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Thursday, April 11, 2019

While Minnesotans Prepare For Global Warming, Mother Nature Hits Them With A(n) Historic "Spring" Winter Storm -- April 11, 2019

What's wrong with this picture? Hint: this picture is not tipped on its side.


In the eighteen years growing up in North Dakota, I never once saw this.

From "Homeland Security":
HSEM continues to track snow storm reports from emergency managers as more counties are reporting impacts. The following are new reports we’ve received over the past two hours.
• Blue Earth County reports downed power lines and power poles which have resulted in widespread outages.
• Cottonwood County has pulled their snow plows from the roadways due to fallen power lines and poor visibility. There are numerous electrical outages and crews are quickly working to restore service.
• Dodge County reports multiple downed power lines over roadways.
• Faribault County reports nearly 100 downed power poles.
• Freeborn County reports more than 200 downed power poles. The utilities are calling partners to help with repairs as thousands of customers are without power. Downed power lines forced the closure of Highway 13.
• Nicollet county reports scattered power outages as crews battle strong wind gusts to make repairs.
• Waseca County has issued a no travel advisory. The sheriff is assisting with road closures.
HSEM is conducting daily conference calls with regional staff and county emergency managers to assess weather impacts. No requests for state assistance have been made.

WTI Drops Below $64; Five New Permits -- April 11, 2019

Active rigs:

$63.714/11/201904/11/201804/11/201704/11/201604/11/2015
Active Rigs6359533193

Five new permits:
  • Operators: Whiting (3); Lime Rock Resources; BR
  • Fields: Sanish, Murphy Creek, Big Bend, Corral Creek
  • Comments:
    • Whiting has permits for three single wells:
      • Jones, section 8-154-91, Sanish oil field 
      • Oppeboen, section 5-142-91, Big Bend oil field
      • Stenseth Trust, lot 4/section 5-152-91 in Sanish oil field
    • Lime Rock has a permit for a Brew well in section 13-143-96 in Murphy Creek;
    • BR has a permit for a CCU Burner well in section 26-147-95 in Corral Creek;
Two permits renewed:
  • XTO: two Lonnie Federal permits in Williams County.

Natural Gas Fill Rate -- April 11, 2019

Link here.

This is something I did not see predicted. In hindsight, it seems like it should have been easily predicted.

Look how fast the "curve" is turning.

It's hard to say whether the rate of "fill" will exceed that of one year ago -- very steep a year ago (once it started to turn), but one can see that the curve turned positive sooner this year than last year. In retrospect, that should have been predicted. I completely missed it.


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What Condition My Condition Is In

Natural Gas, April 11, 2019, T+99, Part 2 -- Making America Great

Updates

April 12, 2019: with regard to the note below, a reader noted --
"Unfortunately: NGCC power plants are less efficient than other forms of natural gas-fired capacity." Did you mean non combined cycle are less efficient - like single stage peak load generators....the other 1/2?

Original Post

Natural gas milestone, 2018: US natural gas-fired combined-cycle capacity overtook coal-fired capacity in 2018.

NGCC.
  • 2019, US:
    • NGCC capacity: 264 GW
    • coal plant capacity: 243 GW
    • NGCC capacity: accounts for about half of all natural gas-fired capacity in the US
Unfortunately: NGCC power plants are less efficient than other forms of natural gas-fired capacity.

Last four years:
  • coal: shed 40 GW of capacity
  • NGCC: added about 30 GW 
Examples:
  • Duke Energy: $1.5 billion, 1.64 GW Citrus Combined Cycle Station in Florida
  • Dominion Energy: $1.3 billion, 1.6 GW Greensville station in Virginia
$1.5 billion / 1.6 GW =  $1 million / MW
New natural gas capacity for 2019: should add 6 GW of electricity -- mostly in PA, FL, and LA

It's very interesting: California is not mentioned in the article. In fact, the entire west coast is AWOL.

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Skills For The 21st Century

My Inappropriate Exuberance Regarding The Bakken Has Not Abated -- April 11, 2019

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here.

Disclaimer: I am inappropriately exuberant with regard to the Bakken.

Disclaimer: when it comes to the Bakken, I sometimes think I live in an echo chamber.

Disclaimer: connecting the dots below; there will be factual and typographical errors; personal comments and opinions will be interspersed with data points from other sources.

From the NOG presentation:
  • nothing new here, NOG repeats the current EUR from the Bakken: 7.4 billion bbls
  • another decade of drilling based on current data
    • 7.4 billion bbls recoverable oil
    • 1.4 million bopd crude oil (not boe)
    • 14.5 years 
EOR, Bloomberg:
  • tight oil goal: move primary recovery from 10% to 20%
  • that's a huge goal -- doubling primary recovery from 10% to 20%
  • the original Bakken wells had EURs of 350,000 bbls crude oil; now, the expectation is for new wells to have EURs of 1 million bbls crude oil
  •  North Dakota legislature, oil industry already beginning to address issues of CO2 storage, injection
  • conventional oil: 50% primary recovery
Original Leigh Price paper:
  • 500 billion bbls original oil in place (OOIP)
Primary recovery in the Bakken:
  • early on in the Bakken boom: 1 - 3% recovery 
  • currently: some think we may be nearing 20% from primary recovery in the newer wells in the Bakken
USGS survey of the Bakken: promised a long time ago; still waiting for it
  • when we get it, it will include the middle Bakken and the first bench of the Three Forks
  • will not include the lower benches of the Three Forks
  • will double the recoverable reserves from the previous report
NDIC map:
  • currently the NDIC map includes one "page" -- the entire state of North Dakota
  • the next iteration, the NDIC will have four pages or more: one page for each of the four main counties and a map each for the southwestern counties and the northwestern counties
Bakken strengths:
  • small geographic area
  • infrastructure in place; already good, getting better
  • huge microseismic array; at one time, the world's largest such array
  • good relationship among all players 

April 11, 2019, T+99, Part 1 -- Global Warming Wallops Minnesota; The Sixth Extinction

Minnesota, global warming, 476 closings -- link here:


Saudi bonds: maybe not all that great after all. For some inexplicable reason, $100 billion in orders, but only $12 billion "sold." Link here.

Tesla: biggest business story today -- Panasonic and Tesla parting ways? That gigafactory in China -- a joint venture between Panasonic and Tesla -- was announced with great fanfare. Now, apparently, a change in plans. Links everywhere.

Wealth tax: what a bunch of crap. There is no law against billionaires paying as much as they want above and beyond what is required by the IRS. If Elizabeth Warren, Warren Buffett, et al, say there should be a wealth tax, let's see them go first with contributing 25% of their wealth to Uncle Sam this year. What a bunch of hypocrites. As for me, I contributed 33% of my military pension to Uncle Sam this year -- above and beyond my tax liability. I paid my required taxes in full -- about 20% tax rate and then on top of that, I made a significantly larger voluntary contribution to Uncle Sam The contribution was a little more than 33% of my military pension. I got no tax deduction for doing that. I gained absolutely nothing from that financially.  I've been doing that for about the last five years. [Correction: I did gain from that financially in this sense. Had I not voluntarily sent that to Uncle Sam, I would have invested it and would have owed more in taxes. But any tax on that lost investment would have paled in comparison to what I voluntarily sent Uncle Sam over and above my required taxes.]

The Sixth Extinction? Link here. I've never read the book by that same title, but I've skimmed through it -- a bunch of nonsense. Net change in species going forward is positive, and by a large margin. Most of the species being "being lost today" due to human activity comes from deforestation in Brazil; urbanization across China, Africa, and South America; illegal poaching in Africa; excessive ocean fishing by the Japanese; under-regulated hunting in the Arctic by indigenous peoples; solar farms in California. No species are being lost due to global warming. None. Period. Dot. Nada. Zilch.

Most interesting: the "real sixth extinction" is the one no has talked about yet. The "Homo" extinction. See below.
 *********************************
Global Warming: The Science Is Settled
But ... Human Evolution ... The Answer Is Still Out There

From The WSJ:
  • a new species 
  • "a good case that this is something new that we have not seen before"
  • for the first time, the Philippines is part of the evolutionary debate
  • new species: Homo luzonensis

I count no less than eleven species of Homo that have gone extinct, and all during the "cold Ice Age," not during any global warming Hot Age.

Homo rudolfensis, Home naledi, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis, and Denisovan are mere blips on the evolutionary stage.

So far, "we" have identified 12 species of "homos." Eleven have gone extinct. 11/12 = 92% homo species have gone extinct. I don't think any of the previous five global mass extinctions were worse. Just saying. 

If I had to name one species that has done exceedingly well it would be the frogs.

Frogs.
  • About 88% of amphibian species are classified in the order Anura (from the Greek, "without a tail" -- probably noted by Aristotle)
    • These include over 7,000 species in 56 families, of which the Craugastoridae (831 species), Hylidae (720 species), Microhylidae (670 species), and Bufonidae (610 species) are the richest in species.
Reminder:
  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Chordata
  • Class: Amphibia
  • Order: only three orders in the "class of amphibians":
    • Anura (frogs and toads) – about 6,500 species
    • Caudata or Urodela (newts and salamanders) – about 680 species
    • Gymnophiona or Apoda (caecilians [limbless, serpentine]) – about 205 species
Yup, frogs have bragging rights. And more species of frogs are being found every year.

Frogs and toads of North Dakota at this link. The one we caught while exploring the Little Muddy: the northern leopard. LOL.

Huge Drop In First Time Unemployment Claims -- April 11, 2019

Updates

Later, 1:23 p.m. Central Time: not easily found, it took a Drudge Report link to find the story.


Link here: jobless claims lowest in 50 years .. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 196,000 for the week ended April 6, the lowest level since early October 1969. Claims have now declined for four straight weeks.
... below 200,000 ... lowest since October 4, 1969. Link her to 10-year graphic, this is absolutely amazing ...


Original Post
Jobless claims: link here --
  • prior: 204K
  • forecast: 211K
  • actual: 196K
  • change: down 8,000 
The market ...

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you have read here .

First, accomplishments of the 115th US Congress at 99 days:

And we move on. Early morning trading:
  • WTI: recovers a bit; back to $64
  • Dow: up 61 points and my entire watchlist is red -- led by TSLA
  • TSLA: down 3%; down over $9; trading at $267
  • nothing else of interest; both NOG and JAG are down, as expected 
  • Boeing recovering nicely; up a percent today -- I assume that's why the Dow is up 61 points and everything else is red; 
Tesla:


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A New Day, A New Way 
 --- to quote Maxine Waters

Yup, time for Sophia to strike out on her own. She has her house key.

The walk home from TutorTime is only about 1.5 miles. The first half mile has a lot of car traffic and a busy intersection but after that a country road through dairy farm. She will enjoy talking to the calves.


 She has an iPhone so during inclement weather she can always Uber.

Two Wells Come Off Confidential List Today; WTI Slips Below $64 -- April 11, 2019

Wells coming off confidential list today -- Thursday, April 11, 2019: 33 wells for the month; 33 wells for the quarter
  • 33685, drl, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Nelson 6-30-31-157N-99W TFH, Lone Tree Lake, no production data,
  • 30006, 618, Oasis, Harbour 5501 14-4 7B,  Tyrone, t11/18; cum 78K 2/19;
Active rigs:

$63.844/11/201904/11/201804/11/201704/11/201604/11/2015
Active Rigs6359533193

RBN Energy: too much butane in Edmonton pushed prices to near zero.
What a deal! Take as much butane as you want — all for the low, low price of less than 10 cents/gallon (c/gal). That was the situation in Edmonton, AB, last November and the price stayed dirt cheap until a few days ago. Given a decline in demand for butane in crude blending, along with growing NGL production, the NGL processing and storage hub in Western Canada was awash in butane as winter approached. It remains flush with product today — and the price for Alberta butane is still low. How did this happen, and how will it play out over the next few months? Today, we examine the factors that led the Edmonton NGL market to see a price fall to near zero c/gal for the second time this decade.