The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog): 06/14/23

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Weekly EIA Petroleum Report -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44939WTI.

Link here.

US crude oil in storage increased by a whopping 7.9 million bbls and yet the price of oil managed to eke out a gain; oil in commercial storage now stands at 467.1 million bbls, which is the five-year average. Wow. We're right at the five-year average.
imports: yawn.
refiners: 93.7%.
distillate fuel: increased by 2.1 million bbls; 14% below the five-year average;
jet fuel supplied was down 0.7%.
a pretty dismal report, all-in-all for those with large positions in "oil," like me.

Gasoline demand, link here:

Amazon Simply Gets Better And Better -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44938AMZN.

Amazon just keeps getting better and better.

This is a true story; I will swear on a stack of Bibles.

Three days ago I ordered a book from Amazon.

Yesterday I got a note saying it had been delayed.

It did not bother me. In fact, shortly after ordering the book I realized I did not want it. I was no longer interested in that book or that author.

But for $10, it was so inexpensive, I just let it go. I did not cancel the order, though my heart was no longer in it.

Today, I got a message from Amazon saying that they were unable to obtain a copy of that book and that my order had been canceled. I would be refunded the full amount.

So, Amazon can now, based on one's history, determine whether a buyer really, really wants an ordered item. If the Amazon algorithm suggests the reader really doesn't need or want that item, Amazon will cancel the order and refund the money.

If the customer really wants that item, Amazon figures the customer can re-order it with one-click ordering.

And so it goes.

Ten DUCs Completed; Ten Permits Renewed; Eight Permits Canceled; Five New Permits; And, A Partridge In A Pear Tree-- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44937B.

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The Daily Activity Report

Active rigs: 37.

WTI: $68.59.

Five new permits, #39974 - #39978, inclusive:

Operator: BR
Field: Little Knife (Dunn County)
Comments:

BR has permits for one Crying Man well and four Manchester wells, SESW 9-147-97;

to be sited between 424 FSL and 427 FSL and between 1816 FWL and 2087 FWL.

Ten permits renewed:

XTO: XTO renewed four Don permits in Camp oil field; and, six Bud permits in McGregor oil field.

Eight permits canceled:

Petroshale canceled two Horse Camp permits in Dunn County; and six Petroshale US permits in McKenzie County.

Ten producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

39077, 1,079, Hess,
39078, 1,300, Hess,
38202, n/d, CLR,
38935, 1,692, CLR,
38936, 2,105, CLR,
38937, 1,625, CLR,
38938, 1,893, CLR,
36145, 240, BR,
36146, 480, BR,
30861, 168, BR,

Random Thoughts On Investing In Publicly-Traded "Oil Companies" -- A Continuing And Dynamic Series -- Part 1 -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44936INV.

For the archives, my thoughts on investing in oil E&P companies.

This is for my executor as I transition management of the portfolio to my successor. I trust Sophia to do a great job.

In 2022, or thereabouts, I transitioned from allocating "new" money into oil E&P stocks and kept a "hold" on all current "oil" investments. I haven't quite figured out "where" I will put new money, but much of it will go into "technology."

Thoughts.

This graph continues to haunt me. Those investors "bullish" on oil E&P who post their thoughts on twitter and who I follow never address this chart:

The comments in this series pertain to shares of US publicly-traded oil companies involved in upstream (E&P), midstream (pipelines), and downstream (retail service stations selling gasoline and diesel to the American public.

I am an investor and not a trader.

My investment horizon is a rolling 30-year horizon. Every day the "horizon" moves forward one day, thirty years out.

Share prices in these companies are determined by the following:

60%: price of oil.
30%: supply and demand forecasts (short-term, mid-term, long-term, but mostly prices anticipated by analysts one year out).
20%: on a short term basis by YOLO, FOMO, MOJO, emotion, fear, greed, headlines in the mainstream media.
10%: the Goddess of Oil (see Marjorie Morrow Anderson), the Oracle of Oil (see M. King Hubbert) and a pantheon of others.

Price of oil: we might get back to this but I think most folks understand the daily change in the price oil.

The price of oil on any given day generally outweighs all the other factors that determine the price of shares in publicly-traded "oil" companies.

Supply and demand: I started investing in "oil" in the mid- to late 1980s.

I don't think a day went by when "experts" said that the supply of oil was finite and some day "we would run out of oil." I said the same thing. That day has not come after forty years of investing in oil. I'm a slow learner. Forty years.

Not only that, all indications are that the demand for oil for transportation is now decreasing and will never increase to any meaningful extent in the first world. If not an absolute decrease in real numbers then a decrease in relationship to potential supply.

In other words, the world will never "run out" of accessible, affordable oil.

YOLO, FOMO, MOJO: these concepts simply do not exist when discussing the price of oil / the price of publicly traded "oil" shares except in rare instances, and these rare instances are short-lived.

I do not anticipate any point in the future when we might see sustained (more than a year) of YOLO, FOMO, or, MOJO when discussing oil. YOLO, FOMO, and MOJO have not place for investors but these factors, when sustained, tend to set a new floor for the price of oil.

The goddess of oil is very capricious and a hater of mere mortals, particularly investors. I don't see the goddess of oil changing, and not only has the oracle died, those listening to the oracle often misunderstood what was being said.

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So, What Does One Do?

Never, never, never sell shares in "oil."

These shares now trade and reward investors like utilities; they take the place of Treasury bonds in my portfolio.

Do not invest "new" money in "oil."

I'm not saying that those involved directly in the oil business won't continue too do very, very well. I'm suggesting that is not true for those investing in shares of publicly-trading oil companies. There will always be exceptions. I don't see myself as being one of those exceptions. But, wow, I'm glad I'm overweight in "oil." Those dividends allow me to continue investing in my golden years.

IN PROGRESS.

For The Archives -- For The Grandchildren -- Nothing About The Bakken -- Norman Mailer Phase -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44935D.

In my Norman Mailer phase.

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To The Grandchildren
Archives

Norman Mailer, letters, 813 MAI:

#11, 40 Otis Place, Boston, Massachusetts, June 21, 1942

writing; hospital orderly

#12, Dunster Hall, G-41, Harvard College, April 10, 1943

decides to enlist, US Army, as a private, for the experience

#13, April 28, 1943 (probably same address)

writing; looking for an agent

#14, May 2, 1943 (probably same address)

graduation is set for May 27, 1943
mentions that Radcliffe-Harvard merger off again

#15, June 9, 1943, Provincetown, MA

writing; has Harvard undergraduate degree

#16, 102 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY, January 11, 1944

provides bio to Edwin Seaver (agent?)

born in Long Branch, NJ, January 31, 1923
lived in Brooklyn, NY, most of his life to that point
graduated Harvard, June, 1943

draft board refuses his request for extension
says his bio can now add "Armed Forces" (resignation or sarcastic?)

#17, January 19, 1944

requests change in appointment to Government Appeal Agent, due to his "illness"
reason for request for deferment: writing a novel

#18, Camp Upton, NY, April 1, 1944

mentions it is his sixth day since he's been gone
therefore, signed in on/about Monday, March 27, 1944 (possibly arrived Sunday)

#19, Fort Bragg, NC, April 30, 1944

long letter; explains the US Army to his folks

#20, May 21, 1944
#21, Fort Bragg, ND, late May, 1944
#22, King George Hotel, San Francisco, California, August 22, 1944

to his wife Beatrice
arrived in San Francisco, that day/date
describes trip from east coast to SF; describes SF

#23, USS Sea Barb, at sea, December 2x?, 1944

to his wife Beatrice

#24, Luzon, Philippines, February 1, 1945,

to his parents
on another [blank space] in the Philippines
12th Regimental Combat Team; HQ; does not do any fightiing

#25, March 11, 1945

still in the Philippines; weary of the place; wants to go to China; see birth of civilization;

#26, April 11, 1945

been in a "little combat"
his description of that "little combat" sounds exactly like what he wrote in The Naked and The Dead

#27, April 25, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
talks of his fears of dying in combat

#28, May 14, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
long letter; much on combat
wow, sounds just like early chapters in The Naked and the Dead

#29, May 17, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
on combat and courage

#30, June 4, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
one of the greatest moments of his life: given a machine gun
reading Thoreau, who is abhorrent to him (Mailer)

June 9, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
more military writing

August 9, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
talk of the atom bomb; more talk than about V-E day; as much as Roosevelt's death

#33, Tateyama Naval Base, Japan, September 4, 1945

to his parents
saw USS Missouri just as surrender was being signed; heard it on the radio; saw it through the porthole
landed on Japan; undramatic
talks about "getting home"; depends on "points"; he says he might have a chance

#34, Choshi, Japan, October 3, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
working as cook in KP
talks about getting his section sergeant in Recoon back on Luzoon in his novel; Ysidro Martinez
I don't think Mailer has mentioned the proposed name for this novel yet

#35, mid-October, 1945

mentions Spengler

#36, mid-October, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
thought about his novel; mentions "Red" as if has introduced "Red" in earlier letters; if so, I missed it; also mentions Ridges

#37, mid-October 1945

to his wife Beatrice
mentions a short piece for his novel

#38, October 30, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
reading Anna Karenina, Tolstoy); found it much greater than War and Peace (Dostoyevsky)

#39, November 12, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
mentions The White Tower, James Ramsay Ullman

#40, November 25, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
writes the scene of murdering a Japanese soldier in cold blood

#41, December 21, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
working at a hospital
still writing novel; sending Beatrice snippets of his novel

#42, December 22, 1945

to his wife Beatrice
another piece for his novel

#43, January 12, 1946

to his wife Beatrice
wrote out the names of all the soldiers he's known
161, to be precise

#44, January 14, 1946

to his parents
tells his parents about the novel he's writing; no name suggested

#45, Onahoma, Japan, January 25, 1946

to his wife Beatrice

#46, Choshi, Japan, March 3, 1946

to his wife Beatrice
more on his novel

#47, Tokyo, Japan, March 8, 1946

to his wife Beatrice
3-day pass
looks like he's heading
could be leaving Yokohama between April 15 and April 25, 1946

#48, Choshi, Japan, March 14, 1946

to his wife Beatrice
more for the novel

#49, March 27, 1946

to his wife Beatrice
passage on Croft, character in the novel

#50, 49 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY, mid-October, 1946

first letter since Choshi, Japan
writing editor at Little, Brown and Co; of course, talking about his novel
like most soldiers, after the war, returned home;

#51, October 24, 1946

frustrated a re-write; euphemism for deleting profanity;

#52, early November 1946

letter to editor at Amussen, Rinehart and Co
his novel, of course; no title mentioned

#53, mid-November, 1946

to Angus Cameron, Little, Brown and Co
his novel, of course; hurt, bitter, frustrated

#54, 11 rue Brea, Paris, November 1, 1947

to I. B. Mailer alone, father
finally, mentions the title, The Naked and the Dead
being retyped for the printers

#55, December 6, 1947

to his father
mentions letter from Bill Raney; talked with Stan Rinehart; giddy with book
says "they should do this book B-I-G"
will start a new novel even as TNATD is being published
what happened to Beatrice?

#56, February 7, 1948

to Bill Raney, editor
still in Paris
talks about profanity in his novel; long letter

#57, March 1, 1948

to Bill Raney, more on profanity

#58, May 10, 1948

to agent at Sam Jaffe Agency
mentions "Bea" coming in with lots of mail
says he may soon need an agent

#59, May 12, 1948

letter to Mrs Hyman Silverman
Rinehart has published his novel
still in Paris, but planning to return to the US; talks about buying a car;

#60, May 31, 1948

to agents at Sam Jaffe Agency
now talking about film script

#61, July 12, 1948

letter to Mrs Hyman Silverman
calls them his mother and father; Beatrice's parents?
apparently live in Chelsea

#62, Boston, August 4, 1948,

to parents
working with Lillian Hellman; how to turn a novel into a play

#63, Box 140, Jamaica, Vermont, telegram, after March 9, 1949

to Arthur Miller
congrats on The Death of a Salesman

#64, April 24, 1949

letter to Charlees Rembar
says he may head to California

#65, April 30, 1949

letter to Mark Linenthal and Alice Adams
talks about going out to California
reflection on life; long letter; important

#66, Chateau Marmont, 8221 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, California, July 3, 1949

letter to Jean and Galy Malaquais (close friend; talked about many times earlier)
invites them out to California; friends from France

#67, 1601 Marley Drive, Hollywood, California, July 24, 1949

to parents
describes CA to his parents; sends them a "big" check
mentions he will be seeing Lillian Hellman

#68, August 8, 1949

letter to Lillian Hellman
film TNATD

#69, August 21, 1949

to his parents
waiting for their first baby

#70, 7475 Hillside Avenue, Los Angeles, California, November 17, 1949

to his father
long newsy letter
last letter of 1940s
now, on to the 1950s

Linda:

undergraduate: Rutgers, New Jersey, matriculated, 1967

undergraduate degree: Rutgers, 1971

1972: Harvard medical school; matriculated

medical school, MD degree: Harvard, 1975

1977: the "non-merger merger" between Harvard and Radcliffe
residency: Washington University, St Louis

Radcliffe - Harvard:

Acceptance of the 19th-century rationales for this exclusion was fading, particularly as during the 1960s, a nationwide movement for co-education grew. Reflecting this movement, many Radcliffe students began to insist upon receiving Harvard diplomas for their academic work and upon merging Radcliffe and Harvard extra-curricular activities. Growing budgetary problems at Radcliffe encouraged this insistence. The Radcliffe Graduate School merged with Harvard's in 1963, and from that year onward Radcliffe undergraduates received Harvard University diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard. (Harvard students' diplomas were signed only by the president of Harvard.) Many Radcliffe and Harvard student groups combined during the decade and joint commencement exercises between the two institutions began in 1970.

In 1971, largely in response to gains made by newly co-ed Princeton and Yale in their respective yields of students admitted to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and to comparable admissions competition posed by the increasing national popularity of co-ed Stanford, Harvard president Derek Bok reduced the admissions ratio of Harvard students to Radcliffe students from 4:1 to 5:2.

That same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students through an experimental program, and in 1972 full co-residence between the two colleges was instituted. The schools' departments of athletics merged shortly thereafter.

By the late 1960s there were open discussions between Radcliffe and Harvard about complete merger of the two institutions—which in truth meant abolition of Radcliffe. However, a merger study committee of the Radcliffe Alumnae Association recommended caution. In a prepared statement, the committee reported that "it would be a mistake to dissolve Radcliffe at this time. Women's self-awareness is increasing as the 'women's liberation movement develops and as moderate groups call attention to the life styles and problems particular to women. This is precisely the wrong time to abolish a prestigious women's college which should be giving leadership to women as they seek to define and enlarge their role in society."

Instead of a complete merger, in 1977 Radcliffe president Matina Horner and Harvard president Derek Bok signed an agreement that, through their admission to Radcliffe, put undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College. The so-called "non-merger merger" combined the Radcliffe and Harvard admissions offices and ended the forced ceiling on female enrollment. In practice most of the energies of Radcliffe (which remained an autonomous institution) were then devoted to the institution's research initiatives and fellowships, rather than to female undergraduates. The Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduate communities and classes came to be known officially as "Harvard and Radcliffe" or "Harvard-Radcliffe," and female students continued to be awarded degrees signed by both presidents. Radcliffe continued to own its campus and provided financial aid, undergraduate prizes, and externship and fellowship opportunities to Radcliffe students, and the college continued to sponsor academic access programs for high school girls and continuing education opportunities for people outside the traditional college age. The college also continued to support programs and workshops targeting female undergraduates.

In practice, though, Radcliffe at this point had minimal impact on the average undergraduate's day to day experiences at the university. This minimal role fueled still more talk about a full merger of the two schools. Conversely, supporters of the "non-merger merger" maintained that the agreement gave Radcliffe students the full benefits of Harvard citizenship while allowing maintenance of the proud Radcliffe identity, an institution with its own mission, programs, financial resources and alumnae network.

On October 1, 1999, Radcliffe College was fully absorbed into Harvard University; female undergraduates were henceforward members only of Harvard College while Radcliffe College evolved into the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

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Linda's Boston

Intel Vs Apple -- Latest Results -- Apple: Twice The Speed At Half The Cost -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44934TECH.
Locator: 44931TECH.

Another huge tech story coming out after the WWDC, June, 2023.

For newbies, this is a complicated story. It will be told in several parts.

It affects computer scientists, engineers, high-end developers. This does not affect you or me. As consumers or investors. But it's hugely interesting. Hugely entertaining.

Part two.

Link here to the story.

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Here's My Take -- Part Two

This is the Apple Mac Pro.

It's been around forever.

It's why Apple is the first $3-trillion company (market cap).

It's Apple's most powerful, most versatile computer. It's for an elite group of Apple developers. It's not for the rest of us.

It sells for over $7,000.

It is updated regularly, and then geeks take it for a ride, just to see how fast it really is. Generally it's compared to Intel chips, the company that once set the standard for chips and speed.

Here are the latest "speed" results. The contestants: Intel Xeon W and Apple M2.

Two contestants (Intel vs Apple) each with two configurations:

In lane one: the highest-end Intel-based Mac Pro with a (holy mackerel look at this) 28-core Xeon W processor: cost? It starts at $12,999. Remember this is an Apple Mac Pro using an Intel-processor; two configurations:

single-core
multi-core

In lane two: the new Apple-chip Mac Pro, two configurations

single-core
multi-core

Results:

first race, single core:

in lane one: INTEL MAC PRO speed, single core: 1,378 mph
in lane two: APPLE MAC PRO speed, single core: 2,794 mph

first race, multi-core:

in lane two: INTEL MAC PRO speed, multi-core: 10,390 mph
in lane one: APPLE MAC PRO speed, multi-core: 21,453 mph

Again:

Intel best: 10,390 mph
Apple: 21,453 mph

Price:

Intel best: starts at $12,999
Apple: $6,999

In other words, buy the top-of-the line Intel-based Apple Mac Pro for twice the cost of the Apple M2 Mac Pro and get half the speed.

Wow.

But there is so much more. More later.

Rivian Removed From NASDAQ - 100 -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44933EVS.

Link here. In pre-market trading, EV is up about one percent. Companies like Rivian should do better in a lower interest rate environment.

Nasdaq is dropping Rivian because it shrunk too much. The electric carmaker will lose its spot on the Nasdaq-100, which comprises 100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, on June 20, Nasdaq confirmed yesterday, June 13, 2023.

The EV stock is being booted because it has had a weight of less than 0.1% for two consecutive months on the market-capitalization-weighted index, where companies with growing stock prices yield higher influence.

The biggest companies on the New York-based index Microsoft and Apple, both of which have a roughly 12% weightage.

JPMorgan Chase analyst Min Moon, who had warned that Rivian was on the verge of getting kicked off two weeks ago, also correctly predicted its replacement: ON Semiconductor.

Nasdaq will sell all the shares it holds in Rivian and replace them with On Semiconductor’s shares. This could deal another blow to the struggling, money-draining EV company.

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The Book Page

The Naked and the Dead: one can see why this book remained at the top of the best-seller list soo long when it first came out. The farther one gets into it, the more hooked one becomes.

The Nineties: A Book, Chuck Klosterman, c. 2022. When Klosterman is good, he's very, very good. This one? Very good. Highly recommend for summer reading. Excerpts from the book here, but even these excerpts fail to capture how good this book really is.

The Market Before And After (Pending) The Fed Decision -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44935MKT.

At the open, we'll see where these go after the Fed decision is announced:

$3-trillion club:

AAPL: wow, wow, just turned positive; another all-time high (?); market cap at $2.892 trillion;

tech:

TSM: profit-taking, down 0.7%;
AMD: pops; up 1.75%; up $2.18 / share;
NVDA: can't stop a train; up 0.7%; up another $3.52 / share;

EVs

TSLA: profit-taking, flat to negative;
RIVN: flat to negative;

big cap, MAGA:

UNP: up 1.6%
DE: up 1.4%; up another $5.65 / share
CAT: up 0.25%
BRK-B: up 0.41%

oil, gas:

CVX: up 1%
DVN: up 1.4%
EPD: up 1%
SRE: up 0.7%

high dividend:

T: up 0.5%

missteps / one-offs / opportunities:

BUD: up almost 2%

After the Fed decision:

Fed pauses but says more hikes coming after this pause

Dow drops 374 points
S&P drops 23 points
NASDAQ drops 70 points

Later, the next day, June 15, 2023:

the market. -- all three major indices -- had an incredible rally;
a rally seldom seen;
no increase in the Fed rate, and though JPow was hawkish in his remarks, a lot "analysts" / writers suggested the Fed was "bluffing" about more hikes this year.
if the Fed does hike it's unlikely they would do it during the summer unless inflation took a serious turn for the worse.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.

Extreme Deprssion? Suicidal Ideation? Mental Stress? Or Something Else? -- June 14, 2023

Locator: 44934PGA.

I saw a clip of Jay Monahan being interviewed during the PGA tournament this past weekend trying to explain the merger. Truly pathetic on so many levels.

Did the stress of that interview lead to his need for medical leave?

Link here.

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The Book Page

From Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties, page 241, Penguin edition:

Meet Joe Black was released in theaters in November of 1998. Starring Brad Pitt as Death and lasting more than three hours, it was a lackluster romance with elements of supernatuural realism. The only memorable scene involves Pitt being struck by both a minivan and a taxicab within the span of twenty-four frames.
It cost $90 million to make and earned $44 million domestically, which would normally define it as a forgettable flop.
But Meeet Joe Black holds a strange cinematic distinction: it is almost certainly the all-time highest-grossing move among ticket buyers who did not watch one minute of the film.
Before screenings of Meet Joe Black, movie houses across the country debuted the 131-second trailer for The Phantom Menace, the first prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy, slated for the summer of 1999.
The result was a phenomenon that had never happend before and hadn't even been imagined as a prospect: there were numerous reports of people buying full-priced tickets for Meet Joe Black, watching the Phantom Menace trailer, and then immediately exiting the theater.

That short essay precedes chapter ten: "A Two-Dimensional Fourth Dimension," a "critical" review of another movie of the nineties, The Matrix.

The Matrix was a sci-fi action film about a computer-simulated world constructed during a war between humans and self-aware computers.

The movie is a series of interlocking contradictions that should not equate to the blockbuster it became.

It was written and directed by Lilly and Lana Wachowski, who were still living iin 1999 as men. Their eventual gender transition is now the most glaring subtext to The Matrix, directly illustrated when the story's main character has to choose between swallowing a blue pill ... or a red pill ... the metaphoric meaning of this decision has been projected back upon the Wachowski siblings.... the original thematic intention ...
The movie starred Keanu Reeves ... his version of cool was not the nineties version of cool: Keanu was a masculine airhead. All the things that were once seen as vapid or devoid of affect became charming. A blankness that previously suggested naiveté now suggested wisdom. ... The Matrix was absorbed into Reeves.
The desire to classify Reeeves as brilliant peaked in late 2020, when The New York Times published a list of the twenty-five greatest actors of the twenty-first century and somehow placed Keanu at number 4 overall ... Meryl Streep was ignred entirely.
So what, exactl, made this film smart enough to turn a hipster doofus into a hipster Copernicus?
The Matrix seemed like it was about computers. It was actually about TV.

Three Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today -- WTI Resisting $70 -- Fed Decision Pending -- June 14, 203

Locator: 44932B.

Top story of the day: EV darling of Wall Street removed from the NASDAQ-100.

Energy vs tech: Liz Sonders.

Nvidia market cap: joins the $1-trillion club.

Pending: traders anxiously await Fed decision

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 35.

WTI: $69.86.

Thursday, June 15, 2023: 32 for the month; 140 for the quarter, 395 for the year
39302, conf, CLR, Skachenko Federal 10-31H1,

Wednesday, June 14, 2023: 31 for the month; 139 for the quarter, 394 for the year
39471, conf, Lime Rock Resources, Federal Kubik Trust 3-18-19H-143-95L,
39396, conf, Kraken, Wiseman 31-36-35-34 2H,
39215, conf, SOGC (Sinclair), Grasslands Federal 14-15-3H,

RBN Energy: SAF production will need more than the IRA tax credit to really take off.

Around the world, there’s a strong push to put aviation on a more sustainable footing and reduce the industry’s greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint. Increasing the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) — a close cousin of renewable diesel (RD) — is key to this effort. But while the economic case for producing RD in the U.S. has been compelling for some time thanks to government subsidies, the returns on investment for producing SAF appear more dubious, despite a seemingly generous production tax credit for SAF in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). As we discuss in today’s RBN blog, the incentive for making jet fuel is likely too small — and too short-lived — to overcome the higher cost of production for SAF compared to RD, and additional incentives may be needed to spur meaningful increases in SAF production.

Jet fuel is the planet’s third-most consumed transportation fuel, totaling about 7 MMb/d globally. Although worldwide consumption of jet fuel is significantly less than diesel (28 MMb/d) and gasoline (24 MMb/d), it represents a respectable 12% of these “Big Three” clean transportation fuels. In the U.S., jet fuel accounts for a similar portion. Therefore, its considerable volume presents a valid target for carbon reduction. Many airlines have set “net-zero-by-2050” targets and (many would argue) the increased use of SAF would have more of a climate impact than carbon offsets. So, when combined with the environmental objectives of consuming airlines, there seems to be a case to be made for SAF. But is it economic to produce?

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Wednesday, June 14, 2023