Back Home -- What A Great Country! -- August 11, 2021

Started out about two weeks ago; returned home today.

Alaska Airlines: DFW to PDX. Three-hour flight. Uneventful. $150 or something like that.

Uber: PDX to daughter's home in Portland, OR. $50 for twelve miles, thirty minutes. A full day in Portland.

POV: daughter's home to Amtrak.

Amtrak: Union Station, Portland, OR, to Whitefish, MT. $80 one way. Twelve hours overnight, through the Rocky Mountains. Train on schedule for entire journey.

POV: sister picked me up at Whitefish; ten days +/- on Flathead Lake, MT (Lakeside, MT) for family reunion. About a 30-mile ride from Whitefish to Flathead Lake home.

POV: return to Amtrak station. Whitefish, MT, return to Portland, OR. $80 one way. Twelve hours overnight, through the Rocky Mountains. Train on schedule for entire journey.

By foot: walked from train station, downtown Portland, to light rail station in the Rose Quarter. Probably about three/fourths mile. Across the Broadway Bridge. Beautiful walk.

MAX, blue line: light rail to Gresham, Oregon. About thirty minutes. $2.50 (vs $40  by Uber). But in fact it's free. No one checks and the only folks who pay are tourists. I gave my "ticket" to another person. I don't think she knew what it was. I didn't know her story and didn't ask; she was in a deep conversation with an imaginary friend.

By foot: sixteen minutes from Max blue line to granddaughter's home. A full day with daughter, husband, and twin grandsons.

POV: to Portland airport. Noted after going through TSA Security that I had booked wrong destination airport. LOL. We always fly in / out of DFW. How I booked this ticket to Love Field in Dallas I will never know. 

Alaska Airlines: PDX to LUV, Three hour flight. $150 or something like that.

POV: LUV to home in Euless, TX, about twenty minutes. 

Trip uneventful. People incredibly nice all along the way.

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Lana Del Rey -- Doin' Time

Link here.

Killing The Keystone XL -- For The Archives -- August 11, 2021

This is how much diesel fuel it takes to transport Canadian oil by train (CBR) now that the Keystone XL has been killed:

For the archives and for the granddaughters:

• 1 unit train has 100 cars, 2 engines and weighs 27,240,000 lbs
  
• 1 unit train carries 3,000,000 gallons of oil  
• 1 train uses 55.5 gallons of diesel per mile 
• it takes 119,000 gallons of diesel to go 2,150 miles from Hardisty, AB (Canada) to Freeport, TX 
• the Keystone XL pipeline was to deliver 34,860,000 gallons of oil per day
• it would take 12 trains and 1,428,000 gallons of diesel to deliver that amount. PER DAY!
• 521,220,000 gallons of diesel per year 
• the oil will still go to market with or without the pipeline 
• by stopping the pipeline billions of gallons of diesel will be wasted and cause needless pollution 

Alternative?

• stop the Tar Sands all together? Then we must ship the oil from the overseas sandbox. 
• 1 large oil tanker can haul 120,000,000 gallons of oil 
• 1 boat takes 15 days to float across the Atlantic 
• 1 boat uses 63,000 gallons of fuel PER DAY, that is about 1 million gallons of the most polluting type fuel in the world PER TRIP 
• *(See below) Or take 3.5 days of Keystone Pipeline to move the same amount of oil with a fraction of the pollution 
• *In international waters ship emissions remains one of the least regulated parts of our global transportation system. The fuel used in ships is waste oil, basically what is left over after the crude oil refining process. It is the same as asphalt and is so thick that when cold it can be walked upon. It's the cheapest and most polluting fuel available and the world's 90,000 ships chew through an astonishing 7.29 million barrels of it each day, or more than 84% of all exported oil production from Saudi Arabia 
• shipping is by far the biggest transport polluter in the world. There are 760 million cars in the world today emitting approx. 78,599 tons of Sulphur Oxides (SOx) annually 
• the world's 90,000 vessels burn approximately 370 million tons of fuel per year emitting 20 million tons of sulphur oxides. That equates to 260 times more sulphur oxides being emitted by ships than the world's entire car fleet 
• one large ship alone can generate approx. 5,200 tons of Sulphur oxide pollution in a year, meaning that 15 of the largest ships now emit as much SOx as the worlds 760 million cars 
• eliminate all gas consuming cars and diesel vehicles? 
• worldwide car gas consumption is 403,583,712,000 gallons a year. That's billions 
• worldwide oil consumption is 1,500,000,000,000 gallons a year. That's trillions
• it takes 2.15 gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of car gas and .6 gal of diesel 
• so it takes 867,704,980,800 gallons of oil to run the worlds cars, most diesel vehicles for a year and some ships 
• that leaves 632,295,019,200 gallons of oil for other uses 
• passenger vehicles are only a very small percentage of the problem. If emissions are the problem why not just capture them at the exhaust? 
• create an industry to clean exhaust instead of crushing an entire industry and building a complete untested, replacement industry? 

Alternative, mining:

• are we willing to dramatically increase mining to get all the minerals necessary to make all these batteries and electric motors? 
• mining is way worse for the environment than oil extraction.

Let's See: Did Anyone See This Coming? -- August 11, 2021

First, the grid in California, did anyone see this coming? This caught me by surprise. LOL. Link here.

• California faces potential energy shortfalls of up to 3,500 MW - ~2.6M households worth of electricity supply - in the coming weeks and as much as 5,000 MW next summer in extreme weather conditions like this summer's heat waves and drought, the state's Public Utilities Commission says.
• Governor Gavin Newsom would need to fill the gap in part by using more fossil fuels, allowing industrial energy users to run on diesel generators and engines, according to an emergency proclamation. [It's very possible it won't be Newsom's problem after October 1, 2021.]
  
• The extreme drought has cut 1,000 MW of hydroelectric power capacity, wildfires have threatened transmission lines that bring in power from other states, and a fire at a gas plant took a 300 MW chunk out of supply, all of which has made this year's supply shortfall worse than expected.
• Did anyone mention the nuclear plants that have been decommissioned over the past ten years?
• Did anyone mention the refinery-friendly business atmosphere in the Bay area?
• Did anyone mention the ban on fracking?
  
• Then utilities PG&E and San Diego Gas & Electric warned the PUC about delays in several battery projects planned for storing wind and solar energy for peak demand periods.
• California's conundrum shows "the challenges electricity grids face by moving away from natural gas and coal power while incorporating large amounts of wind and solar energy that only run when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining."

Second, the Taliban resurgence, did anyone see this coming? This caught me by surprise. LOL. Link here.

• the speed of Taliban advance surprises President Biden administration, dismays US allies.
• the headline suggests that the Biden administration knew this would happen; they were only surprised how fast it happened; the article confirms it; thought it wouldn't happen until at least this fall;
• the link is to The Wall Street Journal
• the story will have legs until Kabul falls, then the story will disappear from our newspapers

Third, warehouse space near US ports, link here. Maybe an executive order stop all imports, or quadruple import tariffs or build more warehouses? Maybe that was in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. I did not read the article, but I assume a lot of this has to do with a "trucker shortage." Not a "truck shortage, but a "trucker shortage."

Sturgis rally: active cases are starting to increase; deaths not yet seen. Same with North Dakota: cases increasing; deaths not yet seen. Of the three states, Montana is seeing the biggest jump in active cases.

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Most Beautiful Woman In The World

This was a candid photograph taken shortly before we got married a few years ago. Starting to fade (the photograph, not the beauty). If this is not my favorite photograph, then it is "tied" with whatever photograph is my favorite.

Is There Any Wonder There's A Southern Surge -- August 11, 2021

Southern surge: any wonder why folks are surging across the southern border, and up until a day or two ago, Canadians weren't allowed to cross the northern border. I'm sort of reminded of the answer Willie Sutton gave the FBI when he was asked why he robbed banks. On top of that, the vaccine is readily available. Why wouldn't folks want to come here? It's a good news story for someone.

China: crude oil inventories dropping. Short term, imports may have dropped due to slowing economic activity but long term, the tea leaves suggest there is going to be a significant supply/demand mismatch. If so, my hunch is that the mismatch won't last long. At $65-WTI, everyone wins.

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Something's Got A Hold On Me -- Etta James

Link here.

I had not noticed this before. There's an instrumental riff of four chords that are the same four chords seen in this video of James Brown.

US Crude Oil Imports -- Gasoline Demand -- August 11, 2021

Link here.

Crude oil imports: note this week and the previous week, last column --

Crude Oil Imports
Week (week-over-week)	Date of Report	Raw Data, millions of bbls	Change (millions of bbls)	Four-week period comparison
Week 41	December 23, 2020	5.6	0.140	-12.90%
Week 42	December 30, 2020	5.3	-0.238	-14.40%
Week 43	January 6, 2021	5.4	0.043	-18.10%
Week 44	January 13, 2021	6.2	0.900	14.90%
Week 45	January 22, 2021	6.0	-0.194	-11.80%
Week 46	January 27, 2021	5.1	-1.000	-13.90%
Week 47	February 3, 2021	6.5	1.400	-9.20%
Week 48	February 10, 2021	5.9	-0.700	-12.00%
Week 49	February 18, 2021	5.9	0.041
Week 50	February 24, 2021	4.6	-1.300	-13.30%
Week 51	March 3, 2021	6.3	1.700	-12.80%
Week 52	March 10, 2021	5.7	-0.600
Week 53	March 17, 2021	5.3	-0.332	13.90%
Week 54	March 24, 2021	5.6	0.300	-9.50%
Week 55	March 31, 2021	6.1	0.500	-9.40%
Week 56	April 7, 2021	6.3	0.119	-5.00%
Week 57	April 14, 2021	5.9	-0.411	7.00%
Week 58	April 21, 2021	5.4	-0.448	5.00%
Week 59	April 28, 2021	6.6	1.200	10.70%
Week 60	May 5, 2021	5.5	-1.200	7.80%
Week 61	May 12, 2021	5.5	0.037	7.60%
Week 62	May 19, 2021	6.4	0.900	10.90%
Week 63	May 26, 2021	6.3	-0.138	0.50%
Week 64	June 3, 2021	5.6	-0.600	-0.70%
Week 65	June 10, 2021	6.6	-1.000	-1.90%
Week 66	June 16, 2021	6.7	0.108	-5.90%
Week 67	June 23, 2021	6.9	0.197	-1.00%
Week 68	June 30, 2021	6.4	-0.500	2.80%
Week 69	July 8, 2021	5.9	-0.500	-2.20%
Week 70	July 14, 2021	6.2	0.347	-0.10%
Week 71	July 21, 2021	7.1	0.900	2.90%
Week 72	July 28, 2021	6.5	-0.600	6.90%
Week 73	August 4, 2021	6.4	-0.075	15.80%
Week 74	August 11, 2021	6.5	-0.036	16.30%

Gasoline demand, link here: