Thursday, July 14, 2016

After Brexit, Britain Scraps Climate Change -- Rigzone -- July 14, 2016

Link here.
New UK Prime Minister Theresa May has scrapped the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and added energy policy responsibilities to the government's business department.
The renamed Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will be headed by the Right Honourable Greg Clark MP, who will be known as the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Clark was previously the government's Communities Secretary. Clark said in a statement he is "thrilled" to lead the new department, which is "charged with delivering a comprehensive industrial strategy, leading government’s relationship with business, furthering our world-class science base, delivering affordable, clean energy and tackling climate change."

Regular Unleaded At $1.68/Gallon West Of Grapevine, Near Texas Motor Speedway -- July 14, 2016

Gasoline selling for $1.68/gallon at QT service stations west of DFW. I think these prices will go down at least another 20 cents based on prices elsewhere in the immediate area ($2.09/gallon).

I'm curious if anyone in the US is seeing gasoline at less than $1.69/gallon. See poll at sidebar at the right.



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Terrorist Attack?

Did President Obama admit the most recent slaughter in France was a "terrorist" attack? This attack "just happened" and already the president knows it's a "terrorist" attack. Remarkable. I assume SecState John "served in Vietnam" Kerry is calling this a car accident until more information is gathered.

Poll: Will ND Crude Oil Production Show An Increase Or Decrease When The Director's Cut Comes Out Friday?

The NDIC Director's Cut is scheduled to be released Friday, July 15, at 2:00 p.m. This will be data from May, 2016.

Daily production had decreased in April, 2016, but Rystad Energy suggested it was due to temporary factors that would resolve. Rystad Energy seemed to imply that the "temporary factors" would resolve in May.

At the poll at the sidebar at the right: do you think crude oil production, on a daily basis, will show an increase or a decrease in May, 2016, compared to production in April, 2016?

California Rejects SRE's Plan For A Natural Gas Connector Pipeline -- July 14, 2016

From SeekingAlpha:
  • The California Public Utilities Commission rejects SoCalGas' request to build its North-South pipeline project, saying there are "more cost-effective alternatives for supporting the utility's southern natural gas system."
  • The regulator also denies $621M in rate increases requested by SoCalGas and San Diego Gas & Electric, both subsidiaries of Sempra Energy.
  • The project would have consisted of a new 65-mile natural gas pipeline from a pumping station in Adelanto through San Bernardino county to another station in Moreno Valley.
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A Must-Read Story

I had not seen this story. Don sent it to me. It's quite incredible, to say the least. It's a Bloomberg story

MRO Has Another Great Well -- July 14, 2016

Active rigs:


7/14/201607/14/201507/14/201407/14/201307/14/2012
Active Rigs2973193186215


No wells are coming off confidential list Friday.

Seven (7) new permits:
  • Operators: BR (3), EOG (3), Whiting
  • Fields: Blue Buttes (McKenzie), Parshall (Mountrail), Cow Creek (WIlliams)
  • Comments:
Nine (9) permits renewed:
  • BR (7), one Hefer permit and six He permits, all in McKenzie County 
  • Emerald Oil (2), two Lloyd Christmas permits, both in Stark County
One producing well completed:
  • 31060, 3,473, MRO, Heather USA 13-35TFH, Antelope, Sanish pool, t5/16; cum 18K after 7 days; frack data not filed (as far as I can tell) but it appears that it was a 44-stage frack

Off The Net For Awhile -- One Last Screenshot -- Iran Crude Oil Production -- July 14, 2016

Iran should be thanking President Obama.




Getting ready for a nap, poolside.

Market Continues To Set New Records -- July 14, 2016

I was late getting to this because there was too much other stuff to check up on and blog, and then I went biking. But it was obvious that we would see another Dow record when earnings for JPMorgan were announced earlier this morning, before the market open. All things being equal the past two weeks, the market was "holding its breath" waiting to see how Brexit would affect the banks. Of course, Brexit hasn't even occurred yet -- just the vote -- so it would have had no effect on JPMorgan's 2Q16 earnings. But for the record, JPMorgan easily surpassed Wall Street estimates of $1.43/share when it reported $1.55/share in earnings. JPMorgan's consumer bank deposits climbed 10% from one year ago to a record high, while merchants' credit card processing volume rose 13%. Jamie Dimon earned his bonus this quarter.

With regard to the market at midday, the Dow is up another 144 points, setting yet another record. The S&P 500 is up almost 13 points.

NYSE 52-week highs: 222
  • Becton Dickinson
  • Cabela's
  • Chevron (a big whoop) 
  • XOM (a big whoop)
  • General Electric
  • Helmerich & Payne (who wudda thought?)
  • TransCanada (the Keystone folks)
NYSE 52-week lows:  0

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Bubbles
Making Bubbles


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The Seven Deadly Sins of Wine-and-Food Pairing

From The Everyday Gourmet: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Cooking, Chef Bill Briwa, The Culinary Institute of America, c. 2012.

The seven types of food that are hard on wine and should be avoided when serving wine. But there are solutions.

First, the seven types of foods: chiles, vinegar, eggs, spinach, artichokes, asparagus, and soup.

Chiles: chiles are an irritant. If serving wine with chiles, choose a wine that has low alcohol, no astringency, no tannin, and maybe a little bit of sweetness. I wonder if the kabinet or spatlese wines of Germany would work?

Vinegar: vinegar is spoiled wine. If a dish is prepared with a small amount of vinegar and the vinegar does not define the dish, then wine should be fine. Does this not suggest, one should not drink wine with some salad dressings?

Eggs: an exception. Because eggs don't define a quiche, it should be okay to pair wine with quiche.

Spinach: for spinach to work with wine, it must be "redefined" such as adding it to stir-fry or sauteed with garlic and herbs.

Artichokes can make wine taste sweet because of an enzyme called cymarin. The solution: steam artichokes; take off the petals, and dip them in mayonnaise. Of course.

Asparagus: redefine asparagus by grilling it; sprinkle some parmesan cheese and some thyme on top.

Soup: in classical French cuisine, one does not pair a beverage (soup) with another beverage (wine). CIA suggests that this probably pertains to consomme. It should be fine to pair wine with rich, hearty soups, along with a piece of cheese and/or some crusty bread.

The Value Of An Energy Asset Is Deteriorating Underneath Europe -- Bloomberg -- July 14, 2016

From Bloomberg:
For decades, one of the most profitable parts of Europe’s energy industry was giant, underground reservoirs used to store billions of dollars worth of natural gas. Traders stockpile fuel there during the summer to sell in winter, when the continent’s consumers need to heat their homes.

The trade isn’t working anymore.

As the world finds itself with an increasing oversupply of natural gas, the gap between summer and winter prices has narrowed, making the storage business much less lucrative.

That’s caused RWE AG and SSE Plc to write down the value of gas storage sites by about $200 million each in the first quarter. Other operators from Statoil ASA to Wingas GmbH say they may exit the industry if the slump continues. That could be a problem because storage isn’t just about profits from trading - it also provides security against sudden spikes in demand or unexpected supply constraints.
Data points:
  • European storage operators are shutting down storage; storage prices no longer cover operating costs
  • 1Q16: three of the 10 largest storage operators in Europe recorded losses due to storage operating costs
  • more than 3% of Europe's gas storage has been mothballed since 2010, including two more facilities in 2016
  • there was also a permanent reduction in output from Europe's largest natural gas field Groningen, in Netherlands, when production was linked to tremors
Risks:
  • Europe has experienced natural gas shortages twice in the last decade during freezing temperatures because of disputes between Ukraine and Russia
  • Russia is the EU's largest outside supplier
  • this is a security issue for the EU
With regard to Groningen, this is a most opportune time to take us back to this post in early 2014.

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Notes To The Granddaughters

The book to read this week (me, not the granddaughters): Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry, Ian Stewart, c. 2007, the author of Nature's Numbers and Does God Play Dice?

Mesopotamia: between two rivers. Potamia, rivers, potable?

Invention of agriculture, led to city-states. Some of the world's great city-states in Mesopotamia: Ninevah, Nimrud, Nippur, Uruk, Lagash, Eridu, Ur, and above all, Babylon.

Euclid's Elements Of Geometry (generally, just Elements). When printing was invented, this book was among the first to appear in printed form. It  has been published in over a thousand different editions, a number exceeded only by the Bible. Taught, wrote in Alexandria, 325 BCE; died, 265 BCE; exact birthplace unknown. Must have been, at some point, a student at Plato's Academy in Athens.

Euclid's only tools: an unmarked straightedge and a compass.

Regular polygons. The Greeks could construct regular polygons when the number of sides is: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, or 20. The Greeks could not construct regular polygons when the number of sides is: 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 19. From wiki:
As 7 is a Pierpont prime but not a Fermat prime, the regular heptagon is not constructible with compass and straightedge but is constructible with a marked ruler and compass.
This type of construction is called a neusis construction.
It is also constructible with compass, straightedge and angle trisector.
The impossibility of straightedge and compass construction follows from the observation that \scriptstyle {2\cos {\tfrac {2\pi }{7}}\approx 1.247} is a zero of the irreducible cubic x3 + x2 − 2x − 1. Consequently this polynomial is the minimal polynomial of 2cos(2Ï€⁄7), whereas the degree of the minimal polynomial for a constructible number must be a power of 2. 
Within the range of 3 - 20, note that the number "17" is missing. The author will get back to "17" later. 

Omar Khayyam was prominent among Persian and Arab mathematicians who took up the torch that the Greeks had dropped. He went farther than using straightedge and compass, but not much farther. He used "conic sections" because they can be constructed by slicing a cone with a plane.

To be continued, maybe. Probably not.

Update On The Niobrara; ND Starts The Day With 29 Active Rigs -- July 14, 2016

Active rigs:


7/14/201607/14/201507/14/201407/14/201307/14/2012
Active Rigs2973193186215

RBN Energy: update on the Niobrara.

Jobs: unchanged from previous week. Unchanged at 254,000. Median estimate had been for an increase to 265,00 (+11,000).  From Bloomberg:
In April, applications had dropped to a 4-decade low of 248,000. Weekly claims have been below 300,000 for 71 consecutive weeks, the longest period since 1973 and consistent with robust employment conditions.
Brent. Nice graphic of "Brent" from Platts over at Twitter today: