NPR: Truth In Renewable Energy Costs -- The Road To New England -- August 23, 2014; Hopefully $125 Million Makes People Feel Better

The first link was sent to me by Steven. Thank you.

Note the source: New Hampshire Public Radio. One wonders how much influence the liberal college students have in these decisions, that once they leave the state will not be affected by the results.

New Hampshire Public Radio is reporting:

A new biomass plant in Berlin is finally producing electricity for Public Service of New Hampshire under a controversial 20-year contract that a report says will cost PSNH ratepayers $125 million more than if the electricity was purchased on the open market...

That estimate came from the consulting firm of La Capra Associates which did the report for the state's Public Utilities Commission as part of a wide-ranging review of PSNH’s operations.

In a statement PSNH said the La Capra report isn’t a sure thing because its conclusions are “highly dependent on a number of issues that are uncertain and difficult to predict - the future price of gas, the retirement of other power plants, and new infrastructure development, among other things." 

My hunch: the estimates are low-balled; they don't want to be responsible for any public lynchings or Ferguson-like looting by disgruntled citizens.

I'm always impressed how precise the estimates can be. In this case,  $125 million, not "more than $100 million" or "more than $125 million," but precisely $125 million. 

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Chess

Was Putin correct, Obama wrong? Their thoughts, not mine, as being reported by The Washington Post:

What a difference a year makes. Around this time last year, the West was gearing up for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was accused of carrying out chemical weapons attacks on his own people. That intervention never came to pass, not least because domestic public opinion in countries such as Britain and the United States was opposed to further entanglements in the Middle East.

It will be interesting to read the history books 30 years from now. My hunch: there will be a totally new ranking of worse presidents ever, and Jimmy Carter will no longer be among the top three.

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Baffled

Even the mainstream press is ... well, baffled.... FoxNews is reporting:

President Obama has few remaining friends—either in his own party or in the media.

That’s the unmistakable conclusion of two pieces this week in the New York Times. Just about everyone, it seems, is down on his single, solitary nature.

I’ve been saying for a year now that the president’s liberal media allies have soured on him. It started with the ObamaCare debacle and continued through his seeming passivity or slow reaction time in the wake of the VA scandal, the Bowe Bergdahl mess, the military collapse in Iraq and so on.

At this point they’re basically Waiting for Hillary.

What is striking now is a growing sense, fairly or unfairly, that Obama is not capable of rising to the occasion, that he just doesn’t like politics, that he’s disengaged, that despite his soaring rhetoric in 2008 he has a passion deficit.

I don't think he's even phoning it in even more. 

By the way, with regard to that "passion deficit" -- listen to that speech after the video-taped beheading, something about justice, and then off to golf.

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In mainstream media, night of August 23, 2014, it is being reported that ISIS is about ready to massacre an Iraqi village (through the UN) and the president issues an executive order directing a federal review of the informal process of "militarizing" America's police.  Could the Feds disarm American law enforcement?

I Was Off By A Day: I Thought Yesterday Was Going To Be A Big Day -- Posted July 30, 2014; Bloomberg Still Refers To The Bakken As Booming Regardless Of What The Atlantic Monthly Says

... but it looks like today is going to be the big day.

The "big day" actually started just after the market closed yesterday: the SM Energy-Baytex story; the Menard's story; a new AAPL story; and so forth.

The "big day" continues into today.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

HES (Hess) soars! Hess soars on quarterly results and Bakken MLP formation.

Hess soared after reporting better-than-expected quarterly earnings and saying it will form a tax-advantaged master-limited partnership to hold railcars, trucking, storage and processing facilities in North Dakota’s booming Bakken Shale region.

Shares of the New York-based oil producer rose 4.2 percent to $103.62 at 9:09 a.m. before the start of regular trading in New York. Excluding one-time items, per-share profit for the second quarter was $1.38, exceeding the average of 24 analysts’ estimates by 20 cents.

Creating a partnership for the Bakken assets would reduce the tax burden, since master-limited partnerships don’t pay federal income tax. Hess is the latest to propose forming such a partnership, known as an MLP, as companies seek ways to cut the 35 percent corporate U.S. tax rate.

With regard to Hess, here's the BIG story, from the linked article:

The new partnership will include a natural gas processing plant in Tioga, North Dakota, as well as railcars and a loading facility for transporting oil from the region. It will also have a propane facility in Mentor, Minnesota. 

Don picked up on this. Does this mean that Hess will have a pipeline from the Bakken to Mentor, MN? Or is it something entirely different. I missed this until today, and Reuters just posted it last month:

As politicians debate the dangers of a massive increase in oil carried by rail in North America, railroads and energy producers are considering the same for natural gas.
Buoyed by the unexpected success of crude by rail, companies are beginning to consider transporting natural gas as remote drilling frontiers emerge beyond the reach of pipelines, executives said. 

Natural gas by rail is years away and likely to face strong public resistance after a series of explosive crude-by-rail accidents. But the potentially multibillion-dollar development could connect gas-rich regions like North Dakota with urban centers, presenting an opportunity for railroads, drillers and tank car makers already cashing in from hauling oil on trains. 

It could also be a cure for environmentally unfriendly flaring, a growing problem in far-flung areas where more than $1 billion of natural gas produced alongside oil is burned off each year for lack of processing plants or pipelines that can take years to build. 

Everything, they said, is years away, in this business.  Mentor, MN, is about 45 miles southeast of Grand Forks, and is on the main BNSF rail line across the northern tier. I don't think this has anything to do with diluent for Canadian heavy oil. Hess ships diluent from its Tioga facility directly north to Canada.

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President Obama Needs to Work on Foreign Policy, Not His Golf Game -- The LA Times

Near Total Collapse of America's Foreign Policy -- Their Words, Not Mine

An LA Times op-ed:

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. On Saturday, President Obama played golf while his foreign policy, and that of the nation he leads, was going up in smoke.

Literally.

Saturday was the day the State Department ordered the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Libya. Only three years ago, Obama helped NATO allies overthrow Moammar Kadafi as part of his “lead from behind” doctrine, but he has done little to help the resulting democratic government secure its authority.

Not only did the U.S. not support sending international peacekeepers, it didn't mount a serious program to train a new Libyan army. The predictable result has been utter chaos. In September 2012, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi. In recent days, much of Tripoli's main airport has been destroyed in militia fighting. The embassy staff had to be evacuated overland as thick black smoke from the fighting hung over the Tripoli skyline.

In any other circumstances — and especially if the chief executive were a Republican — this would have been a scandal blared across the media. But at a time when we are witnessing the near-total collapse of American foreign policy, it barely registers.

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Another Fine Observation

On July 24, 2014, I wrote:

The next big thing: mobile payments -- and it will be head-to-head, Apple vs Facebook. Apple has the eco-niche: hardware, integrated operating system, a cult-following, a handshake with IBM. But the killer technology Apple has: iBeacon. One won't even have to take one's credit card out or mobile device out to pay for one's purchase. iBeacon's range is measured in meters, and is scalable/flexible/personal. Apple doesn't talk much about iBeacon; it's just there. iBeacon even has its own wiki entry. I talk about "the next big thing" here.   

It took them a bit longer, but Yahoo!Finance noticed the same thing and posted a great story yesterday:

The expected iPhone 6 and iWatch may not be the only big things down the pike for Apple.

The tech giant is reportedly looking at getting into the mobile payment business. According to published reports, Apple is said to be in talks with credit card companies to create a service that would allow users to pay for items with the iPhones acting as credit cards.

But other than that little snippet, it's actually a pretty superficial article. I did not watch the video.

Spreadsheet, Natural Gas Processing Plants In North Dakota; Dickinson Plans For More Growth West Of Town, Near The New Refinery -- July 26, 2014; Phoning It In (Their Words, Not Mine)

It's hard to find fault with developers trying to stay ahead of all that natural gas and all that flaring. Don happened to come across this spreadsheet detailing all the natural gas processing plants in North Dakota. The jpg is here: http://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-road-to-new-england-after-that.html.

Look at the difference between 2010 and 2013.

And then look at the difference between 2013 and 2014, and, then that planned through 2015. It's really quite dramatic.

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West Dickinson Area Plan

Now that it really does appear that one of the nation's first new refineries in decades is about to be completed in North Dakota, Dickinson folks are planning on how to develop the area west of their city, near where the MDU-Calumet refinery will be. The Dickinson Press is reporting:

City officials are getting ready to study how to use approximately 6,100 acres of land west of Dickinson.

The City of Dickinson, in partnership with engineering firm Kadrmas, Lee and Jackson, is preparing to draft a plan to address the rapidly developing area.

The West Dickinson Area Plan will be an addendum to the Dickinson Comprehensive Plan, “Dickinson 2035: Roadmap to the Future,” which was adopted just two years ago.

The study area will consist of the region spanning from 35th Street West south to Patterson Lake, and approximately 116th Avenue Southwest east to 30th Avenue West; it’s not within city limits, but receives some city services.

In recent years, developments in the area have included the Dakota Prairie Refinery, Bakken Oil Express, the Dickinson Interstate 94 Exit 56 interchange, the Dickinson interim bypass route and numerous infrastructure improvement commitments, including an extended sewer line, Day said.

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Global Sea Ice At Record Levels
The Maldives Are Doomed Once This Ice Starts Melting
This Is The Coolest Summer On Record in The US

Steven Goddard/Real Science is reporting: global sea ice is at record levels; eighth (8th) highest on record. In 1992 Algore said sea ice was melting due to global warming. There is an interesting graph at the link. Note the trend with regard to the extent of global sea ice over the past four years: almost straight up. I can't make this stuff up.

Steve Goddard also notes that the summer of 2014 (that would be THIS summer) has turned out to be the coolest summer on record in the US. The graph at this link:

The frequency of 90 degree days in the US has been plummeting for 80 years, and 2014 has had the lowest frequency of 90 degree days through July 23 on record. The only other year which came close was 1992, and that was due to dust in the atmosphere from Mt Pinatubo.

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Phoning It In

The (London) Telegaph is reporting:

The degree to which Barack Obama is now phoning it in – sleepwalking perfunctorily through his second term, amid golf rounds and dinner parties – is astonishing. 

President Obama has emotionally checked out of his job a couple of years early, it seems. How can one tell?

Candidates for president who brazenly assume they are the inevitable victor are sometimes accused of “measuring the drapes” for the White House.

Obama, conversely, seems to be prematurely packing his bags in hopes for an early departure. 

Obama’s not dumb [but he is lazy, his words, not mine], and he’s clearly capable of marshalling an effective propaganda campaign when he wants to. So what explains this series of bad optics, which might be described by PR professionals as political malpractice?

The only thing that makes sense is that he is exhausted and, perhaps, has checked out of the job early.

If Nero fiddled while Rome burned, then Obama is dining out, golfing, and raising money while the world collapses.

I started noticing this back in October, 2013, and Peggy Noonan (WSJ) started writing about earlier this month.  I have the tag "Obama_Lame_Duck" but I'm wondering whether I should have called it "Phoning_It_In"?

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Israel Offers Extended Truce, Hamas Refuses

Hamas In Secret Arms Deal With North Korea

No sooner had the 12-hour truce come to an end, and Hamas started firing rockets into Israel again. Israel offered to extend the truce; Hamas rejected. 

Meanwhile, The (London) Telegraph is reporting that Hamas and North Korea are in a secret arms deal.

Hamas militants are attempting to negotiate a new arms deal with North Korea for missiles and communications equipment that will allow them to maintain their offensive against Israel, according to Western security sources.

Security officials say the deal between Hamas and North Korea is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and is being handled by a Lebanese-based trading company with close ties to the militant Palestinian organization based in east Beirut.

Hamas officials are believed to have already made an initial cash down payment to secure the deal, and are now hoping that North Korea will soon begin shipping extra supplies of weapons to Gaza. 

And then folks wonder why Israel has the Gaza strip coastline blockaded. This is not rocket science.

Previous US presidents would have called this "outrageous" (his word, not mine) but the current administration will let it go.

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Another GM Recall?
General Motors Government Motors Genuine Menace

Get ready for another GM recall. This time: older model Impalas with air bag software problems. If there is a problem with Impalas, I doubt it will be limited to one make/model. It could be a double whammy: if the ignition switch fails and the car comes to a sudden stop, and the air bag does not deploy ...

 
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Handicaps Crossing

My hunch is that President Obama's handicap is decreasing while Tiger Woods' handicap is increasing. It's very possible, the two handicaps will cross sometime in 2018.  Someday you can say you read it here first.

Disclaimer: this is not a sports column. Do not quote anything from this site as accurate if it pertains to sports, or anything you think you might have read here that might possibly have related to sports. Definitely don't make any Las Vegas bets based on what you read here. 

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Earlier I posted a note for the granddaughters about my experience at LAX today. As I watched the buses go by with their destinations in LED (e.g., Van Nuys), I thought about the man who probably did more than anyone to promote this city (Los Angeles): Johnny Carson.