Clearing Off The Desktop -- January 15, 2025

Locator: 44689ARCHIVES.

Clearing off the desktop. Some of this interested me last night and some of this interested me earlier today but now none of this interests me, but I need to keep the links for the archives.

If you came here for the Bakken, I highly recommend you skip this page.

Banks: surging profits:

• The WSJ, link here;
• Axios, link here;
• BRK-B: finished up $8.48 / share today; up 1.88% today; closed at $458.51.
• Warren Buffett loves banks

Semaphore business:

• welcome;
• "The Messenger" board weighed shutting down, one year ago, link here;
• "The Messenger," wiki.

Tech:

• first iPhone chips made in America soon to start mass production; MacRumors;
• two years ago, so many said it couldn't be done.
• Nvidia: to establish a "second" headquarters;
• Asian headquarters: Taipei, Taiwan

Linkhorns:

• Abraham Linkhorn (Lincoln); Kentucky History;
• Linkhorns, A Walk on the Wild Side, Literature Network Forums;
• A Walk on the Wild Side, wiki;
• white trash, David Reynolds, Essays, JSTOR;

Biden:

• now we can speak the truth, The New York Times;
• the BBC;

STEO:

• quite incredible when you think about it;

XOM: 

• natural gas discovery off Egypt;

Venture Global:

• Barron's;

Books:

• the best books to read in 2025; yes, 2025; BBC.

Batteries:

• Bjorn Lomborg.

EV:

• California buckles. Reuters.

Holy Mackerel! WTI Spikes -- Due To Biden's Last-Minute Sanctions? If So, He Knew It All Along; Now Leaving It UP For Trump; "Drill, Baby, Drill" Will Open New Plays -- January 15, 2025

Locator: 44688B.

Anduril Industries: something to watch. At wiki.

Profits: link here.

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

WTI: $80.04. Up $2.54; up 3.28%. I mentioned the STEO report on the blog this morning; in addition, CPI numbers were released. History WTI here.

Active rigs: 32.

Five new permits, #41517 - #41521, inclusive:

• Operators: MRO (4); Hess.
• Fields: Bailey (Dunn County); Ellsworth (McKenzie)
• Comments:
• Hess has a permit for a BW-Cushing well, SWNW 33-149-100; 
• to be sited 2070FNL and 1176 FWL, 1920-acre spacing; 33 / 34 / 35 - 149-100;
• MRO has permits for four Bailey oil field wells: Patton, Partridge, Clawson, and Semerad; lot 4, section 7-145-93; and, Patton
  
• to be sited 497/498 FSL and 1098 / 1218 FWL;
• spacing (see disclaimer; I often make typographical errors):
• Patton: sections 1 / 12 - 145-94;
• Partridge: sections 13 / 24 / 25 / 36 - 145-94
• Clawson: sections 13 / 24 / 25 / 36 - 145-94 and sections 18 / 19 / 30 /31 - 145-93
  
• Semerad: sections 18 / 19 /30 / 31 - 145-93
  

With regard to the MRO permits, this map:

Two permits renewed:

• Silver Hill Energy Operating, LLC: one Maple Leaf permit and one Avalanche permit, both in Leaf Mountain oil field; Burke County.

Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 39149, 560, Petro-Hunt, USA 146-97-29B-32-1H,
• 39150, 645, Petro-Hunt, USA 146-97-29B-32-2H,
• 39151, 733, Petro-Hunt, USA 146-97-29A-32-3H,

Six Zavanna wells renamed:

• five Sawyer wells are now Rennerfeldt wells;
• a six well, a Hereford well had a minor name change; is still a Hereford well.

Confirmation Hearings For Secretary Interior, Doug Burgum -- Pending -- January 15, 2025

Locator: 44687TRUMP.

Link here.

Before Trump, CCS was a key component of government policies cutting carbon emissions. 

Now, with Trump elected and nominating a CCS-proponent, Doug Burgum, CCS is considered by some to be an untested boondoggle.

From the linked article:

For some climate activists, carbon capture is a ruse by the fossil fuel sector to forestall the much-needed transition to renewable energy and allow oil companies in some cases to inject carbon dioxide underground to help extract even more petroleum.

For others, pumping carbon dioxide underground is a threat to the property rights of farmers, ranchers and other landowners. “We don’t need to be a dumping ground for everybody’s carbon,” said Scott Skokos, executive director of the Dakota Resource Council, a conservation and farming group that opposes several carbon-capture projects in the state.

“Ultimately, all that carbon is going to be stored underneath a bunch of different farms and you just never know in 20, 30, 40 years if those storage wells are going to hold up or not.”

Now Burgum and his new boss must decide whether to embrace or shun the low-carbon tech that the oil industry loves.

And from the 'net today:

Themes -- 2025 -- Updated

Locator: 44686TECH.

Themes, 2025, linked. here. 

Added today, February 6, 2025: 

The End of The Renewable Energy Transition

Added today, February 6, 2025: 

Collapse of the EV 

Link here. 

Happened so much faster than anyone expected.

Added today, January 15, 2025:

Fourth Industrial Revolution --> Sixth Industrial Revolution

Technology:

• private / public space launches; satellite communication (posted January 15, 2025)
• AI --> large data centers and everything that derives from AI (posted January 15, 2025)
• energy requirements: natural gas, wind, solar
• CHIPS Act, 2022 -- updated two years later; posted January 15, 2025)
• Chatbots, GPT, DeepSeek: link here (posted January 26, 2025)
  
• parameters
• tokens
• learning / training

Space startup Loft Orbital: raises $170 million to expand satellite fleet. Risk / downside: they need to reserve / buy space on other companies' launch vehicles. 

Blue Origin: wiki here.

SpaceX: wiki here.

Comment: when one reads Loft Orbital, it appears to me the company does not have a huge moat. The company's business plan offers a lot of ideas for others.

Bloomberg's Take On The Southern Califronia Fires -- January 15, 2025

Locator: 44685FIRES.

Link here.

Wow, talk about tone-deaf and misunderstanding southern California fires, specifically the January, 2025, Pacific Palisades and the Altadena/Pasadena fries. Wow.

Bloomberg is blaming the firemen for this catastrophe. Wow.

Bloomberg fails to mention the one thing the fireman lacked: water.

Prop 1 was never executed.

One of three existing water reservoirs has been empty since at least 2010.

I've Lost Track -- What Day Is this? January 20th Can't Come Soon Enough -- And On Top Of Everything Else, That's A Federal Holiday -- This Has Happened Only Once Before -- January 15, 2025

Locator: 44684B.

Only once before: that occurrence is .... well, if history doesn't repeat, it certainly rhymes. Link here.  

FDA: bans red dye #3. All of a sudden RFK, Jr., doesn't look so extreme. This was Governor Newson's hobby horse. One of many. Speaking of which: sources suggest that a former HHS official has been tapped to be RFK, Jr's, chief of staff. And that's how it works. 

HHS:

• Heather Flick: no wiki entry; bio here.
  
• an ally to Trump loyalist, Harmeet Dhillon: wiki here; worth reading;
• previously served in multiple top roles at HHS during the first Trump administration

XOM: natural gas discovery off Egypt. Link here.

STEO: I quit following the STEO reports a long time ago, but this certainly caught my attention.

Headlines: at the end of the day -- I'm getting ahead of myself -- Biden is making a lot of news in his last 20 days, but at the end of the day these last-minute actions will be ephemeral (banning oil exploration) or inconsequential (pardons). The real story will be what Trump does; already Trump seems to be making tectonic changes and he hasn't even been sworn in yet.

Exhibit A: California to pull its EPA waiver request regarding trucks.

Daimler EVs: Amazon places its largest-ever order for electric semi trucks. Amazon will add over 200 Mercedes-Benz eActros 600 electirc semi trucks to its fleet later this year (2025).  Link here. These are destined for the UK and Germany. So many stories on so many levels. 

Apple and Nvidia: lots of news in the past 72 hours. I might get to those stories; I might not. 

Biden: we're going to need a whole page to track "Biden-legacy" stories over the next few days. Like every president, Biden is complicated. In Biden's case, he may turn out to be one of the most complicated presidents the US has ever seen. This is just a start:

• BiMaga: link here.
• immigration: link here.
• Bidenomics: link here.

Carl: ever since Carl moved to Bluesky he's become incredibly irrelevant. He used to post really, really good stuff on X -- though I don't agree with his politics -- but ever since he moved to Bluesky I haven't seen much. 

Speaking of which: that MSNBC DEI-hire is another example of the chaos -- used in a positive sense -- that Trump is creating and he hasn't even been sworn in yet. 

Trump: risks being accused of over-promising and under-delivering. But that might be good. 

ERS: why hasn't someone thought about this before now?

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

WTI: $77.72.

New wells:

• Thursday, January 16, 2025: 25 for the month, 25 for the quarter, 25 for the year, 
• 40834, conf, Koda Resources, Stout 1402-1BH,
• 40115, conf, Silver Hill Energy Operating, Morgen Federal 158-93-17-20-10MBH,
• Wednesday, January 15, 2025: 23 for the month, 23 for the quarter, 23 for the year, 
• 40205, conf, Koda Resources, Stout 1402-2BH,
• 40099, conf, Silver Hill Energy Operating, LLC, Morgen Federal 158-93-17-20-1MBH,

RBN Energy: Alaskan crude oil production set to increase, but where will it all go?

After a long decline, crude oil production on Alaska’s North Slope is poised to increase, and it’s possible that by the early 2030s production could return to levels not seen since the turn of the century. It’s an exciting development for the 49^th state, but where will all that oil go? With refining capacity on the decline in California, which has typically handled a lot of Alaska North Slope (ANS) crude, it’s not an easy answer. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the locations where ANS oil production could land — one of the many essential topics covered in our upcoming Future of Fuels report. 

As we discussed in our first blog in this mini-series, Holding Out for a Hero, ANS crude oil production has been sliding for decades but is poised to rebound because of two long-planned projects — Pikka and Willow — which are slated to start in 2026 and 2029, respectively, and begin a new ramp up in Alaskan oil production. Although existing fields will continue to experience natural declines, new projects such as ConocoPhillips’s recently started Nuna drill site (which will add 20 Mb/d) will begin to boost volumes slightly this year. As a result, we expect that 2024 will be the nadir for Alaskan production (at least for the next two decades). The much larger Pikka project, due to start in early 2026, will push production to 490 Mb/d by 2028 (a gain of more than 20% from current levels). With the even larger Willow project starting up in 2029, we project Alaskan production will reach 660 Mb/d by 2032 as Willow ramps up to full operation.