Of Life -- Except For Politicians, Apparently

Many, many years ago Woody Allen famously said "showing up is 80% of life."

Senator Heidi Heitkamp did not show up for the roll call vote that nominated the first woman ever by either the GOP or the Democratic party to be its presidential nominee. She cited scheduling conflicts. Something about a game of solitaire that she was playing.

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Lawn Services And The Texas Economy

A few days ago I mentioned the "lawn service" industry here in north Texas. It is quite incredible all the pick-up trucks pulling flatbed trailers and clearly in the business of lawn care. Our older daughter and her husband live in an upper middle class neighborhood where most (?) homeowners seem to employ some lawn service for at least part, if not all, of their lawn service requirements. Yesterday I saw something I had not seen before. The two men mowing and trimming the law across the street pulled up in a 2016 Cadillac Escalade (MSRP starts at around $73,000) pulling an enclosed trailer. After doing the edging, the driver of the Escalade drove off, no doubt to the next house they were servicing, leaving the other worker to mow the lawn. I assume the Escalade would be back in about an hour. But a new Escalade? No "advertising" on the SUV or the trailer. 

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Chrysler Pacifica

"Best in class." Review over at Portland Press Herald. Some data points:

• 10 USB ports, 2 HDMI ports and two built-in high-definition 10-inch touch screens
• nine-speed transmission
• the engine: a Pentastar V-6
• 32 mpg combined over mostly highway miles in this review; much better than the US EPA-rated 28 highway mpg; ties the Odyssey for best in class
• a plug-in hybrid variant expected in the fall; will have a 30-mile electric range that gets the equivalent of 80 mpg
• base price: just under $40,000

Chrysler invented the minivan in 1984. Then, it was all about the number of cupholders, not the number of USB ports.

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Notes To The Granddaughters

Another incredibly busy weekend. I've been pretty much 24/7 with Sophia for the past several days. Her mom and older sister Olivia are participating in a soccer tournament in Dallas. Her dad and oldest sister Arianna are out in San Jose, CA, for a National Junior Olympics Water Polo tournament, the largest such water polo tournament in the United States, and by extension, probably in the universe. Certainly the universe as we know it.

Sophia is still asleep. She will get up in another ten minutes or so. Breakfast, and then she gets ready for her own soccer practice at 10:00 a.m. at an indoor complex not too far down the road.