Fast, Furious, And Complete -- December 17, 2020

This page is now complete. No more updates; there may be some editing, but this page is done. Stick a fork in it. It was time to move on when the Weather Channel starting demonstrating how to shovel snow. Seriously. LOL

Can you say, "albedo"? See comments.

Tell me again Mother Nature doesn't have a sense of humor: just as the airline industry kicks into full gear to deliver "the" vaccine, this winter storm hits the most populated are in the US. LOL. 

Sure, most airports will be open, but the trucks have been banned from interstates, and the secondary roads are impassable. Tell me again why the FAA hindered the rollout of drones. Obviously the folks behind Operation WarpSpeed completely missed this one. Didn't anyone look at the calendar? Covid-19 testing sites are closed today in New England, northeast US.

2020: after everything else this year ... now a record-setting snow storm just days before the end of the year. 

41 inches of snow on the ground in Binghamton, NY. 

Weather Channel now admitting that their forecast yesterday failed to predict this much snow 24 hours later, but they can forecast/predict/guarantee that the earth's global temperature will be 2.2 degrees warmer 100 years from now.

Electricity prices (times in CT):

• New England:
• 8:00 a.m.: $103; oil up to 4%; coal up to 3%; hydro, 9%;
• 9:00 a.m.: $114; it looks like natural gas has maxed out; hydro (very expensive) surging; hydro, 11%; renewables down to 8%; oil, 5%; coal, 3%;
• 10:00 a.m.: $138;
• 12:00 noon: $144; natural gas has peaked; hydro at max for the day; oil, 5%; coal, 3%; coal flatlined; oil started peaking at 0700; solar peaked earlier and now slowly declining;
  
• Long Island:
• 8:00 a.m.: $86
• 9:00 a.m.: $94
• 10:00 a.m.: $94
• 12:00 noon: $93;
  

Winter storm Gail.

Historic storm in the northeast: link here. We will see snow reports that will break records like never before. Where are the Kennedys -- you know, the  guys who told us their grandchildren would never see snow again. 

AMHQ: "'We never imagined this once." "We completely missed this in Binghamton." Snowing at a rate of 5 inches/hour. Unprecedented.  "We can keep up with 2 inches/hour, but no way can we keep up with 5 inches of snow per hour." 

The number of commercials on this station exceeds any other network I watch but the optics this morning are worth sitting through the commercials. Keep your remote handy. So much going on across all networks this morning, including North By Northwest on TCM. 

Binghamton record: 18 inches in 24 hours; currently about 34 inches in past 24 hours. Something like that.  Now being reported: 40 inches of snow in Binghamton. Where is Binghamton? Western NY right on the Pennsylvania state line. Normally about 2 hours southeast of Rochester, NY, which sits on Lake Ontario. Three hours southwest of Albany. Record snowfall in Broome County, NY: 31.2 inches, March 14, 2017. That was only three years ago. Say what? Global warming? Never saw this coming.

Note: no one wearing masks in any of the commercials. Finally aerial drone coverage -- but video is from a private source, not from Weather Channel.

Follow price of electricity here:

• New England: here.
• as natural gas maxes out, one can see hydro increase
• price will surge
• we've already seen surges to $200/MWh overnight
• New York: here.

LNG: "There is hardly any gas" -- LNG price rally exacerbates gas crunch in Asia. Link here.

Market: should be a nice day for most. It's 8:32 a.m., market opens, here we go:

• Dow: up 147 points
• S&P 500: up 23 points
• NASDAQ: up 82 points
• individual stocks:
• IMUX: still above $18 but opens down about 1%;
• JNJ: up 1%; up $1.50;
  
• PFE: actually down a bit;
  
• AAPL: up $1.56; up 1.2%;
  
• BRK-B: up slightly; essentially flat;
  
• UNP: up a bit, but still below $200;
  
• SRE: up about 1%; trading at $129;
  
• DFS: up slightly
  

New Mexico: doing what it can to shut down their shale oil bonanza. First, they vote for Joe Biden, and now they will ban freshwater for fracking. Maybe not ban, but severely limit amount of freshwater for fracking. We've been through this argument before. Check the amount of water used on golf courses. Just saying.

Other news (you mean there is other news):

• New York state lawmakers weigh crushing tax increases on the wealthy: WSJ. Why the wealthy continue to live in New York state, or even worse, NYC, is beyond me.
• Toyota CEO: "Electric vehicles are overhyped." WSJ.  Elon Musk himself said as recently as yesterday it's going to take alot more energy once we move to EVs. The good news: plenty of cars. The bad news: most Americans won't be able to afford them.
  
  
  
• Olympics 202One: not gonna happen. No way will Japan let a gazillion super-spreaders into their country. Along with retirement communities, sports venues seem to be the most common source of the spread of Chinese flu. After WWII experience, is this China's revenge on Japan?
  

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Chinese Flu Watch

Johns Hopkins data just updated a few minutes ago:

• Oh, oh, this is not good. New York is now moving up; it's showing up as #6 this morning! But even worse, California is now among the top five! CA enters the list at #3.
• Tennessee: #1
• followed by Rhode Island (#2), California #3), Arizona (#4) and, Indiana, #5).
• North Dakota and South Dakota fall off the top-5 list;

I talked to a very, very smart friend of the family last night who lives out in California. He/she does still not "get it." He/she has no idea how much worse it's going to get in southern California. Seeing California jump to #3 on the top-five list is ... alarming. The only question I have: why did it take so long?

Herd immunity: some folks don't "believe" in herd immunity. LOL. 

North Dakota active cases plummeting. Chinese flu penetration trending toward 12%.

California active cases surging. Chinese flu penetration not yet at 5%.

Coronavirus: statistics. By country. By state.

The World In Data.

WSJ - Johns Hopkins data.  

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$48.12	12/17/2020	12/17/2019	12/17/2018	12/17/2017	12/17/2016
Active Rigs	14	52	68	53	40

Two wells coming off the confidential list: Thursday, December 17, 2020:

• 37317, drl/A,  WPX, Topaz 24-13HF, Mandaree, t--; cum 26K in 13 days extrapolates to 60,000 bbls over 30 days; Topaz wells are tracked here;
  
• 36684, drl/A, Hess, BL-Iverson C-155-96-2314H-7, Tioga, t--; cum 86K 10/20;

RBN Energy: a novel effort to recover diluent for reuse in Alberta's oil sands.

As bitumen production in Alberta’s oil sands has grown over the past decade, so has demand for diluent, which is blended with molasses-like bitumen to help it flow through pipelines or be transported by rail. 

With bitumen output expected to continue rising through the first half of the 2020s, we have estimated that Alberta demand for field condensate, natural gasoline and other diluent will increase by more than 40% — to almost 1 MMb/d — by 2025. 

The catch is, diluent production in Western Canada isn’t growing fast enough to keep pace, and there are limits to how much diluent can be imported on the two existing pipelines from the U.S. What if there were a way to slash how much diluent is needed to put bitumen in rail tank cars — and make rail transport safer in the process? 

Today, we discuss Gibson Energy and US Development Group’s new diluent recovery unit in Hardisty, AB.

Fracking. the well:

• 37317, drl/A,  WPX, Topaz 24-13HF, Mandaree, t--; cum 26K in 13 days extrapolates to 60,000 bbls over 30 days; fracked 9/19/20 - 9/25/20; only 5 million gallons of water; 83.4% water by mass; Topaz wells are tracked here;