Catching Up On The New Yorker -- Nothing About The Bakken -- February 27, 2018

After decades of subscribing to The New Yorker, I finally bailed. Just too much TDS. But I do try to look at it on a weekly basis. Because of winter weather, I did not bike to the library, 3.8 miles away by car, probably about 4.0 miles by bike. It's been a long time since I've been to the library but I was eager to catch on what I had missed. Or had not missed. 

From The New Yorker.

January 1, 2018

• Letter From France: "The Home Front: Leila Slimani's dark exploration of our most intimate taboos, "Lauren Collins, p. 34.
• Slimani just won the Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, which counts among its laureates Proust and Malroux.
• The Goncourt has, more often than not, gone to a middle-aged white man and so the committee had also broken from history in consecrating Slimani as the face of French literature. At thirty-five, she was the second Moroccan and the twelfth woman to receive the award (and the first to do so four months pregnant). 
• Chanson Douce, her second novel, sold six hundred thousand copies in its first year of publication, making Slimani, who lives in Paris, the most-read author in France in 2016.

• A Reporter At Large: "The Glut Economy: will the booms and busts of the energy industry always dominate Texas? Lawrence Wright, p. 42.

January 8, 2018

• A Reporter At Large: "Making China Great Again: how Beijing learned to use Trump to its advantage," Evan Osnos, p. 36.

• Looks like a nice update of China. Discusses China's "Belt and Road Initiative."

• Portfolio: "A New Silk Road: China is investing billions in building pathways to Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East," photographs by Davide Monteleone, p.46. 

• The photographs were uninspiring; a real let-down. To say the least.

• A Critic At Large: "Been There: the presidential election in 1968," Louis Menand, p. 69.

• Might be an interesting read. 
• Unfortunately the book reviewed is one by Lawrence O'Donnell who is on my list of most "fake" journalists.

January 15, 2018

• The cover features Kaepernick -- one more reason why I won't re-subscribe to the magazine.
• Nothing of interest. Amazing to the degree to which the editor is afflicted with TDS.

 January 22, 2018

•  The cover was a blank and so were the contents. $8.99 at the newstand.

January 29, 2018

• An article glorifying prisoners. $8.99 at the newstand.

February 5, 2018

• Nothing. Still $8.99 at the newstand. But if you are affected by TDS, you will still love the magazine. It's your weekly fix.

February 12 & 19, 2018 (two issues); hope there's something in this issue. We've suffered through three consecutive issues in which only the cartoons justified the price. Sort of.

• A long, long article on polar explorers. Might be interesting. 
• The Critics, Life and Letters: "It's Still Alive: two hundred years of "Frankenstein." 
• Finally, something of interest.

February 26, 2018

• Annals Of War: "Escaping ISIS: how a small group of immigrants helped save their people back home. 
• ISIS intended to wipe out the Yazidi religion in Iraq. Yazidis in America had a plan, so they started driving to Washington.
• Wow, it never quits, TDS. Now a long article on beauty pageants and, of course, Trump. By Jeffrey Toobin, a regular. I guess if you are a regular for the magazine and write anything negative on Trump it will get published. Tedious.

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Tulip Season

They are outdoors during the day, if the weather is fine, but they come in at night, when they are watered, and fed, and read a story about the Bakken.

Cleaning Out The In-Box -- February 27, 2018

Biofuels. From oilprice.com: watch for biofuels policy changes. Trump not happy with bankrupt Pennsylvania refinery attributing its problems to biofuel rules. Iowa vs Pennsylvania. Electoral votes: Iowa (6) vs Pennsylvania (20). We've talked about this refinery before; it ranked first among refineries in use of Bakken oil. It reinvigorated the economy of Pennsylvania.

Tesla. From a contributor over at SeekingAlpha: folks plunking down $50,000+ for the Model 3 may be in for a shock when a "variant" of the same model is released for $35,000. Some folks doubt one will be able to tell the difference between the $50K model and the $35K model. This would be like Apple releasing a "variant" of the iPhone X for $500 vs the current price of $1,000, and making no discernible changes in the "variant" simply because the iPhone X ($1,000 model) was not selling well.

China coal. No links. Too many stories coming out right now about China's energy needs. Coal will be huge player.

US coal. It seems I posted this story or one similar to it; can't remember. The WSJ is reporting that US coal industry is seeing a resurgence in jobs, production. Due to exports to Europe -- how's that emphasis on renewable energy working out? So much for the Paris accords.

Fracking sand. In short supply but some reason for optimism. From the Emergent Group a few days ago (no link):

Life in the Permian, where some operators pump more than 5,000 tons of sand per well to help free trapped hydrocarbons, may not be as cutthroat as it was for characters of the fictional West Wing of the White House.

But tight supplies are causing some angst in the basin.

The 100-mesh sand appears to be the most desired. [Yes, it seems 100-mesh is part of the mix in almost every Bakken frack.]

Additional supplies are expected to come online with sand suppliers such as Badger Mining Corp., Emerge Energy Services, Hi-Crush Partners, Smart Sand, Unimin and U.S. Silica planning to add new capacity.

Peak oil. Asia set to lose three (3) milion bopd of oil production. Yes, the article is from that "peak oil" site, oilprice.com.

The right whale on verge of extinction. The right whale was saved by Rockefeller and "big oil." But time may be running out. The Boston Globe is reporting that "after a year of record deaths, right whales produced no new calves, which could be catastrophic."

GE: Jeff Immelt laughing all the way to the bank. Jack Welch, probably not. Reuters is reporting that GE will restate two years of earnings. Tick-tock. Jeff, you will recall, was the economic czar for President Obama.

GM on the move. Profits from GMC's hulking trucks support GM's longer-range bets on electric and autonomous cars, says The WSJ. The headline needed to add the word "China."

Beyond the pale. I've posted this previously, but it was still in the in-box. Clearing it out now.

Wow -- Percent Of S&P 500 Firms Beating Sales Estimates Highest In A Decade -- Making America Great Again -- February 27, 2018

Wall Street Journal: percent of S&P 500 firms beating sales estimates highest in over a decade. 

This all happened in the year after President Obama left office and Trump was sworn in. I am amazed how fast the US economy turned around. This is absolutely stunning. Think about that: percent of S&P 500 firms beating sales estimates highest in over a decade. Highest in a decade. From a reader: This is what an organically growing economy looks like. First time we've seen it since the late '90's.

Full article is here.

If you subscribe to The WSJ, you may want to bookmark "The Daily Shot."

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The Literary Page

Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth 

Katherine Frank

c. 2004

DDS: 823FRA

Chapter One: Two Writing Men, London, 1719

Defoe: poor; in debt; surrounded by women (wives, sisters) in his rented home north of London; 60 years old; stole the name Robinson Crusoe from childhood friend, Timothy Cruso (without the "e")

Robert Knox: well-off; retired sea captain; nearly 80, writing letters to his cousin, Reverend John Strype, also about 80 years old; Knox has no wife or children; in home north of London, but a bit south of Defoe

1660: Robert Knox, age 19, and his father, taken captive on Ceylon; would not see England again for 20 years

Robert Knox escaped in 1680, or thereabouts, and published a bestseller in 1861

Among its many early buyers and readers was a young London wholesaler of hosiery and cloth in Freeman's Yard named Daniel Foe.

In 1719, by then, had reinvented himself as Daniel DeFoe.

Robinson Crusoe written in four months.

Chapter Two: Crusoe's Secret, London, 1719 - 20

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe -- published April, 1719

Becomes an overnight sensation. DeFoe sold the book and the rights to a printer for 50 English pounds.

Illicitly ran as 78 serial installments in a newspaper called The Original London Post. Continued to run until late March, 1720 (the installments began October 7, 1719).

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Will be completed elsewhere.

The Market And Energy Page, T+37 -- February 27, 2018

Wow, this is so cool. I said this would happen -- I can't remember if I posted it or merely mentioned it in an e-mail to a reader, but I suspected this would happen. The WSJ is reporting that dividends are climbing amid competition from bonds.

More than a fifth of the S&P 500 have boosted their payouts this year, but higher bond yields threaten to diminish the allure of high-dividend stocks.

More than a fifth of the companies in the S&P 500 have boosted their dividends to shareholders so far this year, while none have slashed their payouts, a first since 2011, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The increases are getting bigger too, with companies on average raising their payouts by 14%, the biggest jump since 2014.

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Barack Obama And Slow Growth

Is Barack Obama to blame for slow growth? That's the question The WSJ is asking. President Donald Trump’s economists may be right about the direction of President Barack Obama's policies but wrong about the magnitude, according to this article.

A quick reading suggests that the writer is either an apologist for Obama or at least trying to "justify" Obama's actions. The author seems to be saying exactly what we've all been saying for years, to explain how Obama crippled the US economy. Obama's motives seem unclear to many. For those folks, all I can say is, they need to replace their "Chuck Schumer" filters on their reading glasses.

The article begins:

One of the great economic puzzles of the last decade is why growth since the last recession has been so weak. Last week, President Donald Trump’s economic team pointed the finger at President Barack Obama.

There’s a tradeoff between growth and fairness, and Mr. Obama erred too far in favor of the latter, argued Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers its first Economic Report of the President.

Mr. Obama’s “efforts to strike a new optimum on the frontier of social protection and economic growth may have sacrificed too much of the latter in pursuit of the former,” the report declares. The typical household earned less in 2016 than in 2001 and “Obama’s tax and transfer policies worsened the wound,” Kevin Hassett, the council’s chairman, told reporters.

Mr. Hassett probably has the direction right: Mr. Obama raised marginal tax rates, inundated business with rules and lawsuits and expanded “means-tested” benefits (i.e., that phase out as incomes rise). Textbook economics predicts all these things ought to discourage work and investment. But his report does not prove these policies explain the magnitude of the growth shortfall, and is silent on the harm some of Mr. Trump’s own policies could do, in particular restricting legal immigration.

Economic growth since the trough of the recession in 2009 has been the weakest of any expansion since 1949. But an aging population means the economy can’t grow as fast as it used to. Moreover, financial crises usually beget weak expansions and the U.S. actually did better than all but one of the seven largest advanced economies.

Mr. Obama’s macroeconomic policies—those aimed at the economy as a whole—were relatively mainstream and made the recovery faster than otherwise: fiscal stimulus, bailouts of tottering financial companies and car manufacturers, and support for the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary easing.

The "Beast From The East" Hits The United Kingdom -- February 27, 2018

Pic of the day, from the Sun:

Idle chatter: in an e-mail exchange, I was reminiscing about my "cold weather" experiences in North Dakota, Germany, and England. In reply, a reader wrote:

I remember -40 in 1966 in MN and about -40 in 1981 in ND and almost as cold in MN about 2002 or so. 

Bottom line: he "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming" of the past 15 years, if there ever was any, is absolutely, positively over and it never had anything to do with CO2....or a "melting Arctic" (as either a cause or an effect).

Cyclical weather, as we've both known for years, is mostly the sun and associated magnetism, cosmic rays, and orbital patterns in the solar system and how these causes effect ocean currents and volcanism (unless you're selling grant paid for "science" papers, solar panels, wind mills and  pollution credits). Amazing how so many otherwise intelligent people fell for the hoax.

As I've said before: the marketing of solar panels reminds me of marketing "aluminum siding" when I was growing up in North Dakota some decades ago.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$63.59↓	2/27/2018	02/27/2017	02/27/2016	02/27/2015	02/27/2014
Active Rigs	57	41	38	119	194

RBN Energy: rising Canadian production, takeaway constraints, and WCS price discounts, part 5.