Busy, Busy, Busy -- Bubba Doubling Down -- Two Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today -- June 24, 2020

Updates

Later, 1:53 p.m. CDT: Bubba keeps digging that hole deeper. Now this headline -- "Damage control: Bubba Wallace abandons noose narrative after embarrassing CNN interview.

Hours after an embarrassing CNN interview in which he clung to the noose theory (at the link), NASCAR's Bubba Wallace backpeddled with a Wednesday tweet - in which he appears to acknowledge that a garage pull in his bay at Talladega Supserspeedway wasn't a noose.

In other words, after going 'full Smollett,' Bubba likely hired a crisis management firm which advised him to dispense with the noose talk and issue a statement he should have made the second after the FBI concluded there was no foul play.

In less than one news cycle, he came full circle -- he was played; NASCAR was played. Why in the world did he ever agree to go on CNN? It will be interesting to see if he's driving for NASCAR next year. Talk about thin-skinned.

Original Post

First things first: never have I laughed so hard. I've talked about this before --- how headline writers, business reporters, etc., try to explain the entire stock market on one factoid so it fits a headline or can be made into a story for click bait. The market has been on a tear; the NASDAQ has hit consecutive all-time highs; TSLA and AAPL are going crazy; and so, today futures suggest the market will "fall."

The reason: corona virus cases are rising.

Again, there is a huge difference between the number of actual cases; the number of individual folks actually testing positive for Covid-19; and the number of cases being reported by county health departments; etc.

Bubba Wallace and the noose: it turns out he has a thinner skin than he realized. He's doubling down on his angst:

• it turns out -- and he admits it -- he never saw the "noose"
• his quote: "It wasn't directed at me, but it was a noose."
• the "noose" was in the garage since last year
• the garage is not "his" garage; the garages are assigned to racers at the time of the race
• the president of NASCAR was the one who told Bubba about the "noose"
• someone told the NASCAR president -- was Bubba played?
• the entire body of NASCAR racers were played
• enough of this
• I'm hoping the racers let Bubba win the next race so he will feel better about all this
• NASCAR needs to award "participation" trophies to those drivers who finish, and "partial participation" trophies to those who start but do not finish

Washington State: got caught with its hands in the "cookie jar." Falsely reporting deaths attributed to corona virus. Remember: if the death certificate has the word corona virus on it, Medicare pays an additional $13,000 for the diagnosis. Washington State says it will quit lying reporting false data regarding deaths attributed to corona virus. Sure.

Apple: "now easily the best smartwatch in the world." It's only a matter of time before I buy a smart watch. The perfect smartphone's theme song:

It's Just A Matter of Time, Randy Travis
Tesla: Model Y update over at SeekingAlpha.

The [C]arnival is over. LOL. I could be wrong on this, but it was my understanding that Prince MbS took a huge position in Carnival. There was talk he was going to turn the cruise ships into tankers (obviously that was a Mideast joke -- that would have been near-impossible -- the only similarity between cruise ships and oil tankers is that they both tend to float when at sea.

Wow: the Dow drops almost 400 points, AAPL drops a bit and IMUX is up almost 1%. Awesome. Trading near $15.


Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. Headline: Carnival becomes latest fallen angel while Covid halts cruises. Link here.

Taxes: "April 15" deadline approaching.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$39.53	6/24/2020	06/24/2019	06/24/2018	06/24/2017	06/24/2016
Active Rigs	11	62	65	58	30

Two wells coming off the confidential list today  -- Wednesday, June 24, 2020: 58 for the month; 203 for the quarter, 430 for the year:

• 37053, drl/drl, CLR, Angus Federal 14-9HSL1, Elm Tree,
• 26417, drl/drl, Bruin, Wm Polar 157-101-25A-36-4B, -- look how old this permit is; Otter,

RBN Energy: the pipeline networks that source diluent for the oil sands, part 2.

The folks who transport bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to faraway markets depend on light hydrocarbons collectively known as diluent to help make highly viscous bitumen flowable enough to be run through pipelines or loaded into rail tank cars. The catch is — or was, we should say — that Western Canada wasn’t producing nearly enough condensate and other diluent to keep pace with fast-rising demand, so a few years ago, two pipelines from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest were repurposed to allow diluent to be piped north. More recently, though, Western Canadian production of diluent has been soaring and new pipeline capacity has been built within Alberta to deliver it to the oil sands. That has the potential to reduce the need for imports from the U.S. and may soon lead to at least one of the import pipes being repurposed yet again. Today, we continue our series on diluent with a review of the pipeline systems that collect locally produced light hydrocarbons that are eventually employed in the oil sands.

The production of bitumen, the very heavy oil that comes from Alberta’s oil sands, has undergone tremendous expansion in the past decade. While bitumen has become the workhorse of Canada’s oil supply growth, it poses a big challenge: bitumen’s extreme viscosity means that it needs help to allow it to flow in pipelines or be transported by rail. This is typically accomplished by blending diluent with bitumen to form a flowable mix called “dilbit” for transport by pipeline or, less frequently, “railbit” for loading into rail cars.

Simon Watkins: the real reason Russia joined OPEC+ -- over at oilprice. The few "things" I've read by Simon Watkins suggests he may be a straight shooter. Don't know. But "good enough" to start getting "star" attraction on the blog. Big concern: where he regularly posts, but there are not many outlets that have that kind of readership.