Superior thinking. Minnesota gets bragging rights (low CO2 emissions); neighboring states get revenue, jobs. What's not to like? Everyone's happy. Minnesota Power to build $700 million, 550-MW natural gas plant five miles across the state line in Wisconsin. On the expensive side at $1.3 million / MW. Assuming everything goes as planned (and it won't) the energy center will be located near an Enbridge terminal oil tank farm. The new natural gas plant serving Minnesota will be built in/near Superior, WI:
EIA's weekly energy charts: link here. The bureaucrats move into the 21st century -- EIA has its own Flickr page.
ObamaCare bailout: insurers have nothing to worry about. Now that
Trump is cutting deals with Pelosi and Schumer, the health insurers
will do just fine, thank you. It appears the insurers will continue to
get their money from DC to fund ObamaCare, but at the same time, the
insurers will reduce coverage, cut and run.
I wrote that tongue-in-cheek. I surmised it was going to happen but did not have a link, nor was I even interested. Now tonight, while reading today's on-line edition of The WSJ this story: a plan to fund health insurer payments coalesces.
A deal to fund insurer payments critical to the health law took shape, even as conservative lawmakers and the White House push an alternative.
The contours of a deal to fund insurer payments critical to the
Affordable Care Act took shape Thursday, even as conservative lawmakers
and the White House pushed an alternative plan to repeal parts of the
law.
Senate Health Committee Chairman
Lamar Alexander
(R., Tenn.) said he hoped to reach an agreement with Democrats by
the end of next week on the insurer payments, which offset subsidies
they provide low-income consumers.
At a hearing Thursday, Mr.
Alexander suggested he would be willing to authorize the subsidy
payments for multiple years, as Democrats are demanding, in exchange for
“structural changes” to the ACA, also called Obamacare.
And so it goes.
For the record, I've lost all interest in ObamaCare. I still post updates but however it turns out, I no longer care. From an investor's point of view, it's another open book test. Perhaps the most interesting question is whether RINOs will even dare bring this issue up in the 2018 mid-term elections.
Florida nuclear plants shutting down: link here, data points:
two nuclear plants: Turkey Point; St Lucie
Florida Power & Light
Florida's only operating nuclear power plants
can you say Fukushima? not too worry --
the nuclear sites are among the strongest in the United States and are
designed to withstand heavy wind and storm surge. Turkey Point's nuclear
reactors are enclosed in six feet of steel-reinforced concrete and sit
20 feet above sea level. Nuclear plants also have significant redundancies that serve as back-ups to back-ups
specific information as to when plants would be shut was not provided by the company, but US NRC said:
Turkey Point should shut down Friday evening;
St Lucie would go off-line 12 hours later
And then I guess Florida will need to rely on solar and wind energy (and there will be a lot of wind energy -- just not particularly useful). I know Algore would go with solar and wind.
Hartford, CT, ready to declare bankruptcy. WSJ story here. $50 million pales in comparison to what is about to happen in Florida, what happened in Texas. Wouldn't it be great if Amazon selected Hartford for HQ2. "Doomsday: US cities" tracked here. Amazon HQ2: to employup to 50,000 people. Sounds like a lot. On the other hand, the Foxcconn facility that will be built in Wisconson with a $3 billion taxpayer price tag might hire 3,000 people. Quick, how many people does Foxconn employ at their Zhengzhou ("Pat, is there a "z"? I would like to solve the puzzle.")? Answer: 250,000 people are employed at one plant. Source: WSJ.
The Mideast. Rules of engagement (ROE) have changed. I don't know if folks recall this story. But some years ago when ISIS celebrated the taking of some Iraqi/Syrian city, they had a huge "parade" of scores (hundreds?) of Toyota military vehicles. The USAF could have taken out 100's of military vehicles but President Obama's ROE ruled it out. Not this time. Stripes is reporting that "US warplanes picked off ISIS fighters drawn to a stranded convoy like moths to the flame."
Ah, yes, here it is. It was in West Anbar province where ISIS held a massive parade celebrating victory in Ramadi, May 18, 2015. See photographs below: USAF could have taken out this whole group with little collateral damage but the administration said "no."
UPDATE, September 14, 2017: apparently the US blinked. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the ISIS convoy reached militant-held Syria after US-led coalition stops strikes. The US-led coalition ceased airstrikes at the request of the Russian government. Wow. Since much of the convoy was made up of wives and children perhaps it was the right thing to do. Apparently the convoy was made up of buses. Even US warriors have (moral, ethical) trouble taking out yellow school buses.
Islamic State militants stranded in the Syrian desert for two weeks
have reached ISIS-controlled territory in eastern Syria after the
U.S.-led coalition ceased its airstrikes on the convoy’s route,
according to opposition activists.
The convoy of buses traveled
across Syria as part of a controversial deal brokered in August by the
Lebanese militia group Hezbollah that allowed 600 people—Islamic State
fighters and their families—to withdraw from the Lebanese border in
southwestern Syria and head toward its border with Iraq.
*******************************
Following News That SRE-Oncor Deal Remains On Track
Around $102/share in January, 2017; now closing in on $120/share.
In 1998, the quarterly dividend was 39 cents/share; this year, the dividend is running around 82 cents/share. During that time period, the dividend has dropped as low as 25 cents/share.
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do now make any investment, financial, job, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.
US commercial crude oil inventories (excluding the SPR) increased by 4.6 million bbls. In the past 19 weeks, there have only been three weeks in which crude oil inventories rose, and, by far, this was the greatest increase ... and the US summer driving season has come to an end.
At 462.4 million bbls, US crude oil inventories are in the upper half of the average range for this time of year (the report did not say over how many years the "average" was determined). The average was pulled up significantly by the Saudi surge between 2014 and 2016, so saying US inventories are in the upper half is not good news for oil bulls.
Following the report, the price of WTI reversed its upward trend, and is now trading below $49 again, down about one-half percent.
Interestingly, total motor gasoline inventories decreased 3.2 million bbls last week despite the fact that Texans were not driving because they had run out of gasoline, post-Harvey. Regardless, gasoline inventories remain near the upper limit of the average range, so if you think you are over-paying for gasoline ... guess what, you probably are.
Weeks to re-balance (to see how this works, previous "re-balancing" links will explain it:
Week
Date
Drawdown
Storage
Weeks to RB
Week 0
Apr 26, 2017
529.0
180
Week 1
May 3, 2017
0.9
528.0
198
Week 2
May 10, 2017
6
522.0
50
Week 3
May 17, 2017
1.8
520.2
59
Week 4
May 24, 2017
4.4
515.8
51
Week 5
May 31, 2017
6.4
509.9
41
Week 6
June 7, 2017
-3.3
513.2
60
Week 7
June 14, 2017
1.7
511.5
57
Week 8
June 21, 2017
2.5
509.0
62
Week 9
June 28, 2017
-0.2
509.2
71
Week 10
July 6, 2017
6.3
502.9
58
Week 11
July 12, 2017
7.6
495.3
47
Week 12
July 19, 2017
4.7
490.6
43
Week 13
July 26, 2017
7.2
483.4
38
Week 14
August 2, 2017
1.5
481.9
37
Week 15
August 9, 2017
6.5
475.4
35
Week 16
August 16, 2017
8.9
466.5
30
Week 17
August 23, 2017
3.3
463.2
29
Week 18
August 30, 2017
5.4
457.8
27
Week 19
September 7, 2017
-4.6
462.4
32
At the current average rate of decline, it will still take 32 weeks to re-balance.
Other data points of interest from the weekly petroleum report:
refinery inputs averaged 14.5 million b/d; about 3.3 million b/d less than the previous week's average (due to refineries shut down due to Hurricane Harvey)
refineries operated at 80% capacity vs usual 97%+
crude oil imports hardly decreased at all -- testament to a lot of hard word, American ingenuity
Refinery runs: hit record low due to Hurricane Harvey - link here.Data points:
refinery utilization rates dropped 16.9 percentage points to 79.7 percent of total capacity
lowest level since data started being kep in 1992
crude oil inventories rose 4.6 million bbls; forecast for 4 million bbl
*******************************************
Alan Turing: The Enigma
inspired the film, The Imitation Game
Andrew Hodges
c. 1983, 2014
DDS: 510HOD
As mentioned earlier, I am in my Margaret Sanger phase. I had not expected this phase to last long, but I may be surprised.
This passage from Andrew Hodges' biography of Alan Turing seems to dovetail exactly with excerpts from the biography of Margaret Sanger and the biography of "the pill." From Alan Turing: The Enigma, page 259:
In the spring of 1941 Alan developed a new friendship. It was with Joan Clarke, a fact which presented him with a very difficult decision. First they had gone out together to the cinema a few times, and spent some leave days together. Soon everything was pointing in one direction. He proposed marriage, and Joan gladly accepted.
Many people, in 1941, would not have thought it important that marriage did not correspond with his sexual desires; the idea that marriage should include a mutual sexual satisfaction was still a modern one, which had not yet replaced the older idea of marriage as a social duty. One thing that Alan never questioned was the form of the marriage relationship, with the wife as housekeeper. But in other ways he took a modern view, and above all was honest to a fault. So he told her a few days later that they should not count on it working out, because he had "homosexual tendencies."
And then several pages of most fascinating reading about a wonderful relationship.
Charlie Rich and his wife were driving to Florida for a vacation after seeing their son Allan perform with Freddy Fender at Lady Luck Casino in Natchez, Mississippi when he experienced a bout of severe coughing.
After visiting a doctor in St. Francisville, Louisiana, and receiving antibiotics, he continued traveling until he stopped to rest for the night. Rich died in his sleep on July 25, 1995, in a Hammond, Louisiana motel; he was 62 years old. The cause of death was a pulmonary embolism. He was buried in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee.
1995, he died. I saw him in concert in 1974, or thereabouts. Spectacular show. Incredible seats.
