Notes From All Over, Part 1, -- January 31, 2020

XOM posts declines in profit, revenue

• reports net income of $1.33 / share
• analysts' expectations: 75 cents

Sverdrup oil field: output guidance raised. Peak oil? What peak oil? Guidance raised from 160,000 b/d to over 200,000 boe/d.

It's all Greek to me, but I like the sound of it. From twitter to day: CPC Blend 2020 demand will be firm from buyers in APAC, which will work to counter falling demand in Europe where the crude oil grade had been partially displaced by US light sweet crude, such as WTI. 

Oh-oh: sales of Latin American oil cargoes of China have ground to a halt this week. Is Venezuela spelled with three "e's"? And Chevron, about those Venezuela waivers? Ouch.

CVX: speaking of Chevron -- the company loses $6.6 billion have huge writedown of North American shale. Chevron announced a $104 billion writedown, including North American shale deposits, last year. Everyone knew this; reported last year they were writing down their shale assets.Recent 8.4% dividend increase; paying 4.63%.

Something tells me Iranian oil to China also coming to a halt. Just saying.

Politics: from The WSJ,

• Sanders gains ground on Biden; the two candidates are tied in a national poll; 27% each;
• who loses? Pocahontas; drops to a distant third place, 15% (polling below 15% in any state results in zero delegates)
• in the prior two surveys, she was about even with Sanders in second place
• she needs to do more beer commercials going into Super Bowl weekend 
• Iowa caucuses vote Monday
• Bloomberg: has jumped into fourth place; 9%
• the graphic at the site showing change for Pocahontas/Sanders is quite remarkable
• no mention of brokered convention where it is obviously headed

SecCommerce Wilbur Ross: exactly right. Coronoavirus will set back China's growth significantly. I think the economic fallout for China will be much worse than folks imagine.

Best way to cut CO2 emissions, FWIW but it will make St Greta happy: stop flights in and out of China.

Map of China here, ground zero at Hubei, "about halfway between Atlanta, GA and St Louis, MO, on the map below. Puts things in perspective. This would be like the US declaring a health emergency in Alabama and all flights into and out of the US canceled. The SARS outbreak in China, November, 2002, to July, 2003; no vaccine ever developed. 8,000 cases; 700 deaths worldwide. So, far, it appears coronavirus will be much, much worse in terms of number of cases We are now up over 10,000 cases and the "pandemic" is less than two weeks old. In late 2017, Chinese scientists traced the SARS virus through the intermediary of civets to cave-dwelling horseshoe bats in Yunnan province. Wiki already has a 2019 - 2020 Wuhan coronavirus "outbreak" site. It will be interesting when they change the word "outbreak" to "pandemic." The latter is one step below "epidemic." Or not. Perhaps "epidemic" is "local." "Pandemic" is "global."

The Chinese provinces:

Tesla, Toyota will idle Chinese plants; other auto manufacturers / suppliers have installed travel restrictions.

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Civets

Enerplus has a 6-well "cat" pad in the Bakken but none of the wells were named after a  civet. Just for the record.