Wednesday Night Links, Stories, And Comments; Warren Buffett Apparently Nods In Support Of Hillary's Call To Raise Taxes On The Middle Class -- August 3, 2016

Golf. Nike to exit golf equipment business.

PGA. Speaking of golf. How bad was The Economist predicting the PGA winner? Five days before tournament, The Economist -- home of the birthplace of golf -- didn't even have the eventual winner on its radar scope. Jimmy Walker was not even among the top 10 favored to win by The Economist. However, in their defense, their pick -- Jason Day -- came in second -- and came close to winning it on the 18th hole of the last round.

The Dickinson, ND, water tower debacle. I don't even know where to pigeon-hole this article. The new Dickinson water tower is complete. A technological marvel. Would hold all the water Dickinson would need except for one thing: the pump isn't strong enough to get the water to the top. And even if it did, water pressure would be so great that it would blow out Dickinson's public water pipes. The tower was supposed to be 72 feet high. The engineering company responsible for the design built it to 150 feet or 78 feet too tall. This story I definitely could not make up. My hunch is they saw the "flooded Statue of Liberty" on the front cover of National Geographic and concerned about rising sea levels due to global warming, were going to make the water tower tall enough to prevent that from happening.

Tesla. The WSJ -- Tesla loses almost $300 million as deliveries fall short, expenses rise. The bigger story is not that it suffered a loss, but it was much wider than forecast. When this house of cards begins to fall, it will fall fast. Unless, of course, funding keeps the enterprise afloat.

A second-quarter loss of $293 million was 60% deeper compared with a year ago. Its operating loss equaled $1.06 a share, greater than the 52-cent loss analysts had been expecting.

Bakken Pipeline. Reported earlier at the blog, this Bakken Magazine.com story made the Google Finance headline: Enbridge, Marathon buy into Bakken Pipeline System. 

Enbridge Energy Partners LP and Marathon Petroleum Corp. this week announced the formation of a new joint venture with Energy Transfer Partners LP and Sunoco Logistics Partners LP to acquire an equity interest in the Bakken Pipeline System.

The Dakota Access Pipeline—which will carry about 470,000 barrels of Bakken crude per day from western North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois—and the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline (ETCOP)—which transports the oil from Illinois to the Texas Gulf Coast—are collectively known as the Bakken Pipeline System.

Marathon and Enbridge acquired a 49 percent equity interest in the holding company that owns 75 percent of the Bakken Pipeline System from an affiliate of Energy Transfer and Sunoco Logistics.

Under this arrangement, Enbridge and Marathon will indirectly hold 75 percent and 25 percent respectively of the joint venture's 49 percent interest in the Bakken Pipeline holding company. The purchase price of Enbridge’s 27.6 percent interest in the pipeline system is $1.5 billion. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016.
Construction on the 1,168-mile-long, $3.78 billion Dakota Access Pipeline began in May and is expected to be ready for service by the end of 2016. ETCOP—an existing natural gas pipeline—is being converted by the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Co. to transport oil and is also expected to be in service by the end of the year.

Also this week, Energy Transfer, Sunoco Logistics and Phillips 66 announced the successful completion of project-level financing for the Dakota Access Pipeline and ETCOP projects. The $2.5 billion facility is anticipated to provide most of the remaining capital needed to complete the projects.

Freudian slip.

Raise Taxes on the Middle Class