Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Tuesday Morning -- Scrolling Down X -- April 29, 2025

Locator: 48543ARCHIVES.

Tariffs: that story that Amazon was going to publish tariff cost on each product it sold --> fake story, fake news. Trump fell for it. 

Ethane: China waives tariffs on US ethane imports. On Trump’s 100th day in office. Link here.

The EIA expects total U.S. petroleum products consumption to increase in 2025 and 2026.

CCS, XOM, Calpine, Permian, Gulf of Texas: link here. Great update. 

Gulf of America: doesn't roll off the tongue due to vowel alignment. Gulf of Mexico, worked. Gulf of Texas? Even better.

Scrolling down x:

  • Netflix hit all-time highs today.
  • Chili's Restaurants Parent stock plunges despite huge earnings
  • UPS to cut 20,000 positions in 2025; employs 490,000;
    • UPS stock "pops" after earnings beat; guidance is the concern;
    • guidance is always the concern
  • Amazon (Bezos) launches its first satellites to rival Starlink (Musk)
  • Spain's electricity grid collapse; cause unknown; Spain lost 60% of its power in five seconds;
    • minute-by-minute time line known; but second-by-second time line not known
    • the fact the operators don’t know the cause is more worrisome than the fact it happened;
    • the AI super chips to manage the grid: who made them?
    • 60% of electricity on Spain’s grid was solar-generated at the time of the grid failure; link here;
    • google: solar flares disrupting solar energy; link here;
  • Trump's tariff talks provide relief hopes for Ford, GM
    • also helping Tesla

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The Book Page

Logarithms lead directly to slide rules. From the book below, p. 60:

The production of slide rules, circular slide rules, and slide cylinders came to a halt in 1976, when the first low-cost electronic pocket calculator entered the market.

1976.

Wow. 

I graduated from high school, 1969, and college, 1973. Three years later, the end of the slide rule. I doubt Sophia even knows what a slide rule is. To what extent her older sisters know, I have no idea.

The book this week: The Daring Invention of Logarithm Tables: How Jost Bürgi, John Napier, and Henry Briggs Simplified Arithmetic and Started the Computing Revolution, color edition, Klaus Truemper, c. 2020, updates, 2023, 2024, and 2025. 

Klaus Truemper is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is author of several books in Brain Science, Mathematics, and Computer science.

University of Texas as Dallas? UTD. Just a few miles up the road from where we live. Could be huge beneficiary of Nvidia's announcement to build a supercomputer in Dallas. UTD has transformed in the past five years. New kid on the block. Connection with Nvidia? 

Six links. This is not an investment site and no recommendations are being or implied.

Nvidia is working with its manufacturing partners to design and build factories that, for the first time, will produce Nvidia AI supercomputers entirely in the U.S.
Together with leading manufacturing partners, the company has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test Nvidia Blackwell chips in Arizona and AI supercomputers in Texas. Nvidia Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona. 
Nvidia is building supercomputer manufacturing plants in Texas, with Foxconn in Houston and with Wistron in Dallas.
Mass production at both plants is expected to ramp up in the next 12-15 months.
The AI chip and supercomputer supply chain is complex and demands the most advanced manufacturing, packaging, assembly and test technologies. 
Nvidia is partnering with Amkor and SPIL for packaging and testing operations in Arizona.
Within the next four years, Nvidia plans to produce up to half a trillion dollars of AI infrastructure in the United States through partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Amkor and SPIL.
These world-leading companies are deepening their partnership with Nvidia , growing their businesses while expanding their global footprint and hardening supply chain resilience. 
Nvidia AI supercomputers are the engines of a new type of data center created for the sole purpose of processing artificial intelligence — AI factories that are the infrastructure powering a new AI industry.
Tens of “gigawatt AI factories” are expected to be built in the coming years.
Manufacturing Nvidia AI chips and supercomputers for American AI factories is expected to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and drive trillions of dollars in economic security over the coming decades.
“The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia . “Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resiliency.”

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Ethane

Just a reminder with regard to ethane, the US, shale.

From a reader, January 20, 2021, link here:

I did a double take when you posted that story about the inaugural shipment from the Orbit Terminal on the maiden voyage of the Seri Everest.
That ~900 thousand barrels capacity is almost 4 times larger than the initial 'Dragon Ships' ethane carriers that were launched just 5 years ago.
Prior to that 2016 lifting of ethane from Marcus Hook, there was virtually NO 'industry' of seaborne transport of ethane except for small, infrequent barge transfers in the Baltic region.
The explosive growth of both ethane and propane production from US shales has prompted ...
1. Big build out of new steam crackers and Propane Dehydrogenation Units (PDHs) in India, Europe, and China to process ethane/propane as making products from these raw materials is MUCH cheaper than using naptha, the historical supply which is generally obtained from oil.
2. An entirely new 'industry' has emerged in the building and launching of ships designed for the express purpose of transporting liquified ethane and propane, something never before even contemplated.
There are now 'virtual pipelines' ferrying these products to Indian, Chinese, and European plants. A huge Propane Dehydrogenation Plant is opening next year in Belgium and a massive cracker/PDH complex in Antwerp is set to come online in 2024. US shale is expected to provide virtually all the raw products.

Folks who thought China was going to quit making plastic had no clue.


Huge win for Trump. 

And it comes back to this: who needs whom more?

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