Apple MacBook Air -- Just In Time For College -- June 29, 2022

Apple will launch MacBook Air with M2 chip on July 15, 2022.  

Already on Apple home page.

And, yes, I'm ordering one. 

This one will be hard to get; will fly off the shelves; just in time for students starting / returning too college.

Without question, the MacBook Air, simply the best bang for the buck. Trust me on this. 

Know what I love about Apple MacBook Air? Two ports, MagSafe, and a headphone jack.

Minimalist. 

Actually, Apple should remove that headphone jack, also. Apple tried that once and received so much backlash from customers, they put it back in. No longer needed. 

USB 4: double-speed USB. That's all you need to know. 

From Apple's webpage:

MagSafe 3 charging port

3.5 mm headphone jack

Two Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports with support for:

• Charging
• DisplayPort
• Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40Gb/s)
• USB 4 (up to 40Gb/s)
• USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10Gb/s)

USB 4? Here. Three main benefits:

• speed:
• same speed as Thunderbolt 3
• 40 Gbps maximum speed; achieved by using two-lane cables
• display:
• USB 4 can support 8K resolution
• 8K resolution up to 80 Gpbs
• compatible with some Thunderbolt 3 devices, such as Apple's new MacBook Air, M2

What's Wrong With This Graph? Wrong Answers Only -- June 29, 2022

Link here.

What's wrong with this graph. Wrong answers only.

General Mills Raises Its Dividend -- June 29, 2022

 General Mills: link here.

• raises dividend from 51 cents to 54 cents;
  
• EPS: $1.12, beats by a whopping eleven cents
• revenue: $4.89 billion; beats by $80 million
• I assume lots of reasons, but it certainly suggests company able to pass inflation costs onto the consumer

Saudi Arabia, Russia, And Egypt -- Big "Shout-Out" To Giovanni Staunovo -- June 29, 2022

I follow a handful of very select, very incredible energy analysts, a very select group. Even among them, there is a first among equals. Giovanni Staunovo. He provided the following. A huge "thank you." 

Link here.

After everything "we've"  been discussing on the blog for the past year or so, and now with the realization that "spare capacity" is a myth, and then, on top of that, how "trade routes" will change due to Putin's War, take some time and look at this graphic:

When I saw this, I about fell off my chair.

Why was (classical) Rome able to become and remain an "empire" for so long? One reason: access to wheat. And where did that wheat come from? Egypt. Rome went after Egypt for one reason: wheat to feed their military and their growing urban population.

Spend some time on that graphic; there's a lot there.

Family Pictures For The Archives -- June 29, 2022

Our younger daughter has an incredible crafts room with multiple sewing machines, including a long arm. 

Does a lot of quilting and has been teaching her two-year-old twins to quilt.

Pictures of Judah and Levi today. 

Judah is more "just get the job done." 

Levi studies the plan for quite some time before starting his project. 

Enerplus With Four New Permits; Seven Permits Renewed -- June 29, 2022

Wimbledon stunner:

• Harmony Tan, world ranking about 151, defeats Serena Williams in first round
• say what?

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

NDIC GIS map still not available. Goal was to have map up by June 24, 2022. 

WTI: after hitting $112, fell back to $110 at the close.

• more and more talk of $200-oil
• Biden administration already in panic; talking about another 45-million-bbl release from the SPR;

Active rigs: 44

Four new permits, #39058 - #39061, inclusive:

• Operator: Enerplus
• Field: Little Knife (Dunn County)
• Comments:
• Enerplus has permits for four Olson wells in SWSW 34-147-97; 
• to be sited between 492 FSL and 529 FSL and between 424 FWL and 515 FWL

Seven permits renewed / reinstated:

• XTO (4): four Twin State Federal permits in McKenzie County
• Sinclair (3): three Lizzie Rae permits, also in McKenzie County

Temporarily abandoned:

• Oasis: eight wells -- four Helix wells, two Ruud wells, and two Helling Trust Federal wells, all in the prolific Mountrail County;
• Cobra: a JV-P SSU well in Divide County
• Citation Oil: a Tank well in McKenzie County

Inflation Watch -- June 29, 2022

EIA's weekly report posted. 

WTI drops a buck after report released. Tells me all I need to know.

****************************
Electricity Statement -- June 24, 2022

This is our total energy / utility bill. We only have electricity, no natural gas. 

*************************
Inflation Watch

Every Time I See Another Media Headline On Inflation, I Take Another Look At This Chart To See What I'm Missing -- June 29, 2022

First posted about a month ago:

Off The Net -- Taking Sophia To Sailing Class -- June 29, 2022

I'm driving a bit more than usual because I'm taking Sophia out to the lake each day for her sailing course.

Recent 2011 Honda Civic mileage:

Date - Odometer reading - gallons -- $/gal - total price -- miles driven -- mpg -- cents/mile:

14 Oct 21	120,815	8.15	2.90	23.62	241	29.59	0.10
9 Nov 21	121,109	9.40	3.16	29.72	294	31.28	0.10
15 Nov 21	121,312	6.11	3.05	18.62	203	33.25	0.09
3 Dec 21	121,581	8.21	3.00	24.63	269	32.76	0.09
January 7, 2022	121,906	9.98	2.85	28.43	325	32.57	0.09
March 26, 2022	122,088	6.42	3.68	23.62	182	28.34	0.13
June 8, 2022	122,263	6.75	4.60	31.06	175	25.91	0.18
June 21, 2022	122,435	6.20	4.68	28.99	172	27.76	0.17
June 29, 2022	122,670	7.61	4.44	33.77	235	30.89	0.14

Politics, link here:

Hopefully this quiets the tweets that keep showing up on my twitter feed pushed by twitter and I can't block them. 

EIA Weekly Petroleum Report --- June 29, 2022

Note: refiners in PADD 3 are operating at 97.9% of their operating capacity.

Note: Peter Zeihan's c. 2022 just hit #3 on Amazon's best seller list. I'm halfway through. Superb book. 

Note: US 1Q22 final GDP reading = minus 1.6%.

Brent back to >$120.

Back to the EIA: Most fascinating. 

Apparently most EIA products will still be delayed but the agency has released the weekly petroleum report.

While we waited for the report to be released, EV tickers:

• TSLA: down 3%; down $22; back to $675
• RIVN: down almost 4%; down $1.00; back to $26.
• RIDE: down almost 6%; down to $1.66; 
• GOEV: down 5% down below $2.00 again

What to watch? WTI. 

Prior to release: WTI at $113.70.

Thirty minutes after EIA report released: $112.70. Down a buck. Tells me all I needed to know.

Link here. 

The report, for week ending June 24, 2022:

• US crude oil inventories decreased by 2.8 million bbls (and this is on top of that record-breaking SPR release). 
• US crude oil inventories stand at 415.6 million bbls, 13% below five-year average; irrelevant;
• US crude oil imports average 6.0 million bopd; four-week average, 6.3 million bbls, 5.1% less than year ago; yawn. 
• US refiners working at a whopping 95% -- this is the number most folks are watching;
• US gasoline supplied averaged 2.0% less than same period last year
• US distillate inventories down 7.4% from same period last year
• US jet fuel supplied was up 17.1% compared with same four-year period last year

It looks like refiners are focused on distillates over gasoline. Next time you drive by a service station, compare price of diesel with gasoline. Refiners are making more money on diesel than they're making on gasoline. 

There is no shortage of oil; there is no shortage of gasoline. Having said that, local gasoline outages have been reported.

Highly recommend: if traveling this weekend, don't let your vehicle's fuel tank get less than half full. 

Biggest Military Build-Up Since Reagan? One Well Coming Off Confidential List -- June 29, 2022

Re-posting: biggest build-up since Reagan! 

Geo-political: huge story; NATO getting huge boost

• Turkey: Sweden, Finland, fast-track into NATO; totally unexpected it would happen this fast
• more F-35s to UK -- I don't know full story yet, but this is fascinating; we can start here; much more to follow;
• Financial Times; expected paywall but able to access for some reason; look at this:
• US will establish PERMANENT HQ 5th Army Corps in Poland; huge deal for Poland.
  
• US will send 5,000 additional troops to Romania
• US will increase rotational deployments in the Baltic states
• two squadrons of US F-35 fighters will be sent to UK;
• both squadrons will likely go to same US air base; 
• probably RAF Lakenheath; possibly RAF Upper Heyford? RAF Mildenhall co-located with RAF Lakenheath? USAF bases in UK;
• a squadron? generally, about 20 a/c
  
• will increase number of US naval destroyers to Spain from four to six:
• overall, NATO will increase number of troops to high alert by seven-fold; from 40,000 to 300,000
• is this the biggest military announcement since the days of Reagan?

F-35: wiki. 

V Corps: wiki. 

OXY and Buffett:

• the other day I mentioned I lost the bubble on this subject.
• here's most recent update: Buffett keeps buying more OXY
• numbers to watch:
• $60 and $90
• some say Buffett won't buy entire company (OXY) because he won't pay $90 for it;
• pundits suggest Buffett feels share price won't go above $60
• Berkshire is Occidental's largest individual shareholder with ~153.5M shares worth more than $9B, based on OXY's Monday close at $58.90, with options to buy another 83.9M shares that would bring its stake to more than 25%.
• today, ticker OXY, to open at $61.71 and pre-market in the green

****************************

Back to the Bakken

Far Side: link here.

WTI: holy mackerel! Up 1.59%; up $1.78; now trading at $113.50.

• please, please, please, Mr Biden -- don't change your travel plans
• travel to Saudi Arabia so you can hear from the horse's mouth, OPEC has very little spare capacity
• and, oh, by the way, aviation fuel demand is yet to take off

Active rigs: 44

Wednesday, June 29, 2022: 40 for the month, 178 for the quarter, 337 for the year 

• 38600, conf, Murex, Sheldon Mark 34-22H-A 2MB,

RBN Energy: E&Ps ride strong commodity price wave to record income and cash flow.

The oil and gas industry has historically been roiled by global economic and political crises, from the oil embargo in 1973 to the Great Recession of 2008 to the onset of the global pandemic in early 2020.  However, amid the economic and political turmoil from the war in the Ukraine, rampant inflation and supply chain disruptions, E&P companies in recent weeks reported strong results for the first quarter of 2022, riding the wave of rising commodity prices as record volumes of cash flowed into corporate coffers. Producers successfully absorbed service cost increases and resisted calls to abandon their profits-focused fiscal discipline to generate Q1 2022 pre-tax operating earnings and cash flows that were up 25% and 12%, respectively, from the two-decade-high results recorded in the last quarter of 2021. In today’s RBN blog, we detail the industry’s outstanding results and preview its performance for the rest of the year.

General Mills -- Beats On Top / Bottom Line -- And So Much More -- June 29, 2022

General Mills: link here.

• raises dividend from 51 cents to 54 cents;
  
• EPS: $1.12, beats by a whopping eleven cents
• revenue: $4.89 billion; beats by $80 million
• I assume lots of reasons, but it certainly suggests company able to pass inflation costs onto the consumer

Geo-political: huge story; NATO getting huge boost

• Turkey: Sweden, Finland, fast-track into NATO; totally unexpected it would happen this fast
• more F-35s to UK -- I don't know full story yet, but this is fascinating; we can start here; much more to follow;
• Financial Times; expected paywall but able to access for some reason; look at this:
• US will establish PERMANENT HQ 5th Army Corps in Poland;
• US will send 5,000 additional troops to Romania
• US will increase rotational deployments in the Baltic states
• two squadrons of US F-35 fighters will be sent to UK; both squadrons will likely go to same US air base; probably RAF Lakenheath; possibly RAF Upper Heyford? RAF Mildenhall co-located with RAF Lakenheath? USAF bases in UK;
• will increase number of US naval destroyers to Spain from four to six:
• overall, NATO will increase number of troops to high alert by seven-fold; from 40,000 to 300,000
• is this the biggest military announcement since the days of Reagan?

Oil: it's unanimous -- everyone now saying what we knew all along -- mideast / OPEC+ spare capacity was and is a myth; many, many links;

• Saudi shortfall at Bloomberg via twitter;
• Saudi Aramco, also over at Bloomberg via twitter;
• Russia -- part of OPEC+ -- production over at twitter;
• Shell (?) CEO said same thing: space capacity not as much as some expect / hope

EVs: not to say that these aren't great trading stocks, but US EV companies fell off the shelf yesterday;
perhaps more later;

• I don't think anyone knows what's going on Tesla any more;

LNG: this is simply incredible; the 2020s will be the decade for fossil fuel

• Europe looking at twenty -- repeat, twenty -- new LNG import terminals
• US ready now to supply; Canada slow off the starting blocks 

Expensive water:

• I have to do more research on this: Topo Chico
• seems to be huge item here in north Texas
• link here;

Chart of the day: google. Link here.

Small font: hope you can read --

Most interesting news item today:

• FOX has huge -- very long -- article on Mitch McConnell's memoir, "The Long Game."
• But the memoir came out in 2019 and now it's getting traction.
• I never, never, never read a political memoir.
• I will be ordering the memoir from Amazon later today. 

Okay, that's it. This post is done. Stick a fork in it.

One last thing. Just remember, I did not start this. A reader sent it to me. Did Trump just lose Fox's Bret Baier? Link here. More than ever, it would be great to hear Rush's "take" on this. Even the opposition in the House is not "pushing back." I assume they are watching the polls, media spin. Again, I did not start this. A reader sent this to me.