The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+8 -- August 22, 2018

Economy: for the archives. "They" said this could never happen again in the US. "They" said the jobs were never coming back. "They" said and "they" said ....

TSA and airline security: this is why the TSA and the federal government do not trust state-issued driver's licenses. The "undocumented resident" who killed Mollie Tibbets in Iowa? Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents said that Rivera, of Mexico, had been in the U.S. illegally for four to seven years.

Yarrabee Farms, which had hired Rivera, initially said he passed a federal E-Verify check, which is intended to maintain a database of I-9 forms and tax records of employees across the country. On Wednesday, however, co-owner and manager Dane Lang said that the farm used a different program that a family member wrongly thought was E-Verify. The farm used Social Security Administration data in the vetting process, Lang said. 

Lang added that Rivera provided a state-issued photo ID and social security card.

EIA: today's weekly report;

• US crude oil inventories decreased by a whopping 5.8 million bbls; WTI climbs 3%
• refineries operating at 98.1% -- identical to last week
• imports down 1.5 million from that incredible number last week; now at 7.5 million bbls of imported oil
• gasoline production: slightly below "threshold" at 10.2 million b/d
• distillate fuel production: slightly below "threshold" at 5.4 million b/d
• gasoline supplied to the market: continues to trend down
• distillate supplied to the market: down almost 8% from same period last year (huge data point?)
• jet fuel supplied to market: up almost 4% year-over-year

Dead: Saudi Aramco officially kills any idea of going public: as predicted on the blog when this idea was first floated. This is a non-story. Except for one thing. The timing. The announcement comes just days after Elon Musk tweeted that he had financing secure for taking Tesla private, and many folks suggested that he had an agreement with Prince Salman to go forward with taking Tesla private. Interesting, huh?

Gasoline demand:

• strong, strong economy
• longest bull run on history
• regardless of what pundits might say, gasoline has been very inexpensive this past summer; and yet, 
• gasoline demand really, really lagging year-over-year
• from this link: 

News from "the swamp":