Sunday Morning Coming Down -- February 21, 2021

Wow, it could be a really, really busy day of blogging. I can hardly wait to get started. I have two choices: really long posts with lots of notes / links and or many short posts so stuff doesn't get lost. I really don't know what to do. So, let's get started and see what happens.

Texas freeze: for the record, our power went out at 2:02 a.m. (just after midnight) on Monday morning, February 15, 2021, a holiday of some sort. I don't recall for sure but I think the power for our apartment complex came back on Thursday, February 18, 2021.

For the record I have not turned on the heat in this apartment since the power went off last Monday except for a short spell -- I believe it was Thursday night -- but that was it. I think it gets down to about 45°F at night -- no, I do not get up in the middle of the night to check. I know it doesn't get below 32°F because my bedtime beverage does not freeze. One can use this method to estimate the ambient temperature when it gets really cold in your house.

I think it's generally about 54°F in the evening before going to bed. 

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Wind

The facts are in: the primary and immediate cause of this unfavorable event -- wind turbines that froze. We'll provide links later. Where is Richard Feynman when we need him?

There will be six months worth of state and federal investigations, and in the end, we will learn that had it not been for wind turbines and global warming it would have been much worse. And, of course, it occurred while the country was focused on the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, the most acquitted president in history, even more so that Bill Clinton.

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Cartoons

The cartoons over at PowerLine are so good this week, I may post one cartoon from the selection each day. We'll see. Again, links later.

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The Market

When I last watched CNBC the new meme: rising interest rates (10-year Treasuries and 30-year Treasuries) will put a damper on stocks. That's true for the short term, let's say from six months to a year; that's not true over the long term, let's say fifteen to thirty years. There's a difference between trading and investing. Again, links coming.

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The Bakken

Running the numbers. 

The Bakken holds 500 billion bbls of OOIP. Ten percent is definitely recoverable. Harold Hamm once suggested the Bakken held upwards of one trillion bbls of OOIP but then backed off. The "500" number comes from a paper written years ago, never vetted, never published. With new data, one does wonder if 500 is off by half. 

Early in the boom, it was expected that 1 - 3% of OOIP would be recovered/produced through primary production. It didn't take long for Whiting to show that 10% was easily achievable, and now there are estimates that percent recoverable through primary production could be much, much higher. But let's stick with the conservative numbers.

• OOIP: 500 billion bbls
• primary production, 10%: 50 billion bbls
• Bakken production: one million bbls / day = 365 million bbls/year
• do the math: (50 billion bbls ) / (365 million bbls/year) = 50,000 / 365 = 140 years of drilling and CBR
  

Now let's assume primary production is 20% and let's assume OOIP remains the same. Let's assume that production drops to an average of 250 million bbls/year for various reasons (Biden policies; EVs; pipelines shut down, etc):

• 500 billion x 0.2 = 100 billion bbls
• 100 billion bbls / (250 million bbls/years) = 400 years and CBR
  

The law of big numbers.

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We Will Never See Snow Again

For mineral owners, would you like to see 10 years of drilling activity with an average ND light sweet oil pegged at an average of $33/bbl, or 150 years of ND light sweet oil pegged at an average of $50/bbl? Asking for a friend. I laugh when I hear folks tell me that a two-rig program in the Powder River Basin is not aggressive enough.

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We Will Never See Snow Again

More on this later, along with links. 

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Lamb

I never did post the "AFTER" photo. We will get to that, also.

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Propane Shortage

Are you kidding me? And that Midwest governor still wants to shut down the Canadian pipeline that delivers propane to her state. If she's successful, propane volumes will be cut in half. EIA's weekly petroleum report. The most recent, before the recent unfavorable event in Texas:

Propane / propylene inventories decreased by 2.9 million bbls last week (week ending February 12, 2021) and are about 9% below the five-year average for this time of year.

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The Next Best Thing

The new F-150s will have built-in generators that will enough capacity to power a home. Two F-150's will have enough capacity to power a McMansion. Three F-150's will power the Tesla factory in Austin. One bit of bad news: there will never be enough F-150's to generate the electricity needed to mine bitcoin.

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EPD

It's not what you think. Links later.

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IBM: Health Is Complicated

IBM trying to spin off Watson. Good luck with that.

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Legacy Fund

February, 2021, data should be posted tomorrow, Monday, February 22, 2021. If not, blame it on Trump. Or the rolling blackouts in North Dakota which is something I never, never, never saw in the eighteen years I grew up in North Dakota and the weather was colder then than it is now, according to Algore. The only thing different in North Dakota now than when I was growing up: wind farms.

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Comstock

Look it up in Funk and Wagnall's: another word for "whoo-hoo." 

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Greedy

That's how Griddy is pronounced down here here in Texas. Griddy: the bitcoin in ERCOT's realm. 

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From PowerLine

Link here. 

This is why Biden will be better than Trump: Biden says he will take us where science leads us.