Last Week Was The Last Hurrah! We'll Never See Snow Again -- February 22, 2021

From a reader. While we were freezing in Texas last week, the Saudis weren't having it so easy, either.

Saudi Arabia hit by a rare blizzard as region sees snow fall -- These camels are taking their lumps in Saudi Arabia, which was hit by a blizzard Thursday, according to a report.

Libya sees first snow in 15 years as cold snap hits parts of northern Africa and Middle East -The Green Mountain in northeastern Libya saw its first snowfall in 15 years this week as a cold wave swept through parts of the southern Mediterranean region, northern Africa, and the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel.

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We'll Never See Snow Again

Link here.

It's Only Getting Worse -- "Never See Snow Again" -- January 20, 2021

From Bloomberg: cold, calm Arctic weather set to rattle Europe energy markets ... and it's on its way to the American midwest. 

Europe is girding for an extended blast of freezing conditions with temperatures set to drop below zero in many parts by the end of this week.

A sub-zero blast that has already blanketed Madrid in a rare snowfall is set to worsen with a weather phenomenon known as a sudden stratospheric warming. The event can disrupt the polar vortex, the winds that usually keep cold air contained in the far north, and allow freezing weather to head south.

It threatens a re-run of “the beast from the east” of two years ago, when a deadly Siberian cold blast lashed Europe, forcing evacuations, stranding trains and snarling traffic. It couldn’t come at a worse time for the region’s heating and power systems, with calm conditions expected to stifle Europe’s wind generation and nuclear plant outages adding to the strain from the cold.

Chilly conditions in Europe January 17-22, 2021, will push the number of heating degree days for that period 11% above the 10-year average.

The measure of when temperatures are below a level needed to warm buildings is expected to climb to 92 days next week, compared to a 10-year seasonal average of 82.7.

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South Dakota Attorney General

No new news in the past four weeks. Link here.

Spain: Incomprehensible Cold -- January 12, 2021

Link here.

Asia -- "Never See Snow Again" -- January 12, 2021

Updates

January 14, 2021: could this turn into a humanitarian crisis?

Original Post

They saw this coming four weeks ago -- back on December 18, 2020: electricity prices jump as winter chill hits Japan. Link here. Electricity prices surged to 59 cents/kilowatt hour -- thirty of thirty-three nuclear reactors off line and prices of LNG skyrocketing.

Fears of Japan blackouts as power prices hit record highs! Cold snap and low LNG supplies leave portions of electricity system with little capacity. Wow, these advanced nations are looking more and more like third-world countries now that they've turned to renewable energy. But I guess that's the price to be paid to save the earth. Link here to Financial Times.

Japanese electricity prices have soared to all-time highs as a cold snap coincides with tight supplies of liquefied natural gas to raise fears of blackouts in parts of the country.

Power companies begged their customers to leave the heating on but turn off other appliances as the electricity system hit 99 per cent of its maximum capacity in western parts of the country on Tuesday. 

The spike in energy prices comes just two months before the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima disaster — the aftermath of which pushed Japan into a radical rethink of its energy mix away from nuclear power — and two months after it announced an ambitious plan to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Warnings of potential blackouts come with just three of Japan’s 33 nuclear reactors in operation, leading experts to predict that the current crisis could add an urgency and strength to government efforts to accelerate the restart programme. 

A week of unusually severe weather has dumped more than a metre of snow on parts of the country and prompted many households, which are working from home because of Covid-19, to turn up the heating.

Japan scrambles! Link here. 

LNG Asian benchmark: link here. 

Freezing in Asia: link here. 

How's that coal phase-out working out for Japan? Link here. 

Snowstorm Shuts Down Spain -- January 9, 2021

Updates

Later, 8:26 p.m. CT: news continues --

Original Post 

Link here.

Storm Filomena has blanketed parts of Spain in heavy snow, with half of the country on red alert for more on Saturday. Madrid, one of the worst affected areas, is set to see up to 20cm (eight inches) of snow in the next 24 hours. 

The city's airport has closed along with a number of roads. 

According to local media, the snowfall in Madrid is the heaviest in at least 40 years. 

The country's AEMET weather agency said the snowfall was "exceptional and most likely historic".

See also this story: snow in Spain; freezing in Asia. 

Never see snow again? Video here.

Jack Ma -- Missing? January 3, 2021

Scary. Scary. Link here. 

Global warming smacks Britain. Link here. [London] Daily Mail here.

Less than twelve hours away: Santa Claus rally tracked here. The last two days, Monday / Tuesday -- January 4 and 5, 2021. 

WTI: could it break $50 today?

PFF: this sounds very, very British, and very, very good. Link here. This is truly amazing:

PFF grades every NFL player on every play on a scale of -2 to +2 using half point increments. 

The grades are based on context and performance. 

A four-yard run that gains a first down after two broken tackles will receive a better grade than a four-yard run on 3rd & 5, where the ball carrier does nothing more than expected. A quarterback who makes a good pass that a receiver tips into the arms of a defender will not negatively affect the quarterback's grade on that play, despite the overall negative result for the team. 

Furthermore, grades are separated by play type. 

Beyond just an overall grade, an offensive lineman receives one grade for pass-blocking and one for run-blocking. 

The average grade is meant to be zero, and raw grades are normalized. In watching every game, PFF is also able to record information and create data that is typically unavailable. One example is how frequently individual offensive linemen yield pressure.

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A Musical Interlude And Some Photography

Another bit of serendipity. I enjoyed Powerline at one time but not so much any more; I seldom visit the site except on Saturday morning for the "week in pictures." But when bored, I might stop by. Wow, I'm glad I stopped by this morning. Every Sunday they have a segment on music, always (?) by Scott Johnson. This past Sunday -- I guess it was yesterday -- a piece on Tony Rice. A must read.

Tony Rice on YouTube.

A British guitarist analyzes Tony Rice's technical ability. Another treasure and another example of how lucky we are to have YouTube. I know nothing about string instruments but I nailed it, watching Tony Rice, noting how Tony Rice managed to strum so quickly. 

So, that's that. 

But in YouTube's wisdom, seeing what I was watching, the site thought I would enjoy this clip, recommending that I take a look. I had not seen this Phil Donahue interview with the cast of Steel Magnolias. It was fascinating. I never cared for Phil Donahue but that's okay. One can get past that and enjoy the folks on stage. 

Note: Sally Fields name is misspelled and the uploader failed to mention Olympia Dukakis on stage. 

Phil does pop up in unusual places. Of all things, he shows up in the documentary, Finding Vivian Maier. Link here. The making of the documentary, the story of how this all came about is as interesting as the story of Vivian Maier herself.

Biography of Vivian Maier.

Notes From All Over -- Late Morning Edition -- January 3, 2021

Anticipation: equity futures tonight.  

NASCAR: "classic NASCAR"  -- Fox Sports 1 -- 2011 Talladega championship.  Three abreast at the finish line. Jimmie Johnson wins by 3/16th's of an inch. Jimmie Johnson, Clint Boyer, Jeff Gordon. Four drafting teams at the very end: Jimmie Johnson/Dale Earnhardt, Jr; Jeff Gordon/Mark Martin; Clint Bowyer/Kevin Harvick; and Carl Edwards/Greg Biffle.

Everybody watches NASCAR for the "big one" and Talladega is known for the "big one." This race is a taped race, obviously. With less then 50 laps to go, the network cuts to a commercial and when they return, they show a replay of the "big one" that occurred during the commercial break. Are you kidding me?

With "54 to go," advice from crew chief to one of the drivers, "Start pushing it up, and keep turning left."

New blogging series: worst predictions ever. We'll start with Patrick "we'll-never-see-snow-again" Kennedy.  

Speaking of snow:

Notes From All Over -- Late Morning Edition -- December 18, 2020

MLPs: from SeekingAlpha, Goldman Sachs, November, 2020:

TSLA: on a down day for the market, TSLA is up 1%;

• volume:
• current: 39 million
• average: 46 million

Winter Storm Gail, electricity rates

• ISO-NE:
• current: $118
• surge: $150
• mix:
• hydro: 8%
• renewables: 7%
• oil: 6%
• coal: 3%
• natural gas maxed out
• ISO-NY:
• Long Island: $101
• NYC: $87
• west-state (along Pennsylvania state line: $33

Winter Storm Gail: link here, from The WSJ:

A massive storm system dropped record-breaking snow across parts of the Northeast, producing dangerous traffic conditions that snarled highways and resulted in multiple fatalities.

Residents from Virginia to Maine dug out of significant snowfall from the two-day storm. It dumped more than 2 feet across central Pennsylvania and New York.

In Binghamton, N.Y., 42 inches of snow fell, breaking the area’s record for the highest one-day and two-day storm totals in December.

“It’s shattering a lot of records over here,” said Lily Chapman, a meteorologist with the weather service in Binghamton.

In New York City, 10.5 inches of snow fell on Central Park by Thursday afternoon, surpassing last winter’s cumulative snowfall there.

Japan: record snowfall hits Japanese islands. 

Chinese flu watch:

• wow, the brown map is at light as ever except for San Bernardino County, CA
• even "four corners" looking better:
• except for a couple of outliers, ND is practically back to "normal"
• top-5 graphic:
• Tennessee remains at #1 but new cases/100,000 coming down
• Rhode Island remains at #2, followed by California (#3), Arizona (#4), and Indiana (#5)
• California's rate of climb? By Monday, if not over the weekend, California should clearly be in first place;

Do Folks Really Notice The Difference Between Four Feet Of Snow And Five Feet Of Snow? -- December 17, 2020

This morning Weather Channel was simply amazed with all the snow winter storm Gail was dumping on New England and the northeast. 

Winter storm Gail.

Historic storm in the northeast: link here. We will see snow reports that will break records like never before. Where are the Kennedys -- you know, the  guys who told us their grandchildren would never see snow again. 

AMHQ: "'We never imagined this once." "We completely missed this in Binghamton." Snowing at a rate of 5 inches/hour. Unprecedented.  "We can keep up with 2 inches/hour, but no way can we keep up with 5 inches of snow per hour." 

The number of commercials on this station exceeds any other network I watch but the optics this morning are worth sitting through the commercials. Keep your remote handy. So much going on across all networks this morning, including North By Northwest on TCM. 

Binghamton record: 18 inches in 24 hours; currently about 34 inches in past 24 hours. Something like that.  Now being reported: 40 inches of snow in Binghamton. Where is Binghamton? Western NY right on the Pennsylvania state line. Normally about 2 hours southeast of Rochester, NY, which sits on Lake Ontario. Three hours southwest of Albany. Record snowfall in Broome County, NY: 31.2 inches, March 14, 2017. That was only three years ago. Say what? Global warming? Never saw this coming.

Note: no one wearing masks in any of the commercials. Finally aerial drone coverage -- but video is from a private source, not from Weather Channel.

But that got me to thinking.

When I was growing up in Williston, ND, the national media thought it was a big deal when winter temps in North Dakota dropped to forty degrees below zero. But honestly, I was never able to tell the difference between thirty degrees below zero and forty degrees below zero.

So, one wonders: do the folks in Pennsylvania and New York really notice a difference between four feet of snow and five feet of snow? 

 Probably. 

By the way, we will hit a new snowfall record in these areas today (2020) and the most recent record prior to that was just three years ago (2020) and I assume they had similar amounts of snow the last couple of years. 

Global warming? Say what? 

Oh, that's right. The global warming folks said they predicted more snow all along.

Fast, Furious, And Complete -- December 17, 2020

This page is now complete. No more updates; there may be some editing, but this page is done. Stick a fork in it. It was time to move on when the Weather Channel starting demonstrating how to shovel snow. Seriously. LOL

Can you say, "albedo"? See comments.

Tell me again Mother Nature doesn't have a sense of humor: just as the airline industry kicks into full gear to deliver "the" vaccine, this winter storm hits the most populated are in the US. LOL. 

Sure, most airports will be open, but the trucks have been banned from interstates, and the secondary roads are impassable. Tell me again why the FAA hindered the rollout of drones. Obviously the folks behind Operation WarpSpeed completely missed this one. Didn't anyone look at the calendar? Covid-19 testing sites are closed today in New England, northeast US.

2020: after everything else this year ... now a record-setting snow storm just days before the end of the year. 

41 inches of snow on the ground in Binghamton, NY. 

Weather Channel now admitting that their forecast yesterday failed to predict this much snow 24 hours later, but they can forecast/predict/guarantee that the earth's global temperature will be 2.2 degrees warmer 100 years from now.

Electricity prices (times in CT):

• New England:
• 8:00 a.m.: $103; oil up to 4%; coal up to 3%; hydro, 9%;
• 9:00 a.m.: $114; it looks like natural gas has maxed out; hydro (very expensive) surging; hydro, 11%; renewables down to 8%; oil, 5%; coal, 3%;
• 10:00 a.m.: $138;
• 12:00 noon: $144; natural gas has peaked; hydro at max for the day; oil, 5%; coal, 3%; coal flatlined; oil started peaking at 0700; solar peaked earlier and now slowly declining;
  
• Long Island:
• 8:00 a.m.: $86
• 9:00 a.m.: $94
• 10:00 a.m.: $94
• 12:00 noon: $93;
  

Winter storm Gail.

Historic storm in the northeast: link here. We will see snow reports that will break records like never before. Where are the Kennedys -- you know, the  guys who told us their grandchildren would never see snow again. 

AMHQ: "'We never imagined this once." "We completely missed this in Binghamton." Snowing at a rate of 5 inches/hour. Unprecedented.  "We can keep up with 2 inches/hour, but no way can we keep up with 5 inches of snow per hour." 

The number of commercials on this station exceeds any other network I watch but the optics this morning are worth sitting through the commercials. Keep your remote handy. So much going on across all networks this morning, including North By Northwest on TCM. 

Binghamton record: 18 inches in 24 hours; currently about 34 inches in past 24 hours. Something like that.  Now being reported: 40 inches of snow in Binghamton. Where is Binghamton? Western NY right on the Pennsylvania state line. Normally about 2 hours southeast of Rochester, NY, which sits on Lake Ontario. Three hours southwest of Albany. Record snowfall in Broome County, NY: 31.2 inches, March 14, 2017. That was only three years ago. Say what? Global warming? Never saw this coming.

Note: no one wearing masks in any of the commercials. Finally aerial drone coverage -- but video is from a private source, not from Weather Channel.

Follow price of electricity here:

• New England: here.
• as natural gas maxes out, one can see hydro increase
• price will surge
• we've already seen surges to $200/MWh overnight
• New York: here.

LNG: "There is hardly any gas" -- LNG price rally exacerbates gas crunch in Asia. Link here.

Market: should be a nice day for most. It's 8:32 a.m., market opens, here we go:

• Dow: up 147 points
• S&P 500: up 23 points
• NASDAQ: up 82 points
• individual stocks:
• IMUX: still above $18 but opens down about 1%;
• JNJ: up 1%; up $1.50;
  
• PFE: actually down a bit;
  
• AAPL: up $1.56; up 1.2%;
  
• BRK-B: up slightly; essentially flat;
  
• UNP: up a bit, but still below $200;
  
• SRE: up about 1%; trading at $129;
  
• DFS: up slightly
  

New Mexico: doing what it can to shut down their shale oil bonanza. First, they vote for Joe Biden, and now they will ban freshwater for fracking. Maybe not ban, but severely limit amount of freshwater for fracking. We've been through this argument before. Check the amount of water used on golf courses. Just saying.

Other news (you mean there is other news):

• New York state lawmakers weigh crushing tax increases on the wealthy: WSJ. Why the wealthy continue to live in New York state, or even worse, NYC, is beyond me.
• Toyota CEO: "Electric vehicles are overhyped." WSJ.  Elon Musk himself said as recently as yesterday it's going to take alot more energy once we move to EVs. The good news: plenty of cars. The bad news: most Americans won't be able to afford them.
  
  
  
• Olympics 202One: not gonna happen. No way will Japan let a gazillion super-spreaders into their country. Along with retirement communities, sports venues seem to be the most common source of the spread of Chinese flu. After WWII experience, is this China's revenge on Japan?
  

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Chinese Flu Watch

Johns Hopkins data just updated a few minutes ago:

• Oh, oh, this is not good. New York is now moving up; it's showing up as #6 this morning! But even worse, California is now among the top five! CA enters the list at #3.
• Tennessee: #1
• followed by Rhode Island (#2), California #3), Arizona (#4) and, Indiana, #5).
• North Dakota and South Dakota fall off the top-5 list;

I talked to a very, very smart friend of the family last night who lives out in California. He/she does still not "get it." He/she has no idea how much worse it's going to get in southern California. Seeing California jump to #3 on the top-five list is ... alarming. The only question I have: why did it take so long?

Herd immunity: some folks don't "believe" in herd immunity. LOL. 

North Dakota active cases plummeting. Chinese flu penetration trending toward 12%.

California active cases surging. Chinese flu penetration not yet at 5%.

Coronavirus: statistics. By country. By state.

The World In Data.

WSJ - Johns Hopkins data.  

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$48.12	12/17/2020	12/17/2019	12/17/2018	12/17/2017	12/17/2016
Active Rigs	14	52	68	53	40

Two wells coming off the confidential list: Thursday, December 17, 2020:

• 37317, drl/A,  WPX, Topaz 24-13HF, Mandaree, t--; cum 26K in 13 days extrapolates to 60,000 bbls over 30 days; Topaz wells are tracked here;
  
• 36684, drl/A, Hess, BL-Iverson C-155-96-2314H-7, Tioga, t--; cum 86K 10/20;

RBN Energy: a novel effort to recover diluent for reuse in Alberta's oil sands.

As bitumen production in Alberta’s oil sands has grown over the past decade, so has demand for diluent, which is blended with molasses-like bitumen to help it flow through pipelines or be transported by rail. 

With bitumen output expected to continue rising through the first half of the 2020s, we have estimated that Alberta demand for field condensate, natural gasoline and other diluent will increase by more than 40% — to almost 1 MMb/d — by 2025. 

The catch is, diluent production in Western Canada isn’t growing fast enough to keep pace, and there are limits to how much diluent can be imported on the two existing pipelines from the U.S. What if there were a way to slash how much diluent is needed to put bitumen in rail tank cars — and make rail transport safer in the process? 

Today, we discuss Gibson Energy and US Development Group’s new diluent recovery unit in Hardisty, AB.

Fracking. the well:

• 37317, drl/A,  WPX, Topaz 24-13HF, Mandaree, t--; cum 26K in 13 days extrapolates to 60,000 bbls over 30 days; fracked 9/19/20 - 9/25/20; only 5 million gallons of water; 83.4% water by mass; Topaz wells are tracked here;

Winter Storm Abigail Setting Records And Hurricane Season Not Yet Over -- October 21, 2020

First things first: well, hello there .... early winter ... from weather.com ...

Snow that has blanketed parts of the northern Rockies, northern Plains, upper Midwest and northern New England set October records in multiple locations, and more snow is on the way through early next week, possibly as far south as Texas.

We're only about a month into autumn, but in the last week a colder pattern in parts of the country has reminded us that winter is fast approaching.

Minneapolis-St. Paul has set the most recent October snowfall record after piling up 7.9 inches on Tuesday, October 20, 2020. That's the heaviest snowstorm on record so early in the season in the Twin Cities.

Montana has been the hardest hit since last week. Great Falls picked up 13.8 inches of snow Friday through Monday and set a number of October snowfall records, including:

-Heaviest calendar-day October snowfall: 8.2 inches Sunday, October 18, 2020.

-Greatest October snow depth: 10 inches Monday, which topped previous record set last year on October 9, 2020.

-Earliest-in-season 10-inch snow depth, which beat the previous record set Nov. 9, 2012.

Remember all the Kennedy stories that we would never see snow again. Wow.  

With distance learning / remote learning / streaming there should be no reports of "snow days" for school.

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Wow, That Was Fast. Skipped Right Through The Second Wave

From New York Intelligencer: the third wave of the pandemic is here. For the archives.

For The Archives -- Spring Snowstorm Shatters Records -- April 18, 2020

From AccuWeather, April 18, 2020:

Despite the calendar reading mid-April and Americans preparing to stow away their winter jackets, winter hit rewind on 2020, dumping record-breaking snow totals on the High Plains region Thursday night (April 16, 2020).

Through Friday morning, that snow turned treacherous in its path towards the East Coast, causing traffic hazards in the Great Lakes region.

In Nebraska, daily snow total records were smashed in cities like Lincoln and Grand Island following Thursday's spring storm. Farther east, by the border of Iowa, numerous areas around Omaha topped 5 inches, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

The amount of snow was not trivial. 

The cool weather in north Texas persists. I'm getting tired of this long, dragged out spring. North Texas has already broken all records for precipitation this calendar year -- something like 122 years -- I forget the exact number -- but essentially since records were kept -- and that was in March. It's been a long, cold, wet spring.

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Crawfish Season

Gol-dang it. I just realized I'm missing crawfish season.  I'll check in with my favorite crawfish restaurant on Monday. For takeout. Their website says they are open for takeout. $5.99 a pound. I really don't care about the price this year.

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Amazing Technology

For the archives. I put this in my journal this evening (edited, of course, for the blog):

Still in nationwide lock down. I’m watching “Casablanca” on Turner Classic Movies. Updating my calendar. I see an entry for a “Zoe _________” birthday coming up. Zoe was one year old in 2002. I was TDY, Menwith Hill, Yorkshire, when I met her and her parents. She was adopted. I really, really liked her dad. I doubt he remembers me. I think about Zoe periodically. As a pediatrician I met her once or twice when she was one or two years old. I googled the name, thinking that “Zoe __________” might be a bit unique. And, voila. Wow. Several hits — and all the same person — a preppie at _______________ Prep School in [western] MD. Her dad was in a federal service and it would be likely the family is living/working in the DC area. It appears she is a “star” player on the school’s girls’ soccer team. Tears come to my eyes. It’s so touching to see how things turned out for Zoe. I wonder if she has siblings. I wonder how her parents are doing. I would love to send a note to her prep school to give to her but it’s probably best not. No purpose to be served.

As noted Zoe was adopted. I wish I were less of a romantic; I wear nostalgia on my sleeves, as they say.

Wow, no matter how many times I watch "Casablanca" I never tire of seeing it. It seems I always see something I did not see before.

"We'll always have Paris."

For me, I'll always have Menwith Hill.

Clearing Out The In-Box -- Huge Day -- October 31, 2019

By the way, wasn't there a lawsuit between EPD and ETP? Link here. 

Twitter one-liners:

• coals to Newcastle: the US has been a net exporter of crude oil to the UAE every month this year
• Rex Tillerson did not deny Exxon's role in creating global warming
• Turkey's oil imports reached their highest level in at least eight years at 703,000 bopd in August, 2019
• the US exported 2.727 million bbls of crude oil in August, 2019
• US crud oil imports from Saudi Arabia were 417,000 bopd in August, 2019, slightly higher vs multi-year low July imports of 395,000 bopd
• Weatherford reports $821 million 3Q19 loss; most of the loss related to reorganization costs
• US oil demand was at 21.062 million bopd in August, 2019, down 296,000 bopd or 1.4% y/y
• Texas crude oil production reached an all-time high in August, 2019: 5/121 million bopd
• US, September, 2019, crude oil production around 12.43 million bopd -- HFI Research, consider the source
• exit US oil production slightly lower not to about 12.8 million bopd; range is 12.8 to 12.85, down from 12.9; HFI Research, consider the source
• India increases its Russian thermal coal imports by 72 percent so far this year -- yes, 72 percent, no typo
• Encana to come US firm with new name; changes could take effect early next year; link here; new name: Ovintiv;
• differentials widened from ~ $13/bbl toward $30/bbl -- Canadian western shale oil -- stranded oil -- Keystone pipeline lead; no typo; diffs widened from ~$13/bbl toward $30/bbl

MPC: huge earnings report, announcements. Link here. To spin-off Speedway. Will break itself up into three separate companies: retail (Speedway); refining; and, pipelines. MPC estimates the retail unit has a potential enterprise value of $15 billion to $18 billion (Speedway);

Refining costs to increase: following Canadian Keystone pipeline spill in northeastern North Dakota, earlier this week; last time this happened; pipeline shut down for quite some time

Pipeline expansion: Seaway eyes expansion; could add 200,000 bopd; link here -- 

• Cushing, OK, to Texas Gulf Coast
• 50/50: Enterprise Products Partners LP, Enbridge

Time to optimize: link here.

Keystone pipeline leak: "ungood" for TC Energy; Bloomberg link here.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Canadian pipeline incidents (leaks): annual review, O&GJ. 2018:

• total pipeline system grew 75,000 miles
• 19 leaks for the CY18
• about average; pales in comparison to ~ 35 incidents in 2013
• four liquids incidents released a total of .... drum roll ... 175.5 bbls of oil; 94% recovered
• one release considered significant by totaling more 50 bbl
• compare with a single CBR derailment
• we won't go there
• Canadian transmission pipelines delivered more than 1.6 billion bbls crude oil in 2018
• 175.5 / 1.6 billion = 0.0000011%

Canadian CBR: Suncor, MEG, Cenovus eye increased CBR; announced prior to most recent Keystone spill; 

Gasoline pump prices: fall across US y/y. Link here.

• "significantly lower" -- their words, not mine
• average regular-grad gasoline pump prices fell 18 cents to hit $2.61 / gallon
• US gasoline consumption grew by approximately 520,000 b/d to 9.78 billion b/d for the weed ended October 25 from prior's week's 9.59 million b/d

Natural gas weekly storage report: link here.

Working gas in storage was 3,695 Bcf as of Friday, October 25, 2019, according to EIA estimates. This represents a net increase of 89 Bcf from the previous week. Stocks were 559 Bcf higher than last year at this time and 52 Bcf above the five-year average of 3,643 Bcf. At 3,695 Bcf, total working gas is within the five-year historical range 

Global warming; blamed for record low, early winter temperatures; record snow

• Utah sees record cold of  -43.6 ºF; may have set record for continental US; shoot, it may have set record for North America
• Chicago: 96-year-old snowfall record smashed as Halloween storm sweeps across the US; link here;
• record low temperatures; up to 50 degrees below normal, threaten to wreck rest of harvest season;
• can you say, "grand solar minimum" -- this has been predicted for quite some time;

For the record -- Farmer's Almanac, from this link, screenshot, October 31, 2019:

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- October 30, 2019

Tesla: one would think that the BYD story is very, very concerning for Tesla, which is pretty much focused on China. It's all about subsidies.

Tesla: filing shows US sales tumbled almost 40% in third quarter and yet their quarterly income was amazing. Something tells me analysts are poring over Tesla's most recent quarterly report. Things simply do not add up.

U.S. sales, which account for the biggest share of the company’s total revenue, fell to $3.13 billion from $5.13 billion a year earlier.

Sales in China rose 64% to $669 million and its other segment, which covers the rest of the globe, rose by more than a billion dollars to $1.83 billion.

“Musk & Co. are laser-focused on Europe and China for growth, while domestically, core demand is fading relative to other regions,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said, adding that U.S. growth will remain more challenging going forward.

In its earnings report earlier this month, Tesla reported a nearly 8% drop in total revenue to $6.30 billion, missing analysts’ average estimate of $6.33 billion.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Denver: more snow, record cold, winter storm warning in effect (winter won't officially be here for several more weeks).

North Dakota:

Track The Biggest Snowstorm In The Rockies Since 1934 -- September 27, 2019

Link here.

One wonders whether this will get that same national attention that Hurricane Dorian received.

Global Warming, 2018 - 2019 -- A Lingering Winter -- May 10, 2019

Updates

Later, 9:20 a.m. CT: so much for all that global warming drought. First it was snow (see below); now it's floods. Beware the "solar minima."

Original Post

Minnesota: I find this absolutely stunning, incredible, ironic, and so much else. For this to happen at this point in time -- all the hyperbole about global warming. I was also impressed that a reader saw this coming a couple of days ago -- I think he saw it even before the National Weather Service confirmed it -- that we were about to see another winter snow record broken. And here it is: a May snowstorm breaks a 117-year-old Minnesota record. Wow.

While the calendar shows it's more than six weeks into spring, Mother Nature dealt a wintry blow to Minnesota with a winter-like storm that unleashed historic snow amounts in some locations on Wednesday into Thursday.

The same storm system that brought an outbreak of severe weather to the South-Central states through the first portion of this week created enough cold air to produce a zone of heavy accumulating snow on its northwestern side.

Snow fell along a zone from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Duluth, Minnesota. While not accumulating, snowflakes even managed to fall in parts of Minneapolis.

Through Thursday morning, Duluth was blanketed with 10.6 inches of snow for this event and 10.9 inches total for the month, leading to a number of broken snowfall records, according to data from the National Weather Service. One spot just southwest of Duluth reported 12 inches of snow as of Thursday afternoon.

Colorado: "Spring" snow for Colorado. Link here.

Snow is falling heavily in the mountains and roads are snow covered and slippery. Rain is changing over to snow in the Denver area and will accumulate to a few inches on grassy surfaces early Thursday.

The operative word is "heavily." LOL.

I find this fascinating.

Good News For North Dakota; Quiet Tornado Season, But Winter Blasts Begin -- November 19, 2016

Freezing in north Texas, and it's not even winter yet! Getting reading to head out for a soccer tournament:

Do you remember the Kennedy clan worried that their children would never see snow again? LOL. I had completely forgotten that I even had a tag for that story: Never_See_Snow_Again. For the record, and for the Kennedy great grandchildren, at the moment:

• Akeley, MN: 12 - 13 inches of snow
• Leader, MN: 20 inches of snow

First 2016 - 2017 winter blast: all predicted by Farmers Almanac this year.

• Argos: slammed Minnesota; now moving to Marcellus/Utica --
• ski resorts in northeast celebrating
• Buffalo, NY
• Minneapolis, MN  
• satellites show 1.2-degree cooling since early 2016: being referred to as the "Gore Effect" 
• about the only tornadoes we saw this past year were on YouTube 

Telstar, The Tornadoes

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Back To The Bakken

President Obama put more restrictions on US drilling in the Arctic.

Friday’s announcement fell short of fulfilling environmentalists’ pleas for more enduring protections that would keep U.S. Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific waters permanently off limits, though President Barack Obama could issue such a declaration any time before leaving office on January 20, 2017.

President-elect Donald Trump’s administration can rip up the five-year plan, but substantially replacing it and putting the Atlantic and Arctic back on the auction block would take years because of legally required public comment periods and environmental reviews.

The Bakken is going to be around for 50 years, probably more. The US will simply cede the Arctic to foreign countries.

Also, a new study on sources of high methane emissions is great news for the Bakken, but could become a headache for Ohio, Pennsylvania, and California.

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Off The Net For Awhile -- Time For Waffles

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Breakfast Reading

From the November 24, 2016, issue of The New York Review of Books:

• Our 86 billion neurons, The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable, Suzana Herclano-Houzel, c. 2016
• The long-distance reader, Avid Reader, Robert Gottlieb, c. 2016
• High ambition for deep truth, Turner, Franny Moyle, c. 2016; and, J.M.W. Turner, Vol I, Eric Shanes, c. 2016
• The battles over Julia Ward Howe, The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe, Elaine Showalter, c. 2016

This was one of the better issues.

For those interested in "the human brain," the Herclano-Houzel book is huge. HH was the first person to actually count accurately the number of neurons in the human brain. It is quite a story. But that is just the beginning.

Herclano-Houzel's resume

• Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, undergraduate, virology
• Case Western Reserve, Cleveland, OH, graduate studies in the nervous system
• Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany, PhD in visual neurophysiology
• Federal University in Rio, assistant professor

Upon returning to the University at Rio, she asked her colleagues, a rather simple question: how many neurons are there in the human brain? The number she was told was 100 billion. She asked for the source for that number. There was no source for that number. No one had actually counted the number of neurons in the human brain. It was simply an estimate based on an outmoded, inexact method of estimating the number of neurons in the human brain.

HH then proceeded to figure out how to do accurately count the number of neurons in the human brain. Precisely. The answer: brain soup.

That was the tool she needed to answer the question: what was the human advantage? How did the human brain become remarkable?

The answer: cooked food.

Along the way, some data points:

• the human cerebral cortex constitutes 82% of total brain mass, the largest percentage when compared to all mammals, but the human cerebral cortex was found to contain only 19% of the total number of neurons in the brain
• the percentage of neurons in the human cerebral cortex is the very same as that of the guinea pig and capybara, and miway in the 15 - 25% range found in most mammals

The question arises: how can the human cerebral cortex have expanded so greatly in comparison to the rest of the brain while maintaining a proportion of neurons equivalent to that found in small-brained animals, particularly primates? HH's answer with two hypotheses:

• it has to do with the absolute number of neurons in the human cerebral cortex; and, 
• partly in the fact that different scaling rules apply to the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum

Scaling:

• the scaling rules are constant across all primates: when additional neurons are added to the brain, the cerebral cortex increases in mass at a much faster rate than does the cerebellum
• this is because the cerebral cortex requires larger neurons than the cerebellum -- neurons that have long-range connections of several centimeters to link different cortical areas; neurons in the cerebellum need to span no more than a few millimeters

Through more discussion it boils down to this: the human advantage comes from no more than strength in numbers.

But what about the much bigger brains of elephants and whales? HH has not been able to get her hands on a cetacean brain, but with incredible difficulty, she did manage to get her hands on an elephant brain.

• the elephant brain had more neurons than the human brain
• not just a few more but three times as many: 247 billion to our 86 billion
• but: 98% of these neurons were located in the cerebellum at the back of the brain
• this left a mere 5.6 billion neurons in the 2.8-kg cerebral cortex of the elephant brain compared to 16 billion neurons in the human's 1.2-kg cerebral cortex (the human cerebral cortex is less than half the size of the elephant cerebral cortex, but has also almost three times the number of neurons

What are all those neurons doing in the elephant cerebellum? Most likely controlling its 100-kg and highly sensory muscular trunk.
 
As far as cooking food goes? Homo habilis reached its maximum brain size because its energy source was no different than the non-Homo primates, and there were not enough hours in the day to consume enough calories through foraging.


"Further expansion of the brain required securing more energy from the same type and quantity of foodstuffs. As from 1.5 million years ago that is just what our ancestors achieved by cooking their food.

Memo To The Kennedy Clan -- It's Gonna Be A White Christmas -- December 1, 2015

Updates

December 21, 2015: up to 3 feet of snow forecast for southern Washington / northern Oregon Cascades.
 

Original Post

 

The conference ended about two weeks; haven't heard a thing since then. This from an old post.

ClimateDepot is reporting on the second day of the Paris climate conference:

U.S. snow cover on the morning of December 1, 2015, is the highest on record for this day of the year. 38.7% of the U.S. (including a small part of southwestern Canada) is currently snow-covered.

Atmospheric CO2, November, 2015 -- official measuring station is in Hawaii: 400.16. I wish I had said this, a comment from The [London] Express:

Again--for the climate alarmists--400 ppm (0.0004) of the atmosphere is CO2. Of that, 4% (0.04) is manmade (0.00016). Of that, the US accounts for approx 15% (0.15) or 0.000024. Of that, energy generation accounts for approximately 1/3 (0.33) or 0.00000792. That's 792/100,000,000 or 792 parts per 100 million.

Any of you who think that our ecosystem is so fragile that percentages of 792 parts per 100 million can even been measured, much less somehow change our climate, are fools.

Forget the completely inaccurate temperature models and fudging of data--the math doesn't lie.

Hell--don't break out the US or energy generation figures--16 ppm (16/1,000,000) can't be measured, either. It's all based on assumptions, not measurements. But leave it up the alarmists to pull another flim-flam--"Yes, we've been wrong--but it's much worse that we thought!" When will people stop buying the snake oil?

See if you can separate fact from fiction in these ten college student demands. I bet you can't. I couldn't. I failed.  Meanwhile, Yale students want the First Amendment repealed. And so it goes.

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Note to the Granddaughters 

Last evening our two older granddaughters and their parents went to a "dinner theater" to watch Star Wars. Our older granddaughter dressed up just like Princess Leia (now, General Organo). So, I was left home alone to take care of 17-month-old Sophia.

Sophia's favorite items are anything with buttons: remote key fobs, smart phones, clam shell phones, iPads, computers, automatic timers inside the house, automatic timers outside the house, remote controls for televisions, remote controls for Bose radios, and I'm sure there are some I've forgotten.

We spent the evening upstairs where most of her toys are and where she can easily fall asleep if she gets tired (which she did not). There is a huge flat screen television upstairs as well as downstairs. Unfortunately, there was no remote anywhere to be found upstairs, and I had no idea how to set up the TV for television without a remote. I brought the TV remote from downstairs upstairs knowing that once I got the television set up, the remote would work for volume and changing channels.

I was unable to get the television to work. I tried everything, pushing every button on the remote and nothing happened. The remote simply did not work. I probably spent five minutes trying to get the remote to work. I managed to get some gadget sitting underneath the television turned on (which is integral to the whole set-up, but I could not get the television to work).

Figuring that I had nothing to lose, I gave the remote control to Sophia to keep her occupied while I got out a book to read.

Sophia took the remote control -- this is 100% true -- and walked up to the television. The television is a huge screen but it sits on a fairly low console so it's about eye-level for her when she is standing up.

Sophia took the remote control and walked up to the television. She pushed the on-off button which I had not seen (and did not even know existed) and the television monitor came to life. The monitor, unfortunately, defaults to "Roku" which I have no idea how to work and even if I did, I did not want to watch re-runs of shows in syndication or whatever "Roku" provides.

Sophia continued to randomly hit buttons on the remote control when suddenly the "set-up menu" appeared on the monitor -- I wasn't fast enough to grab the remote out of Sophia's hands before "Roku" was back up on the screen. But at least I now knew there was hope.

I took the remote but was unable to duplicate what Sophia had done. I was unable to get "Roku" off the screen. But then I got serious -- I started looking for a control panel on the television set. To make this long story short, using the control panel I finally got to "real" television.

At that point, the remote control worked fine for channel surfing, but not volume. But at least Sophia and I were now watching television.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Last evening our two older granddaughters and their parents went to a "dinner theater" to watch Star Wars. Our older granddaughter dressed up just like Princess Leia (now, General Organo). So, I was left home alone to take care of 17-month-old Sophia.

Sophia and I spent the first part of the evening watching television (see story above). The first channel that popped up was showing "Miss Universe" live, hosted by Steve Harvey.  Sophia was mesmerized: the music and the colorful gowns really caught her attention. Normally, she is only interested in commercials, but for some reason the "Miss Universe" contest really interested her.

Steve Harvey was just ready to announce the five finalists, so I knew the show was nearly over, and worth watching, especially if it held Sophia's attention for awhile. I could also check in on the NFL football game during commercial breaks.

We watched the crowning of Miss Colombia and then I stepped out of the room for a moment. I forget why, probably to catch Sophia who loves to climb up and down the carpeted stairs. In her bare feet she does quite well, but in her "footed" pajamas she tends to slide about six steps before catching herself. Outside the room, I heard Steve Harvey make his -- now famous -- "I have to apologize ..."

I rushed back in and could not believe what I was seeing. The story is all over the net for those interested. Even Rolling Stone has a story on the debacle. It's just a matter of time before President Obama invites Steve to the White House for a beer.

I don't think I've ever seen something so incredible in all my life on a show of that nature, and it was all occurring in real time / live. I have heard that Harvey has trouble reading those little index cards he holds on "Family Feud," also.

One wonders.

All night long, not one glitch, and then, the last card with two names on it.

The producer forget the KISS principle.

[Later, December 22, 2015: during the telecast, Steve Harvey said the teleprompter had it wrong, and, in fact, there are now reports of SnapChat photos showing the teleprompter had it wrong. Those photos, if they existed, have been taken down.]

Monday, December 21, 2015

And then there with thirteen (or thereabouts): Lindsay Graham is "out" as a contender for the GOP nomination.

Active rigs:

	12/21/2015	12/21/2014	12/21/2013	12/21/2012	12/21/2011
Active Rigs	65	182	192	189	196

RBN Energy: concludes the series on natural gas supply, demand, and price in the US.

The U.S. natural gas market is facing an ultimatum. Natural gas storage inventories are carrying such a daunting surplus, that prices already at 21-year lows for December, seem primed to go even lower should supply or demand fail to cooperate and balance the market. A warm winter so far and the very real prospect of hitting a storage celling before next winter mean that something has to give.  Today we wrap up our series on the gas supply/demand balance with a look forward to how 2016 could pan out.

In Part 1, we showed how drilling productivity gains kept production volumes firm in 2015 in spite of substantial headwinds from lower oil and gas prices, drilling budget cuts and falling rig counts. Producers this year decreased drilling times and drilled more wells for every operating rig. Average initial production (IP – typically the output in the first 30 days) rates climbed, as did IP additions per rig per year. For instance, EOG Resources this year drilled wells in one-third the time it took in 2011, drilled three times more wells per rig each year, and produced double the volume from each well in its first 30 days. And all of that translated to five times more volume produced for every rig than in 2011. So while fewer rigs were operating, those that were operating were much more prolific than they were in 2011 or even a year ago. Using data from the Energy Information Administration’s Drilling Productivity Report, we then looked at average production per rig for entire basins, and found that EOG’s productivity gains are no exception. Productivity improvements have been occurring in varying degrees across all the major shale basins, and for both oil and gas rigs. 

In Part 2 we showed the impact these productivity gains have had on drilling costs and producers’ internal rates of return (IRR). For instance, a sampling of producers’ investor presentations showed that drilling and completion costs (D&C) had come down an average 25% versus 2014 across five major shale production regions (Anadarko, Permian, Eagle Ford, Bakken and Utica) as of 3Q2015. When we factored in that 25% reduction in D&C costs at early December prices ($40/Bbl oil and $2.10/MMBtu gas), our IRR model results for representative wells indicated that producers could eke out minimal but positive returns in some areas. We then considered the scenario that drilling costs continued falling since Q3 another 15%, down a total of 40% versus 2014 levels, and a remarkable thing happened:  IRRs, particularly in the Northeast dry gas plays, began to come close to 2014 levels when prices were much higher.  These types of productivity gains and drilling cost reductions are what have kept the production volumes resilient in 2015.

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Snow In California

I see they forecast another 36 inches of snow in the California mountains.

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If It's In The LA Times, It Must Be True

The Los Angeles Times headline:  Polls may actually underestimate Trump's support, study finds.

There is only one reason why The Los Angeles Times would publish this story. We saw similar stories and similar "timing" in the last two elections.

Meanwhile, The Los Angeles Times is also reporting a heroin epidemic in New Hampshire.  Really? It appears the New Hampshire folks are skipping the gateway drug and going straight to the good stuff. Colorado, et al, I suppose, figure the gateway drug will postpone the inevitable.

5,120-Acre Spacing Units In The Bakken -- December 20, 2015; Kennedy Clan Rushing Off To Idaho?

This is being posted because a well on 5,120-acre spacing will be reported Monday.

For the archives, previously reported:

December 18, 2014:

• 23424, CLR, Brooklyn-Bakken, establish a 5120-acre unit; 2 wells; Williams

November 20, 2014:

• 23267, CLR, Hayland, Hamlet, and/or Stoneview-Bakken, establish 2 overlapping 5120-acre unts, 2 wells on each, Divide
• 23268, CLR, Stoneview-Bakken, establish 2 overlapping 5120-acre units; 2 wells on each; Divide, Williams
• 23269, CLR, Northwest McGregor, Stoneview, and/or Sauk-Bakken, establish an overlapping 5120-acre unit, 2 wells, Williams
• 23270, CLR, Sauk, Stoneview, and/or Lindahl-Bakken, establish an overlapping 5120-acre unit, 2 wells, Williams
• 23271, CLR, Sauk-Bakken, establish an overlapping 5120-acre unit, 2 wells, Williams

There may be others.

For newbies: note these are cases, not permits.

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Global Warming -- Kennedy Clan Rushing Off To Idaho?

Breaking now: Heavy snowfall causes major outage in Mccall, Idaho, impacting about 10,000 customers.

Clock-boy wannabe: CEO of Air France says device discovered in bathroom of an Air France flight was a fake bomb made of cardboard, paper and household timer. Will Hollande invite perpetrator to Paris for "congratulatory science-project-well-done"?