And the Number Is: 4.1%-- July 27, 2018

4.1% -- vs 4.4% forecast. Though forecasts have been all over the board. CNBC is quite positive about this. Quite interesting.

See first comment: one can make an argument that 2Q18 GDP growth was close to 5% than 4% -- see first comment and reply --

GDP was much better than it looks...a $58.2 billion downward swing in inventory growth subtracted 1% from the 2nd quarter's growth rate

...but smaller inventories indicate that less of the goods produced during the quarter were being left "sitting on the shelf”, so their quarter over quarter decrease by $58.2 billion meant that real final sales of GDP were relatively greater by that much, or enough to boost growth in real final sales of GDP to a 5.1% rate...

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Meanwhile ...

COP: 2Q18 earnings -- some incredible insight regarding the Big 3 plays

AMZN:

• EPS forecast: $2.48
• EPS actual: $5.07
• but look at this: one year ago, EPS -- 40 cents/share; now $5.04 -- Whole Foods? Wow.
• net income forecast, guidance, next quarter: $1.4 billion to $2.4 billion
• net income consensus by analysts: $840 million
• shares up 5% after-hours
• takes on Apple for $1 trillion market cap bragging rights

Chesapeake: to sell Utica shale for $2 billion.

• almost all of the proceeds will be used to pay down debt
• shares jumped 7% after-hours

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

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Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off confidential list today: 

• 33955, SI/NC, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Bennnie 7-20-17-157N-99W TFH, Lone Tree Lake, no production data, 
• 24519, SI/NC,  Slawson, Gabriel 5-36-25TFH, North Tobacco Garden, no production data,

Active rigs:

$69.35→	7/27/2018	07/27/2017	07/27/2016	07/27/2015	07/27/2014
Active Rigs	62	60	35	73	193

 
RBN Energy: can planned fractionation capacity in Texas avert a crunch?

Fast-rising NGL production in the Permian, SCOOP/STACK and other plays is testing the ability of fractionators to keep up, and spurring the development of new NGL pipelines — and new fractionation plants, not just in the Mont Belvieu hub but elsewhere along Texas’s Gulf Coast. By our count, more than 1 MMb/d of new fractionation capacity is under development in the Lone Star State, and while some projects are more solid and certain than others, it’s fair to say we’re in for at least a mini-boom in fractionator construction after a multiyear lull. Today, we review the Texas fractionation projects being planned and begin assessing whether they will come online as quickly as they will be needed.

There is currently just over 2.1 MMcf/d of fractionation capacity in Mont Belvieu — 755 Mb/d at Enterprise (including 85 Mb/d that came online in June), 453 Mb/d at Cedar Bayou Fractionators, 420 Mb/d at Lone Star NGL, 340 Mb/d at ONEOK and 145 Mb/d at Gulf State Fractionators.

Within Mont Belvieu’s reach (via pipelines) are a number of ethylene plants (steam crackers) that consume the NGL purity products separated by fractionators (ethane, propane, normal butane, isobutane and natural gasoline), as well as marine terminals for purity-product exports.

These include the Enterprise Hydrocarbons Terminal (EHT), which (among other things) can load and export liquefied petroleum gas (LPG; propane and normal butane); Enterprise’s Morgan’s Point Ethane Export Terminal (ethane); Targa’s Galena Park Marine Terminal (Houston Ship Channel; LPG); and Energy Transfer Partners’ LPG export terminal in Nederland, TX. As for the rest of Texas, 12 companies or joint ventures own a total of just over 1 MMb/d of fractionation capacity currently in place, most of it within 100 miles of the Gulf Coast between Beaumont and the Corpus Christi area. More steam crackers are located along this swath of coast, as is Phillips 66’s Freeport (TX) LPG Export Terminal.

The future: If they are all built, the planned Phillips 66, EPIC and Permico fractionators by the early 2020s would add 730 Mb/d to the more than 1 MMb/d of existing fractionation capacity outside of Mont Belvieu — a second fractionator at EPIC and a third at Permico (both possibilities) would bring Texas’s “non-Mont Belvieu” fractionation capacity to nearly 2 MMb/d. When combined with the 2.1 MMb/d of existing capacity at Mont Belvieu and the 465 Mb/d of new capacity planned there, the state’s total fractionation capacity could top 4.5 MMb/d by 2021 or so.