Watching oil move tonight, just has to be more interesting than the speech:
- WTI: up 5.01%; up $5.18; trading at 108.68.
- Brent: up 5.23%; up $5.49; trading at 110.46.
The next thing to watch: the USD and Canadian dollar. At the link, toggle through one week, one month, one year, and two years. The one-year vs two-year is particularly interesting. Others are noticing it, but some of the "facts" are, in fact, not fact. A previous post on the USD and CAD.
Continues to Surge
I'm listening to Rod Stewart in the background, and in a few minutes I will have dinner, about 9:00 p.m. CT. I assume President Biden is delivering the SOTU address, but I haven't turned on television; in fact, with Hulu I don't even know if I could find the televised event. I will watch reruns of Perry Mason while having dinner.
But I was curious: what is oil doing? OMG -- oh, my goodness -- look at this:
- WTI: up 4.34%; up $4.49; last trade after hours: $107.90.
- Brent: up 4.48%; up $4.70; last trade after hours: $109.67.
Advance Copy
SOTU: "green energy bill" will be sold as anti-inflationary and put $500 back in every American pocket every year. There's no way I'm watching the SOTU address. I will be reading Shakespeare. Later: as I mentioned to a reader -- thinking about the SOTU address, I was reminded of the first few lines of a great song:
If I listened long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing that you lied
Straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe
No Quartery Federal Lease Sale In North Dakota
From The Bismarck Tribune:
A federal oil lease sale in North Dakota expected to occur during the first quarter of this year will not take place, and the state's lawsuit over the matter looks to be heating up again.
The federal government has missed the mid-February deadline to publish a notice to hold a lease sale this quarter, the U.S. Justice Department said in a court filing last week in North Dakota's federal leasing suit.
The holdup has to do with a recent court ruling in Louisiana that blocked the government from using calculations it had made of the social costs of greenhouse gases.
Those calculations are part of its environmental analysis in federal lease sales.
The federal Bureau of Land Management had planned a lease sale this quarter with 29 parcels of federal minerals up for grabs in North Dakota and Montana.
Oil companies seeking to develop federal minerals need to secure a lease and, subsequently, a permit to drill.
President Joe Biden halted federal leasing upon taking office last year, launching a review of the federal program to examine potential reforms. North Dakota and a number of other oil- and gas-rich states filed lawsuits to try to force leasing to continue. A ruling stemming from one of those suits last summer ordered the government to resume lease sales nationwide.
Pleas for more drilling: Meanwhile, the president is asking US producers to drill more.
XOM: to sever ties with Russia.
The Apple Page
News and rumors:
- Apple Lightning Port: will we see a "portless" iPhone? Only way to charge an iPhone, with wireless charging? The EU may force Apple's hand.
- A really inexpensive iPhone? We should know next week if Apple will drop the price of the current iPhone SE to $199 while introducing a new iPhone SE priced at $399.
- A two-fer: Apple will halt all sale from online store in Russia. Link here. A "two-fer" is when a company does one thing but benefits for at least two reasons. In this case, Apple couldn't afford the sanctions on Russia to continue online sales; and, Apple will now have more chips available for products for other countries. Win-win for everyone.
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Everything Else
Calcasieu: first LNG cargo departs from Venture Global's Louisiana LNG export terminal.
Nord Stream 2 operators: have filed for bankruptcy. Wow, if true, that did not take long.
Chariots on fire: the cargo ship with 4,000 cars -- VWs, Porsche, Lamborghini -- some/many/most EVs -- has sunk in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores.
Oil today: I may have missed the high; things were moving quite quickly.
Canadian truckers convoy: newly leaked footage of the Ottawa police chief laying out his strategy to crush the truckers' protest. See if you can spot Pete Buttigieg.
ISO NE: electricity prices in Massachusetts rose 239% over last January and 150% over December. The New England grid had to burn oil, as well as dung and wood, to make power. This all happened pre-Ukraine. Link here.
"Misdiagnosis": with Jimmy Carter we had the "cardigan" speech. With Biden, it looks like "misdiagnosis" will be the meme. From Irina Slav:
"The Keystone Pipeline was not processing oil through the
system. That does not solve any problems. That's a misdiagnosis or maybe
a misdiagnosis of what needs to happen," Psaki also said."I would also note that on oil leases, what this actually justifies in
President Biden's view is the fact that we need to reduce our dependence
on foreign oil, on oil in general ... and we need to look at other ways
of having energy in our country and others."
Say what? Does that any of that make any sense? "The Keystone Pipeline was not processing oil through the system." Really? Again, the speech-writing team has had months to write a statement to explain why Biden killed the Keystone XL.
CVX: raises buybacks and says exposure to Russia is limited. By the way, with "buybacks," that's a two-fer for publicly traded corporations. See above.
CVX: flagging further upside in the Permian today. Doesn't look like there's any change to its one million boepd plan, but now suggests productions grows to 1.2 to 1.5 million boepd in three years. Wow. Investment pace: $4 billion / year. Link here. Link here.
Ten-year treasury: yield dropped almost 13 basis points. Was that supposed to happen? At the close, the 10Y treasury yielded 1.711%, down 0.127. Link here.
After the close:
- WTI: up 11%; up $10.26; trading at $105.98.
- Brent: up 9%; up $9.07; trading at $107.04.
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Back to the Bakken
Active rigs:
$105.98
| 3/1/2022 | 03/01/2021 | 03/01/2020 | 03/01/2019 | 03/01/2018 |
|---|
| Active Rigs | 32 | 15 | 52 | 67 | 59 |
No new permits. Absolutely nothing from today's daily activity report.
