The Energy And Market Page, And Some Politics Thrown In, T+19 -- February 9, 2018

WTI: drops over 3% in mid-morning training. WTI now solidly below $60.

LNG exports: it never quits. With CNPC deal, Cheniere's train 3 at Corpus Christ becomes more likely.  Wow -- China. Ka-ching.

Cheniere Energy, Inc. has entered into two liquefied natural gas (LNG) sale and purchase agreements (SPA) with China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), the Houston-based company reported Friday.

“These long-term SPAs build upon the Memorandum of Understanding we signed in November, and we look forward to a successful long-term partnership with CNPC,” Cheniere President and CEO Jack Fusco said.

According to Cheniere, CNPC unit PetroChina International Co. Ltd. will purchase approximately 1.2 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG under the SPAs with Cheniere subsidiaries Corpus Christi Liquefaction, LLC and Cheniere Marketing International LLP. A portion of the supply will start this year and the balance will begin in 2023, Cheniere added. Each SPA term continues through 2043 and the LNG purchase price will be indexed to the Henry Hub price plus a fixed component.

Fusco also stated that Cheniere expects the SPAs to support the development of a third train at the Corpus Christi Liquefaction export terminal that it is building along Corpus Christi Bay in San Patricio County, Texas.

Road To Canada: from Bloomberg, but a paywall, so this link with the same story to the Financial Post:

• Canada institutes minimum wage; this was from globalnews less than six months ago -- repeat, less than six months ago:

Concerns over the provincial minimum wage increasing to $15/hr by 2019, combined with the proposed elimination of so-called tax loopholes for small business have some economists predicting significant job losses in Ontario.

• Canada's labor market suffered its biggest monthly job loss since the last recession -- all part-time -- as employers faced quickening wage gains
• Canada shed a net 88,000 jobs in January (2018), a sharp drop to a recent stellar performance that saw 2017 produce the biggest increase in jobs since 2002
• the drop
• 137,000 part-time jobs
• a gain
• 49,000 in full-time work
• the drop coincided with an increase in the minimum wage in Canada's largest province -- Ontario; the national wage rate accelerated an an annualized pace of 3.3 percent, the fastest since 2015
• but one can find any number of folks arguing just the opposite, and finding statistics to prove their point (see the comments at the linked article), but it's hard to argue with facts even if you have your own statistics

Whatever.   

Making America great: I find this graphic incredibly interesting. The dollars spent on utility infrastructure in the United States doubled -- from $10 billion to $20 billion over seven years of one administration. I find that remarkable. Doubled. As in 100% increase. One would think that this might be something we would have seen in a developing country but this was in a country that apparently had a pretty good utility infrastructure.

These are the kinds of graphics we need in the Obama Library. One would think that this would be something he would want to showcase. By the way, the $10 billion over seven years works out to almost exactly one penny per American per day (assuming I did the math right). What a great country.

People talk a lot about the money needed for the country's infrastructure. My hunch: a lot of money is already being spent on infrastructure. (And, yes, I know what drove that doubling of infrastructure expenditures. Don't even get me started.)

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Geee! GE is solidly below $15/share now. I remember some weeks ago, the talking heads over at CNBC suggested GE could/would/should hit $15. The question, I suppose now, is whether GE will hit $10? Probably not. Maybe $14 is its floor.

Wow, I would love to opine, but this is not an investment site.

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Island Rising!

Updates

February 10, 2018: from JoanneNova --

Original Post 

The poster-child island for "anthropogenic global warming sea rising" or AGWSR for short -- is growing. I can't make this stuff up. From phys.org: 

The Pacific nation of Tuvalu—long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels—is actually growing in size, new research shows.

Has the UN sent Tuvalu that $50 billion -- mostly from US taxpayers -- to save themselves from rising seas yet?

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Budget Busting BS

Somehow I can't get too excited about all that talk that the budget deal went too far -- busting the budget caps again.

We're talking $300 billion over two years -- over two years. Or less than $150 billion / year -- Buffett, Bezos, and Cook could cover that without blinking an eye.

And, of that $300, $90 billion (or over 25%) will be for disaster relief --

The aid package would earmark $23.5 billion to replenish FEMA's primary fund for recovery and repair programs, provide $28 billion for block grants to rebuild housing and essential infrastructure such as highways, and dedicate $2 billion to improve the power grid in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico where nearly 40% of the island remains without electricity months after Hurricane Maria made landfall.

After you subtract all non-military stuff out, in the big scheme of things, on a percentage basis, the military isn't getting the windfall Rachel will have you believe.

The agreement would increase defense spending this year by $80 billion and domestic spending by $63 billion beyond strict budget caps, according to a summary of the deal obtained by POLITICO. Next year, defense spending would increase by $85 billion and domestic funding by $68 billion beyond the caps. The deal also includes $140 billion for defense and $20 billion for domestic in emergency spending over two years.

Most entertaining: Senator Bernie Sanders went through a laundry list of why this was a great bill -- all the funding it provided for his favorite programs ... but, as he said, "at the end of the day, I have to vote no on this budget deal." Why? Because he's Bernie Sanders. That's what he does.

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Notes to the Granddaughters

Sophia's pre-kindergarten class has been studying space travel for the past two weeks. I assume they are watching videos of Elon Musk's red Tesla hurtling towards the red planet. Today, they are enjoying real astronaut food. What an incredibly clever way to market ice cream. Color me impressed: