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Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Tennis Balls Banned Near GOP Convention Center -- Out-Of-State Demonstrators Decide To Stay Home -- No Fun Without Tennis Balls? -- July 20, 2016

On July 18, 2016, I posted:
With regard to the Republican Convention in Cleveland and possible violence:
  • the networks are hoping for fireworks
  • it is noteworthy that the Ohio governor could not find a legal loophole banning "open carry" for a couple of days -- I can think of several ways he could have done that had he wanted
  • "open carry" will result in a better outcome than had "open carry" been temporarily banned
  • "open carry" patriots will put themselves between the uniformed law enforcers and the crowds, and they (the "open carry" patriots") will have their backs toward the uniformed law enforcers, and their guns on their front sides, holstered and/or unloaded
  • the Cleveland command post knows that 99% of demonstrators are peaceful and sheepish; 1% are out-of-state anarchists; take out those 1% with immediate arrests and there is a better chance of minimizing Baltimore-Ferguson chaos
There are still two more days to go and anything can yet happen, but for the moment, out-of-town activists are upset that so few demonstrators showed up to create trouble in Cleveland. In the biggest demonstration to date, it sounds like:
  • reporters out-numbered demonstrators
  • cops rode bicycles around the demonstrators
  • the cops did NOT arrest anyone
  • demonstrators openly broke the law by bringing in tennis balls
Yes, tennis balls. Open carry is allowed in Cleveland, but tennis balls are banned within a 1.7 square mile event zone around the main venues.

So, why the small turnout? One out-of-town activist said she is "absolutely, positively convinced the reason for that is the fear factor."

The fear factor? Yup.
The out-of-town community organizer says she’s not sure why relatively few people showed up to protest in Cleveland, but she believes many were scared off by Ohio’s open carry laws, which allow people to carry firearms -- despite the ban on tennis balls and aluminum cans -- near the convention.
Or maybe Cleveland isn't that much fun in July.


Offshore Wind In Scotland Is Pretty Much Dead -- Long Llive The Birds -- BBC --July 20, 2016

Truly cool. At least the Scots have their act together.

Wind developers had four major off-shore wind projects planned.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds sued to stop the projects -- the RSPB is the equivalent of "Ducks Unlimited" or the "Sierra Club," one might say.

A judge upheld the RSPB Scoltland's challenge to consent to any wind turbines in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay.

Hurray.
The four projects - Inch Cape, Neart na Gaoithe and Seagreen Alpha and Bravo - were approved by Scottish ministers in October 2014, and could power more than 1.4 million homes.

RSPB Scotland lodged a legal challenge, saying the turbines could have "serious implications" for wildlife, and argued that the government had breached legal requirements when making the original decision by not giving proper consideration to this.

Judge Lord Stewart ruled in favour of the charity, calling the consents "defective", meaning ministers will have to reconsider the planning decisions and address the points put forward by the RSPB's lawyers.

Mr Wilson also said it was difficult to see how the "damning" ruling could be appealed, as it was "so comprehensively critical".
The word in the firths: "offshore wind in Scotland is pretty much dead."
The swallow, the house martin, the swift,
The dotterel, the osprey
All say "hurray!"

The wheatear, the ring ouzel,
The willow warbler, the common tern,
And the cuckoo, too,
To wind developers, cry "Shoo!"

The Firth of Forth,
Henceforth,
Is wind turbine free,
As is the Firth of Tay!
Hurray!
With apologies to Emily Dickinson.

Whiting To Report Two Nice Wells Thursday -- July 20, 2016

Active rigs:


7/20/201607/20/201507/20/201407/20/201207/20/2011
Active Rigs3170195207184

Two wells coming off the confidential list Thursday:
  • 30838, 1,974, Whiting, P Earl Rennerfeldt 154-99-2-3-27-2H3, Epping, Three Forks B1, 42 stages, 6.6 million lbs, spud 11/22/15; TD, 12/5/15; total Three Forks pay zone thickness is estimated at 23 feet;target 8' window; gas units relatively low; t2/16; cum 85K 5/16;
  • 30839, 2,135, Whiting, P Earl Rennerfeldt 154-99-2-3-27-2H, Epping, middle Bakken, 42 stages, 6.9 million lbs, spud 11/5/15; TD 11/19/15; total middle Bakken pay zone thickness is estimated at 40 feet; target window, 8 feet; t2/16; cum 119K 5/16;
  • I track the P Earl Rennerfeldt wells here
Five (5) new permits:
  • Operators: Hess (3), EOG (2)
  • Fields: Antelope (McKenzie), Stanley (Mountrail)
  • Comments:
Five (5) permits renewed:
  • BR (3): three Ransom permits in McKenzie County
  • Oasis (2): two Jensen permits in Williams County
Denbury finally makes it official: it temporarily abandons a Tyler well:
  • 13325, TA, Denbury, SFTU 12-35, Fryburg, t7/92, cum 889K last production in 2006
*******************************************

30839, see above, Whiting, P Earl Rennerfeldt 154-99-2-3-27-2H, Epping:

DateOil RunsMCF Sold
5-20161751731888
4-20162330139598
3-20163107051806
2-20163419227564
1-2016124820

30838, see above, Whiting, P Earl Rennerfeldt 154-99-2-3-27-2H3, Epping:

DateOil RunsMCF Sold
5-20162259337931
4-20161399824854
3-20162130834754
2-2016190293728
1-201670441436

Dow, S&P Set Record Intraday Highs -- CNBC -- 38 Minutes Ago -- July 20, 2016

Price of oil, how "bad" is it? US reports large drawdown in US oil stocks; headlines scream price of oil rises on that news .... and what do we have? WTI still below $45.

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Market

Mid-day trading, new NYSE 52-week highs, 145, including:
  • GE
  • Murphy USA
  • 3M
New 52-week lows: 3

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Wednesday's Energy Tweets

US gasoline consumption averaged 9.7 million bopd over last four weeks; up 126,000 bopd compared to one year ago, 2015.

US gasoline stockpiles -- even adjusted for higher demand now -- peak summer driving -- at highest for over ten years (24.8 days vs average of 23.4 days).

US gasoline stocks now almost 25 million bbls (+11%) higher than at same point last year; and y-o-y the surplus is still growing.

US midwest gasoline stocks rose 1.3 million bbls; Gulf Coast stocks fell 0.4 million bbls last week; US east coast stocks unchanged.

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GDP: Greece vs Turkey vs Saudi Arabia

I posted this for obvious reasons. Now I see that this is a headline story over at Fox News: will the purge send Turkey to a grinding halt? In one word, yes. But worse, Turkey will "go into reverse."

Greece: $242 billion (2013)
Turkey: $822 billion (2013)
Saudi Arabia: $748 billion (2013)

Turkey GDP history:


Saudi Arabia GDP history:



Compare with US at almost $18 trillion, and the US hasn't had a "negative" year since 2009.

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GOP Convention

Fox News numbers down.

Clinton News Network and MicrosoftNBC draw in the viewers.

It will be interesting to see the Democratic Convention numbers. My hunch: television viewership will be huge once the riots start. Inside or outside.

You may want to get your pizza delivery orders in now. An analyst has upgraded Papa John's because growing civil unrest means more pizza deliveries. My hunch is that Papa John could set pizza delivery records during the Democratic convention, second only to deliveries during the Super Bowl games.

Active Rig Count In North Dakota Up To 31 -- July 20, 2016

Active rigs:


7/20/201607/20/201507/20/201407/20/201207/20/2011
Active Rigs3170195207184

RBN Energy: a "spotlight" report on Energy Transfer Partners Midstream & Liquids.

Beating a dead horse: back to the cost of a natural gas pipeline. Remember this post? The SRE natural gas pipeline that California regulators disapproved: 65 miles; $621 million.

An end of an era. Of all the stories I happened to come across in the last 24 hours, this probably affected me the most -- the passing of Garry Marshall. Although his shows were filmed decades ago, these are the shows I grew up with -- "Happy Days," "Laverne & Shirley," "The Odd Couple" -- and the movies, "Pretty Woman."

I can only say that I feel so fortunate to have grown up in the Golden Age of Television, and perhaps the Golden Age of Hollywood, but that's yet to play out.

It's very possible I never would have ended up in California had it not been for television. I grew up in North Dakota, and had spent very little time outside North and/or South Dakota. But an invisible hand pulled (or pushed) me out to California where I went to graduate school (Los Angeles) and ended up spending seven consecutive years in California -- four years in southern California, and three years in what is called northern California.

"Mulholland Drive" and "LA Confidential" are probably closer to the truth regarding the film industry than my myth of Hollywood but that's fine.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Without question, Modern Critical Views is perhaps one of the best, if not the best hardcover series on "literary criticism." The series has been around forever and is edited by perhaps the preeminent literary critic of all time, Harold Bloom, a one-man department at Yale:
Bloom, the most original literary critic in America; Bloom, who has been a member of the English department but has divorced it (or has it divorced him?) to become a free-floating ''professor of the humanities''; Bloom, who talks of being an academic pariah but who is so well-connected that he brunches on Sundays with A. Bartlett Giamatti, Yale's departing president. Bloom is a one-man band. For years, he has called himself a Jewish Gnostic.
During the 1960's and 70's, Bloom's hot-blooded readings of the 19th-century Romantic poets helped melt the authority of the New Critics (an intellectually cool group that distrusted Romantic enthusiasms). His dark, agonized, Freudian speculations over the process known as ''literary influence'' - over the ways writers creatively misread and try to outdo their artistic predecessors - became the theme of his career.
Bloom did more than anyone else to add Wallace Stevens to the ''canon'' of the best 20th-century poets, and Stevens's work has since become entrenched in the nation's English departments. Bloom's tastes in more recent poets have been influential as well; John Ashbery, James Merrill and A. R. Ammons are at the top of his list.
Like some Crazy Eddie of lit crit, Bloom has been editing and writing introductions for hundreds of volumes of criticism being published by an outfit called Chelsea House (he explains the project by saying it's ''insane,'' that he can't sleep anyway and that he's outdoing Samuel Johnson). Last summer, he won the rich MacArthur, or so-called ''genius,'' Award.
Most recently, he has begun teaching and writing on Shakespeare and the Hebrew Bible, two literary monoliths outside his areas of academic certification. As a teacher, he's known as sage, genius and comic rolled into one - Zarathustra cum Zero Mostel. 
I have read several in the series. But today, I was blown away to see that Harold Bloom has included Amy Tan among the series, published in 2000.

I had not heard of Amy Tan until a few years ago when Chuck Wilder, proprietor of "Books On Broadway" in Williston, recommended I read The Joy Luck Club. I have yet to read it but now that Amy Tan has made Bloom's inner circle, perhaps I should.

My wife, a daughter of a Japanese woman, born in Japan, is technically Issei, I guess, along witt her mother, since both were born in Japan and emigrated to the United States. Her daughters, though not full-blooded Japanese, would be second-generation, Nisei. And, of course, that would make Arianna, Olivia, and Sophia Sansei. Whatever. I assume they have to be full-blooded Japanese to be considered Issei, Nisei, or or Sansei, but if nothing else, I've ... well, I've digressed.

My wife great up with the Amy Tan books, and loved them because she could identify with Amy Tan her Oriental mother. 

I have fond, fond memories of May's Japanese mother.

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Amy Tan

From Ben Xu's essay in Amy Tan, Modern Critical Views, edited by Harold Bloom, c. 2000:
What the four families in that book, the Woos, Jongs, Jsus, and St. Clairs, have in common is mother-daughter relations. The mothers are all first generation immigrants from mainland China, speaking very little English and remaining cultural aliens in their new world. The daughters are all born and educated in America, some even married to "foreigners." With the microcultural structure of the family, the only means available for mothers to ensure ethnic continuity is to recollect the past and tell tales of what is remembered. 
Wow.