Locator: 44576B.
Two tycoons mentioned. Slim and Warren.
The long game.
Monday, December 30, 2024
Summary Of Bakken Deals -- 2024
Locator: 44575B.
Previously posted. Just the usual, occasional housekeeping.
Bakken deals are tracked at the sidebar at the right.
The deals:
Silver Hill Energy Partners enter(s) the Bakken, January 31, 2024 -- link here.
Chord to merge with Enerplus, February 21, 2024 -- link here.
COP - MRO deal, May 29, 2024 -- link here.
Devon Energy to buy Grayson Mills assets in the Williston Basin, July 8, 2024 -- link here.
Tech Investing; LNG Exports -- Plaquemines -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44574TECH.
For those with traditional IRAs and turning 73 years of age or older in 2025, tomorrow is a most critical day.
On another note, link here:
In a graphic like this, ticker symbols missing are as important than those on the list.
Intel, Oracle, Dell, QCOM, AVGO, Micron, META, AMZN are not on the list.
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Disclaimer
Brief
Reminder
- I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
- I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
- See disclaimer. This is not an investment site.
- 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 something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
- 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.
- Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
- I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
- And
now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things
Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial
revolution.
- Longer version here.
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LNG
Canoo -- EVGO -- Reverse Stock Split -- The Day The Music Died -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44573EVS.
The day the music died.
Micron, ASML, Apple, Boise, Idaho, And All That Jazz -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44572TECH.
At midnight tonight, if you have time for just one more article, this is it.
Note the byline.
Quick: name the chip company located in Idaho.
I first paid attention to all of this after reading Chip War, c. 2022.
The article begins:
BOISE, Idaho—Brienna Hall has the most valuable role that you’ll never see at the most vital company that you’ve never heard of.
Until she began working at ASML last year, she didn’t know the first thing about the company. She also didn’t know what she would be doing as a customer-support engineer—a “fancy mechanic,” as she calls herself.
And she had absolutely no idea that it would be essential to the global economy.
When she reports for her shift at a chip plant, Hall slips into a bunny suit. She enters a room where the pristine air is 100 times cleaner than a hospital operating room’s. Then she makes her way over to an unfathomably complex machine.
Her job is to know everything about it—so that she can fix it.
“I thought I had the coolest job ever,” Hall says. “I didn’t process the fact that this job is necessary for our entire world to exist as it does.”
The piece of equipment that the entire world has come to rely on—and she is specially trained to handle—is called an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine.
It’s the machine that produces the most advanced microchips on the planet. It was built with scientific technologies that sound more like science fiction—breakthroughs so improbable that they were once dismissed as impossible. And it has transformed wafers of silicon into the engines of modern life.
Even today, there are only a few hundred of these EUV machines in existence—and they are ludicrously expensive. The one that Hall maintains cost $170 million, while the latest models sell for roughly $370 million.
But maybe the most remarkable thing about these invaluable machines is that they’re all made by the same company: ASML.
ASML is the glue holding the chip business together. That’s because this one Dutch company is responsible for all of the EUV lithography systems that help make the chips in so many of your devices. Like your phone. And your computer. And your tablet. And your TV. Maybe even your car, too.
These machines have become indispensable. And they depend on the invisible work of Brienna Hall.
She’s one of the engineers assigned to the fabrication plants—or fabs—where ASML customers manufacture their semiconductors. Hall is based here in Boise, the headquarters of Micron Technology, where I hopped into a bunny suit of my own and followed her inside the chip fab.
Then I got a rare, behind-the-scenes peek at what might just be the most important machine ever made.
Brienna Hall?
Hall, 29, grew up in Seattle as a Girl Scout obsessed with tying the perfect knot. She was president of the Edmonds College rocketry club when she got her associate degree. At Washington State University, she majored in materials science and engineering—and transcribed notes for a professor writing a textbook on quantum mechanics. She loves planning camping trips even though she doesn’t actually like camping. In her spare time, she works with her hands, quilting and piecing together elaborate Ravensburger jigsaw puzzles.
All of which turned out to be excellent preparation for navigating a machine with more than 100,000 parts.
“You’re always problem-solving,” said Alex Jordan, another ASML engineer. “How can I be more efficient? Where can I optimize this? And what if we tried that?”
When the company recruits for customer-support positions, ASML looks for diligent, disciplined and detail-oriented engineers. Hall had the right kind of technical mind and temperament for the job. When one of her professors heard that a semiconductor company was hiring, Hall passed along her résumé and soon received emails from ASML asking her to apply.
American Exceptionalism -- Tech, Semiconductors, AI, Assemble -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44571TECH.
Tech is tracked here.
Chips: tracked here.
Apple is tracked here.
Updates
What Trump could mean for American exceptionalism, link here to Forbes.
American exceptionalism:
- Austin, TX: the new Silicon Valley; UT-Austin; Taylor, Texas, link here, Samsung;
- Arizona
- Utah
- Idaho
- Washington, Seattle
- Portland, OR: Intel
- Nashville, TN: medical AI.
But that's not all:
Original Post
Holy mackerel. This was posted back in 2021:
One of the blog posts I like best had to do with semiconductor chips.
That was perhaps the best update on chips on any blog that requires no subscription and no password. LOL.
Read that post first, and then read the following:
TSMC -- largest chip maker in the world -- set to "double down" and vastly increase US semiconductor chip investment in Arizona. Link here.
The company had already said it was going to invest $10 billion to $12 billion in Arizona. Now, the company is mulling a more advanced 3 nanometer plant that could cost between $23 billion and $25 billion, sources said. The changes would come over the next 10 to 15 years, as the company builds out its Phoenix campus, the report notes.
The move would put TSMC in direct competition with Intel and Samsung for subsidies from the U.S. government. President Joe Biden has proposed $50 billion in funding for domestic chip manufacturing - a proposal the Senate could act on as soon as this week. Intel has also committed to two new fabs in Arizona and Samsung is planning a $17 billion factory in Austin, Texas.
Note:
- the chip factories are not being built where the end-users are based (California);
- the chip factories are being built in Texas and Arizona
- one thing Texas and Arizona have in common: USAA with mirror operations
- Austin, TX: the new Silicon Valley
- UT-Austin
Five New Permits -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44571B.
Active rigs: 35.
WTI:
Five new permits, #41461 - #41465, inclusive:
- Operators: Kraken (4); CLR
- Fields: Boxcar Butte (McKenzie); Banks (McKenzie)
- Comments:
- CLR has a permit for a Garfield Federal well, NWNW 8-152-99, to be sited 150 FNL and 704 FWL;
- Kraken has permits for four Boxcar wells, SESW 36-149-102, to be sited 1625 FWL and 525 / 624 FSL
Two permits renewed:
- Cornerstone Natural Resources, Northeast Foothills, #40397, #40402
Two producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:
- 40612, 2,036, MRO, Betts 24-11H, Duun County;
- 40613, 3,912, MRO, Foss 24-11TFH, Duun County;
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Pool Time
Best Story Of The Day -- Amazing That It Took This Long -- The Kelly Parcel In Wyoming -- Jackson Hole Valley -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44570JOY.
Story everywhere. First reported in The New York Times, then everywhere.
This seems to have been a no-brainer.
Wyoming owned it. One square mile. 640 acres.
Sold it for $10 million to the Federal government. The Kelly Parcel is/was the largest piece of unprotected land within the boundaries of Grand Teton National Park.
Google maps: Kelly Wyoming.
Part of the Gros Ventre River drainage immediately into the larger Snake River area.
This simply tickles the cockles of my heart. Serious as a heartbeat.
Definitely Not A Manic Monday -- December 30, 2024
Locator: 44569B.
Some love for Linda Lavin, link here:
LNG update: with Cheniere's 1.4 Bcf/d Corpus Christi III (#8) now on line, what's next:
- QatarEnergy/ExxonMobil’s 2.4-Bcf/d Golden Pass LNG (#9) in Sabine Pass, TX, which will start coming online in the first half of 2025;
- Sempra's 0.43 Bcf/d Energía Costa Azul (ECA) LNG Phase 1 in west Mexico, to start up in spring, 2026 (this is a delay, had been scheduled to go online summer of 2025);
- NextDecade Corp.’s 2.3-Bcf/d Rio Grande LNG (#10) in Brownsville, TX, starting up in 2027; and,
- Sempra and ConocoPhillips’s 2-Bcf/d Port Arthur LNG (#11), coming online in 2027-28.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $71.05.
Tuesday, December 31, 2024: 51 for the month; 154 for the quarter, 682 for the year
- None.
Monday, December 30, 2024: 51 for the month; 154 for the quarter, 682 for the year
- None.
Sunday, December 29, 2024: 51 for the month; 154 for the quarter, 682 for the year
- None.
Saturday, December 28, 2024: 51 for the month; 154 for the quarter, 682 for the year
- 40731, conf, Rockport Energy, Camden 10-3 3H,
- 39499, conf, Enerplus, Brown Bear 158-99-36-25-5H,
- 37664, conf, BR, Kellogg Ranch 1A TFH,
RBN Energy: Gray Oak stands out as the only Permian crude pipeline to greenlight an expansion. Archived.
As crude oil production in the Permian continues to grow and pipelines from West Texas to the Gulf Coast edge closer to full utilization, it’s becoming a challenge for producers and shippers alike. Amid this capacity crunch, one pipeline stands out as the only one with a detailed expansion plan: the 850-mile, 900-Mb/d Gray Oak Pipeline from West Texas to Corpus Christi and Sweeny, TX, which started up in late 2019 and became fully operational in early 2020. In today’s RBN blog — the latest in our series on Permian crude oil pipelines — we discuss Gray Oak Pipeline’s dynamic story, including its shifting ownership, strategic connectivity and expansion plans.
In Part 1 and Part 3 of this series, we looked at Longhorn Pipeline and BridgeTex Pipeline, respectively, and what ONEOK has accomplished with these systems since it acquired Magellan. In Part 2, we looked at EPIC’s Crude Pipeline to the Corpus Christi area, which has been operating at full capacity. Today, we’ll cover Gray Oak.
We’ll begin by noting that Gray Oak started up shortly before crude oil demand cratered as the pandemic hit. In response, Permian producers shut in a significant amount of production during the summer of 2020. Additionally, two other new Permian pipelines — also to Corpus Christi — started up during the second half of 2019: Plains All American’s Cactus II (585 Mb/d) and EPIC Crude (400 Mb/d, expanded in 2020 to 600 Mb/d), resulting in a glut of crude pipeline egress.
Despite these challenges, Gray Oak’s outflows quickly ramped up throughout 2020. As shown in Figure 1 below, Gray Oak has operated near its 900-Mb/d capacity (dotted horizontal black line) for some time now. Earlier this year, Gray Oak Pipeline LLC sanctioned a 120-Mb/d expansion following a successful open season. Contracted volume commitments of 80 Mb/d start in April 2025 and one year later another 40 Mb/d is committed to the pipe. Gray Oak could offer early service for new or existing shippers if capacity is desired sooner.
Figure 1. Gray Oak Outflows. Source: RBN Crude Oil Permian
The ownership journey of Gray Oak Pipeline is complicated, to say the least. When the project was in its planning stage, Phillips 66 (P66) held a 75% stake and refining company Andeavor owned the remaining 25%. In 2018, Marathon Petroleum acquired Andeavor for $23 billion, inheriting its 25% stake in Gray Oak (box #1 in Figure 2 below), along with a similar stake in the South Texas Gateway (STG) export terminal in Ingleside, across the bay from Corpus. (More on that later — spoiler alert: STG’s traded hands a couple of times since then.) We should note that Andeavor and its old Andeavor Logistics master limited partnership (MLP) had its own intricate corporate history with Marathon and its MPLX unit.
Much, much more at the link.
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Cheniere
December 30, 2024: Cheniere produces first LNG at Corpus Christi, stage III, link here.
April 16, 2024, flashback:
From RBN Energy, today: new JV's focus is moving Permian natural gas to LNG export terminals. Archived here.
Projects already approved / permitted by the US government ... expected to increase U.S. LNG export capacity to about 25 Bcf/d from the current 14 Bcf/d.
Of that 11 Bcf/d of incremental capacity, more than 8 Bcf/d will be sited along the Texas coast.
These projects include Cheniere Energy’s 1.4-Bcf/d Stage III at Corpus Christi LNG, which is scheduled to begin starting up late this year; QatarEnergy/ExxonMobil’s 2.4-Bcf/d Golden Pass LNG in Sabine Pass, TX, which will start coming online in the first half of 2025; NextDecade Corp.’s 2.3-Bcf/d Rio Grande LNG in Brownsville, starting up in 2027; and Sempra and ConocoPhillips’s 2-Bcf/d Port Arthur LNG, coming online in 2027-28.
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