CLR With Two New Permits; WTI Drops Below $70 -- February 25, 2025

Locator: 48426B.

Victor Davis Hanson: Maine pulls a South Carolina. Link here. Get out the popcorn. 

White House daily briefing: much-watch television.  

Investing: not for the timid. But, wow, what incredible opportunities if one stays cool, calm, and collected. I wish I could say more; not tonight. Maybe some other day.

Amazon: is amazing. 

This afternoon, about 2:00 p.m. I ordered a Seagate external drive; it arrived at my doorstep at 8:00 p.m. this evening.

Apple products: are amazing. They simply work. 

By the way, in today's Oval Office visit with the White House Press Corps, President Trump mentioned only one US company and one CEO by name -- Tim Cook -- and he spent quite some time talking about Tim Cook and Apple. Tim Cook has earned every penny of his salary this year.

The Atlantic: of all the mainstream media I read, and I read a lot, The Atlantic has changed the most. It's amazing. Its political slant is fascinating. I assume I will renew my subscription, but the magazine is becoming more and more irrelevant. 

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Music Interlude

Link here.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $69.11.

Active rigs: 32.

Two new permits, #41642 - #41643, inclusive:

• Operator: CLR
• Field: West Capa (Williams)
• Comments:
• CLR has permits for two Klepp wells, NENE 13-154-97; 
• to be sited 302 FNL and 977 / 945 FEL

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Technology

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Medical Note

A most interesting phenomenon earlier this evening. 

About 7:30 p.m. CT this evening, I may have suffered a very, very minor neurological event -- all of a sudden I lost all ability to recall where I posted information on my hard drive and on my blog. It was incredibly "scary" but also very, very interesting. I honestly lost all ability to find files on my hard drive, and I certainly couldn't blog. In addition, my vision was became an issue. For about an hour I was unable to focus. I didn't have double vision or blurred vision, it was as if each eye worked independently but used together it was almost impossible to read. It was if the left half of the page was shifted up a half line and the right half of the page was shifted down a half line, if that makes sense.

I was interrupted by a phone call from my daughter and one of my granddaughters. Both phone calls went very, very well. And after about thirty minutes on the phone (two different conversations; one of which was "FaceTime") everything seemed back to normal. And now, blogging and updating files on the hard drive -- everything seems back to normal. 

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Reminiscing

Going through some old memorabilia tonight, my wife stumbled across this e-mail note from some fifteen years ago, recalling a conversation with our old granddaughter who was about eight years old at the time.

The screenshot:

The Buzz -- February 26, 2025

Locator: 48425BUZZ. 

Predictable: after AP sues to get back into the White House press pool, the Trump administration will change the "unwritten" rules:

Stacey Abrams: billionaire! Link here. 

A climate group linked to high-profile Democrat Stacey Abrams was granted $2 billion by the Biden administration in a "scheme" of "wasteful" spending.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made a revelation that the Biden administration was allowing just eight entities to distribute $20 billion of taxpayer dollars "at their discretion."

Stacey Abrams was in charge of the "clearing house" to manage $2 billion of that $20 billion: included in the funds was a $2 billion grant to Power Forward Communities, a nonprofit with ties to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams that seeks to "reduce our impact on the climate" by financing the replacement of household appliances in lower-income communities with green alternatives.

Warren Buffett: annual letter. 

Apple: one-half trillion dollars to be spend in the US over the next four years -- and Apple will start with $500 million (?) for Houston. Link here.

Apple: a folding phone. 

Apple: TSMC.

Apple. Google.

Apple:

X-35B: link here.

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Locator: 48424B.

Victor Davis Hanson: the truth and troubles of left politics.  Tuesday, February 25, 2025. Must-watch. Ukraine: biggest disaster for Russian since Stalingrad. Starts with Joy Reid. Great, great video.  Analysts who scoff at Trump's "rare earths" negotiations with Zelenskyy simply don't get it. VDH explains it; fascinating,

See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. Google: title IX lawsuit texas.

Texas. Wins lawsuit against Biden / US Dept of Eduction, Title IX.

SRE: ouch. Was up 5% earlier this morning in pre-market trading; now slumps / plummets almost 13%. Raises dividend. At the end of the day, that’s all fine. Big miss. CEO seems unconcerned. Keep your eye on the long game. Was the huge miss a reflection of California’s economy? I have no idea.

Reports Q4 revenue $3.76 billion, consensus $4.73 billion [ouch]. Sempra Energy cuts FY25 EPS view to $4.30-$4.70 from $4.90-$5.25[double ouch].

“With the reset of our guidance in 2025, we are setting a new foundation for a decisive decade of growth,” said Jeffrey W. Martin, chairman and CEO of Sempra. “We are also announcing a record five-year capital plan of $56 billion and raising the company’s long-term EPS growth rate to 7%-9%. 

Over half of planned capital expenditures are earmarked for Texas, where significant new investments are needed to expand and modernize the energy grid. This is consistent with Sempra’s 2030 aspirations of producing over 50% of its earnings from the State of Texas.

SBUX: fourth consecutive quarter of losses; Starbucks to cut 1,000 corporate jobs. Will shrink menu by 30% next week.

Starbucks’ sales have slipped for four straight quarters, the longest decline in years. 

Some customers stopped going to Starbucks because of high prices for drinks and long wait times, and hundreds of its stores have voted to unionize in protest of pay, benefits and working conditions. 

More than 30% of Starbucks’ orders now come from customers ordering off their phones and picking them up. This influx of mobile orders has sometimes strained Starbucks workers during rush hours. 

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $70.33. Barely holding above $70.

New wells:

• Wednesday, February 26, 2025: 52 for the month, 97 for the quarter, 97 for the year,
• 40495, conf, Hess, GO-Olson-157-98-2536H-3,
• Tuesday, February 25, 2025: 51 for the month, 96 for the quarter, 96 for the year,
• 40249, conf, Hess, GO-Olson-157-98-2536H-2,

RBN Energy: Mexico's energy strategy may rest on fate of natural gas pipelines. 

A significant shift is underway within Mexico’s energy landscape, reflected by the development of large-scale oil and gas infrastructure projects in the country, particularly the Southeast Gateway and Sierra Madre gas pipelines that would move U.S.-sourced natural gas across Mexico. These projects — the first an undersea pipe in the Gulf of Mexico and the second a pipe across the country’s northern tier — would enhance Mexico’s gas transport capacity while supporting power generation and industrial development. Mexico, which is already heavily reliant on imports of U.S. gas, is forecast to see gas demand rise in the coming years as domestic production drops. In today’s RBN blog, we look at those two pipelines, their challenges, and how the potential for U.S. tariffs on Mexican imports might complicate the future of both projects.

The Southeast Gateway Pipeline (dashed yellow line in Figure 1 below), also known as Gasoducto Puerta al Sureste, is a $3.9 billion (79 billion Mexican Peso) project led by TC Energy in partnership with Mexico’s state-owned Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) that is slated to come online in May. (Allseas, a U.S. contractor, said in January that it had completed laying the offshore sections of the pipeline.) The conduit extends TC Energy’s existing 2.6-Bcf/d Sur de Texas-Tuxpan undersea pipeline (magenta line), which runs from Brownsville, TX, to Tuxpan. (As we noted in Southern Cross, Sur de Texas-Tuxpan connects with Enbridge’s Valley Crossing pipeline at the border. The gas for Southeast Gateway would be sourced from the Agua Dulce hub in South Texas.)

Figure 1. The Southeast Gateway Project. Source: RBN

The 444-mile (715-km), 1.3-Bcf/d undersea pipeline would link three key ports — Tuxpan and Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz state and Dos Bocas in Tabasco state. Its end users would likely include existing (about 240 MMcf/d) and future CFE power plants on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula that should begin service this year. (CFE, one of Mexico’s largest state-owned enterprises, provides transmission services and distributes electricity; generates and sells electricity; and imports, exports, transports, stores, purchases and sells natural gas, coal and other fuels. It also develops and executes engineering projects, research, and geological and geophysical activities; and oversees the development and implementation of energy sources.)