One New Permit; Seven Permits Renewed -- November 23, 2018

WTI: down 7.76% for the day, apparently. And President Trump wants the price of oil to fall further. Fascinating. Must be driving the Saudis nuts. They've seen this movie before.

Weekly summary: Tom Kool has a nice wrap-up of weekly energy news stories over at oilprice.

Active rigs:

$50.39↓↓↓↓↓	11/23/2018	11/23/2017	11/23/2016	11/23/2015	11/23/2014
Active Rigs	62	54	37	65	191

One new permit:

• Operator: Newfield
• Field: Siverston (McKenzie)
• Comments: one Dahl permit in 5-150-98; Dahl 150-98-5-8-HLWR: #35778 -- already on conf list so not sure what "R" means -- "revised" or "re-entry." Most likely "revised" from the original permit; right now (11/23/18) there is no #35778 on the NDIC map; #35390 is Dahl 150-98-5-8-HLW, with a rig-on-site and on confidential list.

Seven permits renewed:

• BR (2): a Scottvale permit and a Rifle Person permit, both in Dunn County
• EOG (2): two Wayzetta permits in Wayzetta County
• Whiting: a Pronghorn Federal permit in Billings County
• XTO: a Sonya Federal permit in Williams County
• Sinclair: a Highland permit in Mountrail County

Operator transfer:

• Thirteen wells transferred from Oasis to Petroshale

Gasoline Demand -- Troubling -- Gasoline Prices Tumbling -- And Yet Gasoline Demand Falling -- November 23, 2018

From the EIA:

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Moonwalk

I've only watched a few minutes of this video, sent to me by a reader for a different reason. But while watching it, loved the Michael Jackson imitation, fast forward to about 6:15.

Hope Springs Eternal -- November 23, 2018 -- Legacy Fund Deposits For November, 2018, Have Been Posted

From twitter:

Meanwhile, Legacy Fund deposits have been posted for November, 2018 (these are deposits only, not net assets):

The Market, Energy, And Political Page, T+17 -- November 23, 2018 -- Black Friday

"No one saw this coming" -- DeGeneres voice over for the ubiquitous and annoying Spectrum commercials.

No one saw this coming, either, I don't suppose. LOL. From electrek:

Really? Cold weather worldwide? At least I thought Tesla was now worldwide.

By the way, the "cold weather" issue affecting electric vehicles has been known from since ... like forever, but this is something different. Pretty funny. From the linked article.

The door handles of the Model 3 are embedded inside the door and you need to press on one side for it to pop out and pull on it.

Model 3’s doors are also frameless and therefore, the window slides down slightly when you pull on the handle in order to enable you to open the door.

With the cold, several owners were reporting that the door handles were extremely hard to pop out and when they do, the window doesn’t always come down.

After we reported on the issue, Tesla said that it was investigating the situation.

Now just a week later, the automaker has released a new Model 3 software update (2018.44.2) with includes “Cold weather improvements”.

On another note, The Boston Globe is reporting that sea turtles on Cape Cod are dying en masse due to extreme cold. I assume this happens every year, but this year it caught my attention. Sea turtles could use a bit more atmospheric CO2 it seems.

Meanwhile, it's short sleeve weather for some here in north Texas this morning.

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Wind Power -- New England

Off my radar scope, but a reader alerted me to this story.

At the link:  Danish off-shore wind company will purchase Rhode Island's Deepwater wind farm if agreement approved by US government. Price: $510 million.

From this link:

• 400 MW
• That Block Island price, which started at 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour and is escalating at 3.5 percent a year, is significantly higher than the price National Grid pays for power from fossil fuel-burning generators and other conventional sources. 
• It is, however, competitive with other renewable energy projects that have been developed in Rhode Island.

Works out to $1.275 million / MW. 

Yeah, at 24.4 cents per kilowatt hour, it is considerably higher than coal or natural gas.

Other links:
technology costs; EIA; graphics do not include natural gas or conventional coal; when looking at data be sure to note whether price is per MWh or KWh (a factor of 10).

Compare 24.4 cents/kwh with that of conventional coal from a google search:

However, since few petroleum units are used at that cost (petroleum only produced 0.7 percent of U.S. electricity in 2011), it is better to compare nuclear production costs to coal production costs, which averaged 3.23 cents per kilowatt hour in 2011 and to natural gas production costs which averaged 4.51 cents per ...Aug 22, 2012

Let's assume prices in 2018 have doubled since 2012:

• coal: 6 cents/kwh
• natural gas: 9 cents/kwh
• offshore wind: 25 cents/kwh and utility will increase price by 3.5% annually

What The Schiff? I Noted The Same Thing; The Black Friday Effect -- November 23, 2018

The Red Queen may be dead but Black Friday most certainly is not.

This is truly amazing. I noted the same thing. I have had to re-start my computer several times this morning to get a new internet connection. Things are so slow. I thought it was "my" problem or someone was hacking my system.

Nope, Scott Adams noted the same thing:

I can't wait for the Drudge headline announcing record Amazon sales. And the market thinks tech is dead. The smart money thinks the US is headed for a recession. Wow.

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

Starbucks this morning: seating for 30; generally standing room only. Today, I am the only customer sitting in Starbucks and that has been that way for the past 85 minutes. There is one person at the counter, and one person has just come in to pick up a mobile order. Dead, dead, dead. Truly amazing. Hopefully next year President Trump simply declares -- by executive order -- that Thanksgiving will be a five-day affair, Thursday - Monday. As if any work gets done Monday after Thanksgiving. Think of all the money the USPS would save by shutting down for five days. Would anyone notice?

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For The Granddaughters

I don't particularly enjoy this book but, wow, all the new words! French words.

The Great Journey, David McCullough, c. 2011.

A portrait of the Americans traveling to Paris in the 1800s, starting with the 1830s and ending with Henry James in 1875, or thereabouts. The inside map is of Paris, 1870. Twelve arrondissements. Since then, twenty and they have been re-numbered. Today, the twenty arrondissements are arranged in a "golden ratio" spiral. The first four arrondissements are on the right / north / east side of the Seine. Then five, six, and seven on the left side, the Latin quarter, before crossing back over the Seine to number 8. And then the spiral continues out to 20.

Cumulative, life-time, I've probably spent a year in Paris. And like Owen Wilson's character in Midnight in Paris I haven't been there enough.

But I digress. So many "words" that one does not often see these days.

Disclaimer: there will be misspellings. There are variants of spellings. I will correct them later.

My favorite: flâneur, although the French write, flâner -- page 31.

Postillion: most, most interesting -- if the the horses are two abreast, the postillion sits astride the "left" horse. Interesting. Same side as the driver of automobiles in most regions of the world (exception: the Brits).

The huge stagecoaches that carried passengers from Le Havre to Paris, in the 1830s -- "room for 15 passengers in three "apartments": three in the front of the coupe, six in the intérieur, and six more in the rotunde in the rear. Each of these sections was separate from the others, thereby dividing the rich, the middling, and the poor." Don't you just love coupe. For the rich. Coupe de Ville.

The driver of this stagecoach? The conducteur.

By the 1830s, trousers had replaced britches. On this page McCullough spells the word, flâneur.