Feedjit No Longer Available -- April 25, 2018

Wow, this is sad. I loved "Feedjit." I only noticed in the last couple of days it no longer appeared on the blog. This is what I found when looking up "Feedjit."

Feedjit is unfortunately no longer available. The service was run as a hobby site for many years. Due to emerging cyber risks and regulatory requirements, it is not possible to continue to operate Feedjit as a not-for-profit fun service without incurring significant costs.

For this reason we are regrettably shutting down the service.

Both Kerry and I hope you enjoyed Feedjit for the many years that it was running. If you are looking for a way to view your website traffic in real-time, I recommend you install Google Analytics and check out the real-time view.

Regards,

Mark Maunder.

Thank you Mark Zuckerberg, et al.

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Meanwhile, Over At Camelot 2.0

President Trump's first state dinner. Guest of honor: French President Macron. One of a very select group of guests: Tim Cook. 

From Macrumors:

 

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Wow

If the GOP has a bucket of #1 enemies, certainly Ms Lisa Perez Jackson would be in that bucket. 

Guess what! That's her in the picture above; she accompanied Tim Cook to President Trump and Melania's first state dinner -- wow, wow, wow. There are so many story lines. 

Ms Lisa Jackson was the director of the EPA under the Obama administration and probably did as much -- or tried to do as much -- as she could to destroy / derail / slow the US shale revolution. Wow. 

When she left the Obama administration, she went to work for Tim Cook at Apple. Tim Cook could have brought another "date," but he chose to have Ms Lisa Jackson join him. That's really something. 

One-hundred-fifty people, apparently, attended President Trump's first state dinner. That means seventy-five primaries were invited; the other 75 were friends, dates, significant others, spouses. That was a very, very small state dinner .... and Tim Cook was invited. That speaks volumes. 

On top of all that, Tim Cook was seated next to Mrs Macron. Someone needs to fact check that. 

Reading The Opium Wars, Hanes, c. 2002, puts so much of this into perspective.  

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As Long As We Are Talking Apple ...

I remember the skeptics who said the Apple Watch would not move the needle for Apple. I don't know whether that's accurate or not, but I sure see a lot of movers and shakers wearing Apple Watches.

But apparently, Apple Watches have moved the needle for Verizon. From Macrumors:

Verizon, the largest carrier in the United States by subscriber count, saw a monthly subscriber increase of 260,000 during the first quarter of 2018, reports Bloomberg, largely due to an increased number of smart watch activations.

The company actually lost phone and tablet subscribers last quarter, but the dip in subscribers did not hurt its bottom line because of smart watches, wearables, and other connected devices like vehicles.


Image via Bloomberg
Verizon says it added a total of 359,000 subscribers who are using smart watches and other devices during the quarter, making up for the loss of 24,000 phone customers and 75,000 tablet customers.

There was no breakdown in the number of activations by specific device, but Verizon's jump in smart watch subscribers comes following the September release of the Apple Watch Series 3, the first Apple Watch with LTE connectivity. 

I had forgotten the Series 3 Apple Watch had LTE connectivity. Aewsome.

How Low Will It Go? April 25, 2018 -- Natural Gas Withdrawal Season Is Poised To Stretch Two Weeks Longer Than Ever Due To Global Cooling -- April 25, 2018

Updates

April 16, 2018: update here.  

Original Post 

See this post.

The next natural gas fill/withdrawal data will be released by the EIA tomorrow (Thursday, April 26, 2018). This is what is forecast.

Now, this, from today's twitter.

The link to Platt's.

The natural gas withdrawal season is poised to stretch two weeks longer than ever reported as stocks must currently replace 2.549 Tcf of gas to reach the five-year average by the start of the next heating season.

The US Energy Information Administration on Thursday is expected to report a 12 Bcf withdrawal for the week that ended April 20, according to a survey of analysts by S&P Global Platts. Responses to the survey were tight and ranged from a withdrawal of 7 Bcf to 17 Bcf. The EIA plans to release its weekly storage report at 10:30 am EDT on Thursday. A 12 Bcf draw would be very bullish compared to the corresponding week last year, which featured a 71 Bcf injection, and the five-year average build of 60 Bcf. It would also be the latest net withdrawal on record for the heating season.

A withdrawal within analysts' expectations of 12 Bcf would deplete stocks to 1.287 Tcf. The deficit versus the five-year average would grow to 521 Bcf and the deficit versus the corresponding week last year would expand to 891 Bcf.

The EIA reported a 36 Bcf net withdrawal for the week ended April 13. It dropped inventories to 1.299 Tcf, which was 38.3% less than the year-ago inventory of 2.107 Tcf, and 25.7% less than the five-year average of 1.748 Tcf.

Note: yes, I know. This is not all due to global cooling. A lot of this has to do with the nation moving from coal to natural gas. (And, of course, wind and solar energy could not make up the shortfall when coal plants were shut down.)

Random Look At A Madison Well That Cobra Is Considering For Re-Entry -- April 25, 2018

Cobra has asked that this well be put on TA (temporarily abandon) status. Cobra, according to a sundry form, is evaluating whether to re-enter this well. This is the current scout ticket:

NDIC File No: 9578     API No: 33-007-00860-00-00     CTB No: 408128 Well Type: OG     Well Status: TA     Status Date: 3/1/2018     Wellbore type: Vertical Location: SESW 16-144-101     Footages: 580 FSL 2080 FWL     Latitude: 47.285336     Longitude: -103.489599 Current Operator: COBRA OIL & GAS CORPORATION Current Well Name: NORTH ELKHORN RANCH UNIT 1603 Elevation(s): 2515 KB     Total Depth: 9600     Field: NORTH ELKHORN RANCH Spud Date(s):  10/4/1982 Casing String(s):  9.625" 2790'   5.5" 9604'   Completion Data    Pool: MADISON     Perfs: 9470-9540 G     Comp: 11/4/1982     Status: TA     Date: 3/1/2018     Spacing: U Cumulative Production Data    Pool: MADISON     Cum Oil: 612998     Cum MCF Gas: 1385887     Cum Water: 669810 Production Test Data    IP Test Date: 11/4/1982     Pool: MADISON     IP Oil: 1454     IP MCF: 0     IP Water: 50

Monthly Production Data

Nine New Permits; Four Permits Renewed; Oasis Transfers Another 33 Wells To White Rock Oil & Gas; 63 Active Rigs -- April 25, 2018

Active rigs:

$68.05↑	4/25/2018	04/25/2017	04/25/2016	04/25/2015	04/25/2014
Active Rigs	63	49	26	84	182

Nine new permits:

• Operators: Hess (4); NP Resources (4); Cobra Oil & Gas
• Fields: Hawkeye (McKenzie); Ash Coulee (Billings); North Elkhorn Ranch (Billings)
• Comments: Hess has permits for a 4-well Nelson pad in SESE 34-152-95; NP Resources has permits for a 4-well Little Mo Federal pad in NWNW 12-142-102; and, Cobra Oil & Gas has a permit for Neru well in NESE 15-144-101;
• Comment: I mentioned Cobra for the first time (?) on the blog back on January 27, 2016;

Four permits renewed:

• NP Resources (3): three Elkhorn Ranch Federal permits in Billings County
• WPX: one Edward Goodbird permit in Dunn County

Operator Transfer: about 33 wells transferred from Oasis to White Rock --

• oldest permit: #07503
• most recent permit: #21261
• location: three from Williams County; the rest form McKenzie County

Great Britain -- Records Its First Horizontal Well -- Not Completed -- Something To Do With An Earthquake -- April 25, 2018

The UK would need to frack a well per day to reduce gas imports. About as likely as Mary Poppins showing up again. My bad. Mary is returning, Christmas 2018. LOL.


See this story at oilprice.com (Irina Slav).

And this is being reported with a straight face by the authors of "the study":

At this rate of well fracking means a total of 6,100 wells will need to be drilled in the country over the 14-year period and will involve land takeover on a very large scale, the report’s authors concluded.

So, there you have it. Six thousand wells over the next fourteen years, and Caudrilla is waiting for government approval to complete one well. Good luck.

According to the article,

In any case, the future of shale gas in the UK is not necessarily bright. Although earlier this month local shale producer Cuadrilla drilled the first horizontal well in the country, in the Bowland shale, but it has not completed it, awaiting final government approval. There is strong opposition to fracking in the UK, but also not a whole lot of options for replacing imported gas with domestic production.

But a google search reveals that back in 2011, Quadrilla admitted that a well it was fracking was likely the cause of a number of minor seismic events (earthquakes). Link here.

Of course, another quick google search reveals that earthquakes occur on the average once every week or so in Lancashire, England -- and they have been going on for centuries -- well before any fracking.

Bottom line: we are not going to see much fracking in England any time soon -- even if it's all fake news.

Look At This -- Up To 63 Active Rigs In North Dakota -- April 25, 2018; The "Global Warming" Feedback Loop Posted

Active rigs:

$68.07↑	4/25/2018	04/25/2017	04/25/2016	04/25/2015	04/25/2014
Active Rigs	63	49	26	84	182

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It's The Thought That Counts

Like COP Will Ever See It. LOL.

Link here.

• ConocoPhillips says it has been awarded $2.04B in compensation from Venezuela's state-run PDVSA oil company by an international arbitration court for early dissolution of two joint ventures for producing oil in the country
• COP’s assets in Venezuela were expropriated in 2007 following the nationalization of the country’s oil industry
• the arbitration decision by the International Chamber of Commerce is a first step in a series of legal actions taken by COP to receive compensation for the assets; a separate arbitration before a World Bank tribunal is still pending 

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Wow, I Saw This On "The Big Bang Theory"

It made no sense then; and, it makes no sense now. LOL. From What's Up With This?

Anyone that knows anything about feedback loops can see the fallacy in the "global warming" model depicted above.

"T" is for temperature.

Put in any temperature for "Tref" and run the feedback loop as many times as you want until you get the Algore number, "Teq."

For Those Who Missed It: 11th Edition (2018), "Rich States, Poor States" -- April 25, 2018

Released last week. At the link, download the PDF at the upper left-hand corner.

Wow, New York, #50; California, #47. Never saw that coming. I thought California's budget crisis was over and was now one of the rich states. Any other surprises? Minnesota in the second column, #44 -- far below Alabama (#20); Mississippi (#24); Louisiana (#27); and Arkansas (#22) -- pretty much worse off than the old confederacy. What gives?

Of interest (state, economic performance rank [backward-looking]; economic outlook rank [forward-looking]):

• California (crying): 20; 47
• Connecticut (hmmm): 50; 40
• Florida (has swallowed the red pill): 17; 6
• Hawaii (oh, oh): 21; 45
• Idaho (wow): 12; 2
• Illinois (bad, and getting worse): 46; 48
• Indiana (wow): 30; 3
• Iowa (not looking good; despite all that wind energy): 18; 29
• Massachusetts ("M" for mediocre): 15; 25
• Michigan ("M" for aMazing): 47; 18
• Minnesota ("M" for madness): 22; 44
• Montana ("M" for misery): 9; 43
• New Jersey: 49; 46
• New York (one word: Bill, as in de Blasio): 19; 50
• North Dakota: 3; 4
• Oregon ("O" for oh-oh): 6; 41
• South Carolina: 7; 33
• Texas (never saw this coming): 1; 14
• Washington (like Oregon): 2; 37

Iranian Budget Based On $150 Oil -- Joel Pollak -- Scott Adams Interview -- April 25, 2018

See Scott Adams periscope today over at twitter.

Saudi needs at least $100-oil to reach its desired Saudi Aramco IPO valuation. But Iran? Needs $150-oil.

With regard to Iran, time is on "our" side. Trump's tweets have a huge effect in the Iran-US standoff.

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Iran Needs $150-Oil; NBC Needs $70 Million. Period.

From The WSJ:

Megyn Kelly was supposed to bring star power to NBC News and a bigger, broader audience of morning viewers to its “Today” show franchise.

Instead, the three-year, $69 million bet to woo Ms. Kelly from her conservative prime-time perch at Fox News is backfiring.

Since taking over the 9 a.m. hour of the lucrative morning show in September and rebranding it “Megyn Kelly Today,” Ms. Kelly has struggled to make the shift to daytime broadcast television, with its delicate balance of soft features and hard news. Her ratings declines and higher production costs have been a drag on a critical franchise for NBC.

Apparently Megyn Kelly is the one journalist who has not continued to benefit from the "Trump effect."

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A Win (Barely) For Trump

GOP keeps AZ US House seat. 

US Crude Oil Inventories Jump -- Not Much -- But Huge Implications -- April 25, 2018

EIA's weekly petroleum report:

• moderate increase but huge implications: US crude oil inventories increased by even more than API data suggested -- increased by 2.2 million bbls
• an analyst at twitter noted: U.S. weekly crude oil exports 2.3 million b/d for the week ending 4/20, 4th week ever to surpass 2 million b/d; EIA US export data here but only goes through January, 2018, and that showed only 1.34 million bopd exported;
• US crude oil inventories now at 429.7 million bbls
• for newbies: old baseline - 350 million bbls; new baseline -- 400 million bbls
• refinery operating capacity dropped significantly: now down to 90.8%; for me, anything less than 93% is noteworthy
• going into the driving season, gasoline production decreased but still essentially unchanged at 10 mill million b/d; same with distillate fuel production at 5 million b/d
• overall, not much as changed, but US crude oil inventories continue to increase, and the Permian surge is yet to show itself

WTI after report: unchanged at $67.66.

Gasoline demand graph has been posted. 

• blue line: 4-week average, now
• red line: 4-week average, last year

Wisconsin Permits Another Fack Sand Terminal --

Color me surprised. It never surprises me, how many Native Americans live within three miles of where folks actually want to work. Or how trout seem to be everywhere and yet I've had little success with trout fishing over my lifetime.

From The Lacrosse Tribune: Wisconsin DNR gives OK for another frack facility.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued a permit Monday allowing OmniTRAX Logistics Services to fill just over 4 acres of wetlands in order to install nearly 10 miles of track in a loop along the banks of Halls Creek, a Class II trout stream that feeds into the Black River.

OmniTRAX says it will use the terminal to fill more than 80 rail cars per day with sand from a nearby mine. Sand will be processed near the mine and brought to the rail terminal by a nearly 2-mile-long conveyor that will pass under two public roads. The company says it intends to ship about 3 million tons of sand each year to Montana and Texas, where it will be used to extract oil in a process known as hydraulic fracturing.

Midwest Environmental Advocates objected to the permit on behalf of the Ho-Chunk Nation, which has land less than three miles from the site.

I assume the Midwest Environmental Advocates would have no trouble with bald eagle slicers and dicers on that land if a wind energy company sought a permit for the very same area.

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Where Have We Heard This Before?

Reluctantly, Britain's Foreign Secretary, in 1839, agreed to a "limited war" with China over the opium trade, siding with Big Opium. From The Opium Wars, Hanes III, c. 2002:

Further complicating the strategy against China was the weakness of Prime Minister Melbourne's Whig government, which held power by a tiny majority. With the government threatening to fall at any moment, was this really a good time to launch a foreign adventure, no matter how limited in scope?

Plus, the Exchequer was basically broke. Unbalanced budgets had produced huge deficits of £1 million pounds or more per annum for the past three years. Melbourne believed that a weak Parliament would never grant the fund to reimburse the traders for the £2.5 million of lost opium, much less an even more expensive war halfway around the world.

Goaded by is Secretary of State for war, however, the legendary 89-year-old historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, Melbourne came up with an ingenious way to fight a war against th Chinese -- make them pay for it.

After a brief conflict, which Melbourne expected would be a quick and efficient rout, China would be forced to pay reparations, which would serve as reimbursement for the opium it had confiscated. 

The plan had a neat tautology to it.

The Brits prepared for war. 

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Time For A Little Chemistry

Link here.

Acetic anhydride. An incredibly simple molecule. Acetylation.

From wiki: Because of its use for the synthesis of heroin by the diacetylation of morphine, acetic anhydride is listed as a U.S. DEA List II precursor, and restricted in many other countries. Acetic anhydride is a versatile reagent for acetylations, the introduction of acetyl groups to organic substrates. In these conversions, acetic anhydride is viewed as a source of CH3CO+.

I find this fascinating:

The isolation of morphine was the beginning of alkaloid chemistry, which has yielded many important medicinal substances.

Although a satisfactory theory of analgesic structure or action still eludes us, experimenters have developed a number of synthetic analgesics related to morphine.

The oldest is pethidine (also known as meperidine, Demerol and about 40 other names).

It was synthesised in 1939 by the German chemist Otto Eisleb. It is less potent than morphine, but is still widely used for the relief of post-operative pain. By replacing one of the -OH groups with a methoxy group, morphine is converted into codeine, another powerful painkiller. When mixed with paracetamol it goes by the trade name Tylenol. When ingested, the -OCH₃ group is converted back to -OH, regenerating morphine.

US Civil War and morphine.

Making America Great Again -- Another Multi-Billion-Dollar Petrochemicals Complex To Be Built In Louisiana

Making America great again: another huge chemical complex to be built in Louisiana. Here and here. Data points:

• $9.4 billion chemical complex
• 10-year building program; two phases
• construction to begin as soon as next year (2019)
• 1,200 new direct jobs averaging $85,000
• Formosa Petrochemical Corp (Taiwan-based)
• 2,400-acre site; along west bank of the Mississippi River
• will produce ethylene, propylene, ethylene glycol, and assoc polymers
• Formosa Plastics Group: no stranger to Louisiana; already operates three other facilities in the state
• this story will get very little media coverage; meanwhile, at only $5 billion, Amazon HQ2, will get much more media exposure

So Long, CA. Sayonara, NY: from the WSJ.

As the Trump tax cut was being debated in December, California’s Gov. Jerry Brown called the bill “evil in the extreme” and fumed that it would “divide the hell out of us.” He’s right—but in the end, this change could be good for all the states.

In the years to come, millions of people, thousands of businesses, and tens of billions of dollars of net income will flee high-tax blue states for low-tax red states. This migration has been happening for years. But the Trump tax bill’s cap on the deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT, will accelerate the pace. The losers will be most of the Northeast, along with California. The winners are likely to be states like Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

For years blue states have exported a third or more of their tax burden to residents of other states. In places like California, where the top income-tax rate exceeds 13%, that tax could be deducted on a federal return. Now that deduction for state and local taxes will be capped at $10,000 per family.

About 90% of taxpayers are unaffected by the change. But high earners in places with hefty income taxes—not just California and New York, but also Minnesota and New Jersey—will bear more of the true cost of their state government. Also in big trouble are Connecticut and Illinois, where the overall state and local tax burden (especially property taxes) is so onerous that high-income residents will feel the burn now that they can’t deduct these costs on their federal returns. On the other side are nine states—including Florida, Nevada, Texas and Washington—that impose no tax at all on earned income.

Tesla: the Big Four -- the US, Germany, Japan, and, now, China. From Bloomberg: 

That’s the master plan of billionaire Li Shufu, who has catapulted from founding Geely Group as a refrigerator maker in the 1980s to owning Volvo Cars, British sports carmaker Lotus, London Black Cabs and the largest stake in Daimler AG—the inventor of the automobile. Li is spearheading China’s aspirations to wedge itself among the big three of the global car industry—the U.S., Germany and Japan—so they become the Big Four.

He’s not alone: At least four Chinese carmakers and three Chinese-owned startups—SF Motors Inc., NIO and Byton—plan to sell cars in the U.S. starting next year. At the same time, Warren Buffett-backed BYD Co. is building electric buses in California; Baidu Inc. is partnering with Microsoft Corp., TomTom NV and Nvidia Corp. on a self-driving platform; and Beijing-based TuSimple Inc. is testing autonomous-driving big rigs in Arizona.

The industry is set for more upheaval as China unravels a two-decade policy that capped foreign ownership of carmaking ventures at 50 percent. The change may energize companies such as Volkswagen AG and Ford Motor Co. to seek a bigger piece of the world’s largest car market and allow Tesla Inc. to set up a fully owned unit. Carmakers may get better visibility of their futures, and those Chinese companies that fear losing sales at home may sense a greater impetus to go abroad.

The most prolific buyer is Li, who spent almost $13 billion on stakes in Daimler and truckmaker Volvo. Tencent Holdings Ltd., Asia’s biggest internet company, paid about $1.8 billion for 5 percent of Tesla. [Valuing Tesla at $36 billion.]

Tesla: trading at a mere 13,690 times its trailing EBITDA.  Forbes.

DAPL redux: Enbridge Line 3 ruling/protests already back in the news. The article provides a bit of background why Enbridge wanted a new route; it was not simply to be politically correct.

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Back to the Bakken

Where Frackers Are Always Welcome

Active rigs:

$67.45↓	4/25/2018	04/25/2017	04/25/2016	04/25/2015	04/25/2014
Active Rigs	62	49	26	84	182

RBN Energy: why increasing pipeline capacity will reduce eastern gas price volatility.