Continental raised its full-year production view to 210,000-220,000
barrels of oil equivalent per day from 205,000-215,000. It also said its
DUC inventory in Bakken grew to 165, with expectations to end the year
with 190, down from its view of 195 in Q1.
EOG Resources +2.8% AH after beating analyst estimates on Q2 earnings and revenues and raising FY 2016 production guidance
Despite
an adjusted $0.38/share loss, swinging from a profit in the year-ago
quarter, EOG increased the number of wells it plans to frack this year
to 350 from 270 while keeping its budget at $2.4B-$2.6B
EOG says greater efficiencies have allowed it to do more for less and earn at least a 30% after-tax rate of return on its best new wells with the oil price at ~$40/bbl
EOG
says Q2 crude and condensate production fell 4% Y/Y to 267.7K bbl/day,
evidence of the industry's growing focus on capital discipline, but that
output could rise 10% a year through 2020 with $50/bbl oil and 20% a
year at $60 oil
EOG also says it
increased its inventory of net premium drilling locations during the
quarter to 4,300 from 3,200, including an additional 390 in the South
Texas Eagle Ford, EOG's largest high-return play, and more than 500 in
the Delaware Basin
Over the past few days, there have been some incredible stories coming out of the oil patch, and out of the international political community. The EOG press release underscores one of those stories.
If I get a chance I will elaborate, but right now, I'm going out biking. In 102-degree sunny Texas weather.
Chesapeake now expects to sell more than $2.0 billion in assets this
year, well above the upper end of the prior $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion
range. The firm said that it plans to sell "selected" Haynesville Shale
acreage, located in northwest Louisiana.
The
second-largest producer of natural gas posted a bigger-than-expected
adjusted quarterly loss of 14 cents a share. Total revenue fell more
than 50 percent from the same period last year to $1.62 billion and
missed estimates of $1.93 billion.
The energy
company also raised its full-year production forecast by about 3
percent. As of Wednesday's close, shares were up 17.5 percent
year-to-date but nearly 34 percent lower over the last 12 months.
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation:
Link here.
Chesapeake Utilities Corporation (CPK) reported second-quarter 2016
operating earnings of 52 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus
Estimate of 49 cents. Reported earnings also grew 26.8% year-over-year
on the back of higher earnings from the Regulated and Unregulated Energy
segments.
Vertical Integration
From Fortune on why MuskMelon wants Tesla and Solar City to merge. The solar panel industry and the batteries in EVs use inverters to convert DC to AC, but that, to me, doesn't make, at least to me, this acquisition a "vertical integrated company." It simply means that instead of having one team over at Solar City working on inverters, and another team over at Tesla working on inverters, Tesla-Aluminum Siding Corp can have one team working on inverters.
*************************
Visions Of Infinity: The Great Mathematical Problems, Ian Stewart, c. 2013
The best thing about this book, so far, is that it starts off with "primes." In the "pop science genre," it seems incredible all the articles written on primes. I find it intriguing that a property that seems so simple, so unassuming, can be so important to mathematics. And here it is again. In a 17-chapter book on the great math problems, the book starts out with primes.
Something tells me that after this chapter, I won't be able to understand anything else. I will therefore savor this chapter, and look forward to discussing it with Arianna on our rides to water polo practice and tournaments.
Two fascinating tidbits from the chapter on primes which might be of interest to middle school students:
the author demonstrates a clever way of finding the greatest common divisor of two numbers
why the number "1" is considered neither a prime number nor a composite number; it alone is a special number -- this was only "decided" by mathematicians in the "last century or two" -- that the number 1 is "special"
The next "problem" area was "squaring the circle." I first came across this problem when I was in "junior high" -- what we now call "middle school." I remember it vividly because I read about it during Mr Thue's study hall. It was in a biography of our 16th president. President Lincoln, before he became president (and perhaps while he was president) spent hours trying to "square the circle" -- something that is impossible, simply because pi is irrational -- or at least that's what I thought. There is much more to it than that. When a mathematician proved that pi was irrational, that same mathematician in that same paper conjectured that pi was transcendental (which was later proved): pi "transcends" algebraic expression. Pi does not satisfy any polynomial equation with integer coefficients.
Another famous curious number in mathematics, e, is also transcendental.
It turns out that one cannot "square the circle" because pi is transcendental.
Enough for now.
By the way, I'm beginning to think one can see similarities in politics. Not only are some politicians irrational, but they succeed because they transcend human frailty.
Later, 10:37 a.m. Central Time: I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the "arson" story below, I think, has it wrong. Yes, in the "general" sense it was arson -- seriously, is there any doubt? -- but arson in this country generally has a different connotation. In any other context this would be considered environmental terrorism:
Eco-terrorism is defined by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation as "the use or threatened use of
violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an
environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature."
I think this would also fall under the "general" definition of "hate crime." On a lesser scale, of course, it was "malicious vandalism."
Hava Nagila
Original Post
Britain cuts rates for the first time since 2009, and boosts quantitative easing. This is a huge headline story, but the rate is almost inconsequential, it seems. The Bank of England "rate" was already at a meager 0.5%. The bank cut it to 0.25%.
Huge miss by SRE: misses by 18 cents. 2Q16 earnings per share: $0.79. Revenue also misses by $420 million. Revenue was down 7% year-over-year. Shares are trading about 1% lower, but all-in-all, it looks like investors are taking the news in good stride. Story here although it says not much more than the headline data points. The transcript is here.
Huge beat by Denbury Resources: beats by 6 cents; 2Q16 earnings of 8 cents/share. Revenue misses by $31 million, a stunning 32% decrease year-over-year.
Old news, as Hillary would say. This was published in The Bismarck Tribune two days ago -- arson suspected at three Dakota Access pipeline sites in Iowa.
NEWTON, Iowa -- Three fires that scorched heavy equipment being used
to build the Bakken oil pipeline — which investigators believe to be
arsons — won’t slow construction, the developer has vowed.
Jasper
County Sheriff John Halferty said his office was investigating two fires
reported there Monday. The fires caused an estimated $1 million in
damage to construction equipment.
“We believe it was intentionally set. We are investigating them as arson cases,” Halferty said.
Newton, Iowa, is near the center of the state, fairly close to Illinois, actually. It is home of the world-famous Iowa Speedway.
*************************
First World Problems
Only in America.
This Wall Street Journal reporter continues to complain how long it takes for her chip-embedded credit card transaction. I say "continues to complain" because this meme began some time ago. Most folks have gotten over it. I cannot make this up. The Journal devoted almost a whole print page to this story:
After pulling out the stopwatch for over 50 transactions at various
retailers in recent days, I can confirm that it takes twice as long to
pay with a chip card than with a card swipe or mobile payment—on
average, 13 seconds versus 6 seconds.
So, we have this millenial, I assume, complain that her chip card took, on average, 13 seconds to process, and provided almost perfect security protection. That was versus the alternative that took 66 seconds and provides almost no security protection.
She says this 7-second "delay" is giving her "chip card nightmares. Wow, she needs to get a life.
Personally I love the chip card. It give me 7 more seconds to chit-chat with the clerk. That's why I don't have an ATM card. I like going into the bank to say "hi" to the manager and to talk to the tellers. Sometimes I even learn something in the idle chit-chat.
It must be a North Dakota thing.
Now, I'm curious -- there were 197 comments to the story -- I wonder how others saw this story? The second comment (at the moment) noted that conventional swipe terminals are inherently unfriendly to lefties.
Someone noted that in the "old" days, we used to write checks. Or sometimes even use cash and then wait for the clerk to count out the change, and then for the customer to recount the change to make sure it was correct. And then after finding an extra penny in one's pocket, handing back the other four cents that was received in change, and asking for a nickel instead.
One individual noted that part of the delay -- about 5 seconds -- was purposely programmed in the system for testing while programmers debugged the system. That artificial delay had been removed. That person has not noticed any chip card delays in 2016.
Chris summed up her article perfectly: "This is all a joke, right? A few seconds here versus a few more there. We are all totally insane, especially the WSJ for the silly video explaining a truly first-world (non) problem and "vital" solutions. And Stern [the reporter] is insufferably immature, complete with vocal fry, uptalk, and valley girl presentation. Please find a grownup.
What's "uptalk"? Uptalk is a manner of speaking in which declarative sentences are uttered with rising intonation at the end, as if they were questions. Something I often do with Sophia. She always responds.
**************************
Jewish Boycott
Making The Rounds On Social Media -- This Was First Posted Some Years Ago
From a Facebook posting (which I am surprised, has not been removed). I have not confirmed the veracity or accuracy of the following, however, it is clear there are some inaccuracies and disingenuous observations. It was posted by Jerry Goodwin.
I posted it mostly because of the list of Nobel prize winners.
Jewish Boycott
A short
time ago, Iran's Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khomenei urged the
Muslim World to boycott anything and everything that originates with the
Jewish people.
In response, Meyer M. Treinkman, a
pharmacist, out of the kindness of his heart, offered to assist them in
their boycott as follows:
"Any Muslim who has syphilis must
not be cured by Salvarsan discovered by a Jew, Dr. Ehrlich. He should
not even try to find out whether he has syphilis, because the Wasserman test is the discovery of a Jew. If a Muslim suspects that he has gonorrhea, he must not seek diagnosis, Because he will be using the
method of a Jew named Neissner.
"A Muslim who has heart disease must not use digitalis, a discovery by a Jew, Ludwig Traube.
Should he suffer with a toothache, he must not use Novocaine, a discovery of the Jews, Widal and Weil.
If a Muslim has diabetes, he must not use insulin, the result of
research by Minkowsky, a Jew. If one has a headache, he must shun
Pyramidon and Antypyrin, due to the Jews, Spiro and Ellege.
Muslims with seizmures must put up with them because it was a Jew, Oscar Leibreich, who proposed the use of chloral hydrate.
Arabs must do likewise with their psychic ailments because Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew.
Should a Muslim child get diphtheria, he must refrain from the "Schick" reaction which was invented by the Jew, Bella Schick.
"Muslims should be ready to die in great numbers and must not permit
treatment of ear and brain damage, work of Jewish Nobel Prize winner,
Robert Baram.
They should continue to die or remain
crippled by Infantile Paralysis because the discoverer of the anti-polio
vaccine is a Jew, Jonas Salk.
"Muslims must refuse to use
Streptomycin and continue to die of tuberculosis because a Jew, Zalman
Waxman, invented the wonder drug against this killing disease.
Muslim doctors must discard all discoveries and improvements by
dermatologist Judas Sehn Benedict, or the lung specialist, Frawnkel, and
of many other world renowned Jewish scientists and medical experts.
"In short, good and loyal Muslims properly and fittingly should remain
afflicted with syphilis, gonorrhea, heart disease, headaches, typhus, diabetes, mental disorders, polio, convulsions and tuberculosis and be
proud to obey the Islamic boycott." [Actually, it appears many are already treatment for mental disorders.]
Oh, and by the way,
don't call for a doctor on your cell phone because the cell phone was
invented in Israel by a Jewish engineer.
Meanwhile I ask, what medical contributions to the world have the Muslims made?"
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000; that is
ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1988 - Najib Mahfooz
Peace:
1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
1990 - Elias James Corey
1994 - Yaser Arafat
1999 - Ahmed Zewai
Economics:
(zero)
Physics:
(zero)
Medicine:
1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
1998 - Ferid Mourad TOTAL: 7 SEVEN
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000; that is FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975- Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita Levi-Montalcini]
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
1996- Lu RoseIacovino TOTAL: 129!
The Jews are NOT promoting brainwashing children in military training
camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths
of Jews and other non-Muslims.
The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants.
There is NOT one single Jew who has destroyed a church.
There is NOT a single Jew who protests by killing people. The Jews
don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to
all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world's Muslims should
consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the
Jews for all their problems.
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them.
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the
Palestinians and Arab neighbors, even if you believe there is more
culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it
all:
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there
would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today,
there would be no more Israel."
Benjamin Netanyahu: General
Eisenhower warned us. It is a matter of history that when the Supreme
Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the
victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be
taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered
through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
He did
this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now -
get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of
history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'
Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its
school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which
claims it never occurred.
It is not removed as yet.
However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the
world and how easily each country is giving into it.
It is now more than 65 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.
Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to
be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center
'NEVER HAPPENED' because it offends some Muslim in the United States?
CLIPPERDATA: FIRST ETHANE LOADING AT HOUSTON TERMINAL ABORTED
On Monday, RBN Energy discussed the impending first export of Gulf Coast
ethane out of the new Enterprise Morgan’s Point facility. Now, it appears, that cargo has been aborted.
The JS Ineos Insight has left its anchoring point offshore
Galveston and is heading out of the Gulf. The vessel was to take on the
first cargo of ethane to be shipped from the Enterprise terminal at
Morgan's Point on the southern end of the port of Houston. The vessel
anchored in the Galveston area on July 29 and left the area on August
3. Aborting the loading suggests that the terminal is not ready.
The JS Ineos Insight may now be heading to Marcus Hook to take on ethane at the East Coast terminal. Another Ineos ship, the JS Ineos Inspiration
is already at Marcus Hook to load. The other two ethane ships in the
same class (27,500 cubic meters) are offloading in Norway. The
disposition of these ships means that the first loading in Houston will
be significantly delayed.
Ineos could use a smaller vessel to pick up ethane in Houston, but
of the eight vessels in this smaller class of tanker, seven are trading
in the Middle East and Asia, and only one is available in the Americas.
No matter how they spin it, this is still the worst recovery in modern history; officially the worse recovery in 49 years. And now the weekly jobs report. There are two stories today. First, first time unemployment claims rise again. And second, US layoffs rose for the second consecutive month in July.
First, the second story. From CNBC with the look of concerned anxiety on the faces of the talking heads playing in the background, it is announced that US laysoff rise to 45,346 in July as cuts in energy sector spike.
Second, the first time unemployment claims. From Bloomberg, this headline (watch the spin): "jobless claims signal firings in US remain historically low." I can't make this stuff up. Hillary Clinton's press officer must be writing these stories. This is the lede, I kid you not:
The number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits
rose last week to a level that still underscores health in the labor
market.
A limited number of layoffs indicates companies are retaining employees
at a time when skilled and experienced workers are in greater demand.
Further improvement in the job market will be critical in helping drive
consumer spending, the biggest part of the economy, during the second
half of the year.
survey called for the number to actually drop to 265,000
four-week moving average also increased to 260,250
previous report: the four-week moving average had falled to 256,600, the second-lowest level since 1973
Wasn't 1973 the year of the OPEC embargo? I forget. Oh, yes, I just checked. It began in October, 1973.
For 74 consecutive weeks, claims have been below the 300,000 level that
economists say is typically consistent with an improving job market.
That’s the longest stretch since 1973.
Natural gas producers in Western Canada are still struggling to find new markets to replace those they’ve lost to Marcellus/Utica producers in recent years. It hasn’t been easy, and they certainly haven’t been helped by the high cost of transporting gas to Ontario and the Upper Midwest, by the failure of LNG export projects in British Columbia to advance, or by the collapse of oil prices that has slowed growth in the oil sands sector (a huge consumer of gas).
Despite the gloom, though, there are at least some rays of hope. TransCanada is considering big cuts in pipeline tolls in exchange for commitments to long-term deals. It’s also possible that at least one BC LNG export project may become a reality by the early 2020s. And some gas producers in the Montney shale region in the Canadian Rockies are focusing on areas where they also can produce vast amounts of condensate for use as diluent in the nearby oil sands region.
Today, we provide an update on the ongoing (and often frustrating) efforts to expand gas production in BC and Alberta.