Yeah, It's Dead -- The Dead Cow -- September 20, 2020

Vaca Muerta is tracked here. 

This may have been previously reported from a different source.

Now, from Haley Zaremba:

But there are plenty of other oil producing countries in the world who have also seen massive market failures due to COVID-19’s destruction of oil demand and which have not received even a fraction of the attention. One such country is Argentina, home to one of the largest oil and gas fields in the world, the Vaca Muerta shale basin, which contains approximately 927 million barrels of proven reserves. [My hunch is that based on price, this number has been cut significantly.]

Way back in April, even before the historic WTI crash, Bloomberg (via World Oil) published one of relatively few reports of the shale play. More than a report, it was an obituary. “Oil crash kills Vaca Muerta’s potential as the next shale hotspot,” the headline read.

The April 2 article read: “Just a bit more than 3 weeks ago, the head of Argentina’s state-run driller outlined an aggressive $1.8 billion spending plan for 2020 in the country’s Vaca Muerta shale region, based on $60-a-barrel crude. With global prices starting the year above $68, it wasn’t unrealistic. Now, all bets are off.”

Now, nearly half a year later, is Vaca Muerta fully dead? The short answer is no. 

The full answer, of course, is a lot more complicated. According to the Argentinian energy minister of Neuquen province, where the vast Vaca Muerta field is located, resurrecting the shale play will take more than a year. Achieving pre-COVID-19 production levels, he said, will take an estimated 12-18 months due to a lack of market demand, which may not be bouncing back any time soon. “We believe it will take a while for fuel demand to fully recover,” Monteiro told listeners on Monday in an industry webinar.

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So Much For Blind Justice

 Updates

September 25, 2020: I made the very same point in the comments section. Even the Democrats realized when "enough was enough." Remember, in her 27 years on the US Supreme Court, she hired on African American. Prior to that, all her years as a federal judge, not one African-American judge. I can't wait to hear the eulogies given by the BLM folks.

Posted by Bruce Oksol at 10:35 PM No comments:

September 22, 2020: in the comments, I mentioned that the graphic below was so good on so many levels. I completely missed this one. From a reader, with minimal editing, who noted that RBG will lie in repose as the Supreme Court for seven days:

Being raised in ___ and living in ____ means I've had limited exposure to current Jewish observance.  But, by what little I do know, Jews were not embalmed.  They're buried within 24 hours of death with two exceptions.  No burials on the Sabbath, no burials on the first day of a major holiday, e.g. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover.  Traditionally, a wooden casket was used and some folks had holes constructed in the bottom to hasten decomposition.

Now, I realize that religious observance has become less strict across many faiths.  Fro example, Catholics and birth control pills, Lutherans and lutefisk.... but [is there any] contemporary East Coast Jewish community to reference?  Is this 7-day wake not completely in dissent with Judaic belief/custom?  

(My Canadian-born Grandma told of being frightened as a young child.  It was customary to have a coffin on display in the family home.  Dry ice substituted for embalming to preserve the corpse while awaiting the funeral.  She was understandably scared of dead people cloaked in a spooky, swirling cloud of carbon dioxide.)

I'm assuming that's not going to be the scene in the rotunda, and RBG has been embalmed.  But, I'm just curious if that's relatively commonplace now. [See this link.]

Original