National Day Of Mourning But The NDIC Was "Open For Business" -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44651CARTER.

National Day of Mourning 

Biden's tarnished reputation, The Atlantic, June 9, 2024. Imagine. If this is what The Atlantic is saying about President Biden, imagine what others are saying. 

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

WTI: $73.92.

Active rigs: 34.

Three new permits, #41498 - #41500, inclusive:

• Operator: Enerplus:
• Field: McGregory Buttes (Dunn County)
• Comments:
• Enerplus has permits for three wells in McGregory Buttes, SWSW 34-148-94, MHA Helena; MHA Phoenix; and, MHA Memphis, 
• to be sited 435 FL and 1010/1080 FWL

Nine permits renewed:

• XTO: six of nine in Dunn County; three in Williams County; three in Haystack Butte oil field; three in Lost Bridge oil field; and, three in Hofflund oil  field.

Twenty permits canceled:

• XTO: 15
• WPX: 4
• BR: 1

One producing well (a DUC) reported as completed:

• 38101, 11,222 (my hunch? It's a typo), BR, Stafford 11-34MBH, t--; cum --.

Elon Musk -- Update -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44650MUSK.

Link here.

The billionaire declared himself one of the world’s best players of “Diablo IV,” a blockbuster videogame set in a dark fantasy realm that involves making elixirs and slaying demons. 

“So many life lessons to be learned from speedrunning video games on max difficulty,” Musk wrote on his social-media platform X on Nov. 20, before going on to announce that he’d just cleared the highest tier of a section of the game called “The Pit” in under two minutes. He included a video clip of the milestone.

Such an accomplishment requires more than just expertise in monster slashing. It takes dozens of hours just to reach the highest tier, which is level 150. The Pit was only added to the game in May and the latest season kicked off on Oct. 7, resetting all players’ progression to level 1. That suggests Musk made his way to the top level in 45 days or less.

Musk oversees six companies, including brain-computer startup Neuralink, tunneling startup The Boring Company and artificial-intelligence startup xAI. He’s a prolific poster on the social-media platform X, which he bought in 2022. He is now helping oversee a sweeping revamp of the federal government as co-head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

His vast array of commitments have left everyone wondering: How on Earth did he find the time to do it?

Damir Sabic, a 29-year-old devotee of the Diablo franchise, said it took him about 80 hours to reach the 129th tier of the Pit in December. He said he stopped playing at that point because leveling up became tedious. He described Musk’s claim of clearing the 150th tier in November as “insane.” 

“It’s like sitting all day, every day, at your computer playing,” said Sabic, a 3-D printing artist in Houston. 

Much more at the link but the wrong question is being asked.

Looking at everything Elon Musk is doing, the obvious question is what in the world are the other billionaire CEOs doing to earn their pay?

 *******************************
Boring Under Las Vegas

Link here.

Elon Musk’s Boring Company spent years pitching cities on a novel solution to traffic, an underground transportation system to whisk passengers through tunnels in electric vehicles. Proposals in Illinois and California fizzled after officials and the public began scrutinizing details of the plans and seeking environmental reviews.

But in Las Vegas, the tunneling company is building Musk’s vision beneath the city’s urban core thanks to an unlikely partner: the tourism marketing organization best known for selling the image that “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”

The powerful Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority greenlit the idea and funded an 0.8-mile route at its convention center. As that small “people mover” opened in 2021, the authority was already urging the county and city to approve plans for 104 stations across 68 miles of tunnels.

The project is also realizing Musk’s notion of how government officials should deal with entrepreneurs: avoid lengthy reviews before building and instead impose fines later if anything goes awry. Musk’s views on regulatory power have taken on new significance in light of his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump and his role in a new effort to slash rules in the name of improving efficiency. The Las Vegas project, now well under way, is a case study of the regulatory climate Musk favors.

Because the project, now known as the Vegas Loop, is privately operated and receives no federal funding, it is exempt from the kinds of exhaustive governmental vetting and environmental analyses demanded by the other cities that Boring pitched. Such reviews assess whether a proposal is the best option and inform the public of potential impacts to traffic and the environment.

The head of the convention authority has called the project the only viable way to ease traffic on the Las Vegas Strip and in the surrounding area — a claim that was never publicly debated as the Clark County Commission and Las Vegas City Council granted Boring permission to build and operate the system beneath city streets. The approvals allow the company to build and operate close to homes and businesses without the checks and balances that typically apply to major public transit projects.

Much more at the link. 

Winter Storm Cora In North Texas -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44649TEXAS.

Photo: most intense moment of Winter Storm Cora sweeping through Texas right now. This is why schools in the entire DFW area have been closed today and tomorrow. Today is the worse of it. It will be much improved tomorrow. With a high of 48°F tomorrow means this deep snow won't be around on the weekend.

You can see the snow starting to drift next to the tree in the foreground.

EV Reporting: Cognitive Disconnect -- The Day The Music Died -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44648EVS.

EVs are tracked here.

I'm just clearing out the inbox. This interests me not at all at the moment, but necessary for the archives.

I will post the links with little or no commenting.

Porsche, ZeroHedge, China sales slump. Link here.

China, renews car trade-in subsidy to boost hybrid, EV sales. Link here.

Honda: may delay new EV models due to Donald Trump presidency. Link here.

********************************
EVs

Link here.

Wow, this was talked about on the blog years ago -- how this would absolutely devastate the automobile industry -- trapped between the California mandates and the reality almost everywhere else. The Obama/Biden legacy/reputation, with regard to EVs, will go the way of Angela Merkel in Germany.

The years just keep getting warmer. I mean this facetiously. At first, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told us 2016 was 0.94 degree warmer than the 20th-century average. Then the agency raised its estimate by several steps to 1 degree in 2020 before dropping it back to 0.99 perhaps under Trump influence. With Democrats back in charge under President Biden, 2016 started getting warmer again, reaching 1.03 degrees in 2023. The latest NOAA chart shows it 1.04 degrees warmer than the baseline.

Consider it a small evidence of what David Samuels, in a widely noted article, calls the legacy of Obama-era “permission structures.” By permission structures, he means a “whole of society” strategy of pressure and subtle bullying to force buy-in of Obama goals. I hit on a similar formula in 2012 when I explained that Mr. Obama imposed his will by giving voters “permission to think highly of themselves for thinking highly of him.”

One residue, which NOAA obviously participated in, was the permission structure behind today’s gathering boondoggle created by Obama-era mandated investment in electric vehicles.

A feature Mr. Samuels stresses is an Obamaesque ability to substitute new, instantly embraced ideas for old, instantly embraced ideas. In his first two years, Joe Biden justified his giant increase in EV subsidies and mandates by citing the “existential risk” of global climate change. Then that argument was junked overnight. EVs became a “strategic” technology that must be protected from Chinese competition.

Both arguments were nonsense, as I belabored here, yet were seamlessly echoed in the media in turn. Subsidizing green-energy consumption is simply to subsidize energy consumption, including fossil energy. EVs are “strategic” only for China, to reduce its reliance on imported oil in anticipation of military conflict with the U.S. For the rest of the world, including the U.S., electric cars are a consumer technology, albeit a fast-emerging and promising one. Sensibly, they’re also a technology that should have been left to consumers and carmakers to adapt and develop without distorting handouts and mandates.

The result is finally in view: a colossal self-destruction of the Western auto industry, with Germany’s at the forefront. Volkswagen is in a panic about Chinese competition to the money-losing EVs that Berlin forces the company to sell. Germany’s export-led economy is in free fall. Its bellwether auto giant, VW, is pursuing its first-ever domestic factory closures and layoffs.

Likewise, Ford CEO Jim Farley sees his company’s survival in the U.S. threatened by Chinese EVs given the tens of thousands of dollars Ford already loses on each of its government-mandated electric vehicles. The author of Germany’s auto mess, Angela Merkel, is now reviled as an unprincipled bandwagon grabber.

Don’t kid yourself.

The same reputational fate is coming for Messrs. Obama and Biden. Mr. Biden’s EV protectionism is America’s admission of defeat. The U.S. went from “Americans must buy EVs to save the planet” to “Americans must be prevented from buying cheap, high-quality Chinese EVs to preserve a government-created domestic boondoggle.”

 Much more at the link.

*********************************
Local -- North Texas
High Income Areas

My oberservation: our area saw incredible penetration of Tesla EVs, including the Cybertruck, starting several years ago.

All of a sudden, everything, with regard to EVs, seems to have plateaued. I have seen no additional charging points being installed. No change in the number of service stations across the entire region.

On a daily basis, I see one -- exactly one -- Cybertruck. 

Sophia, age 10, fifth grader, says she and her friends call the Cybertruck a garbage truck. That was unsolicited. She told me that as a Cybertruck passed us going in the opposite direction. She says they refer to it as a "garbage truck" because that's what it looks like to them.

Lowering Risk Of Death From Any Cause -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44647COFFEE.

Link here. Timing is most important but look at the amount of coffee ...

Study shows having 2-3 cups is the ‘sweet spot’ for longevity, but daytime java drinkers don’t enjoy the benefit.

Here’s some promising news for coffee enthusiasts, particularly those who prefer their caffeine fix in the morning hours. A new study examining over 40,000 American adults suggests that the timing of coffee consumption might be just as important as how much you drink when it comes to living a longer life.

Demographics Page Updated -- Xennials -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44646DEMOGRAPHICS.

Demographics tracked here.

Added today:

January 9, 2025: Xennials, 1977 - 1983. Wiki entry.

• coined 2014
• micro-generation: on the cusp of the Generation X and Millennial demographic cohorts
• analog childhood and digital young adulthood
• analog: "the big hand is on the 9 and the little hand ..." 
• digital: flashing digits
  
• added to ODE, 2020; added to OED, 2021
• 1977 - 1983 (1980)
  
• 14 years old: 1994 -- 
• Jeff Bezos founded Cadabra, later named Amazon
  
• 20 years old: 2000 ("Y2K")
  
• dot-com bubble burst
• Compaq iPaq: first wi-fi-enabled device
• GPS authorized by Congress for public use
  
• personal milestones
• our first daughter: 1979
• our second daughter: 1983

National Day Of Mourning -- President Carter -- Business As Usual Comes To A Halt -- January 9, 2025

Locator: 44645B. 

From overseas: why does The Daily [London] Mail always do such a better job than US media. Much of the information presented here I have not seen elsewhere. Link here.

Topics on live/streaming television this morning coming out of southern California:

Southern California: local newscasters a bit more upbeat as the winds die down. From 70+ mph winds down to gusts of only 65+ mph. This was at 3:05 a.m. Pacific Time. "It won't be until late Friday night that we get a big break (with regard to wind, humidity)." 

Palisades Fire: at 17,234 acres; 0% contained. Reminder: the Malibu Fire in 2018 started November 8, 2018, and was not fully contained until November 21, 2018. That fire burned just shy of 100,000 acres. Link here. The difference: the number of structures destroyed. Malibu, 2018: 1,643; Palisades, to date: 2,000+ -- which is why CNN is reporting this is the worst such fire in LA's history.

Los Angeles fire department budget cut:

With inflation: budget should have been increased by 5 to 15%; not decreased by 2%, so we have a 7 to 17% deficit / swing.

With recent history: we know that dollar damage from these fires will only get worse, which adds another 5 to 15% need. So that 2% cut is a ridiculous headline. Another example of reporters failing to ask the "right" question.

Water: it turns out that the "big story" coming out of this horrendous story did turn out to be "water." The issue was brought up first by a private realtor which the city was quick to deny.

Most amazing: water drops from the air seem to be incredibly effective. But it seems the "drops" are few and far in between. [Just after posting that, the live stream is talking about the lack of air drops. Apparently they have "one" helicopter." The city is able to drop water from the air 24 hours/day. The limiting factor: high wind, which is currently not a problem. But "one" helicopter? How many helicopters would $20 million buy?

Planning; the city was prepared for one major fire, maybe two major fires, but not at all prepared for more than that. Per LAFD chief in early press conference. Pasadena/Altadena fire chief alluded to the same: simply not prepared for the worst. With all the emphasis on global warming since 1994 and concerns for such fires, it's surprising not more was done with regard to "infrastructure" to prepare for fire situations getting worse.

California GDP / national GDP: will be interesting to watch over the next twelve months.

California housing insurance, from Bloomberg today:

The conflagrations tearing across Los Angeles are on track to be among the most expensive wildfire disasters in US history, draining insurance coffers and threatening California’s massive state-sponsored insurance program. 

Losses from the fires “could push insurance markets over the brink in California,” said Michael Wara, a senior researcher for climate and energy at Stanford University and a wildfire expert. 

It’s an unprecedented test of the FAIR plan, the state-sponsored insurer of last resort. 

Pacific Palisades is the high-cost neighborhood at the center of the Palisades Fire. 

The FAIR plan has seen its exposure there skyrocket to $5.89 billion. Its policies in one ZIP code central to Pacific Palisades grew 85% between 2023 and 2024. 

Read More: Insurers of Last Resort’ Are Absorbing Trillions in Housing Risk.

At least three fires continued to spread rapidly on Wednesday, more than a day after the initial fire outbreak. The Palisades Fire destroyed 300 structures and 13,306 remain threatened. The Hurst Fire, burning northwest of Los Angeles and Burbank, has threatened another 40,000 buildings, while the Eaton Fire burning near Pasadena has endangered more than 28,000 structures.

From wiki:

EVs: yet to be talked about -- fire departments not concerned about ICE vehicles exploding or burning; they are incredibly concerned about EVs burning and exploding. Yet to be talked about.

Water: more and more reports coming in from reporters "boots on the ground" -- firemen have no water to put out fires.

Local: that northern Texas storm has not yet affected us in the DFW area. It's 30°F right now, at 5:09 a.m. CT.

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

WTI: $73.38.

New wells:

• Friday, January 10, 2025: 15 for the month, 15 for the quarter, 15 for the year,
• 40084, conf, Hess, EN-Halvorson-157-93-3229H-5,
• Thursday, January 9, 2025: 14 for the month, 14 for the quarter, 14 for the year,
• 40758, conf, Neptune Operating LLC, Lee South 17-8-5 7H,
• 40563, conf, Empire North Dakota LLC, Sandpiper 29 1H,

RBN Energy: final rules for 45V tax credit coudl help clear a path for clean hydrogen. 

The long-delayed rules around the federal government’s Hydrogen Production Tax Credit (PTC), also known as 45V, had been the subject of heated debate — and lobbying — since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) way back in August 2022. But after more than a year of speculation — and with the Biden administration in its last days — the final rulemaking has at last been published. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at how the final rulemaking compares with the initial guidelines established in December 2023, detail the key areas where the rules have been made more lenient, and explain why clean hydrogen still faces an uncertain future, while also previewing our first Drill Down report of 2025. 

There was a lot of enthusiasm around hydrogen after passage of the IRA, with the initial guidance around the PTC widely expected to be announced within a year, or by August 2023. It soon became clear that extensive debates over the rulemaking continued inside the Biden administration and that informal deadline came and went without much notice. The initial guidance was finally rolled out in late December 2023, which closely followed a draft that was leaked a couple weeks earlier. Publication of the proposed rulemaking then began a 60-day comment period.