Safe To Get Back Into The Water? One Well Coming Off The Confidential List -- December 3, 2021

Investing: I haven't looked at the market nor have I watched any CNBC since the flashcrash one week ago, and I'm not watching CNBC today either. I won't look at the market until next week. I'm not sure when I will get back to CNBC.

Investing: I mention all that because I did cheat a bit today and took a look at a number of semiconductor ticker symbols and some semiconductor stories. Wow, a lot is going on. We'll get to the links later but the highlights that I remember:

• TSMC will roll out the 3-nm chip in a year or so;
• AAPL continues to distance itself from other semiconductor players
• Intel cozying up to TSMC; the story suggests Intel very concerned about being left behind;
  
• Brandon's DOJ will fight to stop Nvidia from buying ARM
• even so, NVDA "poppped" on December 2, 2021, according to The Motley Fool;
  
• Jim Cramer cashed in on some of his "chip" winners but did not take profits in NVDA, suggesting it could be a $10 trillion company someday; for perspective, MSFT and AAPL each have a market cap of $2.5 trillion or something like that; maybe just $2.1 trillion; I've lost the bubble;
• AMD and XLNX merger has not yet gone through; the spread widened as much as $60 while I was away

Investing: I'm going to cheat. I'm going to look at the market. Okay, not the market, just NVDA. I'm curious where the stock price needs to go for NVDA to become a $10 trillion market At $325 now with a market cap of $800 billion, let's see ... 325 / 800 = x / 10,000 ... 3250000 / 800 = $4,000 / share. I'm sure that's not right. LOL. 

Investing: so, it appears it's safe to get back into the water. I bought a sizeable (for me, LOL) chunk of a Big Pharma drug company yesterday; one that isn't marketing a vaccine but it otherwise involved with Covid

Tesla: it's done. It's official. Tesla's headquarters are not in Texas. No long a California company.

Enbridge: I assume I noted this but I really can't remember. Increased its quarterly dividend ever so slightly. Up from 66.7 cents to 67.4 cents. Record date and payment date already behind us.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Brandon and the price of gasoline: his jawboning is working. Gasoline prices have dropped over the past week or so. Link here. But don't get too excited yet: others think his policies -- some call them blunders -- will push oil to $100. Link to Irina Slav. Some say we'll be luck if oil stays below $100. 

Shale and the flashcrash: again, Irina Slav -- this oil price slump may not be bad news for US shale. I assume the flashcrash greatly affected the share prices of shale companies (I haven't checked and won't check any time soon).

This shale story is quite remarkable. How much crude oil does the US produce? I guess I could say I don't have the number in front of me but I think it's about 11 million bopd; historically about 10 million bopd? And when you look at the numbers -- sure, a lot of states produce crude oil but if every state shut down production, including Alaska and California, the three shale plays and GOM would easily keep US production at 10 to 11 million bopd. In round numbers? And except for the GOM, they're all swing producers. Yes, I said that.

• Permian: 5 million bopd
• GOM: 2 million bopd (link here to EIA, April 14, 2021 --  needs a stand-alone post)
• New Mexico: 1.5 million bopd
• North Dakota: 1.0 million bopd

And there you have it. Pretty amazing when you think about it. Pretty amazing even when you don't think about it, I suppose.

Speaking of amazing, by the way: apparently Alec Baldwin didn't pull the trigger. The gun fired itself. At least that's his story. No, it was not an SNL sketch. But it will be in a few years.

WTI: up almost 3% in early morning Friday trading; I guess that OPEC+ announcement was greeted with a big yawn from investors. 

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Back to the Bakken

Rig count: NDIC says the rig count jumped to 37 yesterday. If accurate, but it's not, if accurate that would have been a six-rig jump overnight. But it's not. The "Definitive Rig Report" for December 3, 2021, has been posted.

Active rigs:

$68.38	12/3/2021	12/03/2020	12/03/2019	12/03/2018	12/03/2017
Active Rigs	34	13	55	65	53

Friday, December 3, 2021: 49 for the month, 52 for the quarter, 303 for the year:

• 38046, conf, Slawson, Muskrat Federal 3-28-33H, Big Bend, no production data,

RBN Energy: capturing CO2 for a host of industrial uses, part 2.

Carbon dioxide is not the most potent of the greenhouse gases, but it is by far the most prevalent, which makes it a primary focus of efforts to protect the planet. And while a lot of attention is being paid to ways to reduce CO₂ emissions and to capture those that are produced, it’s important to remember one key fact: There’s strong demand for CO₂ for a variety of commercial uses, from enhanced oil recovery and fertilizers to industrial processes and beverage production. In other words, CO₂ has real value to certain parts of the global economy and capturing CO₂ for sale to these customers must be factored into the decarbonization equation. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the industrial CO₂ value chain.

The push to ratchet down global greenhouse gases (GHGs) has come to shove, and anyone who works in the energy industry or invests in it now needs to be familiar with CO₂, its market dynamics, and the relationship between it and hydrocarbon markets. That new reality prompted us to take a deep dive into CO₂ and, in Part 1 of this series, we focused on the midstream and downstream components that have been instrumental in the development of the U.S. CO₂ market. We discussed how CO₂ is typically transported (as a supercritical fluid) and looked at the U.S. pipeline networks that exist to help move it from place to place. There are more than 5,000 miles of operational CO₂ pipe in the U.S. owned by 29 companies, with the leaders being Kinder Morgan, Denbury Inc., and Occidental Petroleum.

By the way, that first line is very, very incorrect.  Carbon dioxide is not the most potent of the greenhouse gases, but it is by far the most prevalent. No, CO2 is not the most prevalent. Not even close. Take a look at water vapor.  

From the American Chemical Society, and if you can't trust the ACS, who can you trust ...

It's true that water vapor is the largest contributor to the Earth's greenhouse effect. On average, it probably accounts for about 60% of the warming effect ...