For The Date-Time Stamp -- February 2, 2026

Locator: 49885PALANTIR.  

 

Palintir.

Devon With Four New Permits -- February 2, 2026

Locator: 49884B.  

WTI: $61.98.

Active rigs: 29.

Four new permits, #42680 - #42683, inclusive:

• Operator: Devon Energy
• Field: Todd (Williston, Williams County)
• Comments:
• Devon has permits for four Dominek wells, SWNE 12-154-102, 
• to be sited 1350 / 1385 FNL and 1927 / 2010 FEL.

Two permits renewed:

• 35870, Devon, a Pyramid permit in Todd oil field (Williston, Williams County)
• 38759, Devon, a Clear Creek Federal permit in Westberg oil field (Westber oil field( McKenzie County)

One permit canceled:

• MRO, a State Loland permit, Dunn County.

Nineteen producing wells abandoned:

• Hess: 12 wells;
• Oasis: 4 wells;
• Whiting: 3 wells.

US Military Might -- US Intel Dominance — February 2, 2026

Locator: 49883USMILITARYMIGHT.  
Locator: 49883MADUROEXTRACTION.  
Locator: 49883INTELDOMINANCE. 

Updates

Later, 9:30 p.m. CT, February 2, 2026: link here. 

Later, 9:15 p.m. CT, February 2, 2026: the one ring to rule them all. 

Later, 8:44 p.m. CT, February 2, 2026; for investors, the company that might be at the intersection of all of this, might be Palantir. 

Original Note

 This might be the biggest story of the day, pushing the other two big stories off the front page. 

SpaceX to combine with xAI. That's the buzz. Hasn't been formally announced yet.

Starlink is a division of SpaceX.

I didn't read the story, saw the headline, that Starlink may have shut Russia down over the weekend over Ukraine. Needs to be researched, fact-checked.

The CNBC folks are looking at the investing angle.

Me? My hunch: 

SpaceX (including Starlink) +xAI + Palantir (earnings announced today) + NSA + agencies that can't be mentioned -- will establish a military-industrial-intelligence trifecta that can't be matched anywhere.

Right now, US doesn't simply have "air superiority," it has "air dominance."

In the intelligence sector, that's where we're headed. Actually, we’re already there. 

More later.

New page linked at the top. Link.

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How They Work Together

Investing, Part 2 -- February 2, 2026

Locator: 49882MARKET.  

At / near the close:

DIS: worst performer on the Dow. Dropped 7% today. Evenso, it's amazing how much time CNBC spends on DIS. Now, on top of everything else, Bob Iger is checking out. Lame Duck.

AAPL: huge day.

PLUG: for me, this is the second biggest story of the day.

BYD: this is the biggest story of the day. The day the music died.  

GLW: up $8.55. I still remember how I discovered GLW. It was watching Apple (AAPL).

CAT: up $34 today. P/E: 37. Rule-of-forty: 31%.

MU: company’s rule-of-forty has recently exceeded 50 - 60%. 

Investing, Part 1 -- February 2, 2026

Locator: 49881MARKET.

Investing: this is for the extended family members, not the general public. This is not an investment site. See disclaimer for the blog; see below. New money into market today:

• possible choices: AAPL, AMD, SCCO, ENB, EPD, AMZN, WMT, CAT, PLTR, SCHB
• new money went into adding shares in exiting positions: AAPL, AMZN, PLTR, SCHB.  

AI data centers: the chokepoint is "construction" of the data centers -- acquiring land, getting the necessary permits, hooking up to the grid or building their own energy sources -- hooking up to the grid will likely be 5 - 7 years; but with NIMBY things look worrisome for some. Texas may very well be the least affected by these chokepoints. Lots of land, lots of energy, pro-business.

Micron: Morgan Stanley raises target from $338 to $350. Currently trading at $415. The MS story was posted on December 18, 2025, when Micro was trading at $254. Link here. The narrative, not the price target, is the reason to read the article. 

AVGO: Morgan Stanley raises target from $443 to $462. Broadcom is currently trading at $331. The MS story was posted on December 15, 2025, when AVGO was trading at $430. Link here. The narrative, not the price target, is the reason to read the article. 

Apple: another narrative on AAPL (Apple, Inc) after a blow-out quarter. Link here. 

Apple: link here -- is this what a super-cycle looks like? Also, another link here.

Palantir billionaire Peter Thiel: takes / adds to positions in AAPL and MSFT. The story was published on January 31, 2026, before most recent earnings reported. Link here.

AMD: Intel's post-earnings selloff just created a buying opportunity in AMD stock. Story was posted January 29, 2026. Link here.

**********************************
Disclaimer
Briefly

Briefly: 

I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it comes to the Bakken.

I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 

See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.

If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 

Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 

And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution.

I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom.

Longer version here.   

Manic Monday -- February 2, 2026

Locator: 49880B.

Oracle: shares up!

************************************
Back to the Bakken

WTI: $62.06.

New wells reporting:

• Tuesday, February 3, 2026: 6 for the month, 59 for the quarter, 59 for the year,
• 41959, conf, Petro-Hunt, State 162-100-16B-21-2H, 
• 41352, conf, Hess, GO-Beck Living TR-156-98-2017H-3, 
• 39807, conf, BR, Mazama 1C, 
• Monday, February 2, 2026: 3 for the month, 56 for the quarter, 56 for the year,
• 41290, conf, Hess, GO-Morgan-LW-156-97-1806H-1, 
• Sunday, February 1, 2026: 2 for the month, 55 for the quarter, 55 for the year,
• 42133, conf, WGO Resources, Trester 1-21,
• 42032, conf, Slawson, Rebel Federal 4-32-17TFH, 
• Saturday, January 31, 2026: 53 for the month, 53 for the quarter, 53 for the year,
• 41997, conf, Slawson, Rebel Federal 2-32-17H, 
• 39806, conf, BR, Mazama 1B, 

RBN Energy: a big push is on to pipe more PADD2 refined products east to PADD 1. Link here. Archived.

For the past several years, a potent combination of market developments has incentivized PADD 2/Midwest refiners — and their midstream partners — to move increasing volumes of gasoline and diesel east into Pennsylvania and other states in the Northeast. The limiting factors have been eastbound pipeline capacity and the concerns PADD 1/East Coast refiners have expressed to regulators about the potentially negative impacts of the shift in product flows. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss what’s been happening lately on this front and how it’s affecting refiners.

We’ll start with a brief, big-picture review of refining and refined-product flows in the Midwest and Northeast. Since 2000, there’s been a substantive buildup in refining capacity in PADD 2 — a 17% gain in overall capacity and a 33% increase in delayed coking capacity. This has been driven primarily by the growing availability of favorably priced heavy sour crude being piped in from Western Canada. The Midwest now has more than 4.2 MMb/d of refining capacity, including 1.5 MMb/d in the four PADD 2 states closest to PADD 1 (Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio), and produces more refined products than it consumes. Over the same 25-year period, refining capacity in the Northeast (almost all of it in Delaware, New Jersey and southeastern Pennsylvania) has fallen by half, to about 800 Mb/d. Most of the decline in PADD 1 refining can be tied to economics — including the lack of pipeline access to U.S. shale oil — but part of it is due to events, such as the devastating June 2019 fire at Philadelphia Energy Solutions’ 330-Mb/d refinery in Philadelphia, which led the facility’s owner to shut it down.

The fall-off in PADD 1 refining capacity has increased the Northeast’s reliance on gasoline and diesel that is shipped in from elsewhere — waterborne imports for sure, but also piped-in volumes from refineries in PADD 2 and PADD 3/Gulf Coast. While Gulf Coast refineries have provided the majority of these domestic movements, the economics of making refined products in the eastern Midwest and piping them east into PADD 1 are becoming more compelling.

Over the past 15 years, several refineries in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio made significant investments in the delayed cokers and other equipment that enable them to break down price-discounted low-API, high-sulfur Canadian crude into valuable refined products. Much of the time, the cost of making those products and piping them east into the Northeast is lower than the cost PADD 1 refiners and other suppliers there can offer — sometimes considerably so, especially for gasoline. Also contributing to these economics is the trend toward an overall surplus of refined products in PADD 2 as in-region demand stagnates and refiners look to new markets. (Note: A detailed forecast of regional supply/demand and resulting inter-regional product flows through 2050 is included in RBN’s latest Future of Fuels report, which will be coming out in early February.)

But while that “arb” encourages the eastbound movement of Midwest-sourced refined products into PADD 1, those flows are limited not just by the capacity of the eastbound pipes but also by how far east the flows can go.