Texas Manufacting Index; California Dreamin; And, The Bakken -- July 28, 2025

Locator: 48704B.

Texas manufacturing index, July, 2025:

• manufacturing index surges to three-year high!
  
• Breitbart link here;
• less breathess, Dallas Fed link here.

California dreamin’:

• links everywhere;]
• the Santa Ynez Unit (SYU) offshore oil production off the California coast is partially up and running again as of My 15, 2025. Production re-started from the Harmony platform on ay 15, 2025.
  
• Doug Burgum's Dept of Interior moved application through regulator process in Sacramento, CA
  
• flowing at 6,000 bpd; 
production sent to the Las Flores Canyon processing facility
• this represents the restart of the first of three platforms within the SYU, which had been shut down since a 2015 spill;
• 
the first of two platforms is  expected to come back on line July, 2025, this month;
• the second of two platorms to come back on line in August, 2025
• sstimated to hold 190 million bbls of oil
• 
the Bakken is producing more tha one million bopd; 
• thus Santa has 190-days of Bakken production

• however, 3 x 6,000 bonpd = 20,000 bbls oil

• 190 million / 60,000 bbs = about twenty-five years, assuming no additional discoveries (unlikely
• everything above, especially the calculations, needs to be fact-checked.

BRK-B:

• on May 2: trading at $540
• today trading at $482

• down 11% since May 2, 2025
• but even worse, not participating in the tech / NASDAQ / S&P 500 rally
  

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $67.71.

Active rigs: 31.

Three new permits, #42161 - #42163, inclusive:

• 
Operator: Hess

• Field: Beaver Lodge (Williams)

• Comments:

• Hess has permits for three B-Odegaard / BL-Odegaard-E wells: 
• to be sited 455 FNL and 1259 / 1259 / 1325 FEL;

Both NVDA And AMD Hit 52-Week Highs Today -- July 28, 2025

Locator: 48703AMD.
Locator: 48703NVDA.

NVDA does not surprise me. AMD does.

Chart of the day.

The Book Page -- July 28, 2025

Locator: 48702BOOKS.

Tag: movies

No notes yet but this is where the notes on Clicked will be posted.

MOTION PICTURES + MONTAGE = CINEMA.

The book:

Suddenly Something Clicked: The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design, Walter Murch, c. March, 2025.

The author is 81 years old at the time of this writing. He had been working on this book for quite some time but never had time until the Covid lock down to complete it.

This is the first in a series of three on movie-making; the second and third volumes have already been completed and will be released "at the appropriate time."

It's hard to believe but the author has also included 173 short quotes from others -- quotes which he calls "fortunes" -- come from that small piece of paper with a printed quote one finds in fortune cookies. It's quite unique. I've not seen this before.

In addition, many links to the internet ("http" links) are accompanies by a QR code in the margins -- and the few I have tried, really do work. 

This book is going to be filed with cocktail chatter and will be required reading by USC students majoring in the theater arts.

For example, in the introduction, p. 8:

A constant question during production, and especially in the editing and mixing rooms, is: "This is really neat, but will audiences understand and accept it?" Think of Jean-Luc Godard in 1959, experimenting with his jump cuts in Breathless. Or us twenty years later, when we were cutting and mixing the sound for Apocalypse Now in the never-before-attempted spit-surround LFE (low-frequency enhancement) format of what became 5.1 sound.

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Blade Runner

Set in 2019. Think about that.

Released in 1982. From a screenplay that is an adaptation from a 1968 novel.

Two years before Apple released a sledgehammer on IBM.

Apple released its iPhone in 2007.

The first commercially available cell phone was released in 1983.

Monday Morning Market Opens -- July 28, 2025

Locator: 48701ARCHIVES.

AI: 

• start with this link: the chip war, 2022;
• that will take you to this link, one of the better blogs on the AI story; and,
• that will take you to the ASML story.

Broadcom: up 92% this past year.

AMD: surging. 

Intel: up almost 2% today. From Cramer:

BRK-B: down slightly today, but essentially flat. 

******************************
AI -- Film Editing

Link here.

From the book: Suddenly Something Clicked: The Languages of Film Editing and Sound Design, Walter Murch, c. March, 2025.

Walter Murch:

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The Book Page

My AI library:

• The Story of Semiconductors, John Orton, c. 2004. The most challenging by far.
  
• The Innovators: How A Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson, c. 2015. 
• The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created The Modern World, Simo Winchester, c. 2018.
• Chip War: The Fight For the World's Most Critical Technology, Chris Miller, c. 2022. This was the first book I read after starting my pivot into AI.At the time, I think, I had only invested in Nvidia. After reading this book and receiving comments form readers I started positions in most of these chip companies. Not all, but many. Had a reader not alerted me to AVGO, I might have missed it. Up almost 100% this past year per CNBC  this morning.
  

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Reality Sucks

Link here.

*********************
Word For The Day: "Coalface" 

"Coalface" primarily refers to the exposed surface of a coal seam where mining occurs, but it's also used figuratively to describe the practical, hands-on part of any work or activity, often contrasted with more managerial or theoretical aspects. It can also refer to the actual workplace where difficult or strenuous work is done.

Synonyms?

• "at the coalface"
• "in the trenches"
• "where the rubber meets the road"
• "out of the trenches into the storm of shrapnel"
  

NASCAR Yesterday -- A Great Race -- July 28, 2025

Locator: 48700NASCAR.

Another "overtime" finish.

Big story: would the leaders run out of "gas"?

Bubba was said to have been in serious situation, at huge risk of not finishing, likely to run out of fuel on last lap.

In fact, Bubba finished.

And finished first. 

"Bubba Wallace wins Brickyard 400 to become Indy's first Black winner." Bismarck Tribune. Only The Bismarck Tribune had this story on my x feed.

*********************************
Why Was This Not A Front-Page Story In TWSJ?

Link here.

More from TWSJ link:

Every year, a few hundred elite high-school students from all over the planet gather at the International Mathematical Olympiad. This year, those brilliant minds were joined by Google DeepMind and other companies in the business of artificial intelligence. They had all come for one of the ultimate tests of reasoning, logic and creativity.

The famously grueling IMO exam is held over two days and gives students three increasingly difficult problems a day and more than four hours to solve them. The questions span algebra, geometry, number theory and combinatorics—and you can forget about answering them if you’re not a math whiz. You’ll give your brain a workout just trying to understand them.

Because those problems are both complex and unconventional, the annual math test has become a useful benchmark for measuring AI progress from one year to the next. In this age of rapid development, the leading research labs dreamed of a day their systems would be powerful enough to meet the standard for an IMO gold medal, which became the AI equivalent of a four-minute mile.

But nobody knew when they would reach that milestone or if they ever would—until now.

Oil Stocks Higher After EU-US Trade Deal -- Manic Monday -- July 28, 2025

Locator: 48699B.

Cramer drops the f-bomb. Almost walks off-stage. Co-hosts cooled him down. The f-bomb has been dropped on live television may times. This should be a non-story, but it was pretty amazing. Cramer was upset with folks suggesting the US economy was not doing well -- which, by the way, is the mantra of his own party.

EU-US trade deal: what folks are missing -- we avoided a trade war with Europe. 

Television: essay on "Bear" --  NY Times. Both the television show and David French's opinion getting rave reviews as "Bear" enters its fourth season. I spotted this one -- the TV show -- early on and watched the first season, but never returned to the show.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $66.46. Oil up 2% after EU-US trade deal; US LNG stocks surge o EU energy deal.

• an outlier? Javier Media? Link here. Or appropriately bullish?
  

New wells:

• Tuesday, July 29, 2025: 41 for the month, 41 for the quarter, 471 for the year,
• 41526, conf, CLR, Syverson 7-12HSL,
• Monday, July 28, 2025: 40 for the month, 40 for the quarter, 470 for the year,
• 40682, conf, Oasis, Ongstad 5795 13-15 5B,
• 40681, conf, Oasis, Ongstad 5795 13-15 4B,
• Sunday, July 27, 2025: 38 for the month, 38 for the quarter, 468 for the year,
• 41347, conf, CLR, Syverson 6-12H,
• 40680, conf, Oasis, Ongstad 5795 13-15 2B,
• 40580, conf, Oasis, Ongstad 5795 13-15 3B,
• Saturday, July 26, 2025: 35 for the month, 35 for the quarter, 465 for the year,
• 41133, conf, Petro-Hunt, Klevmoen Trust 153-95-20A-32-1HS,

RBN Energy: the theme for RBN's 2025 School of Energy: you ain't seen nothin' yet!

It's an integrated energy market that stretches across the North American continent, from Texas and Florida to the mountains of British Columbia and Canada’s industrial heartland in Ontario/Quebec — a cross-border network so deeply connected, it functions as one massive, interdependent system for oil, natural gas and NGLs. That system is undergoing major shifts and challenges, driven not only by changing supply/demand dynamics and evolving infrastructure within the market itself, but also by powerful external forces, including regulatory policies and political pressures. That’s why we couldn’t think of a better time — or a better place — to host RBN’s 19th School of Energy than in Calgary next month. In today’s RBN blog — a blatant advertorial — we’ll highlight how our upcoming conference will dig into how the interconnected energy landscape is changing and why understanding those shifts is more critical than ever. You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet!