My Favorite Three Words In One Sentence: Oil, Profits, Surge -- In Any Order -- May 30, 2018

Making American great again: one can't make this up -- from Bloomberg no less. US back in top position -- that would be #1 -- "leapfrogs Singapore, Hong Kong -- wins world's most competitive economy award. Trump will go to Oslo to accept the award. From Bloomberg: 

• faster growth propels US to top for first time since Obama -- in other words, under Obama, the US lost first place to countries like Switzerland
• it took Trump less than one year to turn the ship around and get that top spot again
• no, past administrations did not set us on this course -- this is a real-time award -- it has to do with competition -- in the world of running, it's a 100-meter sprint, not a 5K marathon
• wow, this must have been tough for Bloomberg to post this
• the list --

Boston: before going out the door this morning, I heard on CNBC that with regard to economy, tobs, technology, and internet security, Boston "is on fire." One company has 1,000 engineers at one site in Boston. It's possible Amazon will site HQ2 in Boston. Meanwhile, Pocahontas praises communist China's "long-term whole-of-government" strategy. No, I did not read that article.

Kim summit at White House. No, not that Kim. The other Kim.

Oh-oh: US 1Q18 GDP revised down to 2.2% -- down from 2.3%. It was the weather.This is second reading. The estimate was 2.3%.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$67.00→	5/30/2018	05/30/2017	05/30/2016	05/30/2015	05/30/2014
Active Rigs	62	50	29	80	188

RBN Energy: E&Ps' cash flow, profits surge in first quarter on higher oil prices. Oil is low now, dropping well below $72, but for Saudi Arabia, Brent below $88 is an existential issue.

Until the fall in crude oil prices over the past few days, U.S. oil and gas producers had been basking in the glow of the highest oil prices in years. Not surprisingly, in the first quarter of 2018 the 44 major U.S. exploration and production companies we track reported the highest quarterly profit and cash flow since the 2014-15 oil market crash brought many to the edge of a financial abyss.

These producers put themselves into a position to benefit from the commodity price recovery by implementing dramatic strategic shifts and an operational transformation that emphasized operating efficiency, portfolio high-grading and financial discipline. Now, with oil prices softening somewhat, the prospects for continued profitability growth for the E&P sector as a whole are mixed. Today, we do a deep dive into the results and outlook for the companies in the Oil-Weighted, Diversified, and Gas-Weighted peer groups.