Part III, The Energy And Market Page, T+45 -- March 6, 2017

Enbridge bigger.  From Houston Business Journal. I completely forgot all about this one. I assumed the acquisition would be blocked by the former administration on the last day in office or by Justin Trudeau ("we'll take refugees from the US").

• Houston's Enbridge Energy Partners LP moving in with Spectra Energy Partners LP
• near the Galleria
• Enbridge closed the acquisition of Spectra at the end of February, 2017
• created a $126 billion combined company
• the "business entities" will remain "separate but close"
• pretty cool

Spectra Energy: so what did Enbridge gain by buying Spectra? From wiki and Enbridge:

• Enbridge is now North America's largest energy infrastructure company
• natural gas: transmission and storage, distribution, and gathering and processing
• a spin-off from Duke Energy, 2006
• acquired Texas Eastern Pipeline (TETCO); brings gas from Gulf of Mexico to to NYC area
• TETCO: one of the largest pipeline systems in the US
• Spectra also operates three oil pipelines
• 2007: Spectra shares dropped in price, spectacularly
• by 2011: Spectra had rallied; nicely rewarded its shareholders 
• pretty exciting
• dividend: currently $2.12/share; 21st consecutive year of increased dividends for the company
• anticipate annual dividend growth of 10% - 12% through 2019; dividend growth could exceed that level 

GM sold its perennial loser, Opel. Links everywhere. Not interested any more.

XOM: making America great again. Link here. $20 billion -- with a "b" '-- along the Texas gulf Coast. Whoo-hoo. One wonders how much the Saudi Aramco IPO is pushing these announcements. Twenty billion dollars is a lot of money, even for ExxonMobil, even for the US.

Odds of an IRS audit: 0.7%. One in 143. And, of course, the higher the dollar amount, the more likely the odds of an audit. It took my 40 years to figure this out, but if your taxable income is less than $75,000, the chance of being audited is about zilch. Nada. Nil. Zero. And if wondering about a grey area: if the amount you are concerned with would result in "small" amount of return to the IRS, it's unlikely to trigger an audit.

Futures. Hey, it's after 6:00 p.m. somewhere in the world. What are futures showing? Another 23 points down on the Dow; light crude (WTI) flat, at $53.17, right in the sweet spot for US producers and consumers.

It keeps getting better and better. Shell approves new Gulf of Mexico project, first since 2015.

• Kaikias deepwater field
• the first such project the company has approved in 18 months (thank you, Mr Trump)
• will start production in 2019; will generate profits with oil prices less than $40/bbl (big doo-doo for Saudi Arabia)
• direct result of its $54 bilion acquisition of BG Group last year (2016)
• project is estimated to have more than 100 million boe recoverable resources