Locator: 51030B.
Politics: UK PM Starmer resigns as Britain faces its seventh leader in 10 years. This is why Starmer failed according to Gemini:
From Geiger Capital regarding UK, link here:
Investing / market: this market is so crazy, this is the best I can do at the moment -- futures, Monday morning --
Movies: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
The movie will be a blockbuster or a disaster, depending on word-of-mouth / critical reviews within 72 hours of its release July 17, 2026. The definition of blockbuster / disaster will be based on financial success / failure. It will not be based "on the film itself." That will take years.
My hunch: its all-star cast will save the movie financially, but the movie won't have legs. It will be a must-see movie ... but just once. It's not a movie that will generate a following like the great movies of the past.
There's going to be a lot of articles on this movie between now and July 20, 2026. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey will be a movie version of The Kardashians. The movie will be "famous" for being "famous." The movie will be a "must-see" because of the "must-see" hype. I have no desire to see it. My wife does.
Matt Damon doesn't have the gravitas to play Odysseus.
If the movie fails, it will be compared to David Lynch's Dune.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey cost a reported $250 million to produce.
Industry estimates suggest Universal Pictures added an additional $100
million to $150 million for global marketing. Together, the film's total
estimated budget, including production and marketing, is between $350
and $400 million. The first movie in the Star Wars franchise, cost $11 million with an additional $26 million spent by 20th Century Fox for prints, negatives and advertising.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $75.40. Already volatile, it's going to be even more volatile this week.
New wells reporting:
- Tuesday, June 23, 2026: 27 for the month, 183 for the quarter, 340 for the year,
- 41682, conf, Devon Energy, Johnson 27-34 8H,
- Monday, June 22, 2026: 26 for the month, 182 for the quarter, 339 for the year,
- 41610, conf, Hess, BL-Mortenson-LE-156-95-2234H-1,
- Sunday, June 21, 2026: 25 for the month, 181 for the quarter, 338 for the year,
- Saturday, June 20, 2026: 25 for the month, 181 for the quarter, 338 for the year,
RBN Energy: key step can help gas pipelines boost regulatory certainty, limit court challenges. Link here. Archived.
Open
seasons are a key part of marketing capacity for gas pipeline and
storage projects, but they can also raise several regulatory questions.
It starts with determining whether an open season is legally required or
is simply an expected part of the process, and extends to the nuts and
bolts of how it should all be designed and run. And the answers depend
on what kind of open season it is. In today’s RBN blog, we take a deep
dive into the ins and outs of a gas project open season.
This is our second blog in a three-part series on open seasons. As we covered in Part 1,
an open season is essentially a competitive bidding process in which
any qualified shipper can compete for firm pipeline capacity. That
capacity might be on a brand-new pipeline, an expansion of an existing
system, or space that’s opened up because current shippers decided to
give some back or it was simply unsubscribed. The rules and customs vary
depending on the situation, and there are big differences in how the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regulates natural gas and
liquids (crude oil, refined products and NGLs) pipelines. Things get
even looser with intrastate pipelines and gathering systems, where there
are no federal rules to worry about — just state rules and commercial
norms. In this series, we're focusing on the interstate world, where
open seasons are pretty formalized and can carry real consequences.
Today,
we’re zeroing in on natural gas, including how open seasons connect to
precedent agreements and certificate proceedings. (A precedent agreement
is a binding commercial contract in which a shipper commits to reserve
and pay for transportation capacity, usually contingent on the pipeline
project being built or expanded. The agreement outlines key terms such
as volume commitments, contract length, rates, receipt and delivery
points, and conditions required for the project to proceed.) In Part 3,
we'll tackle services by crude oil, refined products and NGL pipelines,
where the common-carrier model — with all its quirks like proration,
committed versus uncommitted service, and contract terms — affects the
need and terms for open seasons. It’s a dense regulatory topic, but
we’ll break it down in a way that we hope can keep you awake.
[There's a huge photo at the link above, but it's not worth including. It's simply a photograph of a pipeline under construction.]
