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Saturday, April 9, 2022

Week 14: April 3, 2022 -- April 9, 2022

Top story of the week:

Top international non-energy story:

Top international energy story:

Top national non-energy story:

Top national energy story:

Top North Dakota non-energy story:

Top North Dakota energy story:

Geoff Simon's top North Dakota energy stories:

Operations:

Operators:

Wells:

Fracking:

Natural gas:

Pipelines:

Bakken economy:

Commentary:

Social Media On Bay Du Nord; Europe's Urgent Need For Natural Gas -- April 9, 2022

Updates 

April 10, 2022: update on Newfoundland and Labrador

Original Post

Previously posted

Equinor - Canada - Bay du Nord oil project: $12 billion project.

  • offshore; proposed by Equinor
  • approved by Canada
  • one wonders: would the US approve a $12 billion offshore oil project? 
  • my understanding: the US is not even approving leases for offshore projects already under development, but that needs to be fact-checked; that may be old news

Now, from Roy Johnston:

At $12 billioon, safe to say that Bay du Nord is Canada's first energy mega project sanctioned since LNG Canada. 

Interesting to read comments at the link. Some folks are eternal pessimists.

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Europe's Urgent Need For Natural Gas

Link here.

Federal Employees Looking For Religion; Easter Services In DC Should Be Standing Room Only -- April 9, 2022

Finding religion: Epoch Times readers advising federal employees to get their religious waivers requests in order; boilerplate examples provided. Link here.

President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal workers is back in effect after a federal appeals court ruling on April 7.

A panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit entered the ruling, overturning a district judge’s earlier block of the mandate.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, had concluded that Biden lacked the statutory authority to issue the mandate.

And remember, it's not just one "shot," it's the full series. This may explain the larger-than-normal issue of vaccine this past week or so.

I had not seen this elsewhere. Let's see how others report it. Here's the link to Reuters

And others:

Top 100 US Racehorses Of The 20th Century -- April 9, 2022

Link here.

In 1999, The Blood-Horse magazine assembled a seven-person panel of distinguished horse racing people: Keeneland racing secretary, Howard Battle; Maryland Jockey Club vice president, Lenny Hale; Daily Racing Form columnist, Jay Hovdey; Sports Illustrated senior writer, William Nack; California senior steward, Pete Pederson; Louisville Courier-Journal racing writer, Jennie Rees; and Gulfstream Park steward Tommy Trotter. 
Each of the experts compiled a list of what they considered to be the top 100 thoroughbred racehorses of the 20th century, which was then combined into a master list. The list was then expanded into a book with complete biographies. 

First twenty-six:


Northern Dancer did not make the 100-list as shown above, but there is some question of the accuracy of the list. A reader says he/she "read the book" and Northern Dancer was tied for 17th in thee list.

Northern Dancer: wiki entry

Sportswriter Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "Northern Dancer is the kind of colt who, if you saw him in your living room, you'd send for a trap and put cheese in it. He's so little, a cat would chase him. But he's so plucky there's barely room in him for his heart. His legs are barely long enough to keep his tail off the ground. He probably takes a hundred more strides than anyone else, but he's harder to pass than a third martini."[

E. P. Taylor: wiki entry. Made his millions with the "toast" invention. As a reader noted, he toasted "bread" and he "bred" horses. One of the most fascinating men ever.

If one reads all the linked articles, one will know a lot of horse-racing history.

ATT - Warner Bros Discovery -- April 9, 2022

WB-Discovery-HBO-CNN? 

Personally I'm waiting for good things from CNN: low-hanging fruit.

ATT is tracked here.  

Merger complete.

WBD "when issued" has started trading.

It appears WBD will be trading by the end of the week, if not on Monday.

This is still the "strangest" trade I've seen in a long time. 

I'll have to wait a week or two to see what the analysts say. 

A 24% dividend and the the company trades up; cuts its dividend in half and still pays 5%. 

Is that not the story in a 91-character tweet? Eighteen words? One line (if not indented)?



Balance sheet: as it stood Friday, April 8, 2022, note total debt.

Note total debt in this article:

Warner Bros Discovery will be saddled with $55 billion in debt mostly tied to the merger, limiting Zaslav’s options. He already signaled in February that he had no plans to "win the spending war" against Disney's $33 billion content budget or the $17 billion that Netflix spent in 2021.

We'll see more on this next week I'm sure. 

One Of My Favorite Maps Of All Time -- April 9, 2022

According to comments this map may be outdated -- with regard to price differentials -- but most everything else appears accurate.

China's Covid-19 Lock Downs -- April 9, 2022

This map may explain it all -- Beijing's lock down of Shanghai. 

Commentary may or may not be provided later today. Or next week. Or never. 

Zero Covid policy in China is unworkable. Doomberg is missing the point

The situation ini Shanghai is scary. Michael Smith. The video might give oonee a clue to what's going on in Shanghai. Of course, without translation of the mob chants we really have no idea what's going on in China.

Saturday Morning Rambling, Page 1 -- April 9, 2022

Global warming; Golfers are wearing ski gloves and stocking caps at 10:20 a.m. ET in Augusta, GA, in April.

Happy Saturday morning. Way too much stuff going on. Impossible to keep up.

I haven't been following the mainstream news at all, so I really have no idea what's going on. Yes, I know the headlines, but I'm not aware of any good analysis. Most of the good analysis (singular, plural, whatever), I suppose, come from sites that require a subscription, but worse, come from sites that are not trustworthy. About the best one do, I suppose, is check in on as many headlines from as many sites as possible, try to form one's one worldview (myth) of what's going on and then look for corroborating theses.

The big stories, one big conundrum.

Ukraine: what's Putin's end game? 

I guess what bothers me most about Putin's War is that there is no western world leader like Churchill, Truman, Roosevelt, Reagan, the other Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington who can take on Putin. We have Boris, Macron, Biden and I can't even name the guy in charge of Germany, much less Japan. Because we have Truman we will have a never-ending war. 
There's should be a lot of soul-searching after this war is over, but I doubt we will see it. We'll be watching the Kardashians.

China: I don't know if I linked the source, and if I didn't it will be pure serendipity if I find it again, but apparently a huge part of China is locked down due to relatively few cases of Covid, and apparently no deaths (or very few deaths) are being attributed to the virus. 

Tell me if I'm wrong, but it appears Shanghai is ground zero for the lock downs. If so, the map of China might help explain what is going. 

The Masters: wow, they did a good job with televising the golf tournament. I thought it would be all about Tiger. It wasn't. Completely fair and balanced. About the only individual who made the cut who was never televised was Patrick Reed. I think there's a story there. I happened to see Brandel Chamblee once, and just for two seconds before I switched to a different streaming site. And even that two seconds was too long. Some observations:

  • Tiger: first day was incredible on so many levels. Second day: wow, he looked exhausted. But he made the cut.
  • Did not make the cut: it is absolutely amazing who won't be playing this weekend. First on that list: Jordan Spieth.
  • Tiger Woods hasn't played competitively in almost two years due to medical issues, and yet he made the cut, and these did not: Zach Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Vijay Singh, Justin Rose. 
  • I don't like lifetime exemptions for any player who has won in the past. Exhibit A: Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer, Padraig Harrington. It's an invitational tournament; they may want to tweak their rules. I don't want this to turn into a "champions tour." 
  • We know why Phil Mickelson wasn't there, but where was Ernie Els? 

Will Smith: speaking of Phil Mickelson, I see Will Smith has been banned from "the Oscars" for ten years. 

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High School Soccer

MaxPreps: covers every high school sports team in the country. Think about that. Every high school sports team in the country. And incredibly easy to navigate. Example: in just a few keystrokes I was able to find the stats on our middle granddaughter, a sophomore in high school, playing on the varsity girls' soccer team. Here they are: https://www.maxpreps.com/athlete/olivia-nevin/e9DqTgakFkqtYJ_3W6bpRg/default.htm

Key:

  • the green bars: Olivia's stats
  • the blue bars: national average

Stats for Olivia:

  • GP: games played -- most recent five games played; most likely coming from the current Texas championship playoff games
  • Pts: in soccer, each player / team earns points based on points scored, as well as attempts; in this category, the national average appears to be 9 points; Olivia was awarded 17 points;
  • Goals: self explanatory; the number of goals she made in the last five games; she made seven; national average was four points;
  • Assists: again, self explanatory; national average was slightly more than 3; Olivia had 3 assists;
  • G/G: goals per game. Olivia at 1.4 was about 3x the national average;
  • A/G: assist per game: at 0.6, Olivia was about double the national average.

Again, she's only a sophomore. Just prior to the tournament she was sidelined much of the time due to an injury. In the first couple of games in the tournament, she played limited minutes due to recovering from than injury and the coach not playing her to allow her to rest / recover. In the first tournament game for example, she played just ten minutes of the 80-minute game. Some games run longer. In a later game, she played just the first half.