As We Head To Davos, Some Thoughts -- January 20, 2026

Locator: 49757COLLAPSE. 

This was from another "Million Dollar Way" blog on April 10, 2025, link here. 

Collapse of an empire -- some of these have not held up well; most have:

Some thoughts based on recent readings and current events.

Collapse of an empire:

• highly bureaucratic; highly regulated;
• European Unionization of the kingdom
  
• disruption of trading patterns
• failure to address imbalance of trade
• loss of border integrity
• breakdown of social order; social disorder
• petty crime; illicit drug use
• failure of immigrants to assimilate one's new country
  
• multilingual
• dress
• religion
  
• severe maldistribution of wealth;
• egomaniacal leaders; grandiose delusional leaders;
• mega-projects with little social benefit or likelihood of success
• manned voyages to Mars; manned voyages beyond the earth's moon
• bullet trains
• loss of a vibrant two-party political system
• the Californication of US politics (extreme gerrymandering resulting in 100% Democratic-controlled counties)
• bad strategic decisions; losing strategic advantages for no gain
  
• selling the Panama Canal to to Panama for one dollar -- perhaps my favorite
• government leaders unable to think strategically -- added since original post 
• misguided military spending
• $5-million missiles to take out $5,000 drones

The biggest oversight: widespread fraud that federal and state government officials no longer care about or actually encourage. 

Maps Of The Caribbean -- January 20, 2026

Locator: 49756CARIBBEAN. 

Maps of the Caribbean. 

From today, Venezuela, link here:

From 2023: Guyana, Antilles, and West Indies, link here: 

Link here.

So, this is what we have:

• Trinidad and Tobago: Shell.
• Surinam: Apache and TTE.
• Guyana: XOM.
• Venezuela: CVX.

A reader alerted me to a Charles Kennedy article on Guyana, dated March 6, 2023. 

Weekend Forecast For Texas -- Could Be Coldest Day In 30 Years -- January 20, 2026

Locator: 49755WEATHER. 

Our daughter will be racing -- stand-up paddleboarding -- on the Colorado River down in Bastrop, thirty miles east of Austin, this Saturday when the cold weather will be at its worse, or approaching its worse. This is not the Colorado River flowing throught the Grand Canyon -- two different river systems; not related to each other at all.

Forecast (for reference see "the Great Freeze, February, 2021, link here):

She paddle-boarded for a week in the Bergen, Norway, fiords this summer, highs were generally at 60°F, lows at 50°F.

Well -- This Has Been A Short Week -- It's Already Tuesday -- January 20, 2026

Locator: 49754B. 

Texas: way too cold to be up today. Clear, calm, but 40°F, feels like 50. Whoo-hoo. Below freezing tonight and then this weekend forecast for coldest day on record in 30 years. With precip. We'll see. 

Natural gas prices surge: link here.

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Back to the Bakken 

WTI: $60.28. Despite that shares prices of CVX, COP are down.

New wells reporting:

• Tuesday, January 20, 2026: 33 for the month, 33 for the quarter, 33 for the year,
• 41255, conf, Oasis, Erickson 5203 14-25 5BX, 
• 41254, conf, Oasis, Erickson 5203 14-25 4B, 
• 41253, conf, Oasis, Erickson 5203 14-25 3B, 
• 41061, conf, Oasis, Erickson 5203 14-25 2B, 
• Monday, January 19, 2026: 29 for the month, 29 for the quarter, 29 for the year,
• 41856, conf, CLR, Schilke 3-19H, 
• Sunday, January 18, 2026: 28 for the month, 28 for the quarter, 28 for the year, 
• 40247, conf, Hunt Oil, Palermo MCNIC 156-90-22-34H 4, 
• 40077, conf, Devon Energy, Cuda 15-27F 3H, 
• Saturday, January 17, 2026: 26 for the month, 26 for the quarter, 26 for the year, 
• 41350, conf, Iron Oil Operating, Patten 2-27-22H, 
• 36614, conf, BR, Sandi 2B UTFH, 

RBN Energy: AltaGas upsizes midstream infrastructure as western Canadian NGL production hits record high. Link here. Archived.

NGL production in Western Canada hit an all-time high in 2025 and looks to be headed even higher in the years ahead. Major midstream players have been undertaking infrastructure expansions to deal with all the additional gas processing, Y-grade fractionation and exports of valuable products such as propane and butane. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll take a closer look at the expansion plans of AltaGas Ltd., one of Western Canada’s leading midstream operators.

Western Canada set a record for natural gas production in 2025 at 19.1 Bcf/d. With that mark, it stands to reason that the region will also see record output of NGLs, such as ethane, propane, butane, condensate and pentanes-plus (known as field condensate and natural gasoline in the U.S.), the vast majority of which are derived through the processing of NGLs at fractionation plants. Production of mixed NGLs (aka Y-grade) through the first 11 months of 2025 averaged 1.29 MMb/d (dashed red box in Figure 1 below), a gain of 0.06 Mb/d versus the same period in 2024, with the biggest growth coming in the pentanes-plus category (teal bar segments). It is that portion of the NGLs suite that has nearly insatiable demand for use as a diluent in Alberta’s oil sands. As discussed in Yes We Can, we expect that Y-grade output will experience additional volume growth in the range of 300 Mb/d by 2030, which would put total output at around 1.6 MMb/d that year.