The amount of oil taken off line due to North Dakota blizzards may be just about equal to the amount of SPR oil that is actually being released. "We" were fortunate to have had a president who could foresee the need for that emergency release.
Monday, April 25, 2022
Bakken Takes Huge Hit -- Blizzard -- April 25, 2022
The amount of oil taken off line due to North Dakota blizzards may be just about equal to the amount of SPR oil that is actually being released. "We" were fortunate to have had a president who could foresee the need for that emergency release.
Elon Musk Gets Board's Approval To Buy "Twitter" -- April 25, 2022
Pet peeve: all the stay-at-home financial advisors who think they know better than Elon Musk how he should spend his money.
I would love to comment on investing right now, but this is not an investment site, but this is perhaps the most exciting time for an investor and a trader. I don't know if the investing / trading climate is in uncharted territories but it certainly feels that way. And I couldn't be more energized.
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Can't Keep Up
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Permian Highway Pipeline
Link here.
Expansion will increase the pipeline's capacity of natural gas takeaway from the Permian Basin to the Gulf Coast by nearly 650 million cubic feet / day.
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Anti-Viral Approved For "All" Age Groups
US FDA has expanded approval of the Covid-19 drug remdesivir to treat patients as young as one month old.
Active Rigs At 38; Three New Permits; Twelve Permits Renewed; One Permit Canceled -- April 25, 2022
Active rigs:
| $98.54 | 4/25/2022 | 04/25/2021 | 04/25/2020 | 04/25/2019 | 04/25/2018 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 38 | 15 | 29 | 64 | 63 |
Three new permits, #38899 - #38901, inclusive:
- Operator: Whiting
- Field: Glass Bluff (McKenzie)
- Comments:
- Whiting has permits for three Snowshoe Federal wells in NWNE 30-151-102;
- to be sited between 325 FNL and 395 FNL and between 2188 FEL and 2244 FEL
Twelve permits renewed:
- NP Resources (110: two Cerkoney permits; seven Elkhorn Ranch Federal permits, and two Little MO Federal permits; all in Billings County:
- SHD Oil & Gas: a Maya permit in McLean County.
Two permits canceled:
- MRO: Nathan 11-3H in Dunn County;
- SHD Oil & Gas: Maya 24-31H, McLean, but renewed above.
One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed:
- 35191, 2,860, XTO, Zane Federal 21X-6E,
It Looks Like MRO Is Drilling / Completing Wells on The Goth Pad In Bailey Oil Field -- April 25, 2022
These wells are tracked here. Several neighboring wells have been taken off line in the past month.
US Mortality Data -- 2015 - 2020 -- Pretty Much Sums It Up -- April 25, 2022
Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors. Calculations should be double- or triple-checked.
The "average" mortality rate for US runs about 2.7 million to 2.8 million out of population of around 330 million = 2.8 / 330 = 0.85%.
In 2020, the rate jumped to about 3.36 million out of a population of 330 million = 1.0%.
From 2.8 million to 3.36 million, a jump of about 0.56 million, or a jump of about 20%.
Deaths went from well less than 3 million deaths / year to well more than 3 million deaths / year.
Link here to Covid-19 overtakes number of US deaths from Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 (a two-year pandemic):
The Covid-19 pandemic has become the deadliest disease event in American history, with a death toll surpassing that of the 1918 Spanish flu.And more:
The Spanish flu was previously the disease event that caused the biggest loss of life in the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 675,000 Americans died during the 1918 pandemic, in waves of illness that stretched out over roughly two years in this country.
According to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker, Covid deaths stand at more than 675,400.
Whether the Covid pandemic will qualify as the deadliest event in U.S. history is perhaps a question for Civil War historians. The long-accepted toll of the War Between the States was 620,000, which this pandemic has already surpassed. But in 2011, David Hacker, a historian at Binghamton University in New York State, published an article in the journal Civil War History arguing the true number of deaths in the Civil War was more likely around 750,000.
The heavy toll the pandemic has taken in the U.S. is due to the country’s inadequate response early on, said Markel. David Morens, a medical historian at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agreed.
It would be interesting "had we done nothing -- absolutely nothing -- with regard to Covid-19" would things be any different now, April 25, 2022?
We will never know.
But a jump in deaths from one year to the next year by 20% in the country with the best medical care and best (?) public health system in the world is not trivial.
A 20% jump in the overall mortality rate.
It's easy to disagree on the cause of death, but "death" is pretty well defined in the US.
It would be interesting to find the prognostications back in 2019 about the possible severity of this pandemic. I'm sure they can be found but I'm not interested enough to look.
The suicide statistics are very interesting:
- 2015 - 20210: a 1.5% jump; truly trivial despite everything we've heard.
- 2018 (highest of years reported above) - 2020: a decrease of 7.3%, which, to me, does not seem trivial.
The memes that have come out of the Covid-19 pandemic remind me much of critical race theory when it comes to an alternative history of the United States. I was under the impression that the suicide rate jumped significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, the numbers suggest, perhaps not.
There are so many other story lines.
A lot of folks suggested that "elective" and preventive medicine was put on hold because of the pandemic. If so, death from chronic disease, like heart disease, should have increased remarkably. It didn't. The rate pretty much remained unchanged. Some of these chronic diseases resulted in more deaths than previous years but not by enough to catch my attention.
Likewise, deaths from cancer should have increased also. In fact, cancer deaths were less in 2020 compared to the previous three years.
It is interesting that with all the attention paid to Covid-19 in the past two years, the most recent update regarding breast cancer does not mention affect of Covid-19 and treatment availability during 2020. Link here which tells me that not much changed with regard to breast cancer during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
And then look at this: deaths from chronic lower respiratory diseases (I assume a lot of these deaths were mis-diagnosed or diagnosed as Covid-19 deaths, but still):
- from a high of 155,000 to 151,637, a slight decrease, which, again, could have been offset by "mis-diagnosis, but highly unlikely given the nature of the disease
And finally: three examples of where attention to Covid-19 and lack of routine and elective medical / surgical care had a huge impact, most of which deaths were probably in the elderly who were unable to obtain routine medical care or kidney dialysis or transplants;
- diabetes,
- Alzheimer, and
- kidney disease
In the big scheme of things, it does not matter how each of us interprets these numbers, this is the data from which US public health policy will be made by research institutions and the federal government.
But again, it would be interesting our discussions today if absolutely nothing had been done to try to stop this pandemic and we were seeing reports of a 20% jump in deaths, year-over-year.
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Denmark
A reader from Denmark sent similar data from Denmark in an e-mail. It was transcribed so there may be minor errors, but I doubt it. I think the numbers are correct.
The numbers from Denmark:
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MRNA
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Word of the Day
Sericulture.
From "agriculture" to "sericulture."
Absolutely fascinating.
One of the "classics" that always fascinated me was Silas Marner, George Eliot, her third novel, 1861. The novel is set in the early years of the 19th century. Silas Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in Northern England.
It is impossible to articulate how miserable the life of Silas Marner must have been. It explains why the infant he brought home was so momentous. It's also impossible to articulate how brilliant George Eliot was to have "discovered" this story.
The weaving of silk was introduced to England by Flemish refugees in the 16th century and was greatly developed after 1685 when the Huguenots from France established themselves at Spitalfields in London.
Some suggest Sudbury, Suffolk, was the home of British silk weaving.
In Britain, sericulture probably became "a thing" with King James I (c. 1600; near the end of Shakespeare's writing).
Downed Utility Lines: Unprecedented -- MDU -- April 25, 2022
North Dakota blizzard: downed utility poles, perhaps worst on record:
Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography -- April 25, 2022
I track computer chips / semiconductors here.
I have no interest in the investment analysis or comments on Intel as this SeekingAlpha article, but it did introduce me to EUV lithography. Nowhere in the linked article does the author spell out the acronym.
From wiki: extreme ultraviolet lithography. Note the first line in the second paragraph:
Extreme ultraviolet lithography, also known as EUV or EUVL, is an optical lithography technology using a range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, roughly spanning a 2% FWHM bandwidth about 13.5 nm, to produce a pattern by exposing reflective photomask to UV light which gets reflected onto a substrate covered by photoresist. It is widely applied in semiconductor device fabrication process.
As of 2022, ASML Holding is the only company who produces and sells EUV systems for chip production, mainly targeting 5 nm.
At the 2019 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), TSMC reported use of EUV for 5 nm in contact, via, metal line, and cut layers, where the cuts can be applied to fins, gates or metal lines.
At IEDM 2020, TSMC reported their 5 nm minimum metal pitch to be reduced 30% from that of 7 nm, which was 40 nm.
Samsung's 5 nm is lithographically the same design rule as 7 nm, with a minimum metal pitch of 36 nm.
Note: ASML is not the only company to make these tools that make chips. They are the only company to use EUV which is a significant departure from the deep ultraviolet lithography process.
EUV vs DUV, I suppose.
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Netflix
Over at SeekingAlpha, also, Netflix disaster paves way for Disney to find a streaming partner.
Folks commenting on the article noted that Disney already has a streaming partner, Hulu, and others suggested that regulators would never allow a tie-up between Disney and Netflix.
I suggested the same thing earlier: that one of big ones (Apple, Google, Meta) could swoop in and buy Netflix. I had forgotten about the regulators.
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The Movie Page
On the joke at the end of the movie, Annie Hall.
The essay is a bit long and a bit circular but it raises some interesting observations.
Let me read the joke. It’s at the very end of the movie, and Alvy (Woody Allen) is talking about meeting Annie for coffee, and he says, “After that it got pretty late and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her, and I thought of that old joke—you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ‘Doc, my brother’s crazy! He thinks he’s a chicken!’ And the doctor says, ‘Well, why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would, but—I need the eggs.’
Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd, and I guess we keep going through it because most of us … need the eggs.” The funny thing about the joke for me is that there are no eggs. Just because the brother thinks he’s a chicken doesn’t mean there are eggs. And David was like—
The participants:
- Zohar Atkins is a rabbi, poet, scholar, and podcaster.
- Nathan Goldman is the managing editor of Jewish Currents.
- David Heti is a stand-up comic of two comedy albums, It was ok and And you will regret it.
- Sheila Heti is a novelist and the former interviews editor of The Believer.
- Noreen Khawaja is the author of The Religion of Existence and teaches in the Religious Studies department at Yale University.
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The Recipe Page
Chicken, artichoke, mushroom recipes.
WTI Drops Below $98; Four Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- April 25, 2022
Active rigs:
| $97.45 | 4/25/2022 | 04/25/2021 | 04/25/2020 | 04/25/2019 | 04/25/2018 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active Rigs | 37 | 15 | 29 | 64 | 63 |
Monday, April 25, 2022: 48 for the month, 48 for the quarter, 207 for one year
- None.
Sunday, April 24, 2022: 48 for the month, 48 for the quarter, 207 for one year
- 37916, conf-->drl/A, Oasis, Fraser Federal 5300 32-35 5BR, Willow Creek, first production, 10/21; t--; cum 139K 2/22;
- 38500, conf, CLR, Whitman FIU 6-34H2, Oakdale, no production data,
- 37663, conf-->loc/A, Whiting, Lacey 12-1-3H, Sanish, first production; t--; cum 90K 2/22;
- 36521, conf-->PNC-->A, Hess, BB-State A-151-95-1615H-1, Blue Buttes, first production, 10/21; t--; cum 121K 2/22;
RBN Energy: E&Ps continue to prioritize rewarding shareholders as cash flows soar. Archived.
The 43 large U.S. E&Ps that we monitor posted record earnings in 2021 and tripled their cash flow — an extraordinary turnaround from a very tough 2020. But as big a story, at least for investors, is how those oil and gas producers are allocating their surging cash reserves. Their dramatic strategic transformation from growth at any cost to maximizing returns is expected to result in 2022 yields approaching 10% for some E&Ps, rates higher than the much broader S&P 500 sector and more than double the payouts of the oil majors, the former dividend kings. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the cash-flow allocation of the major E&P companies and explain what it means for investors.
For more than a decade after the onset of the Shale Revolution, oil and gas producers concentrated on growth, grabbing vast swaths of acreage and spending aggressively on delineation and building out infrastructure. Industry capital expenditures significantly exceeded 100% of cash flow from operations to meet double-digit production growth targets. The spending typically was funded either by debt or stock issuances that diluted shareholder equity. Dividends were either insignificant or non-existent. Today’s cash allocation couldn’t be more different. The 43 major publicly traded E&Ps that we follow have slashed the percentage of reinvested cash flow to just 43% and are targeting flat to low-single-digit production growth. Base dividends that are competitive with other industry sectors are being significantly augmented by additional variable dividends that represent an another 30% to 50% of cash flow. Instead of issuing equity, some producers are further boosting shareholder returns through stock-buyback programs. Others are pursuing “shareholder friendly” allocations to debt reduction or growing cash reserves.