And The Number Is ... -- August 30, 2017 -- Down To 27 Weeks To Re-Balance

US crude oil inventories (excluding the SPR) decreased by a whopping 5.4 million bbls, down to 457.8 million bbls. Wow.

Weeks to re-balance:

Week	Date	Drawdown	Storage	Weeks to RB
Week 0	Apr 26, 2017		529.0	180
Week 1	May 3, 2017	0.9	528.0	198
Week 2	May 10, 2017	6	522.0	50
Week 3	May 17, 2017	1.8	520.2	59
Week 4	May 24, 2017	4.4	515.8	51
Week 5	May 31, 2017	6.4	509.9	41
Week 6	June 7, 2017	-3.3	513.2	60
Week 7	June 14, 2017	1.7	511.5	57
Week 8	June 21, 2017	2.5	509.0	62
Week 9	June 28, 2017	-0.2	509.2	71
Week 10	July 6, 2017	6.3	502.9	58
Week 11	July 12, 2017	7.6	495.3	47
Week 12	July 19, 2017	4.7	490.6	43
Week 13	July 26, 2017	7.2	483.4	38
Week 14	August 2, 2017	1.5	481.9	33
Week 15	August 9, 2017	6.5	475.4	35
Week 16	August 16, 2017	8.9	466.5	30
Week 17	August 23, 2017	3.3	463.2	29
Week 18	August 30, 2017	5.4	457.8	27

Notes: on the weeekly re-balancing report. US crude oil reserves declined by 5.4 million bbls this past week. My estimate for re-balancing, if the decline stays on pace (average over past 18 weeks): 27 weeks.

From my perspective, this is much more quickly than I would have predicted just a few months ago. This takes us to the end of the year. I had expected the re-balancing to take us well into 2018, if ever.

Again, for newbies: I define re-balancing as having 350 million bbls of US crude oil in storage (does not include the SPR), or about 22 days of storage.

Comments: some pundits have said that due to Hurricane Harvey, there is simply no more room for oil in the pipelines; they are all backed up because the Gulf coast refiners can't take any more.

Some data points:

• for the past 18 weeks, US crude oil inventories have decreased
• the largest US storage area: Cushing, OK -- last time I checked, not impacted by Hurricane Harvey
• pipelines from Eagle Ford, closed
• pipelines from the Permian, status?
• ships off-shore have not been able to download for the past several days (to the best of my knowledge, floating oil is not included in weekly US crude oil inventory numbers)
• California oil is not affected
• there are refineries in the northwest, midcontinent, and northeast that were not directly affected by Hurricane Harvey 
• US gasoline demand near record highs

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Margaret Sanger: A Life Of Passion

Jean H. Baker

c. 2011

DDS: 363.9BAK

Chapter 1: Maggie Higgins: Daughter of Corning

• US Civil War
• Corning glassworks
• Erie Canal
• Maggie Higgins: born 1879
• family's relationship with their Catholic church
• poor upbringing
• Erie Railroad bridge that spanned the Chemung River
• 1895, 16 years old, boarding school
• failed to complete 8 grades by school, by two weeks
• enrolled at the Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1895/96?
• a coeducational boarding school near Hudson, NY
• originally a girls' school; then coeducational; good regional reputation
• family unable to finance her through graduation; she completed only three years; did not graduate

Chapter 2: Mrs William Sanger of Hastings-on-Hudson

• 1899, mother dies; Maggie brought home to tend to her dying mother
• 1900: enters nursing school at the White Plains Hospital outside NYC
• her goal: medical school; Cornell University in nearby Ithaca, NY 
• only 5% of US doctors female at that time
• many male suitors, despite being poor and uneducated
• new opportunity, coincidentally: nurses needed for the Spanish-American War, in the Philippines
• nursing schools increased in the US
• White Plains Hospital was one of the beneficiaries of this new phenomenon
• tuberculosis scare
• meets William Sanger, a handsome, freelance draftsman, an aspiring architect and artist; at a dance
• six months later, abruptly married
• no longer "Higgins"
• nurses forbidden to marry and she was expelled from nursing school
• again, did not graduate
• five months later, pregnant
• tuberculosis, national epidemic
• in a TB sanatorium while pregnant
• shortly after baby Stuart's birth, Maggie relapsed (TB)
• second son, born 1908; defiantly pregnant again 13 months later; Margaret (Peggy - born 1910)
• never pregnant again
• obviously the couple employed some form of birth control
• US declining birth rates: by 1900, typical American woman had 3.2 children compared to 7.4 one century earlier
• doctors saw birth control not as an opportunity to improve women's health, but rather as a hazard threatening their professional practices
• overwhelmingly, physicians opposed any form of artificial contraception
• Harvard graduate, president Teddy Roosevelt spoke of "race suicide"
• in 1910, tranquil life
• she joined a literary club, reading papers on George Eliot and Robert Browning

Chapter 3: Comrade Sanger
 
The rest of the notes are posted here.