Locator: 44387D.
Apple, four links:
We'll come back to one of these later.
Apple chips. Link here.
Girls soccer! Whoo-hoo! Olivia's high school soccer team played first of two games in the state soccer championship. Tied in regulation time. Grapevine, TX, Lady Mustangs win 2 - 1 in the shootout. A day off, and then Saturday, the championship game!
Person of the day: Gladys West, wiki entry.
Locator: 44385B.
Thursday: slowest day of the week. No mail arrives on Thursday. Most economic news comes out Monday - Wednesday. I guess we get a jobs reports on Thursday.
Jobless report: link here: new formula for adjusting unemployment applications on a seasonal basis led to an increase in said applications, and now we get a lede that suggests said applications are at their highest level in more than a year.
Well, isn't that what they said would happen? Better reporting would have included numbers based on old formula as we transition to new formula over six months. Whatever.
Almost everyone polled / asked says we're in a recession.
Me? A "Goldilocks" economy. The Fed says the US has way too many people working and we need more layoffs. Bonds are back, I guess. I don't know. From the linked article:
U.S. applications for jobless benefits rose to their highest level in more than a year, but remain at relatively low levels despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool the economy and job market in its battle against inflation.
Jobless claims in the U.S. for the week ending April 8 rose by 11,000 to 239,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s the most since January of 2022 when 251,000 people filed for unemployment benefits. [239,000 / 330 million = 0.07%] [239/251 = 95.2%].
The four-week moving average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week fluctuations, rose by 2,250 to 240,000 [=0.9%]. That’s the most since November of 2021 -- a little over a year ago..
Last week, the Labor Department unveiled revised estimates of the number of weekly applications for jobless benefits under a new formula it is using to reflect seasonal adjustments. The new formula, which led to an increase in its weekly tally, is intended to more accurately capture seasonal patterns in job losses.
The Warthog, the A-10. I honestly did not know it was still flying. Wow. For the archives. Over at The WSJ.
TThe Fed considers a pause.
The market seems not to care. JPow writes that the "banking crisis" will push the US into recession later this year. Let's look at context. Link here.
US market open: traders agree -- the Fed will pause.
Not on my bingo card today, not even close:
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Summer Reading Program To Commence Shortly
My 2022 - 2023 winter reading program.
Summer reading program: May 1, 2023 - September 30, 2023.
Will include the 50th anniversary edition:
Locator: 44381B.
COP: flips the script on US shale.
It begins:
[COP] secured perhaps the US oil deal of the decade by picking up industry pioneer Concho Resources Inc. for $13 billion in the depths of the pandemic. Now, three years later, others are increasingly following suit.
Ovintiv Inc. agreed to spend $4.3 billion on private-equity owned assets earlier this month, while it was reported last week that Exxon Mobil Corp. is eyeing Pioneer Natural Resources Co., one of the Permian Basin’s largest independent producers. More deals are likely.
In this latest uptick in shale M&A, the big are getting bigger and the small get bought. That’s yet another nail in the coffin for the debt-fueled, buccaneering archetype that once prevailed in the shale world. Back in those days, the industry splurged on production growth and managed to upset everyone from OPEC to its own shareholders.
And then finishes:
ConocoPhillips exemplified the new style of US oil company when it unveiled its strategic plan to investors in New York on Wednesday. It will increase production in the Lower 48 (i.e., the contiguous US) by about 7% annually over the next 10 years, a far cry from Concho’s growth heyday of almost 30%.
[COP] will reinvest just half of his company’s cash from operations in new production, leaving the rest for buybacks and dividends, down from more than 100% in 2012 through 2016.
It’s all rather sensible, if a bit boring, especially coming just days after oil prices rallied following OPEC+’s surprise production cut.
To spice things up, Lance told Bloomberg Television that deal flow, particularly in the Permian, is likely to accelerate over the coming months. But the reasons for doing so are also fairly humdrum. Buyers are looking to capture “synergies” and replenish top-tier well locations, he said. Meanwhile, smaller, faster-growing companies are happy to cash out through sales.
I'm lovin' in.
Re-posting, link here.
ConocoPhillips unveiled a 10-year plan Wednesday that envisions more than $115B of free cash flow available for distributions and capital spending averaging ~$10B annually, resulting in a 4%-5% production compound annual growth rate at an average reinvestment rate of ~50%.
The plan foresees durable cash flow growth with projected cash from operations and FCF compounded annual growth rate of ~6% and 11%, respectively, and return on capital employed increasing at least one percentage point annually.
Conoco (COP) said it will seek a resource base of 20B boe at less than $40/bbl WTI, representing a resource life of more than 30 years at current production levels.
The company also pledged to speed up its greenhouse gas intensity reduction target through 2030 by 10% to a range of 50%-60% using a 2016 baseline.
ConocoPhillips (COP) is expected to provide shareholders with almost 5% in annualized dividends and share buybacks, generating strong shareholder returns.
From the balcony, today:
Locator: 44380B.
The Fed considers a pause.
The market seems not to care. JPow writes that the "banking crisis" will push the US into recession later this year. Let's look at context. Link here.
US market open: traders agree -- the Fed will pause.
China crude oil imports: link here.
COP: flips the script on US shale.
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Back to the Bakken
Active rigs: 44.
Peter Zeihan newsletter.
WTI: $83.00
Natural gas: $2.123.
Friday, April 14, 2023: 28 for the month; 28 for the quarter, 283 for the year
38560, conf, Hess, GO-HAUG-156-98-3031H-5,
38559, conf, Hess, GO-HAUG-156-98-1918H-5,
RBN Energy: with methane emissions, solutions can be as tricky to pin down as the problem itself.
By now, just about everyone is aware of and has been impacted by efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — and methane especially — as a way of meeting global climate goals, but that doesn’t mean everyone is on the same page. The energy industry is a leading source of methane emissions in the U.S., but with nearly 1 million active wells across the country and not much common ground on the actual scope of methane emissions and how best to reduce them, finding a path forward without overburdening the sector and its customers is more than a little tricky.
Discussions around the ongoing energy transition often focus on the need to control and then reduce the volume of GHGs emitted into the atmosphere. And while carbon dioxide (CO2), the most prevalent GHG, often gets the most attention, methane is especially problematic. It is the primary constituent in pipeline natural gas and also a particularly potent GHG, with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) that is 25-36 times that of CO2 if normalized to a 100-year timeline. But methane emissions are neutralized in the atmosphere at a much quicker pace, meaning that their initial GWP is much higher, more like 86 times that of CO2 if normalized to a 20-year timeline. That means that making even modest reductions in unburned methane emissions is an important step in plans to blunt the long-term effects of man-made climate change.