SPR Update -- October 15, 2026

Locator: 519534SPR.

WTI: up $2.52; up 2.65%; trading at $97.61. WTI is now closer to $100 than $90. Just saying. The integrated oil companies are slipping significantly along with the rest of the market. 

SPR. 

SPR inventory level: 

The reserve is holding steady at 283 million barrels. This is the lowest inventory level since October 1982, driven by a massive 172-million-barrel emergency drawdown launched earlier this year to stabilize markets following global geopolitical conflicts. 

Prior to that, the largest announced release: 

The largest Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) release under President Joe Biden was an announced 180 million barrels of crude oil in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

TSMC Sixth Consecutive Quarter Of Record Earnings -- October 15, 2026

Locator: 51953AIREVOLUTION.

This follows the spectacular results of ASML. Link here. 

This is TSMC. 

Six quarters takes us back to early 2025.  

Net income:

• projected: T$746.3 billion (~ $23.4 billion) 
• actual: T$763.06 billion (~$23.59 billion)

Market cap for comparison:

• Ford (F): $50 billion
• General Motors (GM): $75 billion

TSMC's annual net income (one year) = exceeds market cap of GM. 

Is anyone even paying attention?

The AI revolution broke out in 2022. And here we are growth y/y in double figures. And not just low double figures but 50% to 70% growth, year-over-year.

 

 

Earnings: 

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Previously Posted -- Prior To Earnings Report

Locator: 51931TSMC.

 TSMC's CAPEX in US dollars for calendar year 2026:

Reminder: need to confirm but I recall that Apple's operating cash flow is $54 billion; Apple's CAPEX is $2 billion. Compare that with TSMC above.

Market caps and P/Es:

• TSMC: $2 trillion / 32;
• AAPL: $5 trillion / 39.

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Disclaimer

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've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom. Now, I've added Amazon. And QCOM. Nothing on this site should be seen as recommendations for the general public. On the other hand, I have no problem if members of my extended family "see" recommendations I might be making - but only members of my extended family, limited to my children and my grandchildren.

Longer version here.

Thursday Morning, Part 2 -- October 15, 2026

Locator: 51952INVESTING.

NFL: TNF -- Seattle Seahawks at Denver Broncos. Seahawks favored by 2.5 points.  

AAPL: trading up 0.67%; up $2.29 today; trading at $345.24. 

TTE: eyes massive profit windfall as refining margins soar. Link here to Tsvetana Paraskova.  

Copper shortage? Link here to Charles Kennedy. 

Paducah: DOE announces landmark massive tech innovation campus in western Kentucky. Link here.

• $100-billion private investment (previous such announcements have led to dismal results)
• phased buildout targeted for 2032
• Brookfield Asset management will build the data center campus
• NextEra Energy will be responsible for providing the power
• the campus: a massive 1.8-GW artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) innovation campus
• footprint 
• 600 acres for the data center
• 200 acres for 2-GW power center
• 300 acres for the 2.6-MW battery energy storage
• total leased / designated area: 785 acres of federal land 
• power: a new energy infrastructure
• 2 GW of natural gas-fired generation coupled with 2.6 GW of battery energy storage
• specific location
• to be located at the former US DOE Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant
• 5501 Hobbs Road, Kevil, McCracken County, western Kentucky 

Paducah, Kentucky: I don't know if I would have posted this note but years ago I spent a fair amount of time on the memoirs of US Grant -- I've read it at least twice and parts of it many more times. 

I also made a self-teaching guide for middle-school students. I will send it to our grandsons in Portland, OR, when they are a bit older. The best part of the self-teaching guide: it teaches a lot of US geography. The memoir had a strong connection to Mark Twain, but that's another story of another day. 

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A Musical Interlude

 

This takes me back to both the Greek Theater within Griffith Park and the Hollywood Bowl a bit farther to the west. North Hollywood; Los Feliz (wow); North Vermont Avenue; Highland Avenue. 
 

"Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac.

 

Link here. 

Deeper Look At The Bakken East Pipeline -- RBN Energy -- October 15, 2026

Locator: 51951B.

Reminder. Previously posted. The full blog is available for a few days without a paywall. Link here.

Locator: 51940B.

RBN Energy: will a newly sanctioned pipeline give the Bakken a big surplus of gas takeaway? Link here. Archived.

The developer of a planned natural gas pipeline across North Dakota has reached a final investment decision (FID) after securing long-term, demand-side commitments for almost all its 1.4 Bcf/d of capacity. The question is, with crude oil-focused drilling activity in the Bakken flat despite elevated WTI prices, will WBI Energy’s roughly $3 billion Bakken East Pipeline leave the play with way too much gas takeaway space? In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the pipeline project, the financial support the state of North Dakota is providing, and the conflicting forecasts for crude oil and associated gas production in the Bakken.

Over the past 15 years we’ve written frequently about the ongoing need to build more midstream infrastructure to serve Bakken production. Crude oil gathering systems and takeaway pipelines. Crude-by-rail terminals. Gas gathering systems and gas processing plants. And, most recently, natural gas and NGL pipelines. Why? Because while Bakken oil production has been holding steady at about 1.2 MMb/d — well below the play’s 1.5-MMb/d peak in 2019 — a fast-rising gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) has increased the volumes of NGLs-rich associated gas being produced. (More on Bakken GORs and the play’s gas production outlook in a moment.)

The Bakken East Pipeline Project

We covered the NGL-pipeline angle in July 2025’s Two Gunslingers. That same month we told the gas-pipeline story in Torn Between Two (Pipelines), which focused on competing proposals by WBI Energy (the Bakken East Pipeline) and a combo of Intensity Infrastructure Partners and Rainbow Energy Center (the Intensity Pipeline) to develop new gas takeaway capacity from the Bakken production region in western North Dakota to the Fargo area at the eastern edge of the state.

In a twist we discussed in that blog, the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC) — eager to encourage more in-state use of the Bakken’s gas bounty — undertook a competitive evaluation process to determine which pipeline proposal would receive up to $500 million in state support via a 10-year, $50 million/year commitment for about 150 MMcf/d of capacity on the new pipe.

The three-member NDIC, comprised of the state’s governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner, in August 2025 unanimously picked WBI Energy’s two-phase, 343-mile Bakken East proposal (dashed pink and red lines in Figure 1 below), citing the company’s experience in developing and operating gas pipelines and the financial strength of WBI’s corporate parent, Bismarck, ND-based MDU Resources, which also owns four electric and/or gas utilities from Minnesota to Washington state. In addition, the commission determined that WBI was more likely to secure the commercial commitments needed to make the project a “go.”