The stories simply never quit. Headline after headline of "LoveTrumpsHate" protests and headline after headline of CAVE dwellers trying to shut down everything, but life in the oil and gas sector keeps moving along.
In this case, ExxonMobil has announced it will significantly expand production of polyethylene at it PE plant in Beaumont, TX. Data points:
already under construction; on-line sometime in 2019: a 650,000-tpy PE plant
to meet rising demand for high-performance plastics
capitalizing on low feedstock prices
meanwhile, the Belvieu plant will increase XOM US PE production by about 2 million tpy or 40%, making Texas the company's largest PE supply point
It just never quits.
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Medicare Part B
One year ago I was not paying attention to Medicare Part B. Now I am.
T+6: It was close all day, nearly falling into negative territory thirty minutes before the close, but then a small spurt in the last thirty minutes, the Dow 30 closing up 21 points, to a new all-time record high: 18,869. This is the fourth all-time record high in as many days. The rally began hours after Trump was named the winner of the 2016 presidential election.
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Small Talk For That Social Outing You Have This Weekend
The great Greek playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
Aeschylus: older; fought in the battle against the Persians at the Battle of Salamis.
Sophocles: was an older teenage on the day of the battle; he took part in the victory parade.
Euripides: born on the very day the Battle of Salamis took place.
Aeschylus: a prolific writer; wrote 70 - 90 plays; only 7 have survived; his Oresteia is the only complete Greek tragic trilogy extant today.
Sophocles: his work is considered the pinnacle of Greek tragedy. He wrote around 123 plays for the Athenian theater but only seven have survived intact.
Euripides: eighty titles are known but it is thought he wrote 92 plays; only 19 of his tragedies are extant today.
The question I have always had: what happened to all those plays that were lost. Part of the answer comes from David Abulafia's The Great Sea, c. 2011, page 160:
The Ptolemies were determined to lay their hands on the best possible texts fo the great authors for their famous Library at Alexandria. They hoodwinked the Athenians into sending their master copies of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides for copying, and then retained them, even thought that meant sacrificing an enormous deposit in silver.
And, of course, as everyone knows, the great fire of the library destroyed all its works.
mega-frac style wells continue to show impressive production results, with an increase of 27.3% from 2013 to 2015
enhanced well designs are still in its infancy, and should continue to accelerate from a production standpoint
from 2014 to 2015, the number of completions decreased by 30% but oil production decreased just 16% and natural gas 1.5%
these improvements have been seen in all US plays and we will cover the Eagle Ford in our next submission
Trump is bullish the US oil industry and we expect protectionist policies will accelerate oil production growth in all US plays
Note:
Operators are moving rigs to better acreage. Continental is an excellent example. It has a large footprint in North Dakota.
Continental was Bakken built, but higher taxes and more costly
differentials forced a move to Oklahoma.
North Dakota is also becoming the state known as the state that can't get a pipeline built: Keystone, Sandpiper, and the Dakota Access Pipeline have all been killed. People still hold out hope that the DAPL will be completed.
Other data points from the linked article. In 2013:
Most were moving to a 2-mile lateral using 30 stages and 4 million
pounds of proppant. We also saw a move to sliding sleeves, as this
helped to keep costs down. When compared to plug and perf, it provides
much less access to the source rock.
Could Trump mandate US refiners use only US crude?
Trump wants to increase the number of high-paying jobs
and decrease our reliance on OPEC oil is bullish for all unconventional
producers in the US. There is a major issue for OPEC
in the coming years. Protectionist legislation could pressure
refineries to use US crude.
If this comes to fruition, US production
could rise and the WTI/Brent differential could widen significantly. If
OPEC crude isn't finding its way to US customers, it may need to cut
more than it initially thought.
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Robots Can't Build Crude Oil Pipelines
Yahoo!Finance has this headline story today: Trump's jobs plan faces a bigger challenge than China. Robots may prevent Trump from bringing back the manufacturing jobs he promised.
Maybe.
All I know is that robots aren't building pipelines. And robots aren't replacing roughnecks, at least not yet, as far as I know.
November 15, 2016: this morning on MSNBC Morning Joe, the two anchors were very, very complimentary on last Saturday's SNL. They thought the opening was excellent and that the entire SNL was funnier and more uplifting.
Original Post
A reader asked me if saw the SNL "cold open" skit two nights ago, and what I thought of it. I had not seen it until now. Here it is:
Random thoughts as I'm listening to this in the background:
beautiful, beautiful voice
beautiful, beautiful interpretation
it again reminds me how really, really good Leonard Cohen is
Leonard Cohen was a poet before he was a singer; his poetry is better than Dylan's
this may be one of the best "cold opens" ever for SNL
I'm impressed
Hillary was so relieved to have this weight lifted off her shoulders
hallelujah
that really was good
maybe one the best "opens"ever
grace
it would be wonderful if "LoveTrumpHate" protestors had the same grace
Tina Fey could not and would not have done this
This is what makes America great. Not Wanda Sykes and not Portland protesters.
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Maligned Drudge
Drudge is the poster child for web sites that the left loves to hate. But if one wants breaking news, no one does it better.
I would have missed the breaking story that Gwen Ifill has died of cancer had it not been for The Drudge Report. The LA Times has the story, but it's a fair way down their front page (on-line) and could have been easily missed. I found it because I was looking for it. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News do not have it on their front page internet site -- if they do, it is not easily found.
My wife is Hispanic-Japanese. She does not look like Trump's America. At least that's what she tells me. Today, she flew to Portland, OR, to visit our daughter there. For the past five days she has been obsessing about whether she would need her passport to get back to Texas when she returns (?) a week from now. I reassured her that a state cannot secede from the union that quickly. She probably should not have asked the TSA agent whether she would need her passport or whether the credit-card-like passport card would be sufficient when returning from Oregon next week.
She was taken out of the security line at the airport and subjected to an extra-special TSA security pat down. In addition, x-ray scanning of her carry-on alerted the technician which resulted in further scrutiny. Apparently the wet wipes look like suspicious items when scanned.
I was watching all this from quite a distance outside the security area. It reminded me of the time my grandfather, father, and I, an eighth grader, were searched leaving West Berlin, on our car trip through East Germany.
Once to her gate, she found herself surrounded by Trump deplorables.
I just received an e-mail note from her. She has arrived safely in Portland, raving about how wonderful Alaska Airlines is compared to Spirit Airlines, her go-to airline when she flies to Los Angeles.
She did not say whether she plans to return to Texas next week as scheduled. In a follow-up e-mail she wrote: "Those TDA (sic) agents, though were polite & personable, unlike at Spirit."
My hunch is she is paranoid that her e-mail is being monitored.
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Really?
The graphic at the link might be photo-shopped. Link here.
"The little tug that could" is now anchored in Tartus harbor. There are four other ships anchored in the harbor. Two more ships are ready to dock. The most recent ping was for minutes ago, approximately 8:59 a.m. Central Time. My hunch is that the a/c carrier remains off-shore.
The four other ships at anchor/docked are not relevant to this discussion.
The two ships heading to the docks are:
Osipov, Russian, unspecified, but looking at the photograph suggests a trawler - communications vessel
The moon this morning, about 6:15 a.m. Central Time was absolutely incredible. I've watched the skies for decades, but I do have to say the moon lived up to all its "hype" this past couple of days.
Only three presidents have donated their presidential salary to charity: Herbert Hoover, JFK, and Donald Trump.
This is pretty funny: the "narrative" has changed. The anti-Trump folks, surprised by three consecutive days of all-time records on the stock market, have changed their narrative. These were the guys who said a Trump presidency would destroy the US and yet the market has set three all-time records over three consecutive days, and it looks like it will happen again today. Now the anti-Trump folks tell us that, "hey, maybe a Trump presidency will actually be good for the US in the short term, but in the long term a Trump presidency won't be good for the US." I saw the "new narrative" over at Bloomberg.com and it was also on MSNBC Morning Joe this morning. So that's the "new narrative." [Update, 9:27 a.m. Central Time -- Reuters is reporting that Dow hits a record high. This is now the fourth record high in as many days.]
Gasoline: even this surprised me. Gasoline at neighborhood service station was $1.74/gallon. And this is not the least expensive station in the area.
Oil: as OPEC continues to increase production, the price of oil continues to drop. Monday morning futures show oil dropping below $43, now about $42.87.
NDIC's monthly Director's Cut is scheduled to be released Wednesday, November 16, 2016.
A combined GE+BHI brings technology and scale to rival Schumberger and Halliburton in North America and the global markets. Many analysts believe that the new GE+BHI puts the company in a position to lead the industry in several drilling, completion, and production market segments.
Although each of these segments varies across the conventional and unconventional markets, GE+BHI would immediately be positioned as a go-to company alongside Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Weatherford.
HOLLYWOOD, Ala. (AP) — After spending more than 40 years and $5 billion on an unfinished nuclear power plant in northeastern Alabama, the nation’s largest federal utility is preparing to sell the property at a fraction of its cost.
The nation's largest federal utility is selling an unfinished nuclear power plant in northeast Alabama.
The Tennessee Valley
Authority utility says it will hold an auction Monday for the Bellefonte
Nuclear Plant. Minimum bids are set at $36.4 million, and one company
has already said it's offering more than that.
The utility says it wants the property used in a way that will benefit the surrounding economy of the Tennessee Valley.
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The Political Page
This tells me that things are not as bad in the United States or California as the pundits or mainstream media would lead us to believe. From The Wall Street Journal: California, as Clinton Territory, Finds Itself a Political Outlier.
Many residents feeling detached from nation; even rock-solid-red Orange County went blue.
