Locator: 51844B.
Story of the day: Corning.
- the cover story on Forbes today -- link here; and,
- covered several times on CNBC yesterday.
Saturn: optimum time of the year to view Saturn -- link here.
Overnight headlines:
- Hegseth's major policy speech: link here.
- Thiel buys $130 million storied property in Los Angeles: link here.
- Note: Thiel and family have not formally "left" the US. Their relocation to Argentina is a temporary relocation due to current events in California.
- the strait is back! Saudi crude through the strait climbed from around 850,000 bopd in late August to 6.7 million bopd last week
- China increasing oil purchases
- LNG Canada Phase 2: FID;
- would double capacity to 28 mtpa as Shell sees global demand nearing 700 mtpa by 2050 -- almost double current demand
- current demand: 400 mtpa
- Trump unveils $200 billion South Korean investment in US; Texas, big winner; and, Alaska;
- previously announced; not new; a political speech leading up to midterms
- perhaps most interesting: California joins growing plug-in solar boom as power costs surge.
- the state is the 10th state to allow so-called balcony solar as officials grapple with soaring electricity bills -- Bloomberg
- balcony solar: compact plug-and-play, 1 to 3 lightweight solar panels that attach to balcony railing, with a standard 120-volt wall outlet
- all this tells me: Californians panicking
- DOD to select state for new, massive military base -- Hegseth
- plan for 25,000 troops
- currently:
- Ft Hood: 36,000 to 40,000 active-due soldiers
- renamed Fort Cavazos in 2023, then reverted back to Fort Hood
- Ft Bragg: largest US Army post -- 250,000 total population with 50,000+ active-duty
- geographically largest
- White Sands Missile Range: largest Army-owned installation
- Fort Bliss (Texas/New Mexico): largest active-duty sprawling maneuver post
- DeepSeek: failing as investment vehicle (Chinese LLM) -- link here.
- no matter how bad your portfolio is, it can't possible be this bad.
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Back to the Bakken
Bakken East Pipeline: link here.
- it seems like this took forever; I had forgotten about it
- MDU's WBI Energy reaches positive final investment decision (FID)
- Bakken area to Fargo area (all intrastate, North Dakota)
WTI: $90.41.
New wells reporting:
- Friday, October 2, 2026: 4 for the month, 4 for the quarter, 503 for the year,
- 42193, conf, Whiting, Link 5001 11-18 2BHP,
- 42150, conf, Whiting, Toonie 5001 11-18 3B,
- 42149, conf, Whiting, Toonie 5001 11-18 2BX,
- 41924, conf, Hess, GO-Lemire-157-97-3613H-4,
- Thursday, October 1, 2026: 0 for the month, 0 for the quarter, 499 for the year,
- None.
RBN Energy: FIDs on LNG Canada Phase 2, Coastal GasLink Expansion to Boost Montney Production. Link here. Archived.
The big news this week may have been the final investment decision (FID) on LNG Canada’s Phase 2, but that announcement — spurred in part by recent changes in Canadian tax policy — will have even larger upstream impacts. For one thing, TC Energy will now move ahead with its plan to nearly double the capacity of the massive Coastal GasLink pipeline, which serves LNG Canada. Also, producers in northeastern British Columbia’s Montney Formation can now make firmer plans to significantly ramp up drilling-and-completion activity, an expansion that will have positive effects on condensate production for use in the Alberta oil sands. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll explain why the newly sanctioned LNG Canada expansion signals a “beautiful day” for a wide range of Western Canadian market players.
As you all know by now, the consortium that co-owns the existing LNG Canada Phase 1 — Shell (the operator, with a 40% stake), Petronas (25%, with one-fifth of that implicitly held by MidOcean Energy), PetroChina Co. Ltd. (15%), Mitsubishi Corp. (15%) and Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS, 5%) — has now reached FID on Phase 2. In the team’s September 28 announcement, they said that, like Phase 1 (orange diamond in Figure 1 below), the Phase 2 expansion at Kitimat, BC, will consist of two liquefaction trains and boast a capacity of 14 MMtpa, or about 1.8 Bcf/d. Phase 2 (checkered orange-and-white diamond), which is expected to come online in 2031-32, also will include an additional LNG storage tank, condensate tank and loading berth, as well as expanded utility and process systems.
