WTI: Shortly Before Market Open -- CVX -- LNG -- Proxies For The War -- March 3, 2026

Locator: 50114WTI.

WTI is a great proxy for "how the war is going."

Earlier this morning:

WTI: up 8% overnight; up $5.54 overnight; trading at $76.77;

Now, 7:20 a.m. CT: 

Up 6.11% (better than the 8% earlier); up $4.35; trading at $75. 58. 

 
Stunning: 

The Relationship Between Apple And Google Continues To Delight -- March 3, 2026

Locator: 50113APPLE.

Apple: would like to see Google run Siri on Google's servers. Link here.

Also, link here: 

 

Car Thefts -- The Dots Are Easy To Connect -- Auto Insurance -- Auto Repair Costs -- March 3, 2026

Locator: 50112AUTOREPAIRTHEFT.

Tag: auto repair theft immigration illegal 

The chatbot appears to link the thefts to "Covid." Interesting.

In fact, practically everything I read with regard to the Biden administration's disastrous four years is referred to as "post-Covid," completely failing to say most (all?) of this was due to the illegal immigration surge. 

Fails to mention the the national car theft rate that surged in 2024 had anything to do with the 40% increase in the number of illegal immigrants that occurred in 2021 - 2024, during the Biden administration when the southern borders were, for all practical purposes, wide open. 

Link here. 

Unauthorized immigrant population, trend and actual numbers, in the four years of the Biden administration:

 

In fact, I can pretty much guess that all academic studies that study the Biden presidency will call it the "post-Covid" economy and completely fail to mention the effect illegal immigration had on those four years.

Back to car thefts:  

Car thefts along US border with Mexico: analysis with map. Link here.

Car thefts and auto insurance refunds:

What is the reason for "cooling" cost of auto repairs? This is absolutely fascinating:

Pemex Losses -- March 3, 2026

Locator: 50111PEMEX.

From yesterday, RBN Energy had huge update with regard to Mexico's refined products:

RBN Energy:  for Gulf Coast refined products, it's down to Mexico by truck, rail, ship, and pipe. Link here. Archived.

U.S. exports of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to Mexico have been mostly rising the past 15 years as Mexican demand for refined products stabilized, the utilization of south-of-the-border refineries sagged, Covid hit and, most recently, Pemex — the state-owned oil and gas company — started bringing its new Dos Bocas refinery online. Over that same decade and a half, the Mexican government’s policy on the import-related roles of Pemex and private companies has zigged and zagged, complicating and ultimately slowing efforts to develop new midstream infrastructure. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll review Mexico’s refined product demand, production and imports from the U.S. — and discuss what likely lies ahead.

Mexico is obviously a key trading partner in general, and has been the #1 source of total U.S. imports since 2023 (when it overtook China for that top spot) and in 2025 it also became the #1 recipient of total U.S. exports, ending (at least for now) Canada’s third-of-a-century run at the top of that heap. It will come as no surprise to our readers that energy — or more specifically, crude oil, natural gas, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — is a major factor in all that U.S.-Mexico trade. Mexico still is shipping significant volumes of heavy crude to Gulf Coast refineries and the U.S. every day is moving billions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of thousands of barrels of refined products south of the border — Mexico is by far the #1 destination for those products.

We recently examined U.S.-to-Mexico natural gas exports (and the role of non-state pipeline companies) in our three-part blog series, Private Dancers. Today, we shift our attention to refined products. We’ll begin with a big-picture look at Mexico’s demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel; the highly variable output of Pemex’s refineries over the years; and the pace of Mexico’s refined product imports from the U.S. After that, we’ll discuss how gasoline, diesel and jet fuel make their way from Gulf Coast refineries to the Mexican market.

Combined demand for gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel in Mexico rose by almost half in the first decade of the 21st century — from about 900 Mb/d in 2000 to 1.3 MMb/d in 2010 — due to a combination of population and economic gains. Demand growth has moderated since then, averaging 1.3 MMb/d in 2015 and just under 1.4 MMb/d in 2024 and 2025. (There was a sizable dip in 2020 — to just 1.1 MMb/d — due to Covid.) Over the same 2015-25 period, Mexican demand for gasoline (blue layer in Figure 1 below) increased from 807 Mb/d to 835 Mb/d, while diesel demand (green layer) grew from 421 Mb/d to 427 Mb/d and jet fuel demand (yellow layer) rose by one-third, from 74 Mb/d to 101 Mb/d.

Pemex' latest earnings: eleven years of huge debts? Despite massive infusions of cash from the government?

The chatbot failed to provide the amount of financial support the Mexican government provided Pemex over the past year (2025). Here's that amount from the same chatbot when asked a second time:

• based on 2025 financial filings the Mexican government provided $22 billion to Pemex in 2025;
• thanks to this intervention, Pemex reduced its financial debt from $97.6 billion at the end of 2024 to $85.2 billion at the end of 2024
• end of 2024, debt: $97.2 billion
• Mexican government provided $22 billion in financial "aid" to Pemex in 2025
• 97.2 - 22 = $75.2
• Pemex reported a debt of $85.2 billion at end of 2025
• Total value of government support, debt buybacks, and supplier financing efforts exceeded $40 billion in 2025.
• $97.2 billion - $40 billion = debt of $57.2 billion (anticipated, all things being equal)
• instead: debt of $85.2 billion at end of 2025. 

The recent surge in oil prices may be a godsend for Pemex.

Tuesday -- March 3, 2026

Locator: 50110B.

Mideast war: all of a sudden, it's getting serious

• link here. 

• must read WSJ assessment: "Gulf states in race against time to repel Iran's onslaught." Link here.
• bottom line: some suggest the gulf states will run out of air-defense interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles and drones
• at end of day won't change ultimate outcome of the war, but will likely result in huge number of civilian casualties if analysis proves to be correct 
• QatarEnergy halts production of LNG at two sites; Iranians drone; takes one-fifth of global LNG export capacity offline in a single geopolitical event

Observation: if Iran can sustain this US-Israeli onslaught with relatively unsophisticated drones and ballistic missiles, imagine an Iran with nuclear ballistic missiles. Implications are immense. 

Qatar: 

• then we have an excellent article from  Simon Watkins on the huge strategic shift to global LNG since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine; 
• excellent article as always from Watkins; link here. 
• Qatar is set to drive at least 40% of global LNG supply growth by 2029, expanding output from 77 mtpa to 142 mtpa.
• wow 77 to 142 --> an 84% increase in three years 

Diego Garcia: it's much worse than we thought. The Brits will soon return the archipelago to Mauritius, and thus "control" to China. This could be stopped, but it's looking exceedingly less likely.

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

WTI: up 8% overnight; up $5.54 overnight; trading at $76.77;

New wells reporting:  

Wednesday, March 4, 2026: 7 for the month, 113 for the quarter, 113 for the year,

• 41601, conf, BR, Sivertson 6D, 
• 41373, conf, Hess, EN-Hanson A-LW-155-94-0618H-1, 

Tuesday, March 3, 2026: 5 for the month, 111 for the quarter, 111 for the year,

• None.

RBN Energy: the expanding role of natural gas storage in east Texas and west Louisiana. Link here. Archived. 

New and expanded natural gas storage facilities near the Texas/Louisiana border are coming online and being planned, mostly in response to the ongoing buildout of LNG export capacity along the Gulf Coast and new gas pipelines to those terminals. In today’s RBN blog — the second in a series — we continue our look at existing and planned storage capacity between the Haynesville and Western Haynesville gas production areas and the LNG export meccas along the Sabine-Neches and Calcasieu ship channels, as well as storage near the Katy, TX, gas hub.

As we said in Part 1, the infrastructure buildout along the border between the Lone Star and Bayou states is well underway. Planned liquefaction trains there with a combined capacity of 75 MMtpa (10 Bcf/d) have reached a final investment decision (FID), are under construction and will be starting up between now and 2031. These new LNG export facilities (blue-striped diamonds in Figure 1 below) will join three existing terminals (green diamonds) in the area — Sabine Pass LNG, Cameron LNG and Calcasieu Pass — that together have nearly 53 MMtpa (7 Bcf/d) of capacity. That means that within five years or so, terminals along the Sabine-Neches and Calcasieu waterways will receive as much as 17 Bcf/d of natural gas.

This massive demand center is fed by pipelines delivering gas from several production areas, including the Permian, the Eagle Ford and the far-away Marcellus/Utica. But as LNG export demand ramps up, increasing volumes will come from the relatively close-by Haynesville (light-gray-shaded area in Figure 1 below) and, in all likelihood, from the emerging Western Haynesville, which is centered in East Texas’s Freestone, Leon, Limestone and Robertson counties (outlined in red).