Locator: 49847B.
Record:
- S&P 500: intra-day record about 10:40 a.m. today; around 6,988
- NASDAQ: intra-day record about 10:40 a.m. today; around 24,020
BRK-B: opens down again today.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) has a massive, core focus on the insurance industry, though it primarily owns property and casualty (P&C) insurers like GEICO and General Re.
- While not heavily invested in health insurers, BRK recently added a stake in UnitedHealth Group ($1.6 billion). It also holds DaVita in the healthcare sector.
GM: beats estimates. Increases dividend by 20%.
Pre-market:
- MU: up $18.
- GLW: up $8.
- SCCO: flat.
- AMD: flat
- AMZN: up $1.47
Medicare: the big question -- did Nancy Pelosi short Humana?
- rate reimbursement is going to remain flat next year
- taking the wind out of the health care industry
- Humana: -16%
- CVS: -11%
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $61.69.
New wells reporting:
- Wednesday, January 28, 2026: 46 for the month, 46 for the quarter, 46 for the year,
- 42035, conf, Slawson, Rebel Federal 6-32-17TFH,
- 40868, conf, Hess, GO-Dustin Brose-156-98-2932H-2,
- Tuesday, January 27, 2026: 44 for the month, 44 for the quarter, 44 for the year,
- None.
RBN Energy: Midland to Echo 2's return to ease Permian crude tightness to Houston. Link here. Archived.
The long-anticipated return of Enterprise Products Partners’ Midland to ECHO 2 Pipeline (M2E-2) to crude oil service is underway, bringing 220 Mb/d of capacity back online for the first time since the end of 2023. The move coincides with Enterprise’s new NGL line, the Bahia Pipeline, which entered service in December. With these changes, Enterprise has become the second-largest owner of outbound Permian crude oil capacity. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at how the line’s return to crude service impacts flows to the Gulf Coast, particularly as the region’s largest crude pipeline, Wink to Webster, has an upcoming 10-day maintenance in March.
A key element of Enterprise’s Permian strategy has been its ability to switch the products some pipelines carry as circumstances and economics change. For the past couple of years, Enterprise has had two major pipelines moving crude from the Permian to Houston — Midland to ECHO 1 (M2E-1, purple line in Figure 1 below) and Midland to ECHO 3 (M2E-3), which represents the company’s 29% undivided interest in the Wink to Webster Pipeline (W2W, orange line). Together, these give Enterprise 1.07 MMb/d of crude takeaway capacity to Houston. A third pipeline, M2E-2 (blue line), has been moving NGLs since December 2023 under the name Seminole (more on that below) but is being returned to crude oil service this month.