Locator: 51815B.
Locator: 51815ELONMUSK.
Anticipation: chart of the day --
Weather: strong nor'easter along the eastern seaboard this weekend; most at risk starting Friday evening and lasting through Sunday morning -- Boston down to Long Island -- much damage anticipated. This reminds me of the 1971 tropical Storm Doria, which has its own wiki page, and which struck the New York and New Jersey region between August 27 and August 28, 1971.
Schwab HQ hosted an evening with Michael Townsend
Managing Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, Schwab Center for Financial Research: last night, September 24, 2026. Two takeaways (and, no Liz Ann Sonders was not there; she is based in NYC; Michael Townsend, 26 years with Schwab, 30 years in DC; photos may be posted later):
- the market doesn't care about politics; it is so important to "keep investing"; don't let the current political events keep you from investing (Schwab talking their book, of course, but had the data to back it up); and,
- people in the audience were truly freaking out about the bond rout.
Query: what is driving the bond rout; what is this all about? Mom-and-pop retail investors should continue to do well with yields? If not trading bonds, they do not have an issue?
Middle East: Saudi and its allies are standing firm with the US and against Iran. This speaks volumes.
I honestly/literally cannot get my head / brain / hands "around" Elon Musk.
Google and Elon Musk just announced a new space-LDC partnership / initiative.
Elon Musk: NY Times and The Wall Street Journal --
- across Texas -- link here --
- it appears the increased interest is due to the effect Elon Musk is likely to have in the mid mid-term elections --
- across the US -- link here -- most striking -- avoiding the entire eastern seaboard -- and Ohio --
Key to map above:
- yellow squares: Tesla
- blue squares: Boring Company
- light blue: Neuralink
- red: SpaceX
Query: what is Elon Musk's boring company doing in Tennessee? You might be surprised.
YouTube: Terafab -- link here. Is Elon Musk also taking on ASML (start about 9:45)?
Back to the Bakken
WTI: $92.98.
New wells reporting:
- Sunday, September 27, 2026: 51 for the month, 131 for the quarter, 488 for the year,
- 42282, conf, Formentera, Fonda-23-02-BAL N513HF,
- Saturday, September 26, 2026: 50 for the month, 130 for the quarter, 487 for the year,
- 42281, conf, Formentera, Fonda-23-02-BAL N611HF,
- Friday, September 25, 2026: 49 for the month, 129 for the quarter, 486 for the year,
- 41769, conf, Hess, EN-Will Trust A-157-94-2734H-5,
- 41533, conf, Devon Energy, Borsheim 33-28 4H,
RBN Energy: market fundamentals as essential as ever in changing energy landscape. Link here. Archived.
The North American energy landscape has changed dramatically since our first School of Energy way back in 2013, but the need to understand market fundamentals has not. Technology, infrastructure, refining constraints, LNG demand, data-center growth and geopolitics are all reshaping how energy markets work — and how they interact — so it’s essential to be able to connect the dots across commodities and stay grounded in supply, demand and infrastructure, even (and especially) when markets inevitably get noisy. That was the focus of our School of Energy: Fundamentals and the subject of today’s RBN blog. Warning: Today’s blog includes some blatant plugs for a newly available replay of our recent conference in Houston.
When we held our first School of Energy, the world was a very different place than it is today. More than a decade later, U.S. crude oil production (dark- and light-blue layers in left graph in Figure 1 below) has jumped to nearly 14 MMb/d. It’s a similar story for natural gas (middle graph), where Lower 48 output has risen to ~110 Bcf/d, and NGLs (right graph), where production from gas processing is now approaching 8 MMb/d. But those production increases weren't because oil and gas prices went up, as they might have in the old days. Instead, we produced more because we figured out how to produce hydrocarbons in ways that were previously thought impossible, bringing on an era of energy abundance in the U.S. that many now take for granted, with markets increasingly balanced on a combination of producer discipline and exports. The share of U.S. production destined for export markets (orange line and right axis) has sharply increased for all three commodities over the past decade, especially crude oil and natural gas (the latter primarily in the form of LNG).
