Locator: 51737B.
Anthropic: will partner with Novo Nordisk.
Eye-opening. The 500 "colleges" in the US where students are not re-paying their loans. Link here. All of a sudden, it's starting to make sense. See this link on the blog if that link above is broken.
California billionaire tax: making news on CNBC in early morning shows.
Canada: to "join" the EU. Needs new markets. Not feeling the love from the US.
Pre-market:
Is tech back today?
- INTC:in pre-market trading, INTC is surging on rumors that it may partner with SK Hynix to manufacture memory chips on US soil.
- Micron: surging today on news that it has announced the Ryzen AI Max PRO 400 Series processors and the Ryzen AI Halo platform for local AI computing. These processors combine graphics, compute, and AI into one system which I believe Apple has been doing for years.
- Nvidia: was up slightly yesterday and in pre-market today looks like it might be up a bit.
- AVGO: up a bit in pre-market trading.
- QCOM: ditto, AVGO.
- Skyworks: yesterday, surged $10 on a $80 stock. Holds gains today.
- AAPL: flat in pre-market trading. After being slightly negative overnight, is now slightly green in pre-market trading.
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Back to the Bakken
Most exciting right now: it looks like CLR is starting to report production from its Brakken FIU wells. See this post. From yesterday's DAR:
Six producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:
- 40056, 2,406, CLR, Brakken FIU 2-6H, McKenzie, with regard to this well, see this post.
- 42215, 1,499, CLR, Louisville FIU 3-7H, McKenzie,
- 42216, 1,309, CLR, Louisville FIU 4-7H, McKenzie,
- 42217, 1,123, CLR, Louisville FIU 5-7H, McKenzie,
- 42241, 1,453, CLR, Addyson 6-14H, Williams County;
- 42447, 533, Petro-Hunt, Torgerson 158-94-10B-15-1HS, Mountrail County.
WTI: $104.10. That's actually down 1.6% over at oilprice. Down $1.66. What's the crawler at CNBC doing? $104.
New wells reporting:
- Thursday, September 17, 2026: 38 for the month, 118 for the quarter, 475 for the year,
- 41728, conf, BR, HBU Hazel 7S MBH,
- 41637, conf, BR, HBU Badlands 9S MBH,
- Wednesday, September 16, 2026: 36 for the month, 116 for the quarter, 473 for the year,
- 42027, conf, Oasis, Milkweed 5302 14-36 4B,
- 41720, conf, BR, HBU Hazel 2N, MBH,
- 41636, conf, BR, HBU Badlands 8S MBH,
RBN Energy: E&Ps favor shareholders as balance sheets strengthen. Link here. Archived.
After years of relentless balance-sheet repair, the upstream oil and gas industry may be reaching an important turning point in its capital-allocation strategy. Stronger commodity prices boosted cash flow and free cash flow for our universe of 35 E&Ps in Q2 2026, while restrained capital spending kept reinvestment rates in check. With industry leverage near its lowest level in years, a growing number of financially stronger producers are shifting incremental cash away from debt reduction and toward share repurchases and other shareholder returns. In today’s RBN blog, we review Q2 2026 cash allocation and analyze a trend that is far from uniform, with sharply different cash-flow dynamics and priorities among Oil-Weighted, Diversified and Gas-Weighted E&Ps.
The E&Ps in our study universe have spent the past several years methodically reducing the impact of leverage on their balance sheets. As shown in Figure 1 below, the group’s debt-to-capital ratio has fallen 17 percentage points, from 39% in 2020 to just 22% as of June 30. That represents a dramatic change from previous industry cycles, when E&Ps routinely relied on substantial debt to fund aggressive drilling programs and pursue rapid production growth. The industry overall is now in strong financial condition, although several companies still need to shore up their balance sheets. For others, however, the heavy lifting on deleveraging appears largely complete, opening the door to redirect more free cash flow toward shareholders.
