Clearing Out The In-Box -- January 3, 2021

North Texas: wow, what an incredibly beautiful day. Bright sunshine, no clouds, shirtsleeve weather. Meanwhile, Dallas Cowboys ( 6 - 9), trailing New York Giants (5 - 10) in the first quarter by a field goal. Win or go home. Winner advances to playoff with a Washington loss, I guess. 

Rose Bowl: I think this is a bigger story than being reported. For those not paying attention, the Rose Bowl was played in Texas the other afternoon -- I actually forget the exact day -- LOL -- that's how much I follow college football any more -- by the way, was there a Rose Bowl parade today -- and, if so, where was it -- but I digress -- I think the Rose Bowl moving to Texas was a bigger story than being reported. This was only the second time in its history that the Rose Bowl game wasn't played in California.

And now the Rose Bowl, America’s most-attended football game, played continuously since 1916, moved to Texas—it was that or be shut down because California’s politicians, enacting increasingly draconian and apparently ineffective COVID-19 rules, wouldn’t allow a few friends and family attend a football game in a giant outdoor stadium capable of holding more than 92,500 people.

This is serious.

This is only the second time “the Granddaddy” of bowl games (so named because it is the oldest continuous contest) won’t be played in California. The other? In 1942, three weeks after the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor, fears of a Japanese raid caused the military and game organizers to shift the contest to North Carolina.

CRC:

• shares surge 9.23% on December 30, 2020. Link here.
• Todd A. Stevens out as CEO at CRC, December 22, 2020. Link here.

Ford, Mahindra go their separate ways. They call it quits. Blame it on the bossa nova. Who decided to cut its losses first? Ford or Mahindra? Mahindra has decided to focus on SUVs in the short term and focus on EVs in the midterm. This is huge. Absolutely huge as a tea leaf. 

Tesla: speaking of tea leaves. Tesla's delayed Semi tests Elon Musk's ability to scale up. In the  US, it appears Daimler Benz is leading the race for the first commercial production EV truck success. The Daimler Benz truck story seems to be off anyone's radar scope but if I'm reading it correctly, DB seems to be in the catbird seat. Yes, I have a huge dog in this fight. LOL.

US dollar, link here:

• great news for investors in 2021; it should drop further;
• US dollar suffers first annual drop since 2017

LNG: DOE extends fourth set of LNG export authorizations through 2050, December 31, 2020, link here.
this is huge; need to look at this more closely; I may be misreading this:

• US extends authorizations through 2050
• the Southern LNG export facility in Georgia
• the Cameron LNG export facility in Louisiana
• the Annova LNG project proposed in Texas
• Eagle LNG's two small-scal facilities in Florida

Meanwhile, Mexico will begin authorizing its LNG export facilities for only five years at a time. Link here. Is this a huge win for SRE? Does SRE have a de facto monopoly on US LNG export from Mexico? I don't know. It's Mexico. It's confusing.

New regulation over the permitting process involved in the importing and exporting of fuels in Mexico published in the country’s Official Gazette on December 26, 2020, could prove harmful to competition in the Mexican energy sector. 

One of the major changes in the published rules is the reduction in duration of refined fuel permits for private sector companies to five years, from twenty years. 

This reduces incentives to invest in long term transportation and storage infrastructure. 

The bill also establishes unclear and burdensome requirements for requesting permits and grants wide discretion to Sener in their ability to revoke them. It turns the granting of permits into “a public policy instrument” to control the makeup of the energy sector. 

In sum, the rules would essentially hand Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) a more dominant monopoly position in the marketing of refined fuels within Mexico. 

While natural gas remained essentially out of the criticism of the bill, the new rules stipulate that importers and exporters of gas in seeking permits need to provide Sener detailed information on volumes, infrastructure and also documentation supporting capacity on pipelines. 

In terms of exporting liquefied natural gas, Mexico would grant an export permit only for shipping out excess gas, or once domestic supply has been established, Mexico energy analyst Gonzalo Monroy told NGI’s Mexico GPI. “Given that Mexico imports 90% of its natural gas, this is a big problem for companies that want to export LNG.”

If I recall correctly, SRE was given a "regional" permit which minimizes the "federal excess gas rule." We'll see.