Too Late To Blog — October 5, 2023

Locator: 45658B.   

Stories tomorrow.

• this week’s theme: energy transition is over. Peter Zeihan.
• one-two punch:
• renewable energy not doable in long term
• interest rates will kill it in short term
• wind, offshore: geographically viable only in the western GOM (perhaps)
• Warren Buffett sells more HPQ
• XOM-PXD
• who’s next?
• Trump: speaker of the US House — fantasy land but nothing surprises me any more
• Fain: announcement tomorrow at noon. My hunch: no change.
• AMD: AI
• more on Rivian tomorrow
• for the umpteenth time — latest reading (today): 4.9%
• Josh over at twitter has lost all credibility
• Charles Lindbergh - Nazi Germany - WWII
• history may not repeat but itcertainly rhymes
• US and natural gas: it no longer makes sense
• Americans like a tragedy with a happy ending
• the “wall” is back

EV Tickers Today -- October 5, 2023

Locator: 45657INV.    

I'm not following the market right now -- we've talked about this before. I do check WTI, obviously, and I do check selected ticker symbols, periodically, but that's about it.

After this week's Rivian (RIVN) volatility -- up 9%, down 9% --  I was curious what RIVN was doing today. Holy mackerel, didn't see this coming. Except for insiders, I doubt anyone did. Certainly not those who bought on Tuesday when RIVN was up 9%.

Screenshot:

Curious. What happened?

• tanks on convertible debt offering
• burning through cash -- confirmed
• will dilute equity for existing shareholders

If I remember, I will talk about this a bit more later, but now -- headed to soccer practice with Sophia.

Others:

• ARVL: down 5%, trading at $1.04.
• LCID: down 7%, trading at $5.16.
• Polestar (PSNYW): down 10%; trading at 38 cents.
• GOEV (Canoo): up 3%; trading at 44 cents;
• F: down a bit; trading below $12; my hunch --
• F folks re-thinking that 65-cent special dividend earlier this year;
• GM: down 2%; trading just north of $30.30.

The energy transition is dead, we just don't know it yet. -- Peter Zeihan.

McDonald's Announces Dividend Increase; WTI Still In Free-Fall -- October 5, 2023

Locator: 45656INV.   

McDonald's quarterly dividend: a ten-percent increase? Needs to be fact-checked.

• previous: $1.52 (?)
  
• new: $1.67 (?) -- payable December 15, 2023

WTI: what happened to that $100-WTI prediction.

EVs today:

• RIVN: holy mackerel -- time for a stand-alone post.
• ARVL:
• LCID:

Stories coming fast and furious: renewable energy companies are coming undone. We'll talk about them in a stand-alone post but family commitments will delay that posting until later this evening. Stay tuned; don't switch channels.

Gasoline demand didn't collapse this week. Josh Young. LOL. Link here. Okay, so maybe "demand" did not collapse, but the price of WTI certainly did.

Doesn't matter! It's Thursday night football -- a "0 - 4" team takes on a "2-2" team. Wow, this should be exciting. 

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs: 34.

WTI: $82.31.

Two new permits, #40242- #40243, inclusive:

• Operator: MRO
• Field: Killdeer (Dunn County)
• Comments:
• MRO has permits for two wells, a Leny Jo well and a KGC well, SESW 31-146-94; 
• the Leny Jo to be sited 759 FSL and 2083 FWL;
• the KGC well to be sited 815 FSL and 2140 FWL; 

This will be interesting to follow, approved for horizontal re-entry;

• 15320, Denbury Onshore, CHSU 43-18NH 15, Cedar Hills South Unit; Bowman County; no production data; file says when the well was drilled in 2002 it was a producing well, but I don't see any production data;
  

Previous history:

• 15320, application, dirt work date: 01/01/2022
• type of well: CO2 injection; conversion
• looks like a Red River B injection zone;
• TVD: 8922 to 9017

CO2 EOR: 

The current CO2 development plan is for injectors to remain on continuous CO2 injection, rather than a water-alternating-gas (WAG) cycle as common in other CO2 floods. Once the CO2 flood reaches a level of maturity, the flood is planned to return to continuous water injection. While subject to change, the current estimate is that water injection could resume in some areas as early as 3 years after the CO2 flood is initiated.

Injection Sources - 

A 123.5 mile-long, 16-inch and 12-inch diameter carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline with ancillary facilities will be used to bring CO2 to the Cedar Hills South Unit (CHSU). The 16-inch pipeline will originate from the existing terminus of the Greencore pipeline at the Bell Creek Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Development in Powder River County, Montana, extending north and east through Carter County, Montana, and terminating at the proposed Cedar Creek Anticline (CCA) Booster Pump station located in Fallon County, Montana (the Project). The 12-inch pipeline will originate from the proposed Cedar Creek Anticline (CCA) Booster Pump station located in Fallon County, Montana (the Project) and terminating at the proposed Miller Meter station located in Bowman County, North Dakota. The proposed Project will transmit liquid (dense phase) CO2 from the Bell Creek EOR Development to CHSU. CO2 for the project will be supplied from the LaBarge Field via the Exxon Shute Creek Gas Plant and the Lost Cabin Field via the Lost Cabin Gas Plant.

All Caught Up -- October 5, 2023

Locator: 45655B.  

High and dry:

Random screenshot:

Speaking of winter in New England:

And with that, I'm caught up with blogging for the day. Except for the Nobel Prize stories. But they can wait.

Back to reading.

Which Story Caught The Biden Administration's Attention? October 5, 2023

Locator: 45654SURGE. 

Which story caught the attention of the Biden administration with regard to the southern surge?

El Paso or Massachusetts? Three guesses and the first two don't county. 

I posted this early this morning even before I started getting notes from readers.

• Biden Builds Back Better -- starting with "the wall."
• all of a sudden the migration story is a big, big, big story 

Anyway. Whatever.

Massachusetts: link here. By the way, NYC's dilapidated hotels are seeing a resurgence. But that's another story for another day.

From the linked article: 

While migrants pour into Chicago, another city with influx is forced to set limits.

FOXBORO - It is one of the most anticipated games in college football and this year it is being played at Gillette Stadium.

The Army-Navy game will make its Foxboro debut on December 9th. American presidents often attend, but you can be certain tens of thousands of veterans will pour into the greater Boston area.

Tickets to the game sell out quickly and hotel rooms become a hot commodity. That's why it was all the more troubling when Mark Mansbach, a travel agent out of New Jersey, started getting calls from clients that their hotel rooms for the game were being canceled.

He decided to call the hotels his agency was partnering with for the game.

"They were leasing out the hotels to the state of Massachusetts for refugees," Mansbach said he was told. It was the response from three hotels owned by Giri Hotel Management, according to Mansbach. The company, he explained, was working with the state to house migrants under the right to shelter law. [No: the "sancturary city" law.]

His clients' previously booked hotel rooms were canceled to continue the lease with the state. Mansbach said at least 70 of his reservations were impacted. [There are only 51,000 hotel rooms in the greater Boston area.

Military veterans are being displaced by undocumented tourists.

El Paso: link here. 

Today, four of the top five stories for CBS News -- migration. The top story was the Massachusetts story linked above.

***************************
This Really Is A Great Country

Life is a cycle.

I can go months not visiting Starbucks and then I can months visiting Starbucks every morning, 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

Currently, I'm in my Starbucks phase. I know almost all the baristas and they all know me by name. I recognize most of the in-store customers. 

Today, a new customer:

• tall Swedish blonde; if she's not 5-11, she's 6-1 -- she just stood up -- she's at least 6-2
  
• high school volleyball player, varsity since a freshman
  
• busy school day ahead for her
• household too noisy this morning
• needed to get out of the house, or
  
• needed a break
• Apple computer
• text books
• large Refresher™
• brand new driver's license
• feeling independent
• UT-Austin next year (her safe school if not accepted by Harvard, Duke, or Princeton)
• what a great state
  

I vaguely remember getting my first driver's license. Actually I don't member that all. I remember summer driver education courses with my high school German teacher, Herr Beggs.

Wow, I love this country.

But, Hungary was fun, too, back during WWI.

WTI Trending Towards $80 -- Two Wells Coming Off Confidential List -- October 5, 2023

Locator: 45653HEATINGOIL.

The grid: see the RBN Energy story below. Reminder:

• the northeast has a supply problem -- driven by faux environmentalists
• Texas has a demand problem -- driven by growth

Heating oil: prices, EIA: 

Heating oil: New England, Y-Charts.

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

WTI: $83.52. I thought GS said we would see $100-oil by now. Predicting the price of oil is a fool's errand. And Saudi is in trouble again. Back to the future.

Friday, October 6, 2023: 16 for the month; 16 for the quarter, 586 for the year
39649, conf, Ovintiv, Fleck 150-100-1-12-8H,
38840, conf, Enerplus, Hay Draw 148-97-27-344-6H,

Thursday, October 5, 2023: 14 for the month; 14 for the quarter, 584 for the year
39359, conf, CLR, Arthur 3-12HSL1,
38035, conf, PetroShale, Tahu 3MBH,

RBN Energy: is the US northeast in for a supply-challenged, high-price heating season? They're reading the blog! LOL. Archived.

Just as homeowners in parts of the Northeast are thinking about turning on the heat again, the market for heating oil, diesel and other middle distillates in PADD 1 is unusually tight.

Inventories are hovering near their five-year lows; prices are up sharply; and the near-term prospects for rebuilding stocks are modest at best.

For one thing, the import-dependent region can’t rely on them as much as it used to; for another, at least a couple of in-region and nearby Canadian refineries the Northeast counts on are offline for major turnarounds. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the latest developments in PADD 1’s distillates market.

Wow, Wow, Wow -- Stop The Presses -- The Swedes Give The Nobel Prize For Literature To A ... Wait For It ... A Norwegian -- October 5, 2023

Locator: 45652NOBEL.

And then hell froze over. A trifecta! Pigs are flying. And the Swedes give top prize to a Norwegian.

I'm struggling to get up after falling off my chair.

The first of many links: NPR.

Not well known outside his home country ... well, that's the understatement of the year. And look at that, a French knight.

**********************
On Another Note

The advances for which the Nobel prizes in chemistry and physics were given, sound very, very similar.

Link here.

High Gasoline Prices -- And High Margins For Refiners -- WSJ -- October 5, 2023

Locator: 45651REFINERS.

An incredibly good article.

Link here to The WSJ. 

DuckDuckGo -- Bing? October 5, 2023

Locator: 45650TECH.

DuckDuckWent for Bing. Who wudda guessed. I did not see this on my bingo card today.

Well, isn't this interesting. 

Now it comes out.

Took a lawsuit.

Turns out that DuckDuckGo uses Bing -- MICROSOFT -- for ... wait for it ... search.

All things being equal, who do you trust more? Microsoft or Google?

The question now: what other search engines use one of the big two for search?

Link here. 

*******************************
Meanwhile, 3M -- I'll Get Back To This Later

Apparently others are reading the blog. 

One can start here with my original post.

From The WSJ today:
 

The writers conveniently left out a lot in that short paragraph. 

So, what's 3M focused on today? 

John Banovetz, 3M’s chief technology officer, said the company’s reduction in product rollouts shows its push for quality over quantity.

The company has focused its bets on potentially high-growth areas such as climate-saving technology and its fast-selling electric-vehicle components.

“The R&D machine is alive and well,” he said.

Current and former scientists say the strategy makes it more difficult for fresh ideas to survive a gantlet of management naysayers. For decades, 3M released a cascade of new items on the market, confident most would be profitable and a few would become indispensable. The company has retreated from its traditional goal of earning around 30% of revenue from new products.

**********************
Next Up: Rivian

A loss of $33,000 per car. Barron's today.

Shares surged yesterday when CEO says "looking for $40K in cost savings." Okay. 

Earlier this year I was looking for $40,000 in deductions when filing IRS taxes. Didn't find nearly that much.

By the way, the model above? Remind you of anything? There was a very, very well-selling vehicle back in the 1960s or thereabouts that looked almost identical. Including the color scheme. It seems I see a lot of them on blocks in Portland these days -- but perhaps that's just my imagination. 

I did not know.

*************************
Ford Bronco

Market cap:

• F: $48 billion
• RIVN: $22 billion

 

Ticker: up 9%, down 95 --

 *******************************
But We Move On

I'll guess we'll quit here but there's so much more yet to come:

• Biden Builds Back Better -- starting with "the wall."
• all of a sudden the migration story is a big, big, big story
  
• which reminds me, has anything been heard from that El Paso politico who I've long forgotten
• the woman "Penn" loved to hate until she won the Nobel Prize for Medicine
• the Nobel Prize for Literature
• New England and price of heating oil 
• how fast things change -- overnight -- yeah, right?
  
• yesterday: deficits don't lead to inflation
  
• today: inflation caused by deficits