No Blogging Until Saturday Evening -- Good Luck To All -- Bakken To Get Hit With Global Warming This Week -- March 2, 2018

Thank you for everyone's patience today. I did not post much and I only just got the daily activity report posted. Many family commitments today. Fridays are supposed to be my day off but they are becoming busier than expected.

Anyway, I'm tired. Not "sleepy tired," but mentally fatigued. I might take a few hours off from the blog to catch up on classic movies and some news.

I love TCM (Turner Classic Movies) but I do wish there were four commercial breaks during each movie. I would like to have scheduled breaks which would allow me to re-fresh my popcorn and diet cola. TCM has no commercials, and it actually drives me nuts. I also wish the presenter Ben Mankiewicz was given more time to talk more about the movies.

For now, don't expect much from the blog until tomorrow evening.

Television sports:

• PGA: apparently there's a PGA tournament, but I did not see Tiger Woods on the leaderboard.
• NASCAR: apparently in Las Vegas this weekend, with one race Saturday (FS1) and the big race Sunday (Fox) 

Family sports:

• water polo, oldest granddaughter, Sunday
• soccer, middle granddaughter; games canceled both weekend days due to drenched/soggy fields; Olympic Program Development (OPD) practice has not yet been postponed
• gymnastics and swimming lessons for Sophia, age 3, in the morning; otherwise free

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

Global Warming Hits The Bakken

Forecasts suggest up to 16 inches of snow accumulation this next week in the Bakken. I honestly do not recall this much snow, except maybe when I was in first or second grade, falling in Williston between 1953 and 1969 when I was growing up in Williston.

Look at these forecasts:

In the graphic below, the total accumulation is "modeled" to hit 15.9". In Canada, north of Williston, up to 24 inches or more.

Four New Permits; Thirteen Permits Renewed -- March 2, 2018

Active rigs:

$61.43↑	3/2/2018	03/02/2017	03/02/2016	03/02/2015	03/02/2014
Active Rigs	59	41	34	120	192

Four new permits:

• Operator: CLR
• Fields: Willow Creek (Williams); Crazy Man Creek (Williams)
• Comments: CLR has permits for a 4-well Anderson pad in Lot 1 4-152-100;

Thirteen permits renewed:

• NP Resources (4): four Mosser Federal permits in Billings County
• EOG (2): two Liberty permits in Mountrail County
• Whiting (2): two P Earl Rennerfeldt permits in Williams County
• WPX (2): two Behr permits in Dunn County
• BR (2): two Cleetwood permits in McKenzie County
• Resource Energy Can-Am: one Shorty permit in Divide County

One permit reinstated:

• 30633, Hess, SC-Beingeman-LE-154-98-1004H-1;

Fight's On! The Trade War -- The Political Page, T+40 -- March 2, 2018

Updates

March 3, 2018: Time estimates that with the new aluminum tariff, a $2,000 MacBook would cost an additional $4. Locales with sales tax add about $160 to said MacBook.

March 3, 2018: time to call it what it is -- a global trade war. US against the universe. Trump announces tariffs on steel and aluminum. At the original post, I suggest this is a warning shot for Canada and Mexico that Trump is serious about re-negotiating NAFTA. And here is is, over at CNBC: energy is the crown jewel of NAFTa; energy will bind them; even in a trade war:

The energy interests of the U.S., Mexico and Canada are so integrated, it would be in no one country's interests to undo them, industry experts say. The U.S. is both a buyer and seller of energy with both its southern and northern neighbors and has been for decades.

We'll see. I don't think anything's off the table.

Later, 2:07 p.m. Central Time: after posting the original post, a writer wrote to tell me his/her "beef" with tariffs --

• a year ago, this article, Japan raising tariffs on beef to protect its own beef industry, from Fortune.com; this was a year ago; and, then this reminder:
• back in 2016, China finally lifted a 13-year-old ban on importing beef from America, a CNN story

Later, 2:05 p.m. Central Time: a reader tells me that a 10% hike on aluminum tariffs will increase the cost of a can of soda by 0.6 cent, again, six-tenths of one cent will be the added cost to an aluminum can -- and liberals have no trouble taxing that same can of Coca-Cola by 5, 10, or 15 cents because of its sugar content.

Original Post

Right, wrong, or indifferent. And not ready for prime time. Regarding the steel and aluminum imports.

• does anybody know what the tariffs will be? in dollars/ton? in dollars per Whirlpool washing machine that one buys once or maybe twice in their entire lifetimes?
• does anybody know what kinds of steel will be affected?
• does anybody know what tariffs China, Denmark, Japan, Great Britain, the EU, Norway impose on US goods?
• so, is President Trump a friend of Wall Street or is he laser-focused on American jobs?
• politically: the unions are "beaming" -- that was the word used by one of the mainstream media (print) outlets yesterday
• 2018, 2020: if Trump is defeated, the unions know those tariffs will be the first thing to go under a new administration
• if this is so bad, will Congress overturn Trump's action with a veto-proof law?
• does anyone really know to the degree that "plastic" can replace steel/aluminum? the petrochemical companies are probably running the numbers now -- it may cost more to build the petrochemical plant (they use a lot of steel) but the amount of petrochemical production may increase as folks move to "plastic"
• cognitive dissonance: all those folks who hate Trump because they think he's in the palms of Wall Street; this was clearly a "Main Street" (jobs) decision; Wall Street is NOT happy 
• another warning shot to other countries: the rules have changed with regard to an "unfair" trading environment; Trump's warning shot to say things are different now
• this warning shot will get the attention of Canada and Mexico that he's serious about making NAFTA more fairer for American workers 
• most interesting, perhaps is the "national security" issue that Trump framed. One could argue -- and my hunch is he had the statistics -- that if the dumping of steel and aluminum continued, at some point, the steel/aluminum industry in the US would die completely. This country would be at the mercy of one country that could produce the amount of steel/aluminum that we would need -- China

The Penguins Are Back! -- March 2, 2018 -- So Much For All The Global Warming Hand-Wringing -- Look At The Huge Jump In Penguins

This is kind of interesting. The WSJ has a story on penguins today. It turns out The WSJ had an almost identical story on the same penguins four years ago. The Adélie penguins must be loving the weather or the climate change or the global warming. By the way, the Antarctic sea ice is at record levels. The Arctic, in terms of sea ice, is a drop in the bucket compared to the Antarctic sea ice.

The two links:

• today: The secret is out: Scientists spot penguin 'super-colony' in Antarctica. Researchers discover Adélie penguins are thriving despite weather patterns and other concerns
• four years ago: Adélie penguin census shows seabirds are thriving. The penguins are  considered a bellwether of climate change, the Antarctic seabird's population is generally on the rise

From today's linked story:

On the Danger Islands of Antarctica, researchers have discovered one of the world’s largest colonies of Adélie penguins, harboring more than a million birds of a species long thought to be succumbing to changing weather patterns and dwindling food supplies.

The Adélies are dressed by nature in formal black and white. Their eyes are rimmed by distinctive white rings that resemble spectacles. And in recent decades, their fortunes have shifted with long-term changes in the annual ice conditions on which they depend, with eight or more colonies along the Antarctic Peninsula vanishing.

For that reason, the discovery of such a large new colony surprised some scientists.
On Friday, [researchers] published their formal count in the journal Scientific Reports: The remote rocky islands were home to a “super-colony” of 751,527 breeding pairs of Adélie penguins—the largest colony in the entire Antarctic Peninsula.

From the linked article of four years ago:

For the first time, researchers have counted all the world's Adélie penguins—a sprightly seabird considered a bellwether of climate change—and discovered that millions of them are thriving in and around Antarctica.

Rather than declining as feared due to warming temperatures that altered their habitats in some areas, the Adélie population generally is on the rise, the scientists said Thursday.

The Adélie penguin population now numbers 3.79 million breeding pairs—about 1.1 million more pairs than 20 years ago.

In all, they identified 251 penguin colonies and surveyed 41 of them for the first time, including 17 apparently new colonies.

Wildlife biologists pay close attention to Adélie penguins because their well-being is tied to annual sea ice conditions and temperature trends. They nest in groups on exposed rock but have to walk to the ice edge to feed in open water.

While annual sea ice in the Arctic has declined dramatically in recent years, the seasonal sea ice around the mainland of Antarctica has reached record levels. The 800-mile-long Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches above the Antarctic Circle toward South America, is relatively mild compared with the mainland. Temperatures there have risen about 2.8 degrees C in the past 50 years, records show.

Another story we won't see in the National Geographic. That's too bad. In the old days, this would have resulted in a huge photo-essay and no political agenda. If this story does make the National Geographic, the emphasis will be on global warming. I can already see how the story will be spun.

WTI Trending Down; North Dakota Rigs Trending Up -- March 2, 2018

North Dakota ranks #1 in quality of life. From Business Insider -- 

New Town could get an indoor "aquatic center." I assume we're talking about a swimming pool for "humans", and not a "Sea World" for orcas. From BHG News: 

From the EIA's annual outlook report:

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

Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$60.65↓↓↓	3/2/2018	03/02/2017	03/02/2016	03/02/2015	03/02/2014
Active Rigs	59	41	34	120	192

RBN Energy: LNG exports, Marcellus/Utica production driving physical gas flows, unprecedented constraints at Henry Hub.

For decades, liquidity at the U.S. natural gas benchmark pricing location Henry Hub in Louisiana has been dominated by financial trades, with minimal physical exchange of gas, despite the hub boasting robust physical infrastructure, including ample pipeline connectivity. 

But that’s changing. Between the start of LNG exports from Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass LNG facility in February 2015, and the slew of pipeline reversals that are allowing Marcellus/Utica producers to target the new Gulf Coast demand, gas flows through Henry have been rising. In fact, more physical gas is moving through the hub than in nearly 10 years, to the point where a key pipeline interconnect is at capacity on many days, which historically was unheard of. Today, we begin a short series looking at the changing physical market at Henry.