Right turn:France makes a right turn; probably moves to the center lane. Markets soar.
WTI: no surprise; trending toward $49.
Dow 30: up 217 points.
SRE: $113
T: $40
BK: $48 (nice little jump; up 2.5%)
XLNX: $60 (after jumping 4.35%)
EOG: $94 (stable; saved by the overall market)
WMB: $30 (stable; saved by the overall market)
BRK-B: $165 (up about 1% with the overall market)
GM: $34 (very, very nice; up about 1%)
TSLA: $308 (up about 0.7%; a bit surprising considering the overall market)
Chevron: to sell Bangladesh gas fields to Chinese; $2 billion; will mark China's first major energy investment in Bangladesh where Beijing is pumping billions of dollars in a race with New Delhi and Tokyo for influence.
OPEC: via Twitter, some OPEC ministers have made preliminary agreements to extend cuts.
Russia cuts: why re-balancing is a joke. Via twitter. Headline: Russia cuts 250,000 bopd by end of April to comply with oil output deal. 250,000 bbls/100 million bbls = 0.25%. Yes, a quarter of one percent. A rounding error. The amount of oil McKenzie County in North Dakota can produce on any given day -- in the winter.
This is a great, great example of taking President Trump seriously, but not taking him literally. President Trump to NASA astronauts: "get Americans on Mars by the end of my first term; failing that, by the end of my second term."
Meanwhile, former President Obama is in Chicago helping troubled young men find jobs. Which, of course, begs the question, what was he doing for eight years when he was in a position in which he could actually do something?
Comment: I posted earlier that "fracking sand issues" will be a bigger problem for the Permian than for the Bakken for several reasons. It appears we are starting to see that based on the Emergent Group story and the RBN Energy story, and the numbers posted today for wells coming off the confidential list in North Dakota including the QEP Tipi V wells in Spotted Horn oil field (Bakken, North Dakota).
OPEC's four-month experiment with production curbs has failed.
More worryingly, the strength of shale's rebound suggests that OPEC
faces a long-term struggle against this new source of supply in an
industry where technological advances are the norm and today's niche
play becomes the next decade's global standard.
Total U.S. crude production has risen by more than 550,000 barrels a
day in the 20 weeks since OPEC decided to cut output, according to
weekly Department of Energy data. Much of that increase has come from
shale formations. If this rate of growth -- a little under 30,000
barrels a day of new supply each week -- continues, U.S. output could
top its recent peak of 9.61 million barrels a day shortly after OPEC
meets on May 25 to consider its next move.
That is bad enough for
OPEC producers, but the picture just gets worse for them each month. The
DoE publishes a monthly outlook and its views on domestic production
are evolving rapidly -- and not in a way that suits OPEC.
Its
latest forecast, published on April 11, pegs U.S. oil production at 9.24
million barrels a day by July. That is half a million barrels a day
higher than it was forecasting for that month in November 2016, just
before OPEC decided to restore output restraint. Its outlook for
December 2017 has increased by 700,000 barrels a day over the same
period.
The euro jumped to its highest since mid-November in early trading on
Sunday, after early projections indicated that centrist Emmanuel Macron
and far-right Marine Le Pen had made it to the second round of the
French presidential election.
Markets had been worried that the far-left, eurosceptic Jean-Luc
Melenchon, who had surged in the polls in recent weeks, could jump ahead
of Macron to make it into the final runoff against Le Pen, giving
voters a choice between two radical candidates who would threaten the
future of the EU.
"They" say Saturday is the 100th day for Trump. Looking ahead, for the blog, Saturday is T+98 so somewhere I must have missed a couple of days. I'll have to sort that out or do a "leap-week" and insert a couple of days. We'll see.
*******************************
Update: Production Update For Sedalia Energy --
Two New Laterals In An Existing Madison Well 20 Miles Northeast Of Minot
Production data for the following well has been updated. Link here.
29854, 320, Sedalia Energy, Pratt Madison Unit 1H, Pratt oil field, t12/24/14; cum 54K 2/17; total depth, 8,041 feet; acres in drilling unit, 1,002; target objective Glenburn 1B; this well is in Pratt oil field, a few miles east-northeast of the
Glenburn oil field, which in turn is northeast of Minot; well outside
the Bakken.
Geologist's narratives for the two new laterals have been posted.
Sedalia Energy has:
17 wells in Pratt oil field: 9 of them are active; and one is on the confidential list
5 wells in Lake Darling oil field: 2 are active; 1 is inactive; and 2 are abandoned
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A Note For The Granddaughters
Tomorrow I fly back to Dallas after a full week in Portland, Oregon. It has been a bittersweet week and the feeling will crescendo between now and tomorrow evening. I assume it -- the emotional swing -- will persist for several days.
Sukiyaki, Kyu Sakamoto
It was another one of those trips that was transformative for me, for lack of a better word.
I reconnected with three generations: an older generation (my mother); and two younger generations. The younger generation was represented by our daughter and my sister -- each of them almost a generation apart but for me, at a fairly similar stage in their lives; and then the youngest generation, the two sons of my sister, who would be grandchildren to my generation, if that all makes sense. Including myself, a span of four generations: mom, myself, daughter, sister's sons.
I have experienced this "sense of leaving" so many times during my life I cannot count them all. The first separation I recall very, very well. I was in 8th grade. My father took his father and me to Norway. Our first week was spent with a family in Oslo. I "connected" with a Norwegian girl my age and it was incredibly difficult for me -- emotionally -- when we left them by rail after one week. I will never forget her. It took me a long time to quit "hating" railroads: I saw them only as sinister things that took me away from things and people I loved.
Since then, it's been one damn separation after another, to coin a phrase.
Even the half-hour tour of the Chinese ship two days ago will leave me with bittersweet memories. I "connected" with the 32-year-old Chinese captain who gave the tour, as soon as he mentioned he had a wife and 6-month daughter back home near Beijing, and that he would be away from home seven months out of every ten.
This has truly been one of the best trips I have ever taken, and it has clearly been the second best trip I've had to Portland, though there have been very few trips to the city of roses. The best trip was some years ago when my wife and I were both here to witness our younger daughter's wedding.
As usual, there were many, many family photos taken this past week, but I would not be a bit surprised if the photos at this link are not the most memorable for me many years from now.
