The Million Dollar Way (The Bakken Oil Blog): 07/09/26

Thursday, July 9, 2026

Today Felt Like A Watershed Day For The Market -- July 9, 2026

Locator: 51138MARKET.

Sell in May, go away.

For me, with regard to investing, today felt like a watershed day. Connecting all the dots suggest the "AI Buildout" will last another ten years. Apple, alone, is going to be spending a lot of money over the next ten years. And as big as Apple will be with spending, Apple is not even the biggest.

It will be interesting six months from now to look again at the market action today.

Micron says it will spend $250 billion through 2035. Comes to about $25 billion / year. And that's just one company. Announced today. It's a big, big deal. The story garnered headlines everywhere.

BRKB: absolutely flat since February 21, 2025.

Mag 7: anything but flat since February 21, 2025. In fact, Micron didn't start to take off until February 2026.

Seven New Oil And Gas Permits; Four Permits Canceled — July 9, 2026

Locator: 51137B.

Note: the NDIC EOD report was not posted at the time I posted the information below. It's possible that my information is incorrect, but this is what I found on other NDIC sites.

Note: much later -- NDIC posted the July 9, 2026, EOD report.

WTI: $72.08.

Active rigs: 26.

Seven new oil and gas permits, #43099 - #43107 -- note: #43100 and #43101 were SWD permits.

Operators: Oasis, Formentera Operations (6);
Fields: Lake Trenton (Williams); Baukol Noonan (Burke); Black Slough (Burke);
Comments:

Formentera has seven new permits;

SESE 8-162-93, to be sited 530 FSL and 395 / 570 FEL; Griffin; Rabbit;

Oasis has a new permit for a new Jaffa well; lot 1, section 1-153-103, four-section spacing unit.

to be sited 349 FNL and 1138 FL.

Four permits canceled:

Formentera Operations (3): Shorty, Bervik, and Lincoln State, all in Divide County; file numbers: 27804, 28644, and 28718;
KODA Resources: Amber, Divide County (#42633).

Thursday -- Cramer's First Hour — July 9, 2026

Locator: 51136CRAMER.

Bonnie Tyler dead at age 75.

Info tech stocks:

more than 2/3rds of all stocks are down 20% from high.
AVGO, QCOM, MU, TSM, AMD, GLW.
SNDK. Currently 1,800. New: 2,000. This is a catch-up play.

Jobless claims in-line.

Ohio. CNBC's best state for business. Link here.

At the top --

Ohio -- #1
North Carolina, #2; was first last year;
Virginia, #3.
Texas, #4.
Minnesota, #5. Okay. Bogus story.

Bottom five:

#46: West Virginia.
#47: Louisiana.
#48. Rhode Island.
#49.Alaska.
#50. Hawaii.

Crack spread: at record highs. Trending toward $60. Valero. MPC.

profit margin for refiners: 3:2:1 --> three barrels of oil for two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel
formula: [(2xprice of gasoline, bbls) + (price of diesel, bbls)] - 3xprice of oil, bbls] = crack spread.

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Back to the Bakken

WTI: $73.94.

New wells reporting:

Friday, July 10, 2026: 15 for the month, 15 for the quarter, 368 for the year,

None.

Thursday, July 9, 2026: 15 for the month, 15 for the quarter, 368 for the year,

41917, conf, Murfin Drilling, MH Hecker 1-14H,

RBN Energy: spike in the D4 renewable identification number price about more than a higher mandate. Link here.

The price of the D4 Renewable Identification Number (RIN) has increased 130% so far in 2026. The jump in the price was a response to both a 70% increase in the minimum bio-based diesel volume mandate set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 2026 and a higher price premium for soybean oil relative to ULSD (Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel). In today’s RBN blog, we analyze the additional factors at play in the increase, from both theoretical and practical standpoints.
Let’s start with a bit of background about how the mandates for renewable fuels work. As we noted in Something’s Gotta Give, the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requires certain minimum volumes of biofuels to be blended into fuel sold in the U.S. The required minimum, known as the Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO), is determined each year by the EPA. A RIN is the regulatory mechanism for tracking the production and blending of renewable fuels and also allows refiners and importers to prove they’ve met their RVO mandates.
To see the importance of the RIN system, let’s consider a bio-based diesel producer who buys used cooking oil — a common feedstock for bio-based diesel production — for $6/gal, processes it into bio-based diesel, then sells it for $3/gal to be blended with refined petroleum diesel for eventual sale as diesel fuel to truckers. With a $6/gal feedstock cost and $3/gal product value, the producer’s profit margin is negative $3/gal. Without a subsidy, production and sales would be zero. The RIN credit is the primary instrument that provides that subsidy.

To see how this works, think of the RIN as having three functions:

First, it is a subsidy. A gallon of bio-based diesel comes with an embedded virtual coupon (that’s the RIN) whose purpose is to stimulate increased sales by reducing its price to a level that makes it competitive as a substitute for petroleum-based diesel.

Second, the D4 RIN functions like a tax on petroleum diesel and gasoline. The dollar value of the tax varies — the higher the RIN price, the higher the pseudo-tax. This raises the question of whether the RIN tax, like a sales tax, passes through the supply chain from the refiner or importer to downstream biofuel blenders, distributors, retailers and consumers. (For more on that important question, see our Misunderstanding blog series.)

The third function of the D4 RIN is to ensure the volume of bio-based diesel delivered to the U.S. market is at least the minimum EPA mandated volume. A higher mandate requires a higher subsidy to draw more volume into the system. The RIN price adjusts to draw in precisely the volume prescribed by the control system.

Midnight, CT -- July 8/9, 2026

Locator: 51135AAPL.

Tag: Baltra.

Futures, midnight, July 8/9, 2026, "little changed," but all indices are green. Certainly better than losing 600 points earlier today.

Broadcom: will expand facility in Fort Collins, CO, after $30 billion deal with Apple; a $1.5 billion capital expenditure.

Apple, Query:

Gemini: Apple had a good day today -- $30-billion deal with Broadcom; continuing with Qualcom chip; says it will develop server chip in-house. May get HBM chips from China. Is that correct? Anything else?

Reply:

Query: what is Apple's server chip roadmap?

Query: how does SMC's advanced packaging tech (SoIC) fit into the Baltra architecture?

Reply:

Furthering the conversation with Baltra, is Apple building a physical center for its cloud services?

Reply:

Query: Where, what city / state, is Apple building is own physical server infrastructure to run its PCC?

Reply:

Query:

The data center locations, six are mentioned, not including the Fort Collins, Colorado, site. How much money is Apple devoting to this buildout and how does it compare to what Meta or Google are doing?

Reply: