Flashback: An American Crude Oil Gusher -- July 6, 2018 -- Quick! Name The Most Productive On-Shore Well In 2012

Doesn't know his history: China's Xi says "Trump has unleashed the largest trade war in economic history." Way wrong. Maybe China's Xi needs to re-read the history of the "opium wars" and how that turned out for the Chinese.

One of my least favorite tropes: lack of investment by the oil companies over the past ten years is going to result in $150-oil in the out years.

Predicting the price of oil is a fool's errand. I'm certainly in the minority on this but I'm not a bit worried about this "lack of investment." It's another trope. If that's the right word.

Bloomberg pressed that trope again -- the lack of investment by the oil sector.  The headline does not provide a time frame; the article does: 2030 -- twelve years from now. My hunch is that Ben Sharples can't even predict accurately what the price of oil will be next week, much less the price of crude oil in 2030.

With regard to lack of investment and lack of exploration, take a look at the sidebar at the right that lists all the shale plays in the US if the price is right. There must be three dozen plays, and right now, only three are actively being pursued: the Permian, the Bakken, and the Eagle Ford.

Quick: in what basin was the largest onshore well in 2012 found? The answer is at this link.

Without the aid of pumps or fracking, the oil just flooded out — more than 600,000 barrels in its first year, making it the nation’s most productive on-shore well in 2012.

The hydrocarbon bounty, however, includes unexpectedly large amounts of methane and other components of natural gas that Fidelity has to burn off because there is no way to get those fuels to market.

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The Literary Page

I just finished Graham Greene's The Quiet American.

It started with Edmund de Wall's books on ceramics, and then moving to the Gavin Menzies' books, and then to W. Travis Hanes The Opium Wars, I finally ended up with The Quiet American. I think the immediate precursor was the "biography" of Edward Lansdale and the lead-up to the US war in Vietnam.

Wow, The Quiet American. What an incredible book. The way Graham Greene can move from the far past to the recent past to the future, and even throw in an epilogue, is quite incredible.

If I recall correctly, "it" was said that Graham Greene, when asked, specifically said Edward Lansdale was not the "model" for the character in The Quiet American who told the story, but that's hard to believe. Too many coincidences between the book and the story of Edward Lansdale.