Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- Devon Energy And WPX To Merge-- September 27, 2020

First things first: Devon Energy and WPX to merge. Link here. Devon to buy WPX.

• all stock deal
• combined: a market value of $6 billion
• currently:
• Devon Energy: $3.4 billion
• WPX: $2.5 billion

Tectonic changes: I see that this post of September 25, 2020, is now trending among the top ten posts at the sidebar on the right. 

As an optimist, I could also argue that this is more evidence that we are seeing tectonic changes in the way America uses energy, that in fact, instead of suggesting a faltering economy, the metrics suggest simply a tectonic change in the way Americans learn, work, and vacation, and less about the economy.

Tectonic changes: President Obama may have been simply premature when he made that famous statement that "these jobs aren't coming back," referring to the fossil fuel energy industry. Interestingly enough that statement is now more correct than ever. 

The weekly jobless reports showing little change week after week suggests this may be true for a lot of jobs. No industry is especially immune. All companies are taking this opportunity (or are being forced to take this opportunity) to re-evaluate their strategic plans, hiring practices; corporate headquarters.

McKinsey & Company has published several studies:

• reimagining the $9 trillion tourism economy;
• the travel industry turned upside down;
• five Covid-19aftershocks reshaping mobility's future;
• make it better, not just safe; the opportunity to reinvent travel;
• a new approach in tracking travel demand;
• for corporate travel, a long recovery ahead:
• hospitality and Covid-19: how long until "no vacancy" for US hotels?
• ready for check-in? Lessons from the German travel recovery;
  

Or you can read Yahoo!Finance reports on same subjects. LOL.

Running out of toes and fingers:

• Volkswagen Trucking invests in self-driving developer TuSimple, link here;
• Huawei set to become major competition in EVs; "Anything Tesla can do, we can do better"; link here; by the way, I think this is the Achilles heel for Tesla.