March 13, 2019 -- Wednesday -- T+70

Weekly EIA petroleum report: link here.

• US crude oil inventory: decreased by 3.9 million bbls
• WTI jumps: up 1.55%; up 88 cents; trading at $57.75
• US crude oil inventory: at 449.1 million bbls, about 2% above the five year average, and that five year average continues to increase
• US refining capacity: 87.6% capacity -- wow, that's low
• gasoline and distillate fuel production, said to have decreased but in big scheme of things, backgroud noise; essentially flat
• US crude oil imports: at 6.7 million bopd; down by 255,000 bopd -- also background noise but it is 9% less than same four-week period last year

Re-balancing: some rows hidden to keep spreadsheet manageable -- note: we are no closer to re-balancing than we were when I started re-following this metric sixteen weeks ago, November 21, 2019. Sixteen weeks ago, the US had 446.9 million bbls of crude oil in storage; most recent data, one week ago: 449.1 million bbls. The goal is to re-balance to 400 million bbls in storage even though historically the US did just fine with 350 million bbls in storage.

Week	Date	Change w-o-w	In Storage	Weeks to RB to 350 Million Bbls
Week 0	November 21, 2018	4.9	446.9	N/A
Week 1	November 28, 2018	3.6	450.5	N/A
Week 2	December 6, 2018	-7.3	443.2	N/A
Week 9	January 24, 2019	8.0	445.0	Won’t happen i my lifetime
Week 10	January 31, 2019	0.9	445.9	Won’t happen in my lifetime
Week 11	February 6, 2019	1.3	447.2	Won’t happen in my lifetime
Week 12	February 13, 2019	3.6	450.8	Won’t happen in my lifetime
Week 13	February 21, 2019	3.7	454.8	Won’t happen in my lifetime
Week 14	February 27, 2019	-8.6	445.9	Won’t happen in my lifetime
Week 15	March 6, 2019	7.1	452.9	Won’t happen in my lifetime
Week 16	March 13, 2019	-3.9	449.1	Won’t happen in my lifetime
		0.4

Slow day.

For the archives, three stories, cleaning out the in-box:

• developer admits they did some things wrong; Mariner East pipeline project; Energy Transfer Partners; long, involved story; something tells me this won't end well;
• Shell -- Royal Dutch Shell -- aims to become world's largest electric company (paywall) but Bloomberg also has the story; this looks like a big story; may come back to it later;
• Shell --Royal Dutch Shell -- is looking to bulk up its position in the Permian Basin -- Motley Fool -- even if not interested in RDS -- lots of data regarding the Permian

Reminder: one of the best climate sites / wildlife sites on the internet. Incredible photographer. From that site:

Antarctic: some weeks ago, there was a story about a piece of the Antarctic, the size of Manhattan, about ready to break apart from that continent -- another story about global warming. I don't have the link any more. Don't really care. But buried deep in the story: the size of this piece breaking off from the Antarctic does not even make the "top 20" list of such Antarctic events.

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Meanwhile

 

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 A Renaissance Man 

Shel Silverstein.

From wiki:

The phrase "Renaissance man" tends to get overused these days, but apply it to Shel Silverstein and it practically begins to seem inadequate.

Not only has he produced with seeming ease country music hits and popular songs, but he's been equally successful at turning his hand to poetry, short stories, plays, and children's books.

Moreover, his whimsically hip fables, beloved by readers of all ages, have made him a stalwart of bestseller lists. A Light in the Attic, most remarkably, showed the kind of staying power on the New York Times chart—two years, to be precise—that most of the biggest names (John Grisham, Stephen King and Michael Crichton) have never equaled with their blockbusters.

His unmistakable illustrative style is another crucial element to his appeal. Just as no writer sounds like Shel, no other artist's vision is as delightfully, sophisticatingly cockeyed. One can only marvel that he makes the time to respond so kindly to his friends' requests. In the following work [Murder for Revenge (1998)], let's be glad he did. Drawing on his characteristic passion for list making, he shows how the deed is not just in the wish but in the sublimation.

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The Book Page

John Conway.

The Game Of Life.

"Rumpled-looking" mathematician from Cambridge University who would become a fellow of the Royal Society in 1981 and who five years later would migrate to a high-prestige professorship at Princeton.

He was born in Liverpool in 1937. Hold that thought: Liverpool.

His father was a chemistry teacher who taught a few local wannabe musicians. Those musical hopefuls would later form a band called the Beatles.

Says fellow mathematician ... "It's as though John Conway's brain is hard-wired for mathematics ... His mother discovered him at the age of four reciting increasingly higher powers of 2 to himself."

Entering secondary school at age eleven he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. He replied that he wanted to be a mathematician at Cambridge. John Conway got his wish. He earned his doctorate at Cambridge in 1964, just as his dad's students, the Fab Four, John, Paul, George, and Ringo, were breaking big time on the record charts.

Liverpool.

From The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates, Howar Bloom, c. 2015. 

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Collectors

I was talking to a gentleman in Starbucks this morning, a gentleman who collects coins, and thinks nothing of spending $5,400 for a collectable silver dollar. His collection is vast.

After reading those short snippets about Shel Silverstein and John Conway above, I got to thinking (scary thought).

I often think, ask myself, why are we here? Why did God create the universe, why did God create man/woman?

It dawned on me after reading those two short snippets above, of Shel Silverstein and John Conway, and reflecting on the coin collector's comments, that the answer is obvious.

God is a collector (and so are his angels). Some angels collect breeds of dogs. Some collect orchids. Some collect country music lyrics. But God and the angels farther up the heirarchy collect humans. God's collection is the best, of course: Adam, Even, Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, as a start. There's an angel that collects Hungarian physicists, but God has Hans Bethe. One of the lesser angels who collects American politicians has Ronald Reagan, but God has George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Once Adam and Eve were created, God let the fractals take over. No more creations in this universe: God set the parameters, pushed the "on/start" button, and there was light. Now "he" sits back waiting for the next "piece" for his collection.

The fact that so many politicians are in their 80's and 90's today suggests that neither God nor the angels want some of these in their collections.

Clarence, It's a Wonderful World