Wednesday January 20, 2016 -- Last Dance

I apologize for the paucity of postings today; we were out and about all day. But I am home now.

A reminder: Kinder Morgan and Xilinx report tomorrow. Both after the market closes. After the "machines" shut down for the day.

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A Note For The Granddaughters

Wow, I'm in a good mood. We've just re-arranged our furniture and it seems we've increased our living space by 25 percent. It's huge. We live in a 651-square-foot apartment north of Ft Worth. I don't know why I added "north of Ft Worth"; if we lived south of Ft Worth it would still be 651-square-feet.

Recently, something came up -- I can't remember what it was -- but something came up that required we re-arrange our furniture. In the process of moving stuff around -- oh, now I remember -- it had to do with my wife getting a Wii for Christmas. I felt she needed a bit more room for dancing to Wii. I came up with a solution, and I'm thrilled with it.

It turns out, my solution was only half of the solution. After I made the first change, my wife came up with the other half (of the solution). Everything has fallen into place. All of a sudden our 651-square-foot apartment seems much bigger.

And now she can dance to her new Wii to her heart's content.

We re-arranged our apartment furniture and it seems 25% bigger. I wish I could "re-arrange my stock portfolio" and show a 25% improvement. Ha-ha; LOL. 

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A Note For The Granddaughters

The Bible

My favorite book right now is The New Oxford Annotated Bible, the best present I got this past Christmas.

The book of Tobit is not in the Bible with which I grew up. It is part of the "Apochrypha." I love it! I did not know this: Tobit 7:10 -- "Eat and drink, and be merry tonight." -- p. 1379. I wonder if Donald Trump is familiar with this verse? LOL.

The story of Judith is a "Joan of Arc" story. How amazing.

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A Note For The Granddaughters

UE Boom

There must be a gazillion wireless/Blue Tooth speakers out there now. We bought a UE Boom two years ago and love it. I would have assumed Apple would have "pushed" its Beats Pill wireless speaker but I was surprised to see that Apple promotes two different brands equally: the Beats Pill and the UE Boom. I bought the UE Boom at the Southlake Apple Store on the advice of one of the young Apple associates. I am thrilled. It's kind of funny. We haven't used the UE Boom in months, but for some reason I've been using it again for the past two nights -- and it still has not required re-charging. Amazing. Maybe we have a "magic Elon Musk battery" -- never needs recharging. I have a unicorn grazing on the patio out back.

I say all that simply to post this video. This is a lousy video but the sound is decent. It takes me back to 1974 or thereabouts when I saw Charlie Rich in person. I was dating a most beautiful woman whose favorite singer at the time was Charlie Rich. Her name was Belle. Seriously.

I wonder whatever happened to her. May knows of her / about her. No jealousy. More than a passing fancy. If I had my life to live over, I would have .....

The Most Beautiful Girl, Charlie Rich
I suppose I should be posting videos of the Eagles. But I'm not. But I am listening to "Hotel California" in the background at the moment, so that should count for something.

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A Note For The Granddaughters  

Dinner

I had a most wonderful dinner tonight: a New York strip steak from Omaha Steaks. From wiki:

The strip steak, also called New York strip steak, is a cut of beef steaks from the short loin. It consists of a muscle that does little work, making the meat particularly tender, though not as tender as the nearby rib eye or tenderloin. Fat content of the strip is somewhere between the two cuts. Unlike the tenderloin, the short loin is a sizable muscle, allowing it to be cut into larger portions. 

Before grilling the steak, I cut off all the fat I can reach. I lose a fair amount of steak, I suppose, but that's fine. 

I honestly do not recall if I've had a New York strip steak before. My usual choices from Omaha Steaks have been filet mignon / tenderloin or hamburger, but not strip steak. New York strip steak sounds so ... well, so ... Donald Trump. I assume that the Donald's steak is "New York" strip steak. Whatever.

Along with the steak I also had an Omaha Steak baked potato; three minutes in the microwave oven. May did not join me; we had big lunches and she felt that another big meal was too much. But her steak is defrosted in the refrigerator and ready any time she changes her mind. I marinaded my steak; May says she would like to have her steak non-marinaded. So, we will see. I can't imagine steak that is not marinaded. Now that I understand the ins and outs of marinade, I don't use recipes: simply pour a bit of this and bit of that into a zip-lock bag with a bit of pepper and voilà. Oil, vinegar, coffee, at a minimum.

For dessert I had half of a slice of Oreo cookie cheesecake that our oldest granddaughter got me yesterday. I should have had only a fourth. A half slice was too much. I find it amazing that folks can have a full meal and then follow it with a full slice of cheesecake -- I'm "blanking out" on the brand name cheesecake -- you know, the one in Big Bang Theory. It was incredible. That was the first cheesecake I've had in about two years, so don't judge me.

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Contract Requirements

I can't believe how depressing the news was this morning. It's amazing how really good '60's music can change all that. I see that the NDIC server is back up. Finally, I can reach the "active rigs" site: I think that was the last NDIC webpage to finally come up today. Did Twitter ever come back up?

I am required by contract that each posting have a Bakken-related note included, so here it is:

Active rigs:

	1/19/2016	01/19/2015	01/19/2014	01/19/2013	01/19/2012
Active Rigs	49	161	187	187	200

Wow, I hate contracts. It feels like so much work. I'm retired. That's why I don't have bucket lists.

I'm heading to bed. It's 11;21 p.m Central Time. I have to get up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready to take our oldest granddaughter to "sectionals": "special" flute practice at school in preparation for some competition. If you send me a note, I won't see it until tomorrow.

Last Dance, Floyd Cramer

Reason #78 Why I Love To Blog -- January 19, 2016

About one week ago I received a human interest story on "wood-burning fireplaces." I did not know whether to post it because I did not know whether it would be of interest to a wider audience. I decided not to link it but kept it in the queue just in case.

Today, I received this note from a completely different reader, who, of course, had no knowledge of the earlier story that I had but did not post.

This is the note I just received:

It seems that even wood isn’t green or renewable enough anymore. The EPA has recently banned the production and sale of 80% of America’s current wood-burning stoves, the oldest heating method known to mankind and mainstay of rural homes and many of our nation’s poorest residents. The agency’s stringent one-size-fits-all rules apply equally to heavily air-polluted cities and far cleaner plus typically colder off-grid wilderness areas such as large regions of Alaska and the American West.

While the EPA’s most recent regulations aren’t altogether new, their impacts will nonetheless be severe. Whereas restrictions had previously banned wood-burning stoves that didn’t limit fine airborne particulate emissions to 15 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) of air, the change will impose a maximum 12 μg/m3 limit. To put this amount in context, the EPA estimates that secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000-4,000 μg/m3 of particulates.

Most wood stoves that warm cabin and home residents from coast to coast cannot meet that standard. Older stoves that don’t cannot be traded in for updated types, but instead must be rendered inoperable, destroyed, or recycled as scrap metal.

The impacts of the EPA ruling will affect many families. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 survey statistics, 2.4 million American housing units (12% of all homes) burned wood as their primary heating fuel, compared with 7% that depended upon fuel oil.

Local governments in some states have gone even further than the EPA, banning not only the sale of noncompliant stoves, but even their use as fireplaces. As a result, owners face fines for infractions. Puget Sound, Washington, is one such location. Montréal, Canada, proposes to eliminate all fireplaces within its city limits.

Only weeks after the EPA enacted its new stove rules, attorneys general of seven states sued the agency to crack down on wood-burning water heaters as well. The lawsuit was filed by Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all predominantly Democrat states. Claiming that the new EPA regulations didn’t go far enough to decrease particle pollution levels, the plaintiffs cited agency estimates that outdoor wood boilers will produce more than 20% of wood-burning emissions by 2017. A related suit was filed by the environmental group EarthJustice.

The link for that story is here. 

Okay. So, "What's the rest of the story?" you ask.

This is the story I received a week or so ago from another reader:

When the Environmental Protection Agency tightened regulations on fireplace  carbon emission levels last year, a second-generation entrepreneurial spirit ignited at the Wilkening Fireplace Company outside of Walker.  

An EPA standard was announced a year ago which basically changed the terminology regulating fireplaces, owner Gary Wilkening explained of the built-in adjustable burn rate heater. The regulations “changed the defininition of a fireplace.”  

The changes sent him a mission to meet the wood smoke emission requirements, reading regs, meeting with attorneys and contacting the EPA.  “We ultimately redesigned our product,” he said, “creating a new category.”  

Wilkening’s late father Albert had invented the Fireplace Home Heater in his garage in 1971, opening the family business in 1973. “Prior to his design, fireplaces took out more heat from the home than it created,” Gary said.

Albert’s design “had the fireplace look, but it heated the house.”   

In February 2015, Wilkening faced a decision: the EPA regulations would either eliminate fireplaces’ heating capacity or create a whole new category of product.  The retail store would continue, he said, but the manufacturing of the fireplaces on site would close - unless he came up with a solution.   “We created opportunity from peril,” Wilkening said light-heartedly.  

EPA regulation of woodburning products began in 1988, he said of the initial 7.5 grams per hour of carbon emissions. The levels were tightened in the 1990s, “but nothing more was done for 20-plus years.”  

But in 2010, regulations began tightening. The proposed standards were published in 2014. The standards came out in early 2015.  Manufacturing was to halt on anything that did not meet the 4.5 grams of emission per hour regulations by May 15, 2015. And that was to go to 2 grams by 2020.  The Wilkening fireplace was 41 inches of glass short of viewing area. “Because of the size of the glass, we could not have an adjustable air control,” he explained.  

Experiments ensued, quarter-century assistant Scott Winter offering production advice.

 “We did it. But it didn’t come easy,” he said of the 12-hour days, seven-day weeks that ensued, watching a fireplace burning.  

He designed a fireplace that “met the definition,” 500 surface inches of viewing area and a single burn rate control.

"That’s the easy part,” Wilkening said.  “The trick is to make it efficient and meet requirements,” he said. “It’s a matter of carbureting air to fire at the right temperature, amounts and location.  “It literally came down to moving holes a quarter inch,” he said of engaging “years of experience and refining what’s been done in the past. I knew if I didn’t have it done by Sept. 1, I wasn’t going to be able to manufacture it,” he said of EPA deadlines.  

I would like to print the full story but that would be unfair to the original source. The link to the story is here: http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/business/3924276-wilkening-develops-epa-approved-fireplace.

Four (4) New Permits; CLR Reports Several Very Nice Wells In Camp Oil Field -- January 19, 2016

Just some of the headlines we woke up to after a 3-day weekend:

• Gun background checks hit record number in President Obama's year of the war on guns.
• In President Obama's last year of presidency, the New York Times notes the epidemic of drug overdose deaths.
• US budget deficit to widen for first time since 2009.
• Murders jumped 6% in first half of 2015, FBI says.
• Old story, recycled: these numbers terrify GM, Ford. 
• EPA jumps right on an oil company within minutes of an "allegation." But if we're talking contaminated water going to a poor African-American community, e-mails show EPA officials knew as far back as February 2015 that Flint, Mich., residents may be drinking water with high levels of lead - NBC News
• if a retired general has been shown to divulge "secret information" to a lover/biographer, he will be demoted retroactively; meanwhile, e-mails from Hillary Clinton's home server contained information classified at levels higher than previously known, according to document obtained by NBC News, and this, too, will, be ignored by the administration and she hasn't even been interviewed by the FBI yet  

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Now, Back To The Bakken

Active rigs:

January 19, 2016, 7:36 p.m. Central Time: NDIC server seems to be back up for the most part, but still unable to reach "Active Rigs."

Wells coming off the confidential list Wednesday:

• 29669, 962, CLR, Sorenson 6-16H2, Alkali Creek, 4 sections, Three Forks Second Bench, 15 stages, 2.9 million lbs, 8/15; cum 51K 11/15; additional information on this well at this post;
• 30406, SI/NC, SM Energy, RM Federal 4-15HNB, Ambrose, no production data,
• 31350, SI/NC, EOG, Austin 53-3402H, Parshall, no production data, 

In addition to those wells that were scheduled to come off the confidential list, the following wells were also released from "tight hole" status:

• 24710, PNC, Crescent Point, CPEC Marino
• 30443, PNC, EOG, Shell
• 30470, PNC, EOG, Shell
• 30471, PNC, EOG, Shell
• 30472, PNC, EOG, Shell
• 30475, PNC, Crescent Point, CPEC Staubach
• 30536, PNC, Slawson, Wolf
• 30537, PNC, Slawson, Wolf
• 30538, PNC, Slawson, Badger
• 30539, PNC, Slawson, Badger
• 30540, PNC, Slawson, Jeriyote
• 30654, PNC, CLR, Gates

Four (4) new permits --

• Operators: Crescent Point Energy
• Fields: Little Muddy (Williams), Ellisville (Williams)
• Comments:

Eleven (11) permit renewals, including:

• Hess, 6, all BB-Eide permits in Mckenzie County
• Emerald Oil, 4, two Joel Goodsen and two Dudley Dawson Federal well permits in McKenzie County
• Murex, 1, a Barrett Leigh permit in Williams County

Six (6) producing wells completed:

• 26042, 1,383, CLR, Patterson Federal 5-13H, Camp, 4 sections, t1/16; cum 2K 2 days;
• 26044, 1,316, CLR, Kuhn Federal 5-12H, Camp, 4 sections, t1/16; cum --
• 26933, 1,243, CLR, Patterson Federal 7-13H, Camp, 4 sections, t1/16; cum 1K 1 day;
• 26934, 1,288, CLR, Kuhn 6-13H1, Camp, 4 sections, t1/16; cum 1K 2 days;
• 26935, 1,059, CLR, Kuhn 7-13H, Camp, 4 sections, t1/16; cum --
• 30361, 1,239, CLR, Patterson Federal 6-13H, Camp, 4 sections, t1/6; cum -- 

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29669, see above, CLR, Sorenson 6-16H2, Alkali Creek:

Date	Oil Runs	MCF Sold
11-2015	9252	7025
10-2015	11131	15799
9-2015	12477	17096
8-2015	17431	23407
7-2015	392	215

Tuesday, January 10, 2016; Unable To Reach NDIC Server

Unable to reach the NDIC server at 8:22 a.m. Central Time, January 19, 2016.  

Twitter is also down. NY Times story. 

Active rigs:

	1/19/2016	01/19/2015	01/19/2014	01/19/2013	01/19/2012
Active Rigs	49	161	187	187	200

RBN Energy: Crude Price Rout Continues In Face of Stark Fundamentals.

Crude prices have fallen 21% since the start of 2016 and may fall further with the end to Iranian sanctions threatening to release yet more supplies into a saturated market. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) closed at $29.42/Bbl Friday (January 15, 2016) and is now down 78% since the price rout began in June 2014. What has changed in the past two months to make crude prices fall so fast this year? Today we begin a two-part discussion of the fundamental factors underlying current weakness in the crude market.

The latest short-term energy outlook (STEO) published this month (January 2016) by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) lays out the oversupply story underling current crude oil price weakness in its forecast out to the end of 2017. The data shows world crude production (supply) in Q1 2016 is still greater than demand – to the tune of about 0.9 MMb/d – meaning that surplus crude is adding to inventory stockpiles every day.

During the period between 2011 and the start of 2014 demand kept ahead of supply (both growing about 4% a year) keeping world oil prices above $100/Bbl. Since 2014 the supply/demand balance has reversed with supply exceeding demand – leading to the price collapse in the second half of 2014 and continuing through today. The surplus of production over demand reached 2.4 MMb/d in Q2 2015. 

EIA expects the imbalance of production over demand to last until mid-2017. The STEO predicts that world crude demand will once again exceed supply during the second half of 2017.

Assuming the EIA forecast turns out to be accurate (and like every forecast - there are plenty of assumptions built in) ...  no end to the surplus until 2017.

Global supply of oil - WSJ: world could "drown" in oversupply of oil; Iran could add 300,000 bopd by the end of 1Q16.

The oil markets could be left with a surplus of 1.5 million barrels a day in the first half of 2016, and “unless something changes, the oil market could drown in oversupply,”  according to the EIA. 

Tweeting now:  Health care conglomerate Johnson & Johnson to cut 3,000 jobs in medical devices division over next 2 years.

Tweeting now:  Tiffany & Co. reports 9% worldwide decline in jewelry sales during holiday period.