Locator: 51030B.
Politics: UK PM Starmer resigns as Britain faces its seventh leader in 10 years. This is why Starmer failed according to Gemini:
Investing / market: this market is so crazy, this is the best I can do at the moment -- futures, Monday morning --
Movies: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
The movie will be a blockbuster or a disaster, depending on word-of-mouth / critical reviews within 72 hours of its release July 17, 2026. The definition of blockbuster / disaster will be based on financial success / failure. It will not be based "on the film itself." That will take years.
My hunch: its all-star cast will save the movie financially, but the movie won't have legs. It will be a must-see movie ... but just once. It's not a movie that will generate a following like the great movies of the past.
There's going to be a lot of articles on this movie between now and July 20, 2026. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey will be a movie version of The Kardashians. The movie will be "famous" for being "famous." The movie will be a "must-see" because of the "must-see" hype. I have no desire to see it. My wife does.
Matt Damon doesn't have the gravitas to play Odysseus.
If the movie fails, it will be compared to David Lynch's Dune.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey cost a reported $250 million to produce. Industry estimates suggest Universal Pictures added an additional $100 million to $150 million for global marketing. Together, the film's total estimated budget, including production and marketing, is between $350 and $400 million. The first movie in the Star Wars franchise, cost $11 million with an additional $26 million spent by 20th Century Fox for prints, negatives and advertising.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $75.40. Already volatile, it's going to be even more volatile this week.
New wells reporting:
- Tuesday, June 23, 2026: 27 for the month, 183 for the quarter, 340 for the year,
- 41682, conf, Devon Energy, Johnson 27-34 8H,
- Monday, June 22, 2026: 26 for the month, 182 for the quarter, 339 for the year,
- 41610, conf, Hess, BL-Mortenson-LE-156-95-2234H-1,
- Sunday, June 21, 2026: 25 for the month, 181 for the quarter, 338 for the year,
- None.
- Saturday, June 20, 2026: 25 for the month, 181 for the quarter, 338 for the year,
- None.
RBN Energy: key step can help gas pipelines boost regulatory certainty, limit court challenges. Link here. Archived.
Open seasons are a key part of marketing capacity for gas pipeline and storage projects, but they can also raise several regulatory questions. It starts with determining whether an open season is legally required or is simply an expected part of the process, and extends to the nuts and bolts of how it should all be designed and run. And the answers depend on what kind of open season it is. In today’s RBN blog, we take a deep dive into the ins and outs of a gas project open season.
This is our second blog in a three-part series on open seasons. As we covered in Part 1, an open season is essentially a competitive bidding process in which any qualified shipper can compete for firm pipeline capacity. That capacity might be on a brand-new pipeline, an expansion of an existing system, or space that’s opened up because current shippers decided to give some back or it was simply unsubscribed. The rules and customs vary depending on the situation, and there are big differences in how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulates natural gas and liquids (crude oil, refined products and NGLs) pipelines. Things get even looser with intrastate pipelines and gathering systems, where there are no federal rules to worry about — just state rules and commercial norms. In this series, we're focusing on the interstate world, where open seasons are pretty formalized and can carry real consequences.
Today, we’re zeroing in on natural gas, including how open seasons connect to precedent agreements and certificate proceedings. (A precedent agreement is a binding commercial contract in which a shipper commits to reserve and pay for transportation capacity, usually contingent on the pipeline project being built or expanded. The agreement outlines key terms such as volume commitments, contract length, rates, receipt and delivery points, and conditions required for the project to proceed.) In Part 3, we'll tackle services by crude oil, refined products and NGL pipelines, where the common-carrier model — with all its quirks like proration, committed versus uncommitted service, and contract terms — affects the need and terms for open seasons. It’s a dense regulatory topic, but we’ll break it down in a way that we hope can keep you awake.
[There's a huge photo at the link above, but it's not worth including. It's simply a photograph of a pipeline under construction.]
