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Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Social Media: Getting Interested In Canadian Oil -- March 10, 2021

Link here

Twitter is getting excited about Canadian oil stocks. Despite the Keystone XL being killed.

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.

This is being posted for the archives. This has nothing to do with recommendations.

You may recognize some of these names from the blog; you may recognize some of these names from the Bakken.

Three New Permits; Seventeen Permits Renewed -- March 10, 2021

Active rigs:

$64.44
3/10/202103/10/202003/10/201903/10/201803/10/2017
Active Rigs1555675944

Three new permits, #38205 - #38207, inclusive:

  • Operators: MRO, Petroshale (2)
  • Fields: Spotted Horn (McKenzie); Killdeer (Dunn)
  • Comments:
    • Petroshale has permits for two Wounded Face wells in section SESW 19-150-94;
      • both are 125' FLS and between 2137' and 212' FWL;
    • MRO has a permit for a John Bergan well in section SEW 2-145-94; 403' FSL 1323' FWL,

Released from confidential status:

  • 27878, PNC, CLR, Jersey FIU 16-16H1, Alkali Creek, but permit renewed (see below);
  • 27879, PNC, CLR, Jersey FIU 17-16H, Alkali Creek, but permit renewed (see below);

One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed:

  • 37252, drl/A, EOG, Liberty LR 117-1416H, Parshall, no production data,

Seventeen permits renewed:

  • CLR (12): twelve Jersey FIU permits in Mountrail County
  • Liberty Resources Management (5): one each, a Keller, a Christine, an LTM, a Thronson, and an Albertson permit, all in Mountrail County except for the Keller permit in Burke County;

The Mid-Day Report -- The Market Edition -- March 10, 2021

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.

For archives only; no recommendations.

First group:

  • 10-Year Treasury: link here.  Down two basis points, 1.521%.
  • DXY: link here. Down slightly, 91.83.
  • Silver: link  here. Up slightly, but off recent highs. $26.285.
  • CBOE volatility index: link here. Down 5.12%; now at 22.8.

Second group:

  • 30-Year Treasury: link here. Down slightly, at 2.246%.

$1.9 trillion stimulus bill signed by the president, although he may not remember.

Markets:

  • Dow hits another all-time high
  • in the news: BRK-B and Warren Buffett

Buffett: net worth reaches $100 billion.

QCOM: dividend increase by 5%; from 65 cents to 68 cents. Street sees 34% upside.

Chase Pay: JPMorgan ends Chase Pay; recommends customers transfer Chase cards to PayPal.

Inflation? Nope. Link here. No inflation unless ....  Stay away from these four and you won't see any inflation:

  • gasoline; diesel; and propane;
  • food;
  • medicine;
  • a new house;

Crisis at the southern border? Nope, if you don't look for it. Yesterday, I looked specifically to see if the LA Times reported any story from the southern border. None. So, apparently it's just a Fox News story. I have no dog in that fight.

Gasoline inventory, link here, under President Biden -- in less than 100 days -- quite a feat ...

Oil closes higher:

  • WTI: up 1.16%; up 74 cents; closed at $64.75
  • Brent: up 0.98%; up 66 cents; closed at $68.18
  • OPEC basket: closed at $66.38

Most misleading story line ever, from the Biden administration: US natural gas consumption was lower in 2020 in all sectors except electric power. Link here. If not misleading, I have no idea what their point was.

*******************************
A Musical Interlude

This is really cool. 

For the past couple of days I've been in one of my John Fogarty / CCR phases, binge watching CCR on YouTube.

Now this, today in The WSJ: John Fogarty on the devil beind CCR's Bad Moon Rising. How the 1969 hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival was inspired by hippie astrology, Elvis and a 1941 movie. Link here.

Weekly EIA Petroleum Report -- March 10, 2021

Link here

WTI: drops below $63.50.

OPEC basket surges: up 8%; up $5.00; trading at $67.05.

Weekly EIA petroleum report:

  • refiners were operating at 69% of their operable capacity;
  • US crude oil inventories increased by almost 14 million bbls from the previous week; that's on top of the 20+ million build last week; so now, in two two week, US inventories of crude oil have increased by 35 million bbls, are now 6% above the five-year average, and WTI is holding above $60;
  • one can anticipate another 10-million-bbl build next week;
  • US crude oil inventories are now, as noted 6% above their five-year average, with almost 500 million bbls in storage;
  • gasoline inventories decreased significantly last week and are 6% below their five-year average;
  • distillate fuel inventories dropped by 5.5 million bbls and are 15% below their five-year average; farmers are just getting ready to plant;
  • propane/propylene inventories are likewise severely depressed, 15% below their five-year average
  • jet fuel supplied was down 29.8% compared with the same four-week period last year;

I remember those articles written by millennials with Brit Lit / journalism degrees some years ago breathlessly reporting that Cushing storage was filling up and the world as we knew it was coming to an end. So, in the past two weeks, when crude oil inventories increase/decrease by one to five million bbls, crude oil in US storage increased by more than 35 million bbls -- perhaps much more. And I haven't read one story in which folks are concerned about running out of storage. And WTI is holding above $60. And OPEC basket is surging. The world needs that heavy oil now that Canada and Mexico can't supply it.

The weekly report can be interpreted many ways, I suppose, but it becomes an even more interesting report when taken in context.

If I get caught up, I will put the report in context. It might explain why WTI is holding above $60 despite the build. 

Over at oilprice.com, a contributor suggests why:

  • gasoline is headed for $3.00 / gallon;
  • why gasoline is quickly headed for $3.00 / gallon;

The contributor provides three reasons. 

Here are my top three reasons why gasoline is headed for $3.00 / gallon:

  1. rising crude oil prices;
  2. crude oil prices are rising; and,
  3. rising crude oil prices will continue to rise.

Fifteen Active Rigs; WTI Holding Above $64 -- March10, 2021

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:

****************************
Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$64.65
3/10/202103/10/202003/10/201903/10/201803/10/2017
Active Rigs1555675944

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.

February, 2021 -- Electricity Bill

We live in a two-bedroom apartment in north Texas, a mile or so from DFW airport, north of Ft Worth, northwest of Dallas. 

We were certainly in the epicenter of the Texas February Freeze.

Readers probably heard all about the high energy bills that Texans were facing following the Texas Deep Freeze, February 15, 2021 - February 19, 2021. 

I was certainly eager to see the bill. We lost power for those four days, and I used very little power before and after those days. I have not turned on the heat since February 15 (the day we lost power) except for one eight-hour stretch on February 20, 2021. 

I'm not quite sure why our electricity usage was so high considering I did not turn on the heat at all, but we did have drying fans placed in the apartment for several days operating 24/7 to dry the walls. 

[They removed the baseboards throughout the apartment, removed the carpet and padding, and cut out the sheet rock (the walls) from the floors to about two feet above the floor to hasten the drying process.]

I assume the heating fans and the "destructive carpentry" accounted for a lot of the electricity. In addition, I did a lot of washing and drying of towels that I used to soak up water from the carpet before the carpet was finally removed.

We moved into the apartment during the summer of 2013. 

Except for one winter, back in 2015 or thereabouts our winters have been very mild, until this year. 

I used to be quite miserly using electricity; I watched it closely. However, starting about three years ago, I became a lot less concerned. I've noticed that the monthly bill does not vary a lot whether I watch electricity very closely or just use it without much concern. 

This is a history of MW used and cost of electricity for the past eight years, including this past February. For some reason, I did not record the data for 2016.