The Market, Energy, Political Page, T+39 -- September 21, 2018

The market: 750 points on the Dow in three days. Something like that. Today, futures are up nearly a hundred points.

• quadruple witching hour
• sunrise at 7:13
• 3/4 moon overnight
• that rare moment when Wall Street reorganizes the investment sectors; lots of busy work; will result in lots of meaningless volume on Wall Street
• CNBC focus today: marijuana stocks, bitcoin, Tesla, and GE 
• mainstream media reports that Trump will tweet today

OPEC: loses relevance (well, duh, -- I remember posting this years ago -- OPEC has always been irrelevant -- Saudi Arabia IS OPEC; some years Iran makes a difference; some years others have a little impact but in the big scheme of things, when it comes to OPEC, all eyes are on Saudi Arabia; but if you want to read about the obvious, here's  the link

Shell: in talks to sell Gulf of Mexico assets to Focus Oil for $1.3 billion

Off-shore: CAPEX will outpace shale next year (2019); why is this not surprising? Think about it.

The Permian: eating Trudeau's lunch; global oil prices have climbed almost 20% this year; western Canadian producers seeing just the opposite; landlocked; must be a slow news day over at Rigzone; having said that, this is an interesting bit of trivia you can use at tonight's cocktail party:

A silver lining is that the low cost for condensate, one of the types of light oil produced in Canada’s shale, is providing some benefit to oil sands producers like Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc., who use it as a diluent to move heavy oil sands crude out of the region. Condensate can make up about a third of every barrel of bitumen crude that’s shipped out via pipeline or rail.