Two New Permits; Four Permits Renewed -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45480B.  

Active rigs: 33. Crude oil in commercial storage at reecord low levels, and active rigs in North Dakota at less than 35. Amazing.

WTI: $78.92.

Two new permits, #40150 - #40151, inclusive:

• Operators: CLR, Armstrong Operating
• Fields: Little Knife (Dunn County); Elmore (Renville)
• Comments:
• CLR has a permit for a Marshall well, SWSW 24-145-97, 
• to be sited 450 FSL and 901 FWL; 
• Armstrong Operating has a permit for a Harkness well, NWNW 33-164-84, 
• to be sited 500 FNL and 818 FWL

Four permits renewed:

• Formentera Operations: three FLX permits, Portal field, Burke County; and, one Tafelmeyer permit, Customs oil field, Burke County;

Meaningless Charts -- For The Umpteenth Time -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45479OIL.  

It will be nice when Bloomberg starts reading the blog (again). 

A reader sent me Bloomberg's chart of the day -- thank you very much. 

Anyone that understands "US shale" and the "oil sector" knows that this graphic is absolutely meaningless. 

It's an important chart, I suppose, as a point of information ... but that raises a philosophical question -- can a meaningless chart be important? Yes, in the context of emotional traders, seeing the data in a meaningless chart can be important. For me, this speaks volumes, that with US crude oil in storage at record lows, the price of WTI continues to drop.

The "choke point" is not "oil in man-made storage." The choke point -- well, there are two choke points when it comes to fossil fuel we can use for transportation:

• refining; and,
• distribution of the final product.

Even adding the above chart to the three below, adds nothing to the story. It's a worthless chart -- the one above. If one doesn't agree, then note that WTI is down again today despite record low crude oil inventories.

From before, for the umpteenth time:

Locator: 45474HURRICANESEASON. 

Two links:

• next hurricane could shut in 40% of GOM produuction, Alex Kimani. Link here.
• low US oil reserves to clash with "above normal" hurricane season; link here.
  
• note: completely wrong, by the way -- hurricanes have minimal effect on crude oil reserves; WTI is measured at Cushing, OK; hurricanes hitting TX/LA have major effect on refining -- it's gasoline stores and production at risk; oil supplies? We'll do just fine.
• Hurricane Harvey: August, 2017; Texas; category 4; devastating; gasoline supplies greatly impacted, much simply because 18-wheelers couldn't get to and from the coast
• there are no gasoline pipelines that run from the coast direct to our neighborhood filling stations

*********************************
The Data

From yesterday, re-posting.

Locator: 45471B.

Gasoline prices are at "recent"highs.

The Biden administration is "monitoring" this. What concerns them most?

Gasoline demand and status, link here, three charts:

Refiners, weekly EIA petroleum report:

• refiners are operating at 94.5% of their capacity; pedal to the metal

******************************
Commentary

The Biden administration says they are monitoring the three graphics above. What are they monitoring? What are they worried about?

I'm thinking back to August 17, 2017, to September 3, 2017.

This Is What Barron's Had To Say About Nvidia Over The Past Few Weeks -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45478NVDA.  

All published before Nvidia's 2Q23 earnings release. All before the meteoric rise in NVDA.

WTI: Breaks Below $78 Again -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45477TECH.  

Everything indicates that the Fed will signal "higher for longer." 

*************************
The Book Club

Primo Levi: The Double Bond, A Biography, Carole Angier, c. 2002.

Notes.

Completely Unexpected -- CNBC This Morning -- AMD Now Bigger Than Intel -- Market Cap -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45477TECH.  

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.

Today: NVDA, market cap -- $1.25 trillion. 

For the record: when "looking back," I no longer look back farther than five years. Looking forward, my horizon is 30 years. When grocery shopping, I no longer buy green bananas.

In the graphic below, for those folks who actually look at the graph, 99.99% will still miss the most important thing about that graph. 

INTC, NVDA, AMD: Wow, talk about missing the mark. From April 8, 2022. Link here. It will be interesting if this article quietly disappears. Market cap a year ago:

Today:

• NVDA: $1.16 trillion
• AMD: $176 billion
• INTC: $142 billion

From a year ago to today:

• INTC: $193 --> $142
• AMD: $166 --> $176
• NVDA: $614 --> 1,160

Cash / market cap: the new moats?

Just One Of Those Things Few Folks Think About -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45476APPLE. 

Link here to MacRumors.  

Data But Any Analysis? If There Is, I Missed It -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45475SUICIDE.

Any correlation with the drug epidemic in the US?  Any correlation with changes in diagnostic criteria. With changes in US population is a jump from 49,449 from 48,183 significant, or simply background noise? Or simply a snapshot in time? So, suicide numbers were worse in 2022 when all along we were told that the lock down in 2020 was leading to increased suicide? Not more than a month ago or so, huge media story that military experiencing increase in suicides -- was that just reflecting what was going on in the US in general? Any comparison to rates in Germany or Canada?

Link here.

Hurricane Season And Gasoline Inventories -- August 24, 2023

Locator: 45474HURRICANESEASON. 

Two links:

• next hurricane could shut in 40% of GOM produuction, Alex Kimani. Link here.
• low US oil reserves to clash with "above normal" hurricane season; link here.
  
• note: completely wrong, by the way -- hurricanes have minimal effect on crude oil reserves; WTI is measured at Cushing, OK; hurricanes hitting TX/LA have major effect on refining -- it's gasoline stores and production at risk; oil supplies? We'll do just fine.
• Hurricane Harvey: August, 2017; Texas; category 4; devastating; gasoline supplies greatly impacted, much simply because 18-wheelers couldn't get to and from the coast
• there are no gasoline pipelines that run from the coast direct to our neighborhood filling stations

*********************************
The Data

From yesterday, re-posting.

Locator: 45471B.

Gasoline prices are at "recent"highs.

The Biden administration is "monitoring" this. What concerns them most?

Gasoline demand and status, link here, three charts:

Refiners, weekly EIA petroleum report:

• refiners are operating at 94.5% of their capacity; pedal to the metal

******************************
Commentary

The Biden administration says they are monitoring the three graphics above. What are they monitoring? What are they worried about?

I'm thinking back to August 17, 2017, to September 3, 2017.

The Day After -- More To Follow -- NVDA -- August 24, 2023

NVDA "Monday morning" phrases:

• double-ordering: no, it's not happening
• data centers: yes, that's what it is all about
• generative AI: governments around the world to global corporations -- every government leader, every CEO is asking what is "gen AI"all about 
• biggest customer who is not a cloud service provider: META (not a cloud service provider)
  
• CNBC: "we've never seen a revenue jump like this ever before in history of the market"
• EPS: up 492% from a year ago 
• price target: generally around $600; some suggest $1,100
  
• CPUs burn hot; GPUs run faster; less hot
• Nvidia: GPUs. 
• Intel, AMD: CPUs
  

Dow: will open down a bit today but mostly due to Boeing; problems with new a/c again.

Market: market returns over five years -- meaningless for millennials --> alpha generation?

Suggestion: google 4th industrial revolution. 

The facts don't matter; the data doesn't matter. It's what the "influencers" have to say. Link here.

Say what? Sold way too soon! Link here to Barron's. This story was posted by Barron's before Nvidia reported blow-out earnings and the meteoric rise of NVDA yesterday:

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

WTI: $79.07. Saudi Arabia starting to suggest deeper cuts for longer.

Friday, August 25, 2023: 45 for the month; 247 for the quarter, 492 for the year
39447, conf, CLR, Edward 7-23H,

Thursday, August 24, 2023: 44 for the month; 246 for the quarter, 491 for the year
38993, conf, Hess, TI-Stenbak-158-95-2526H-8,
37932, conf, BR, Parrish 3C TFH,

RBN Energy: metrics favor large oil-focused shale producers in race to replenish reserves, part 2. Archived.

As this brutally hot summer meanders towards Labor Day, we’re all facing rising gasoline prices as we head to the beach, to barbecues, or to the mall for back-to-school shopping. The main culprit is crude oil production cutbacks by the Russians and Saudis and the situation would likely be much more precarious were it not for strong U.S. shale output keeping gasoline prices from climbing to $5 a gallon or more — except in California, of course. Crucial to sustaining that production long-term is not just replenishing U.S. oil reserves but growing them. In today’s RBN blog, we continue our look at crude oil and natural gas reserves with an analysis of the critical issue of reserve replacement by major oil-focused U.S. producers.

In Say You’ll be There, we raised the question: “How much longer can the U.S.’s shale reserves support U.S. oil and gas production growth?” EIA estimates of “proved” reserves, which are assumed to have at least a 90% chance of eventual recovery under existing economic and operating conditions, imply about 10 years of remaining volumes of crude oil and condensate and 10-17 years of natural gas in the major producing basins. Critical to maintaining or improving these inventories are the rate at which U.S. producers are replacing the reserves they use up via production. Equally critical (especially in an era of heightened scrutiny over capital efficiency) is the price paid to achieve that rate.

David Messler over at oilprice.com: