Key bridge collapse connecting Tehran to its northern / western provinces;
not exactly sure to what extent bridge was damaged;
by this time next week we should have better damage assessment;
Politics: Hegseth fires another top general, this time the US Army's chief of staff.
Six months ago there was talk of $40-oil.
Natural gas in the US is still below $3; in Europe? $17.
*************************** Back to the Bakken
WTI: $111.50.
Active rigs: 23. Five new permits, #42809 - #42813, inclusive:
Operator: Hess
Field: Ross (Mountrail County)
Comments:
Hess has permits for five RS-Bette wells, SWSE 1-156-92;
to be sited, 872 FSL and 2283 / 2415 FEL: all appear to be 2400-acre spacing;
section 640
S/2 320
SE/4 160
E/2320
section 640
W/2 320
Ten permits renewed:
BR (9): five Gorhman permits, Bailey oilfield; three CCU-Badger permits, Corral Creek, all Dunn County; and, one CCU-Mary Swanson section line well; Bear Den, McKenzie County;
Murex: one EMU Ross permit, Elmore oil field, Renville County.
This is a huge story. Trump is ready to start taking out every bridge in Iran. And that will just be a start. He is not waiting for the April 6, 2026, deadline.
Two more weeks of B-52 bombing and most of Tehran's infrastructure will be destroyed.
Karaj is a "suburb" of Tehran, about ten miles to the northwest.
And why haven't the Houthis been more aggressive with action at the
Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a critical maritime chokepoint linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden?
If the two major straits in the Mideast are constrained, the open oceans between China/India and Canada /US / Mexico become much more enviable -- Europe / Britain become the big losers and the western hemisphere gains at Europe's / Britain's expense.
The western hemisphere has a huge energy advantage. China / India return to coal; Japan turns to nuclear energy. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar can all see the writing on the wall even if the writing is not in Arabic. The risk: the writing on the wall is Farsi. Regardless of how this all turns out, Trump still sits in the catbird seat.
The really, really cool part of all this? Despite the mainstream media not being able to follow Trump, the the leaders in Britain, Europe, Russia, the Mideast, India, and China all understand what's happening and where it leads.
In less than three weeks, Trump's Department of War stands down (doesn't leave the area) and lets those who need passage through Bab al-Mandeb and Hormuz deal with the problem. Most likely outcome, those countries will accept the financial cost to access those straits and Iran / Yemen monetize their positions. This is not rocket science.
I'm curious though: where is Britain getting that information or where are these 40 countries meeting to discus post-war Iran? At the UN? LOL.
That's my assessment. What's the assessment over at The New York Times? Link here. Five takeaways by Luke Broadwater and Tyler Pager. Luke covers state and US politics; and, Tyler likes to write about how Trump makes decisions.
The authors' five takeaways:
no clear path to the off-ramp: we've talked about this ad nauseum; yes, let's tell Iran exactly what our plans are; we've already said too much;
keep the war in perspective: the authors noted he won't turn this into America's war (Vietnam) and it certainly is not WWI or WWII -- okay, that's brilliant;
appeared to rule out a raid on Iran's uranium buried deep under tons of rubble: this is the most interesting observation and Luke and Tyler completely miss the obvious;
the strait is not America's problem: this is the most consequential;
the Venezuela mission: this has nothing to do with anything.
DOA: DHS funding. TSA / ICE still up in the air. Recalcitrant right-wing Republicans.
WTI:WTI is now significantly higher than Brent! Interesting!
NCAA -- Basketball -- Men's / Women's: this weekend we wrap it up --
Well, that was an expensive trip: link here. I'm sure they have a "get out of jail free" card. It appears one of the three was able to post bond immediately. The other two .... well ... I assume they missed their connecting flight.
RBN Energy: comparing data center development drivers across key states.Link here. Archived.
Data
centers are cropping up everywhere. Established markets like Northern
Virginia are expanding, and Texas has received a wave of proposals. But
while data centers have found new homes in Georgia and Ohio, mature
markets like California and Illinois are becoming less attractive to new
development. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll examine the factors that
influence data center development across seven key states — Arizona,
California, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — and show how
each stacks up.
We’ve been hard at work mapping the
what, the where, and the when regarding the U.S. data center buildout.
As data centers have come online across the country, the uncertainty
surrounding regional power and natural gas demand has only grown. In Won’t Get Fooled Again, we addressed how data centers will impact natural gas demand in Texas and Louisiana — a necessary data series for the Arrow Model,
our proprietary analytical framework built to assess both states’ gas
markets. But understanding data centers’ impact requires knowing where
they will be built in the first place.
Back in 2024, Where You Lead I Will Follow
examined the factors that influence data center development, focusing
on the importance of uninterrupted power supply in established markets
like Northern Virginia, Texas, Chicago and Silicon Valley. But the data
center map has changed significantly since then, with Georgia, Arizona
and Ohio emerging as important growth markets. Nationally, this growth
has coincided with a changing regulatory environment, particularly in
mature markets.
Figure 1 below offers our updated
view of the seven leading states for existing and new data centers,
comparing each on the key factors that determine where projects are
built. While we covered many of these topics for Virginia in Part 1 of our Sweet Virginia
blog series, any state’s strengths and weaknesses are relative to the
other markets developers may consider. As a result, the matrix in Figure
1 indicates whether a specific factor (rows) is a relative strength
(green plus sign), weakness (red minus sign), or neither (yellow tilde),
in each state.
Figure 1. Relative Strengths and Weaknesses of Key Data Center States. Source: RBN
Chatbots and blogs: currently the chatbots I use (several) do not search blogs -- at least they don't search my blogs. That's a pity.
Anthropic: what a mess. Leaked its own source code; source code posted on GitHub; Anthropic "shuts down Github by mistake." Github, wiki.
Overnight: I keep hearing pundits say that Trump has not offered a path (or an off-ramp) to end the war.
In fact, he's been quite clear about it. In fact, he's been too clear about the timeline which gives the Iranians TMI. Again, Trump telegraphed to Iran: in two weeks + two days this will all be over. Yeah, it will be a tough two weeks, but just wait it out. Iran will soon control the strait. Is that how the oil market interpreted the speech? Oil is up 8% in pre-market trading.
Who's pulling the strings? Netanyahu. Saudi Arabia. Hegseth, Marco Rubio. Probably not in that order. Without question Marco Rubio "gets it." That does not mean he will be rewarded. High stakes game, politically.
DOD: incredibly important war for DOD to be fighting. The focus on the US SPR may have been the wrong place to focus. My hunch: DOD is going to be stockpiling a lot more weapons in the future, and a different type of weapon. Or different types of weapons. Also, a new lease on life for the Warthog.
Baghdad Bob / Tehran Timmy: Iranian spokesperson says, in response to Trump's speech, and this is almost verbatim, as I remember the quote: "The Iranian military has not been degraded."
TACO: "Trump always chickens out" -- according to naysayers, Trump haters and "nattering nabobs of negativism -- well, after last night -- did we see the Un-TACO version?
TOTG: Peter Zeihan says "troops on the ground" are coming. If so, it will be fascinating to watch. But his is what US Marines live (and die) for.
******************************** Back to the Bakken
A great example of why the Bakken will be in the
catbird seat for quite some time, regardless of Nick's pessimism (see
original post). OPEC says $11 trillion invested needed to meet crude oil
demand through 2040. Source: CNBC and OPEC, both well known for
integrity and impartiality.
New wells reporting:
Friday, April 3, 2026: 7 for the month, 7 for the quarter, 164 for the year,
42219, conf, CLR, Louisville Federal 7-7HSL,
41683, conf, Hunt Oil, State A 156-90-9-16H-2,
41424, conf, Hunt Oil, State A 156-90-9-16H-3;
Thursday, April 2, 2026: 4 for the month, 4 for the quarter, 161 for the year,
42218, conf, CLR, Louisville Federal 6-7H,
RBN Energy: comparing data center development drivers across key states. Link here.
Data
centers are cropping up everywhere. Established markets like Northern
Virginia are expanding, and Texas has received a wave of proposals. But
while data centers have found new homes in Georgia and Ohio, mature
markets like California and Illinois are becoming less attractive to new
development. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll examine the factors that
influence data center development across seven key states — Arizona,
California, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and Virginia — and show how
each stacks up.
We’ve been hard at work mapping the
what, the where, and the when regarding the U.S. data center buildout.
As data centers have come online across the country, the uncertainty
surrounding regional power and natural gas demand has only grown. In Won’t Get Fooled Again, we addressed how data centers will impact natural gas demand in Texas and Louisiana — a necessary data series for the Arrow Model,
our proprietary analytical framework built to assess both states’ gas
markets. But understanding data centers’ impact requires knowing where
they will be built in the first place.
Back in 2024, Where You Lead I Will Follow
examined the factors that influence data center development, focusing
on the importance of uninterrupted power supply in established markets
like Northern Virginia, Texas, Chicago and Silicon Valley. But the data
center map has changed significantly since then, with Georgia, Arizona
and Ohio emerging as important growth markets. Nationally, this growth
has coincided with a changing regulatory environment, particularly in
mature markets.
Figure 1 below offers our updated
view of the seven leading states for existing and new data centers,
comparing each on the key factors that determine where projects are
built. While we covered many of these topics for Virginia in Part 1 of our Sweet Virginia
blog series, any state’s strengths and weaknesses are relative to the
other markets developers may consider. As a result, the matrix in Figure
1 indicates whether a specific factor (rows) is a relative strength
(green plus sign), weakness (red minus sign), or neither (yellow tilde),
in each state.
Figure 1. Relative Strengths and Weaknesses of Key Data Center States. Source: RBN
This will be a stand-alone post because I have been posting any number of blogs on the very same subject.
Well, that's interesting. I did not know that the powers that be had divided Texas. I was aware of the "new" division buy my updates from Tricare did not mention "parts of Texas."
So, next AI prompt:
Tricare For Life: which "part of Texas" is covered by TriWest and which "part of Texas" is still covered by Humana Military?
Reply:
So, again, in the original reply, Google Gemini got it wrong, but then corrected it when asked a different way.
An aside: the combination of Medicare and Tricare simply cannot be beat. Somewhat costly perhaps but well worth it. No complaints. None.
Yesterday, The WSJ printed an article that was sent to my iPhone as breaking news. It's key words for search were "Corolla" and "drones." That piqued my interest. Here's the link. Page 1, position 1.
Very, very interesting article. Then I got near the end and realized I had posted a link to the same story over at Reuters some weeks ago. Here's the link. The tag: Locator: 50129LUCAS. Amazing. Whatever. Much could be said, but time to move on. But using "Toyota Corolla" in its headline -- and the story having nothing to do with either Toyota or Corolla -- almost makes this story at TWSJ clickbait. Fun to read, but still clickbait.
Having said that, there was still some interesting information contained in the article. A must-read, must keep.
Most interesting: who owns the rights to Lucas.
Also interesting, mentioning a second name along with SpektreWorks:
Little-known
Scottsdale, Ariz.-based SpektreWorks and Huntsville, Ala.-based
Integration Innovation were tapped to build the drones. A total of five
manufacturers will be selected, each set up to produce 300 drones a
month, a former senior defense official familiar with the plans said.
SpektreWorks and Integration Innovation didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The
Marine Corps was the first to use the drones, and ordered around 6,000,
destined for the Indo-Pacific. But then the war with Iran began. The
drones were handed over to U.S. Central Command and in February made
their first appearance in combat.
The
Trump administration has enacted sweeping reforms in defense
procurement, making it easier for the military to quickly buy weapons
and emphasizing commercial technology to modernize the U.S. arsenal. In
particular, an August decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to
rescind long-held requirements processes for acquiring technology made
the rapid deployment of Lucas possible, current and former defense
officials said.
Still,
other changes will take longer to trickle through the Pentagon’s
bureaucracy, and it will take time to reorient America to a new way of
fighting wars, even as China is developing advanced ways to strike the
U.S., say intelligence and military officials.
