Notes From All Over -- The North American Rig Count Edition -- March 6, 2021

Updates

Later, 11:51 a.m. : a reader pointed out what Baker Hughes did not point out. Rig count in Canada always drops in February / March (and often spectacularly) -- winter / spring thaw -- it's always something -- huge thanks to the reader who explained the drop. Link here. One more reason rig counts don't matter (don't that out of context). 

Original Post

There really isn't any reason for this post except to let folks know I'm up; I haven't died of that spider bite (yet). In fact, the lesion is pretty much gone. The lesion is still very visible, but it's obvious my immune system, 1; spider, 0. I doubt the topical Neosporin helped but it's what my wife would have recommended.

NASCAR: it's 8:47 a.m. Saturday morning -- I was up during the night blogging, slept in late, just got up, turned on television -- third time is the charm -- first two stations I watch were pitiful, but the third click -- NASCAR! Wow! I have no idea what I'm watching except it's a truck race under the lights. Oh, there it is, "Blue-Emu Maximum." Last June? I don't know, but it beats anything else on TV right now.

Rig count: most surprising story at the end of the week  -- all this talk about operators rushing to activate rigs -- hasn't happened. Not yet. 

US up or down one rig overall, week/week.

But saw this overnight: Canadian rigs dropped by double digits.

Wow. Rigzone headline -- prepare to laugh -- "Baker Hughes Rig Count Shows Slight USA Gain." Technically that's accurate. The actual numbers:

• oil rig count grew by one;
  
• natural gas rig count: flat -- no change. Nada. Zilch. Goose egg.

But in Canada, wow: Canada dropped 22 rigs to end the week at 141 units -- see update above --

• oil: down 12, now at 80 (12/92 = a 13% drop in rig count)
• natural gas: down 10, now at 61 (10/71 = a 14% drop in rig county)

Even if operators could turn on a dime, and activate rigs quickly, it wouldn't be smart. Refiners are having a heck of a time getting back to normal. 

Gasoline: Texas now importing gasoline -- happens occasionally but not often. From Bloomberg, European gasoline diverted to Texas to ease supply crunch. Link here.

• five gasoline tankers destined to New York or Savannah, Georgia have been diverted to Texas
• I'm amazed Cuomo/de Blasio allow gasoline tankers to offload in New York; who knew?
  
• most of the cargoes originated in Italy and Belgium
• five tankers: Mitera, Meredian Express, Marlin Maverick, Elka Efesis, and Uzava
• Meredian Express: gasoline blendstock; all others, gasoline
• roughly one in eight gasoline stations in Texas were out of gasoline
• if there is no panic buying, Texas will be fine (LOL -- no panic buying! -- LOL -- it begins this weekend after this story goes viral)
• in my local area, one of four stations was out of gasoline yesterday

Biden will solve the problem: LA Times. February 24, 2021 -- published before the Texas February Freeze. The president himself is unaware of any problem. By the way, did he ever visit Texas? They said he did; I don't watch the news, so I don't know. I doubt he knows either. 

Gerald Ford. 

Mexico: I might come back to these three stories later. Maybe a stand-alone post.

• NGI, February 22, 2021: Texas Freeze underscores Mexico natural gas storage needs, says IEnova CEO (Sempra)
• NGI, February 26, 2021: Sempra sees natural gas as world's most dominant fuel next decade. "Most dominant." Is that like "more pregnant"?
• S&P Global Platts, March 5, 2021: Valero looks to reroute Mexico imports, double capacity as it finalizes storage network
• Valero could shift from rail to ships as main import route
• company to reach 6 million bbls of storage in 2022
• demand picking up slowly

Scary: when American companies are more interested in Mexico than the US.

OPEC+: most interesting story all week. The most interesting story last week was not the fact that OPEC+ announced they would keep production at current level, but that this was said to have caught traders, analysts, experts by surprise. That story was reported over and over, that this was a huge surprise. 

Which raises questions. What was the real reason why OPEC kept production at current levels rather than increasing production? My thoughts: there is no demand for more oil worldwide. China's tanks are full. US refiners are still shut down. OPEC+ will re-visit the issue in one month, April, 2021, so this story that OPEC+ didn't make any changes is pretty much a non-story. Traders bidding oil up to $70 are looking six months out; OPEC+ was looking at conditions over the next month. "Everyone" says there will be a huge shortage of oil by end of summer, 2021. I hope so. I'm really curious to see who the swing producers will be:

• US shale
• Saudi

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Duolingo, Spanish, Sophia and Papa

Wow, wow, wow. 

Sophia and I have a 165-day streak of completing at least one lesson on Duolingo each day. We have not missed one day since we started. 

I subscribed to Duolingo Plus. Duolingo is free, no ads, basic app. Duolingo Plus is about $150/year -- maybe $190, I forget -- but really, really worth it. No ads. Other stuff, I guess, but I wouldn't know what because we never had the basic Duolingo.

Yesterday, a "progress quiz" popped up. If we scored high enough, Unit 2 would open up. Wow, the questions were incredibly difficult. But it appears that our comprehension is much better than we realized. We must have answered enough questions correctly because Unit 2 opened up. Wow. Interestingly, Duolingo did not give us our actual score; Duolingo did not go back through the questions and tell us the correct answers. Very, very interesting.

However, we will still have a lot of modules in Unit 1 to complete. We are moving very, very slowly. 

We try to do three lessons and one story each day. We can do a lesson in about five minutes, maybe less. We try for a minimum of ten minutes. It's quite amazing, ten minutes/day every day, including weekends.