No Wells Coming Off Confidential List; Rig Count Up; WTI Surging -- March 17, 2022

Pay raise: US congress gave themselves a 21% pay raise overnight. Needs to be fact-checked. It's really hard to believe they would do this. My hunch: this was an angry tweet from a former president. Covfeve.

Here's the back story: link here.

• does anyone really believe Congress-people haven't had a pay raise since 2009?
• money is fungible: call it what you want, Congress voted itself a 21% payraise
• as an example: a Tesla EV used exclusively to take a member back and forth work in Washington (DC) and to his/her office back home would qualify as a business expense
• ABC News (and all the rest simply don't get it);
• and that 21% pay raise will go a long way helping maintain incumbency

Yesterday's movers:

Apple: iPhone SE 5G pre-order delivery times slips into late March. OMG. Link here.

• Shenzehen shutdown? Doubt it.
• Foxconn in Shenzhen is back up and running 
• Foxconn shut down for long weekend?
• workers will come back refreshed and eager to get back to work
  

Equinor: confirms trading halt in Russian oil. Again, one wonders what Putin was thinking.

• IMF predicts Russia heading for deep recession.

Word for the day: twerp. Probably misspelled. Preferred spelling by some: twearp.

• one of the few words Shakespeare did not invent
• entered lexicon about 1910

Chevron, Venezuela: this "deal" looks like it's already been kiboshed. But we will see.

Oil surges: I thought it was due to Japanese earthquake. HartEnergy says it's due to IEA report warning of shortfall in supply.

• for newbies:
• EIA: US energy agency
• IEA: Saudi Arabia's energy agency

Demand on OPEC. Can they deliver? 

Airlines: "unparalleled" travel demand. Reuters. Not often we see "unparalleled" paired up with airlines.

Ms Raskin: eager to spend more time with her family. Withdraws. Can't take the heat. Can dish it out but can't take it, is that what they say?

EVs: supply chain fixed? GM will begin production on the Cadillac Lyriq, the brand's first EV model. Link here to CNBC.

Nickel: in front a steamroller. Doomberg. Is this really what's going on in commodity trading?

Obama memoir: new. Released now. About the time he caught Covid yesterday. Link to Babylon Bee. 

Oil:

• WTI: up 4.26%; up $4.05; trading at $99.09
• EOG: up about a percent in pre-market trading;
  
• CVX: up about 1.4% in pre-market trading;
  
• Brent: up 4.52%; up $4.43; trading at $102.5.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$99.05	3/17/2022	03/17/2021	03/17/2020	03/17/2019	03/17/2018
Active Rigs	35	17	56	65	58

No wells coming off confidential list.

RBN Energy: a deep dive into the process, quirks and idiosyncrasies of US natural gas pricing, part 2. 

The U.S. natural gas market is one of the most transparent, liquid and efficient commodity markets in the world. Physical trading is anchored by hundreds of thousands of miles of gathering, transmission and distribution pipelines, and well over 100 distinct trading locations across North America. The dynamic physical market is matched by the equally vigorous CME/NYMEX Henry Hub natural gas futures market. Then, there are the forward basis markets — futures contracts for regional physical gas hubs. These primary pricing mechanisms play related but distinct roles in the U.S. gas market, based on when and how they are traded, their respective settlement or delivery periods, and how they are used by market participants. In today’s RBN blog, we take a closer look at the primary pricing mechanisms driving the U.S. gas market.