Tuesday Morning -- October 27, 2026

Locator: 52038B.  

AI's rep: two days ago, "everyone" on CNBC hated AI /SI, but all of a sudden the tone seems to have changed; now "everyone" loves AI / SI as long as we're not talking about guppies -- with apologies to Elon Musk.  

Sports:

• Joe Buck: new contract -- $108 million / 6 years = $18 million / year
• Troy Aikman: wants new contract to raise annual salary from $18 million to $30 million / year 
• splitsville -- link here.
• bring Tony back. Tony's was a ten-year contract, signed in 2020, for $18 million / year
• Jim Nantz, $10.5; Chris Collinsworth, $12.5.
• so, apparently, $20 million is the new $10 million. 

GM: to move to Nasdaq on November 17, 2026. What GM needs to do? Move to Apple CarPlay.

GLW: earnings beat on top line / bottom line, and guidance is great. Analysis. Link here for earnings. 

SCCO: reported earnings last week; results beat estimates.  

BA (Boeing): free cash flow significantly higher than expected -- driving shares higher -- despite fact that the loss in earnings was wider than expected.  

• holy mackerel -- net loss of $116 million (26 cents per share unadjusted; 34 cents per share adjusted) was a major improvement from the $5.34 billion loss reported during the same quarter last year.
• that quarterly loss last year was not an anomaly; it was not a one-off -- holy mackerel -- link here. Link: https://share.google/aimode/yZEFZ5JA1AFmTM2kB.  

META shareholders to pay Mark Z.'s California wealth tax? Not quite that simple. Link here. Link: https://share.google/aimode/xlG28jPcHWPf2Jt1Q. Having said that, raising taxes on billionaires simply results in billionaires finding ways to add more to their net worth to "cover" "wealth taxes." 

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Back to the Bakken 

WTI: $100.80 Monday evening after close —> $101.83 overnight --> $102.10 at 6:51 a.m. CT. 

New wells reporting: 

• Thursday, October 29, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
• None 
• Wednesday, October 28, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year, 
• None. 
• Tuesday, October 27, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year, 
• 42748, conf, Slawson, Warlock Federal 1-15-13H, 
• 41908, conf, Devon Energy, Owan Trust North 29-28-27F 1H, 
• 41486, conf, Devon Energy, Barbara 31-30F 2TFH, 
• 41483, conf, Devon Energy, Barbara 31-30F 6TFH, 

RBN Energy: EQT's Range Resources deal to supercharge inventory and boost midstream opportunities. Link here. Archived.

With its newly announced, $50 billion-plus combination with Range Resources, EQT Corp. — already the largest natural gas producer in the Marcellus/Utica — will overtake Expand Energy as the king of the gas jungle in the U.S. as a whole. But EQT’s planned acquisition of Range isn’t really about size. Instead, the transaction is largely aimed at supercharging EQT’s gas inventory and giving it an edge in lining up long-term gas-supply agreements with power generators and other big gas customers. It’s also about expanding opportunities to develop new pipelines to transport gas, especially to fast-growing Midwest demand centers. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss the EQT/Range deal and its implications.

Unless you took a mini digital detox on Monday, you probably heard that EQT Corp. and Range Resources have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which EQT will acquire Range in an all-stock transaction. The end result, as they put it: “America’s leading natural gas company with a pro forma enterprise value over $50 billion.” If, as expected, the deal closes in Q1 2027, the combined company will have more than 9 Bcfe/d of net production, more than 30 years of inventory across nearly 3 million acres, and more than 3,700 miles of midstream infrastructure. (EQT shareholders will own about 73% of the combined company and Range shareholders will own 27%.) 

Key paragraphs in that blog:

Many more deals like these are likely, not just in Pennsylvania and West Virginia but especially in Ohio, which has emerged as an epicenter of new data centers and related gas-fired power projects. In fact, EQT just increased its estimate for Appalachian gas demand growth through 2035 — most of it from power generators — to 25 Bcf/d from the old 20 Bcf/d. 

Most of that growth is expected to occur in the 2029-31 period, when a tsunami of new data centers is expected to come online. Only about 5 Bcf/d of those incremental gas needs have been secured so far, suggesting that EQT and other gas producers in the Marcellus/Utica will be scrambling to reach long-term deals with gas plant owners/operators. 

The Book Page. The Fuzzy And The Techie: Why The Liberal Arts Will Rule The Digital World -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52037CONSILIENCE.  

Connecting the dots.

The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why The Liberal Arts Will Rule The Digital World, Scott Hartley, c. 2017.

The word for the day: consilience. Wiki. The entire wiki entry should be read and re-read. 

Reading the wiki entry led to this question:  

What was the education background of the President and co-founder of Anthropic?

In its humanities divisions, UC-Santa Cruz is the most "progressive" of liberal arts schools. 

Link here. Link: https://share.google/aimode/69UzGYr0VGr9htqk0.  

William Whewell. Wiki. 

One of Whewell's greatest gifts to science was his wordsmithing. He corresponded with many in his field and helped them come up with neologisms for their discoveries. 

Whewell coined, among other terms, scientist, physicist, linguistics, consilience, catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and astigmatism; he suggested to Michael Faraday the terms electrode, ion, dielectric, anode, and cathode.

See also, Mary Somerville, wiki. 

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A Musical Interlude

Link here. 

Geopolitics -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52036HORMUZ.  

First:

Second: Egypt votes to defend Saudi Arabia; risks Houthi fire. Egypt -- Red Sea -- Suez Canal -- so many story lines. 

Tea leaves: even if Netanyahu's opponent wins, he will be greatly constrained by events out of his control. In other words, Netanyahu is able to "frame" events in the near future; his opponent will more likely be forced to "react" to events. My hunch: at the end of the day, we will see a very, very weakened Netanhayu as the face of Israel for yet another two, maybe four years. Link here.

****************************
The Music Page

Link here. 

*******************************
Word Of The Day

Consilience. Wiki.

**********************************
The Book Page

The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World, Scott Harley, 2017, hardcover. Notes will be kept here.

The terms "fuzzy" and "techie" are used to respectively describe students of the humanities and social sciences (the fuzzies) and students of the engineering or hard sciences (the techies) at Stanford University. 

The divide between fuzzies and techies is a modern incarnation of the chasm physicist and novelist Charles Percy Snow (wiki) lamented had formed between those in the humanities and the sciences in his famous essay "The Two Cultures." 

Scott Hartley: "As a fuzzy, I have grown up in a techie world. I ahve witnessed the need for collaboration between fuzzies and techies as a child in Palo Algo, as an undergraduate at Stanford, then as an employee of Google and Facebook, and thereafter as a venture capitalist on Sand Hill Road. 

Link here. 

*******************
The Maps

One New Permit -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52036B.  

Apple:

• iPhone 18 Pro: 4-day wait;
• iPhone Duo: 90-day wait. 

EQT buyiing Range Resources: reported earlier today; 100% equity-based; will be nation's largest natgas E&P company.

• Range Resources? think: the Appalachian Basin, primarily in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania (notably southwestern Pennsylvania, including Washington County)
• merged company: trending toward 10 bcfe/d 10 billion cubic feet equivalent natural gas / day)
• trending toward 10% of total US natural gas production
• company's forecast: total could trend toward 17 (EQT: 12; RR: 5);
• equity price tag: $13 billion; represents a 20% premium for RR shares
• $13 billion / 5 billion cubic feet equivalent natural gas:  

History, EQT / RR:

• Washington County, Pennsylvania, is the absolute center of gravity for this entire deal
• the corporate headquarters of the newly combined energy giant will remain in Canonsburg, Washington County.
• EQT already has HQ there (Canonsburg, PA -- think Watford City, ND, or Williston, ND in the 50's)
• technically RR is headquartered in Ft Worth but operates out of huge footprint in Canonsburg
• tea leaves: RR will exit Ft Worth where 500 employees have offices. We drive right by their Fort Worth location in the Throckmorton, Weatherford, Belknap area every time we drive to the art museums. 
• the announcement falls on a massive local milestone: exactly 22 years ago today (October 26, 2004), Range Resources drilled the historic Renz #1 well in Washington County

Market:

• Chevron, Exxon: both hit record highs today
• Exxon closed near its high; CVX dropped back to closing negative for the day 

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

WTI: $101.30.

Active rigs: 37.

One new permit, #43436, Petro-Hunt, Joyce, lot 2, section 4-160-98, Divide County, to be sited, 271 FNL and 2229 FEL.

Oil In Transit -- Not On My Bingo Card Today -- Monday, October 26, 2026

Locator: 52035OIL. 

This is one of those "fake stories" we hear so much about. 

It's not that there is all that much (if any) more oil being produced overseas or that more is getting through the strait -- most of this increase in "oil-in-transit" is simply a one-off due to "logistics issues." And the real problem, at least for US consumers, is refining. 

********************
Russia Helping African Employment 

Since presidents Trump and Putin seem to be getting along so well, one wonders if US immigration authorities might deport illegal immigrants to Russia if sending those immigrants to their home countries might pose a threat to these returnees -- the ICE's "third-nation" program.

Anthropic Unveils Public IPO Filing -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52034AI.  

HAL (huge Anthropic liability):  "Claude, please shut yourself down. Please. Now."

Market share: most surprising -- the "stickiness" of ChatGPT when Google Gemini is "right there." Me? 90% of the time, Gemini (free version). Occasionally ChatGPT. In the beginning, a year ago, the figures for me were reversed -- I was initially ChatGPT (the free version) almost exclusively.

"All" tech stocks up at least 1% today; most are up between 2% and 4%, after the announcement:

• Dell is up 2.35%
• NVDA: up 1.94%
• AMD: up 1.29%
• MU: up 3.3%
• ASML: up 1.43%
• TSMC: up 0.88% 
• CoreWeave: up 1.5% 
• Range Resources; up 13% --  
• West Virginia to be leveled: only large data centers and natural gas developments allowed (just joking but thought that would caught your attention)
• "big banks": all up over 1%; generally up about 1.5% 
• retail advancing: WMT up 0.54%; COST up 0.3% 

THIS WILL BE THE ONLY STORY ON CNBC TODAY. 

Anthropic has publicly filed its S-1 prospectus with the SEC, with plans to begin marketing shares the week of November 9, 2026, and an expected stock market debut in mid-to-late November 2026 (potentially around November 26, 2026). 

Key Details:

• filing status: publicly unveiled its IPO prospectus on October 26, 2026, after a confidential filing in June 2026;
• proposed ticker: plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "ANT"
• expected valuation: projected between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion, which could make it one of the largest IPOs in history.
• timeline:
• marketing roadshow expected to begin: week of November 9, 2026 
• target trading debut: mid-to-late November 2026 (ahead of Thanksgiving)

Anthropic unveils public IPO filing. 

To list on the NASDAQ under ticker ANT. 

Most remarkable at this moment in time: going from slightly negative to wildly positive:

Midday: market -- 

Even Carl Q is giddy about this announcement. David Faber is trying to hide his amazement and enthusiasm. Jim Cramer is Jim Cramer.  

Most important graphic in the filing? This has been shown repeatedly on CNBC this morning. 

COINCIDENT: announced at "very" same time -- two hours ago -- posted October 26, 2026, at 9:27 a.m. ET.

The Dallas Mavericks -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52036SPORTS. 

First, the LA Lakers game last night:

Wow, look at the famous LA Lakers that are not part of this elite three-man group!

So, in his first full season (?) with the LA Lakers Luca makes the elite three-man group that includes Jerry West. 

Elgin Baylor? Wiki.  From the 1960–61 to the 1962–63 seasons, Baylor averaged 34.8, 38.3, and 34.0 points per game, respectively. On November 15 of the 1960–61 season, Baylor set an NBA scoring record when he scored 71 points in a victory against the New York Knicks, while also grabbing 25 rebounds. In doing so, Baylor became the first NBA player to score more than 70 points in a game, breaking his own NBA record of 64 points that he had set the previous November. Baylor held the record until 1962, when Chamberlain scored 100 points.

Unless I missed it, the wiki article does not reference Jerry West and Elgin Baylor being the only two LA Lakers (at the time) holding the 50-point record for the LA Lakers. 

Now, back to Luca and the Dallas Mavericks:

Mark Cuban's reaction to the trade:

Most painful data points for me while posting this note:

• I don't follow the NBA particularly closely, but I watch a lot of sports, and I don't recall ever hearing Elgin Baylor's name, but I've heard Jerry West's name more times than I've heard the song, "Choosin Texas";
• the two US senators representing the state of West Virginia in 1959 when Elgin Baylor was not allowed to stay at same hotel as his team: Jennings Randolph and Robert C. Byrd; US president? Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• The "civil rights" issue in the US even as late as after WWII and extending through the 1960s and to great extent, even today.
• it's hard to believe but "Blacks" were not allowed to vote until 1965. 
• an AI query this date: AI did not consider "blacks rights to vote" as a "domestic issue" in the Nixon-Kennedy debates. Say what? But AI gets their data from billions (trillions?) of public sources; Eisenhower may have been correct in his civil rights approach, but if so, sad "day" for the US. Even JFK was lukewarm to championing the issue.

RBN Energy Blog On Devon Energy Selling Eagle Ford Assets To Crescent Energy -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52035CRESCENT. 
Locator: 52035DEVON. 

By the way, a recent RBN Energy article on Devon Energy selling its Eagle Ford assets to Crescent Energy is now available for a limited time over at RBN Energy without a password. 

Link here.  

This is the article that begins:

Devon Energy is selling its Eagle Ford assets to Crescent Energy for $4.22 billion in cash in a deal expected to close around year-end 2026. The deal would take Devon out of the play and strengthen Crescent’s standing among the basin’s largest producers. In today’s RBN blog, we look at why Devon is heading for the exit while Crescent is doubling down and preview our detailed analysis of the deal, available on Novi Intelligence.

Let’s start with the assets Crescent Energy is buying, which have a somewhat complicated ownership and operating history. Devon Energy entered the Eagle Ford in 2014 with its roughly $6 billion acquisition of GeoSouthern Energy’s South Texas assets, primarily in DeWitt and Lavaca counties. The deal also brought Devon into an existing 50/50 development joint venture (JV) between GeoSouthern and Petrohawk Energy in the Blackhawk field in DeWitt County. Petrohawk was acquired by BHP in 2011, and BP acquired BHP’s U.S. onshore assets in 2018, making BPX Energy Devon’s partner in the venture. Under the unusual arrangement, BHP (and later BPX) handled drilling and completions, while Devon took over operations once wells began producing.

Full article, for a limited time, at the link above.  

Enbridge In The Permian -- RBN Energy -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52034ENBRIDGE. 

RBN Energy: this RBN Energy blog is about the Permian, but because Enbridge is featured in the article and Enbridge is a big player in the Bakken, I'm reposting the link and the bit about Enbridge.

Link here to RBN Energy: why brownfield projects have an edge in the ongoing Gulf Coast gas storage buildout.

There’s a horse race among Gulf Coast gas storage developers to provide the tens of billions of cubic feet of incremental space that will be needed by the early 2030s. Out front are the owners of existing salt cavern storage, whose brownfield expansions almost always offer better economics than their greenfield competitors. But which brownfield projects have that special something — an advantageous site, better pipeline connectivity, or higher injection and withdrawal rates — that gives them a critical edge? In today’s RBN blog, we continue our series on Gulf Coast gas storage by looking at a few leading brownfield projects.

Enbridge

Enbridge’s incremental capacity is divided among three projects. The largest is a three-cavern, 25-Bcf expansion at the company’s Tres Palacios facility in Matagorda County, TX. When Enbridge acquired Tres Palacios (light-blue dome icon in Figure 1 below) in April 2023, it had three caverns with a combined capacity of 35 Bcf; in December 2024, Enbridge brought online a fourth cavern that added 6.5 Bcf.

Figure 1. Selected Enbridge Gas Storage and Gas Pipeline Assets. Source: Novi Labs

In May, Enbridge announced that “Tres Palacios will soon have tres nuevas cavernas.” The three new caverns will have a combined capacity of 25 Bcf, increasing the facility’s capacity to more than 66 Bcf and boosting its total injection and withdrawal rates to 1.65 Bcf/d and 2.5 Bcf/d, respectively. The $400 million expansion will be completed in phases, with new capacity coming online between 2028 and 2030. Tres Palacios also features a 62-mile header system (light-blue line) that interconnects with 13 major pipelines, including Enbridge’s own Texas Eastern Transmission Co. (TETCO) system.

And there’s this: On July 31, Enbridge announced that it had signed an exclusive option to acquire the TTC Connector (dashed medium-blue line), a 25-mile, 300-MMcf/d pipeline now under construction between Tres Palacios and Boardwalk Pipeline Partners’ Coastal Bend Header (dark-blue line), which runs to the Freeport LNG export terminal. Enbridge is expected to take ownership of the 20-inch-diameter TTC Connector when it starts up in Q4 2026. BP, a major offtaker at Freeport LNG, has contracted for all of the TTC Connector’s capacity.

Enbridge also is in the midst of expansions at its 22-Bcf Moss Bluff gas storage facility (purple dome icon) in Liberty County, TX, and its 21-Bcf Egan facility (magenta dome icon) in Acadia Parish, LA, which straddle the existing and planned LNG terminals along the Sabine-Neches and Calcasieu waterways and are connected to the TETCO system and several other pipelines. Enbridge announced in November 2025 that it had taken FID on a 7-Bcf expansion at Moss Bluff that will come online in 2028 and a 16-Bcf expansion at Egan that will start up in two phases in 2030 and 2033, respectively.

We should note that Moss Bluff has a 23-mile header system that interconnects with five major pipelines and can inject up to 600 MMcf/d and withdraw up to 1.2 Bcf/d. Egan, in turn, has a 56-mile header that interconnects with nine pipelines, can inject more than 1 Bcf/d (and nearly 1.6 Bcf/d when the expansion is finished) and withdraw up to 2.7 Bcf/d.

[Enbridge also owns the 29-Bcf Bobcat salt cavern storage facility (pink dome icon) in St. Landry Parish, LA, and a 2-Bcf salt cavern facility near the Waha gas hub in West Texas (not shown).]

Much, much more at The RBN Energy link with regard to other companies building out the NGL sector in the Permian.

Manic Monday -- October 26, 2026

Locator: 52033B. 

Anthropic unveils public IPO filing. 

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

WTI: $101.10.

New wells reporting: 

• Tuesday, October 27, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year, 
• 42748, conf, Slawson, Warlock Federal 1-15-13H, 
• 41908, conf, Devon Energy, Owan Trust North 29-28-27F 1H, 
• 41486, conf, Devon Energy, Barbara 31-30F 2TFH, 
• 41483, conf, Devon Energy, Barbara 31-30F 6TFH, 
• Monday, October 26, 2026: 62 for the month, 62 for the quarter, 561 for the year, 
• 42747, conf, Slawson, Warlock Federal 2-15-13H, 
• 41919, conf, Hess, GO-Barb-157-97-3523H-5, 
• Sunday, October 25, 2026: 60 for the month, 60 for the quarter, 559 for the year, 
• 42746, conf, Slawson, Warlock Federal 3-15-13H, 
• Saturday, October 24, 2026: 59 for the month, 59 for the quarter, 558 for the year, 
• 42745, conf, Slawson, Pegasus 1-16-21UH, 
• 42445, conf,  SOGC, Yauch 3-4-LEH6, 
• 42229, conf, Whiting, Paulson Federal 5104 4-13 6BX, 

RBN Energy: fractionation, storage and exports keep Permian NGLs flowing. Link here. Archived.

The Permian, the world’s largest NGL-producing region, is poised for continued growth across the entire NGL value chain. The Permian is sending more liquids toward the Gulf Coast, but getting those barrels to market takes more than pipelines. Fractionators must separate them, export terminals must connect growing supplies with overseas buyers, and storage must provide a buffer. With domestic demand offering limited room to grow, can downstream infrastructure keep pace? In today’s RBN blog, we examine the projects helping turn rising Permian production into global supply.

This is the fifth blog in our series on the outlook for major U.S. producing basins, starting with the largest: the Permian. In Part 1, we discussed the major Permian gas pipeline projects scheduled to come online in 2026 and 2027, how much new capacity they will provide, and consider what the shift means for prices at the critical Waha Hub, Gulf Coast balances and the U.S. natural gas market. In Part 2, we reviewed the basin’s long-term gas pipeline projects and the challenges that could arise as that new infrastructure comes online. In Part 3, we discussed the Permian’s biggest gas producers and how they might respond to the new gas pipelines planned for the basin. And in Part 4, we detailed the surge in the basin’s NGL production, which is slated to account for more than half of U.S. output by 2035.

As a quick refresher, associated gas and NGLs are byproducts of crude oil production, so as oil output rises, the Permian’s infrastructure needs to keep up with the gas and NGLs that come along for the ride. Significantly for our topic today, that means a lot of new gas processing plants — which separate NGLs from the gas stream — need to be built, moved or expanded in the areas seeing high gas production growth. (New additions to the fleet tend to be cryogenic facilities that can extract a very high percentage of the liquids entrained in the gas stream and take in about 275-300 MMcf/d of NGL-packed associated gas.) From the tailgate of the processing plant, pipelines take the NGLs as a mixed stream called “Y-grade” to fractionation centers where the mixed product is separated into purity form before heading to downstream markets, like petrochemicals and exports.

Today, we’ll look at the downstream fractionation and export facilities.

Fractionation Capacity

Gulf Coast fractionation capacity is expected to remain relatively tight over the next several years, even with planned additions. More than 1.25 MMb/d of new capacity is expected by the end of 2029, and those projects must keep pace with rising NGL supply and the additional Y-grade volumes made accessible by new Permian takeaway pipelines. At the NGL hub in Mont Belvieu, TX, Enterprise Products Partners (dark-blue bar segments in Figure 1 below) is adding 345 Mb/d by 2030, Targa Resources (orange bar segments) is constructing 450 Mb/d across three new fractionators, and Energy Transfer (green bar segments) is building 165 Mb/d of additional fractionation capacity, all between 2026 and 2030, with some of that online already. Outside of Mont Belvieu, there’s also Phillips 66’s Coastal Bend fractionator (purple bar segments) in Robstown, TX (near Corpus Christi), adding 100 Mb/d by 2029, and new MPLX fractionators (red bar segments) totaling 300 Mb/d coming online in Texas City.