The DAPL: One Year Later -- The Williston Herald -- July 1, 2018

This is an incredibly good article. I will archive it and come back to it later.

The article is from The Williston Herald.

I have been talking about DUCs for quite some time. There is a data point in this article that supports my thesis that operators have found that DUCs are a very useful way for ND shale operators to manage their assets.

See if you can spot the data point. But don't write me. It's a rhetorical point. One hint: the data point is a temporary phenomenon.

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The Lobster Page

Updates

January 13, 2021: Australia is awash in lobster.

Original Post

This is a pretty cool story. Forget all the stuff about the tariffs. Look at the other stuff regarding lobster.

I started "following" the lobster story about ten years ago when we were spending a lot of time in Boston for several years. The lobster industry had been dying but researchers discovered the cause -- related to "fishing practices," and nothing to do with the environment. Once changes were made, the US lobster industry came back very strongly. Any doubts? Have you had any trouble finding lobster in your local supermarket? Down here in Texas, about as far away from Maine as one can get, there seems to be a glut of lobster in our supermarkets.

Anyway, from The WSJ:

Maine harvests more lobster than any other U.S. state or Canadian province. Last year it landed nearly 111 million pounds—its fourth-largest annual haul—which it sold for $450 million. The lobster industry accounts for 2% of Maine’s economy. 

And China represents a hungry new market. The post-molt lobsters Maine harvests from July through November have softer shells than Canadian lobsters, so they’re lower quality. But they also sell for several dollars less a pound. In the price-sensitive Chinese market, that has given the U.S. industry a competitive advantage over its Canadian counterparts. In 2017 the U.S. exported more than $137 million in lobsters to China, up from $52 million in 2015. 

Rock Lobster, The B-52's
To be fair, others argue that global warming has been the reason for the resurgence in Maine lobster to the detriment of Connecticut and New York. From NOAA.com:

The lobster industry in New York and southern New England has nearly collapsed. From 1996 to 2014, New York’s registered lobster landings dropped 97.7%—from 9.4 million pounds in 1996 (the state’s most profitable year) to 215,980 pounds in 2014 (the latest data available). The story is much the same in Connecticut, where landings fell 96.6% from the most profitable year, and in Rhode Island, which saw a 70.3% drop from its most profitable year.

“Former lobstermen in Connecticut, many of whom were formerly fishermen, had to switch to clam and oyster farming. A few are also farming seaweed as a second crop,” Margaret van Patten, Connecticut Sea Grant communications director, said in an email. “They have to be really flexible in adapting to available species.”

This doesn’t mean the actual lobster population is disappearing. In fact, populations are relatively steady; it’s the location that’s changed. While southern New England lobstermen have found increasingly empty traps since the mid-90s, Maine’s lobster fishery has boomed. From 1994 to 2014, Maine’s landings surged 219% to more than 124 million pounds. 

But it gets back to a question I've asked often, do the benefits outweigh the risks of global warming, assuming it even exists?

The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling The Mysteries Of Our Favorite Crustacean, Trevor Corson, paperback, 2005

The Last Lobster, Boom or Bust for Maine's Greatest Fishery? Christopher White, 2018 (not recommended unless one wants to read a lot about global warming)

Maine lobstermen have happened upon a bonanza along their rugged, picturesque coast. For the past five years, the lobster population along the coast of Maine has boomed, resulting in a lobster harvest six times the size of the record catch from the 1980s―an event unheard of in fisheries. In a detective story, scientists and fishermen explore various theories for the glut. Leading contenders are a sudden lack of predators and a recent wedge of warming waters, which may disrupt the reproductive cycle, a consequence of climate change.

Christopher White's The Last Lobster follows three lobster captains―Frank, Jason, and Julie (one the few female skippers in Maine)―as they haul and set thousands of traps. Unexpectedly, boom may turn to bust, as the captains must fight a warming ocean, volatile prices, and rough weather to keep their livelihood afloat. The three captains work longer hours, trying to make up in volume what they lack in price. As a result, there are 3 million lobster traps on the bottom of the Gulf of Maine, while Frank, Jason, and others call for a reduction of traps. This may boost prices.

The Maine lobstering towns are among the first American communities to confront global warming, and the survival of the Maine Coast depends upon their efforts.