Wednesday - March 6, 2024

Locator: 46690B.

WTI: trending toward $80 again; up nicely today.

EIA: weekly petroleum report --

• inventories, crude oil: 1% below five-year average which includes the Covid years
• crude oil imports unremarkable; up 7% from same period last year; really no change;
• refiners: 84.9%, trending up
• distillate: 10% below five-year average
• jet fuel supplies was up 1.6% compared with same four-week period last year

Gasoline demand, link here:

Must see TV: Biden's SOTU tomorrow night -- just to see the optics, theatrics.

News hour, for investors:

• best news hour remains, "Squawk on the Street," 8:00 - 9:00 a.m. CT, CNBC; Carl Q; David Faber, Jim Cramer (hyper-manic)
• second best hour: "Squawk on the Street," 9:00 - 10::00 a.m. CT, CNBC; Carl Q; David Faber, Sara Eisen (calm, smart)

Print media (online presence), for investors:

• Barron's: clearly the better of the two
• The WSJ: can't invest without it; and a lot more than just investing

TCM: month of Oscar  -- incredible, last night, all free, no ads; how do they do it? LOL:

• Citizen Kane, In the Heat of the Night,  No Country for Old Men
• ITHOTN: so good on so many levels; amazing how it holds up; painful to watch
• Citizen Kane: what a great movie
• NCFOM: not for everyone; LOL

Amazon Age:

• if a retailer -- without a niche -- cannot compete with Amazon, that retailer won't survive
• even some niche companies won't survive if they can't compete with Amazon 
• many wholesalers, retailers will survive only by selling through Amazon
• forty years ago, no one thought WMT could be "contained." Now, it's Amazon
• is Amazon a retailer or a logistics company?
• Amazon: retail, logistics, cloud
  
• we're talking about big box stores and major retailers
• last night Sophia mentioned to me she needed more film for her "Polaroid" camera
• at 10:00 p.m. last night, I ordered her film from Amazon
• it arrived at 6:00 a.m. this morning
• I assume both Walmart and Target -- just two minutes from where I live -- had the film (they do), but Amazon made it so easy; and film on sale
• it will be fascinating to see Amazon twenty years from now
• can you imagine the "data mining" Amazon has -- both on the consumer side and the retail side? 
• Amazon knows "everything" about me; in comparison, WMT, TGT, hardly know me at all — and I shop there frequently;
• grocers have very little information on me and yet I probably visit a grocer four times a week
  

EVs: story today -- ChargePoint.

• ChargePoint: this is why EVs are struggling (we'll get to this in a separate blog later)

Featured: companies today --

• Crowdstrike (CRWD) up 23% pre-market; 23%; surges on earnings; one year, up 184%
  

Personal investing: only two tickers I will invest in this month; no recommendation; see disclaimer

• NOG: a trade; 6-month horizon; re-evaluate every six months;
  
• AAPL: 30-year horizon; Cramer: "own it, don't trade it." Says it could drop to $160; 30-year horizon; add to position whenever there's a significant pullback.

AAPL: yesterday -- 

Lego:

• 10221 -- I don't collect Star Wars-themed Lego
• 75331 -- I don't collect Star Wars-themed Lego
  
• 76178 -- hard to find

Disney World: think measles. It would be ironic if measles does to Disney what Covid did.

Politics, for the archives:

• Haley suspends her campaign;
• will she vote for Biden, or sit this election out? Like many Americans.
• next story: VP selection for both

TILT, thank you, Sara:

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

WTI: $79.73.

Thursday, March 7, 2024: 95 for the month; 154 for the quarter, 154 for the year
40054, conf, Oasis, K2 Holdings 5401 11-31 3B,
39612, conf, Grayson Mill, Barracuda 150-100-2-11-6H,
39585, conf, Whiting, DE Bud 44-32-5H,

Wednesday, March 6, 2024: 92 for the month; 151 for the quarter, 151 for the year
39572, conf, Grayson Mill, Barracuda 150-100-2-11-8H,

RBN Energy: scale, shifting focus to CCS drive California resources / Aera  Energy M&A.

The drivers behind most upstream M&A the past couple of years have been consistent — namely, to gain scale (mostly in the Permian) and the economies that come with it, boost free cash flow (and share more with shareholders), and replenish reserves to keep the good times rollin' into the 2030s. There are hints of all that in California Resources’ recently announced $2.1 billion agreement to acquire Aera Energy, creating what would be California’s largest crude oil producer. But in other ways the deal is as different as, well, California and Texas themselves. In today’s RBN blog, we examine the planned acquisition, what it reveals about the companies, and the pros and cons of operating in the nation’s most populous, least-friendly-to-hydrocarbons state.

We’ve made it a habit to blog about the multibillion-dollar acquisitions that have become almost commonplace in both the upstream and midstream sectors the past couple of years. We do this partly to gain a deeper understanding of the individual companies involved in these deals — and to share what we learn with you all — but also because the deals collectively help to reveal where the energy industry as a whole is heading and how a variety of integrated giants, public and private E&Ps, and midstreamers are preparing for their futures.

The value of the M&A that’s been happening is staggering. As we recently discussed in Keep on Dancing, upstream M&A soared to $192 billion last year, a mark 79% above the previous 10-year high and more than the previous three years combined. The Permian accounted for $103 billion of that total, capped off by Q4 2024’s ExxonMobil/Pioneer Natural Resources and Occidental Petroleum/CrownRock LP deals. And the Permian remained a primary focus in early 2024 with APA Corp.’s planned purchase of Callon Petroleum and, most recently, Diamondback Energy’s deal to buy Endeavor Energy Resources.