Net worth: does anyone really believe this? Link here. For US households with age of head of family, 65 to 74 years of age:
- median net worth: $266,400
- average net worth: $1.2 million
- next time you shop at Walmart, just imagine that half of all those seniors walking (or riding) down those aisles have a net worth greater than a quarter of a million of dollars;
- this is why we needed the $1.9 trillion stimulus program;
Fast and furious:
- Saudi Arabia's PIF signs $15 billion loan, Reuters;
- Another weekly petroleum report we can ignore, twitter;
- BP exits Kazakh oil projects to focus on renewables strategy, Bloomberg;
- Most misleading headline ever: US natural gas consumption was lower in 2020 in all sectors except electric power, EIA;
- Disney: new streaming milestone: 100 million Disney+ subscribers (+ means they pay), IBD;
- Geico: most ridiculous claim ever, Reuters;
- Best buy ever? How Berkshire Hathaway makes money, Investopedia;
- When adult children get cut off by their parents, time to go on Oprah, twitter;
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Back to the Bakken
Active rigs:
| $64.65 | 3/10/2021 | 03/10/2020 | 03/10/2019 | 03/10/2018 | 03/10/2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 15 | 55 | 67 | 59 | 44 |
No wells coming off confidential list today.
RBN Energy: ample supply, outflow constraint kept lid one northeast gas prices in February, part 3.
Last year served as something of a bellwether for what’s to come for the Northeast gas market in the long term: increasing takeaway pipeline constraints and weakening gas price differentials by mid-decade. The region’s outflows surged to record highs in the fall of 2020 as production also reached fresh highs. Just a couple weeks ago, the region notched another milestone on the pipeline constraint yardstick: record outflows on some pipes and near-full utilization of southbound routes on the coldest days of winter — something we don’t normally see, as gas supply requirements in the Northeast peak with heating demand and less gas is available to flow out of the region. This time, the surge in outflows and the resulting constraints were driven more by spiking demand and gas prices downstream than by oversupply conditions at home, but the result was the same: the Northeast had by far the lowest prices in the country. This happened even as other regions recorded triple-digit, all-time high prices. Today, we examine how Appalachia outflows and takeaway capacity utilization shaped up during Winter Storm Uri.
So whats your take, Bruce? Is oil overpriced and due for correction? Is it rebalancing after covid killed everything last year? Is it all just hard to predict we are just along for the ride.
ReplyDeleteAccording to oilprice, recent downs have from profit taking and not world events per se.
I've said often on the blog it's a fool's errand to try to predict the price of oil.
DeleteHaving said that, the tea leaves suggest WTI / Brent are going to go much higher.
1. Saudi Arabia can't survive on $60-oil.
2. WTI/Brent are not back to where they were pre-pandemic.
3. Pre-pandemic we had a president who wanted much lower oil prices.
4. Post-pandemic we have a president who may not know what he wants, but his policies will push oil prices higher, all things being equal.
5. "Inflation" will push commodities higher.
6. US gasoline demand, according to GasBuddy, is already higher than pre-pandemic and most states have not lifted restrictions; summer driving season has not begun; and internationally, most countries are still in worse shape than the US with regard to Covid-19.
7. Articles in the mainstream media are being written by millennials; they are completely misreading the EV story. They appear to have no clue how 99% of electricity is generated.
8. Across the board, US E&P companies say they are more interested in focusing on growing free cash flow, not growing production.
9. If WTI can hold above $60 with these huge builds (last week, 20+ million bbls; this week, 14 million bbls) imagine what WTI should command once refiners get back on line and inventories drop.
I'm sure others can come up with nine reasons why WTI/Brent will slump to $20 this year.
Some years ago, I was at a Trailblazer's game at the Rose Garden, Portland. Paul Allen and Bill Gates both happened to me there. As I observed to my friend, "You know, on average everyone here is worth about $5 million". Median can be 'mean'....
ReplyDeleteYes, if I recall, the mean is the average (take the entire US household worth / divide by number of heads of household).
DeleteOn the other hand, the median is the number where 50% are higher and 50% are lower.
So, what we have here is exactly what I infer from your note: 1% have a gazillion dollars of net household worth and that skews everything to the right. But the millennials who write these articles had a public school education, majored in Brit Lit and/or journalism, and have never studied statistics.