The Market, Energy, Political Story, T+33 -- July 3, 2018

API, weekly US crude oil inventories, pending.

EVs.

• GM's Chevy Bolts, down 22.6% in 2Q18

More than enough global oil to offset Iran sanctions: so says "senior" US State Dept spokesman; not everyone agrees. WTI surges, opens right at $75 -- huge psychological milestone; makes for a nice headline;

• WTI: $75
• Brent: $78.24
• WTI/Brent spread: less than $5
• LLS: $77.33 (DAPL-Bakken proxy)
• OPEC basket: $74.31

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.

For the archives:

• OAS: $13.09, up 3.5%
• NOG: $3.22, up 3.5%
• CLR: $64, 24, up 2.65%
• TSLA: $323, down 3.6% (hmmm, just after Tesla met production goal)
• S: $5.40, down half a percent
• SRE: flat
• EOG: $125, up 2%
• CVX: $126, up 1.%
• COP: $71.33, up 2.75%
• AAPL: flat, stuck in a trading range around $187

Tariffs: Canada imposes 10% tariff on US Heinz ketchup. Owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

Refinery: St Croix --

• opportunity -- low sulfur content required in marine fuels; restrictions begin in 2020
• refinery operations could begin as son as next year (2019)
• in the 1970's, the former Hovensa refinery on St Croix was one of the world's largest, able to process 650,000 bpd
• halted processing in 2012, filed for bankruptcy; became a storage site
• BP will supply oil
• the refinery would process up to 150,000 bpd

****************************

The History Page

From The Vertigo Years, Europe, 1900 - 1914, Philipp Blom, c. 2008

From the book's introduction, p. 2:

In 1900, the most profound change of all was that in the relationship between men and women, and many indications point towards a deep anxiety on the part of men whose position seemed no longer secure. For the first time in European history women were being educated en masse, earning their own money, demanding the vote and, crucially, suggesting that in an industrial age physical strength and martial virtues were becoming useless. Men reacted with an aggressive restatement of the old values; never before had so many uniforms been seen on the street or so many duels fought,never before had there been so many classified advertisements for treatments allegedly curing 'male maladies' and 'weak nerves'; and never before had to many men complained of exhaustion and nervousness, and found themselves admitted to sanatoriums and even mental hospitals.

Something tells this is going to be a much more interesting book than I originally thought when I pulled it off the book shelf to read.

More, p. 3:

In a large part, the uncertain future facing us early in the twenty-first century arose from the inventions, thoughts and transformations of those unusually rich fifteen years between 1900 and 1914, a period of extraordinary creativity in the arts and sciences, of enormous change in society and in the very image people had of themselves. Everything that was to become important during the twentieth century -- from quantum physics to women's emancipation, from abstract art to space travel, from communism and fascism to the consumer society, from industrialized slaughter to the power of the media -- had already made deep impressions in the years before 1914, so that the rest of the century was little more than an exercise, wonderful and hideous by turn, in living out and exploring these new possibilities.