Conoco; The Permian -- April 6, 2018

Link here. [As I was reading this, the one play I never hear anything about any more -- the Monterey, California.]

More and more reading of the Permian suggests that, of the majors, Conoco has the inside edge in the Permian. If not, it's becoming a trope in the business world. COP bought into the Permian decades ago; holds "all" its Permian assets by production; no longer any need to rush into the Permian and acquisition costs so low that $60 oil is very, very profitable for COP in the Permian. I have no idea if that's a correct reading, but that's what I'm "seeing."

From the linked article:

• COP actually selling non-core assets in the Permian; relatively small, underdeveloped patches of land
• just announced it is selling non-core assets in the Permian and South Texas for $250 million
• same announcement: acquiring acreage in the Montney conventional play in Canada and the Austin Chalk in Louisiana (both the Montney and the Austin Chalk tracked at the sidebar at the right) (May 20, 2017: as a natural gas play, Montney, "Permian of the North" is back)
• strategy: buying low; selling high
• COP's priority: streamline its portfolio as much as possible; focus on low-cost, potentially high-return assets and offloading the rest
• past twelve months: COP shares have gained almost 30% as opposed to an almost 10% slide for XOM
• Conoco's sustaining cost per bbl: $40
• at the start of February (2018), Conoco announced it would life the 2018 dividend by 7.5%; buy back shares worth $2 billion despite booking a loss of 2017
• 2017: paid down $7.6 billion in debt; bought back $3 billion shares
• 2017: reported a 200% organic reserve base replacement rate

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on anything your read here or think you may have read here. 

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The Mystery Page

The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice In Wonderland, Jenny Woolf, c. 2010.

A quick look at the earlier part of the book suggests Leis Carroll was a very private man. That's not particularly profound, or unusual, or interesting. A lot of "famous" people are very private.

So, on to Chapter 10: "He offered large discount, he offered a cheque"/Money

• Carroll's bank account recently discovered, "...discovered after a hundred years unseen in an archive in northern England..."; presumed to have been a wealthy man; his bank account suggests otherwise 
• Oxford Old Bank
• opened his account, 1856; Lewis Carroll was 24 years old
• account closed, two years after his death, 1900
• only value of the account now: it is the only major document about Lewis Carroll that is both factual and completely unaltered
• Carroll made a relatively modest amount of money from his books, and by no means a fortune
• never in a single year did he earn anything approaching the annual income of Alice's father, Dean Liddell, at the time Alice in Wonderland was written
• at the time, he thought he might actually lose money on the book
• made little money from marketing or stage productions 
• he pretty much spent all the money he had publishing this book
• few checking transactions in the early years; checks were fairly "new'; most folks used cash
• apparently there is a period in his diary that is blank; the "mystery years"
• November, 1861, a payment of £94; amounted to a quarter of Carroll's annual income at the time -- a quarter of his annual income: to someone called "Forster"
• the payment was made during the missing diary period; adds to the several other mysteries which shroud those blank (diary) years
• just weeks before Carroll, with considerable reluctance, took Holy Orders
• apparently Forster lived in the Oxford area, but no "Forster" appears elsewhere in the account
• author unable to identify any tradesman or tradeswoman by that name in Oxford at that time
• no surviving documentation links Carroll with Forster, except for a letter written on January 13, 1872, over ten (10) years later, to John Foster (1812 - 76) the biographer, historian and friend of Charles Dickens
• the tone of the letter suggests that the two men had previously met and were on cordial but distant terms
• they had a mutual contact: Carroll's favorite uncle Skeffington Lutwidge
• however, that John Forster did not live in Oxford; does not seem to be him
• the author has no more insight; simply suggesting that Carroll had a private life about which we know nothing
• very charitable; gave money to friends when in need; and gave money to charitable foundations (like churches; pets) even when he, himself, had little money
• the chapter relatively uninteresting but very important for the biography

A quick and superficial perusal of the biography suggests Lewis Carroll was not a particularly interesting individual, and someone with whom I would really not want to spend any time.