Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Notes From All Over -- February 2, 2022

And, so we begin:

NFL: record after record after record. Americans can't get enough. Do we need to go year-'round?

  • Hollywood Reporter: TV ratings, NFL conference championships hit multi-year highs;
  • Sports Illustrated: NFL has best viewership ratings since 2015.
  • reminder: Amazon Prime Video has TNF.

MDU: big story -- lost in shuffle. Will post as stand-along. Link here. 

  • natural gas pipeline
  • North Bakken Expansion project
  • capacity: 250 million cubic feet per day
  • potential: up to 625 million cubic feet per day
  • completion -- look at this -- a 15,426-foot horizontal directional drill of a 24-inch pipeline
  • crossing Lake Sakakawea on the Missouri River
  • just less than three miles long: one of the longest of its kind in the world
  • project completed under a shortened timeframe; reduced original schedule by two months after a delay in receiving approval from the FERC (I'm shocked, shocked -- a FERC delay?)
  • total project expansion: 100 miles of pipeline, a compressor station expansion; a new compressor station;
  • with this project, MDU subsidiary now has total pipeline capacity greater than 2.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (memo to self: check Hess / North Dakota)

Driftwood LNG plant: Tellurian to begin work in April, 2022. That was not on my bingo card.

EPD: on fire. 4Q21 results.

Let's check in on ISO NE:

  • low demand at 5:00 a.m. -- less than 15000 MW
  • already, electricity over $200 /MWh; 8th decile:
  • still no coal? Link here.

Semicondutors surging:

  • AMD gaining on Intel.
  • Short squeeze? XLNX:
    • on January 14, 2022: 11.71 million shares shorted; short % of float: 5.34%
    • on December 14, 2021: 10.5 million shares shorted; 
    • a lot of folks bet against the AMD - XLNX merger

Apple: surprise hardware winner -- link here:

  • one core piece of hardware struggled until the pandemic
    • I bought one of these 27-inch desktop computers back in 2020, and it was best purchase I ever made;
    • getting more use out of it than ever imagined;
  • adult daughter who worked from home, lots of video-meetings with patients, bought same one; huge deal;
  • PC sales were declining prior to the pandemic;
  • huge jump in 2020; 
  • another semiconductor company that beat the supply change challenge;

GM: record sales in 4Q21.

  • what supply chain shortage?
  • GM profit up 56% to $10 billion in 2021.
  • GM's average vehicle sales price rose almost 20% in 4Q21 from a year ago.
  • getting tired off all this supply chain shortage as an excuse.
  • Tesla's business model becoming mainstream: order your vehicle; pay $100 down; and wait one to three years.

Welcome to my world: link here.


Rigs don't matter (don't take that out of context): link here.

Texas "freeze" panic. Am I missing something?

Harold Hamm Foundation: donates $2 million to University of Mary.

Covid-19 vaccine for those under five years of age? If asked, I will say "no." But I doubt anyone will ask me.

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