Active Rigs In The Williston Basin Climbing, Slowly But Surely -- And This Is In The Middle Of Winter; Trump Optimism Extends To Housing Starts; Jobs -- January 19, 2017

The market: absolutely crazy. The Dow 30 has been down five or six days in a row and yet some shares are doing very well:

• CSX: soaring
• UNP: up 4% -- coattails of CSX, no doubt
• Netflix: soaring; hits all-time high
• TSLA: soaring; heavily shorted (wow)
• Apple: at a new high? not sure, but doing well [it's not: its high was about 130; currently about 120

Economic numbers (housing, unemployment claims) are also out today and are quite amazing. All this since Donald Trump was elected to be the next president.  Amazing what optimism can do.

First, housing: housing starts surge in December (2016). Data points:

• more than expected (how often have we heard that?)
• jumped 11.3%
• seasonally adjusted rate: 1.23 million units in December

Now, first time unemployment claims, same link:

• near a 43-year-low
• plunged 15,000 to 234,000; just shy of the 233,000 level touched in mid-November (2016), the lowest rate since November, 1973
• 4-week average also fell an amazing 10,250 to 246,750

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Back To The Bakken

Active rigs:

	1/19/2017	01/19/2016	01/19/2015	01/19/2014	01/19/2013
Active Rigs	39	49	161	187	187

RBN Energy: boosting crude and products pipeline capacity with drag reducing agents.

The capacity of a pipeline built to transport crude oil or refined products is often thought to be tied only to the pipe’s diameter and pumps, as well as the viscosity of the hydrocarbon flowing through it. Increasingly, though, midstream companies are injecting flow improvers—special, long-chain polymers known as “drag reducing agents” —into their pipelines to reduce turbulence, thereby increasing the pipes’ capacity, trimming pumping costs or a combination of the two. The role of these agents has evolved to the point that they aren’t simply being considered to boost existing pipelines, their planned use is being factored into the design of new pipes from the start. Today we begin a series on DRAs and their still-growing influence on the midstream sector.