Marcellus / Utica and Sarnia, Ontario -- The Series Continues -- RBN Energy -- August 25, 2016

Job watch. US jobless claims fall for third straight week.  Big headline  for a small story. Initial claims slipped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 261,000. Four-week moving average fell 1,250 to 264,000.

Biofuels worse for environment than gasoline; University of Michigan, as printed in The Detroit Free Press.

Active rigs:

	8/25/2016	08/25/2015	08/25/2014	08/25/2013	08/25/2012
Active Rigs	32	74	194	184	189

RBN Energy: NOVA's plan to boost its Marcellus / Utica ethane use in Sarnia.

NOVA Chemicals’ 1.8-billion-pound/year ethylene plant in Sarnia, ON already is one of the largest consumers of Marcellus/Utica-sourced ethane, and plans are in the works to significantly increase the steam cracker’s ethane consumption.

In 2018, NOVA will complete a project that will enable the cracker to be fed 100% ethane; the petrochemical company also is mulling a cracker expansion –– again with ethane as the feedstock –– and a new polyethylene plant next door. All these plans are driven in large part by the availability of low-cost ethane piped from the U.S. Northeast.

From the beginning of the hydrocarbon era in North America, Sarnia has played an outsized role in crude oil, refining and petrochemicals, in large part due to that essential truth of real estate: location, location, location.

First, it was its local oil resource. As we said in Part 1 of this series, an 1858 oil well in nearby Oil Springs, ON, is said to have been the first on the continent. Over time, oil-production, refining and petchem infrastructure was developed in southwestern Ontario (as were railroads and pipelines); that infrastructure made Sarnia a refining/petchem center, a position that continues to this day, decades after most oil production in southwestern Ontario dried up.

Earlier, we looked at the crude oil side of things, describing the three refineries in Chemical Valley, the oil pipelines that supply them, and the petroleum-products pipelines that help move the refineries’ output to market.

Then, we turned to Sarnia’s increasingly important natural gas liquids (NGLs) sector –– the pipelines that transport purity ethane and mixed propane/butane to Chemical Valley, the fractionator that separates the propane/butane mix into purity products, the NGL storage facilities, and the big NOVA ethylene plant that “cracks” ethane, propane and butane into petrochemical products, with the star of the show being ethylene –– a critically important petchem building block.

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Ukraine On Edge

Ukraine: Russia to conduct military drills amid Ukraine tensions -- WSJ.

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The Market

Late day trading. NYSE:

• new highs: 108
• new lows: 14
  

Mid-day trading. Flat. Down 2 points right now. NYSE:

• new highs: 60
• new lows: 11
  

Opening. Having trouble getting a bit of traction. Opening a bit on the negative side, but well off the lows / futures. 

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The Ledecky Page

Flashback

An old video, but still great.

Katie Ledecky Interview, CBS This Morning, October 1, 2015.