A Shout-Out To Another Blogger -- August 11, 2017; More Bad News For OPEC; Sanctions? What Sanctions?

A shout-out to OutrunChange -- recently linked one of my posts. Thank you. Have a great weekend.

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The Market And Energy Page, Part 2, T+203

Wow! Completely unexpected: Reuters is reporting that a "flood" of gasoline is heading to the US Northeast as driving season ends; gasoline coming from Europe and the US Gulf Coast. 

A string of inventory draws in the United States and a revival in gasoline demand alleviated a longstanding glut in the New York gasoline hub, drawing interest from shippers in Europe at a time when buying historically eases at the end of August.

Expectation for increased flows pushed gasoline futures and margins to a two-week low after they surged last week to a more than three-month high.

European exports to North America of gasoline and naphtha, which is used for blending into gasoline, will jump in the coming weeks to the highest in months.

Total East Coast imports are set to reach nearly 850,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of August, doubling from a month earlier, according to traders and shipping data.

See related post from yesterday: the nation's biggest fuel pipeline is back in business -- but still not big enough. Making America great again. Who would have ever guessed. I thought Tesla had killed the internal combustion engine.

Speaking of Tesla: lack of "ethical cobalt" undermines Tesla debt issue. -- Financial Times. Tesla and "colonial slaves?"

Russian sanctions? Apparently not when a country needs Russian natural gas. Russian gas producer Gazprom said it used the Opal pipeline to full capacity on Wednesday for the first time since a German court lifted a restriction on the company's access last month.

OPEC: more challenges -- Rigzone is reporting that the IEA has now cut its estimates for the amount of crude oil needed from OPEC in 2017 and 2018. No link yet; just being posted on Twitter. 

Another wow! Has anyone noticed that 10-year Treasuries are down to 2.196% -- at least that's what I'm seeing on the CNBC crawler. And there's an "up" arrow suggesting it was even worse, earlier. Wow. I know nothing about Treasuries but Rick Santelli feels strongly that going through the 3% floor was not trivial. I would assume that banks are going to be making a ton of money when they can borrow cheap money and loan it out at higher rates. I don't know; just idle chatter.