Monday, January 14, 2019

Monday, January 14, 2019

Director's Cut: should be released tomorrow, Tuesday, January 15, 2019, 3:00 p.m. CT.  

Gasoline: regular unleaded gasoline dropped sharply overnight. At neighborhood station, least expensive unleaded regular dropped form $2.29 late last week to $1.83 this morning.  

ISO New England: spiked to $110/MW this morning. Although minimal, both less than 1%, ISO New England was still burning oil and coal.

China's annual trade surplus with US hits record. Until Trump came along, no one was talking about this, nor was the Deep State / MSM talking about a lot of other things that Trump has pointed out. By the way, whatever happened to the North Korean nuclear threat? That's rhetorical; please don't answer/respond. [Shortly after posting that, it was announced that a new "summit" between US and North Korea was in the offing.]

Mexico fuel shortage: update, at Bloomberg via Rigzone. Bottom line: Pemex gas stations are getting priority. If you pull into another service station, there may be a fuel shortage.
Private gasoline retailers including BP Plc and Repsol SA are scrambling for alternatives to state-owned Pemex to supply their service stations in Mexico that are running out of fuel. That could be easier said than done, however.
Companies that have relied on Petroleos Mexicanos for supply could turn to private truckers to carry gasoline and diesel from ports to their stations. The firms are also evaluating importing fuel by rail and ship. Pemex’s fuel pipelines, shut as part of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s efforts to rein in fuel theft, are not expected to fully reopen for several months.
Given that tankers holding the equivalent of about 16 percent of Pemex’s daily fuels sales are waiting at Mexico’s ports, importing more gasoline and diesel may be a challenge.
The government’s actions, including shutting Pemex pipelines and increasing surveillance of refineries and terminals since the weekend, have led to major distribution delays and sparked nationwide shortages at gas stations.
Some of the world’s biggest oil companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Koch Industries Inc. and Glencore Plc, have piled into the Mexican fuel market over the past several years following landmark legislation in 2014 that ended Pemex’s monopoly in the sector. Pemex still owns a majority of Mexico’s distribution networks and infrastructure, however, with only a handful of private importers such as Koch and Glencore moving their own product into the country.
Pemex is prioritizing its own service stations before supplying private clients such as BP, according to one of the people. For example, only about 20 fuel trucks a day are arriving to supply all of the service stations in Toluca in the state of Mexico whereas BP alone relies on 26 fuel trucks a day to supply its fuel stations there.
Equinor (Statoil) acquires 40% operated interest in Chevron's Rosebank, in the west of Shetland, US UK continental shelf. Link here.

M&A mergers in oil and gas industry. GlobalData posted short list of potential M&A targets/acquirers. Link here.

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

James Powell owns the economy. US consumer prices drop for the first time in nine months. Came on the slump of price of gasoline. I've never really understood why gasoline was part of the CPI but that's a discussion for another place and time. Not at this place and not at this time. The Fed, CNBC, and most others agree that underlying inflation pressures remained firm, as rental housing and health care rose steadily.

Saudi Arabia: from John Kemp this morning --
Something puzzles me reading the news (as a bear of very little brain) Saudi Arabia short of cash and borrowing on international capital markets Revenues insufficient to meet budget commitments At the same time, multiple stories about the country investing overseas I'm confused
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Back to the Bakken

Wells coming off confidential list today, over the weekend --
Monday, January 14,2018:
  • 34650, SI/NC, WPX, Lawrence Bull 1-12HC, South Fork, no production data,
  • 34649, SI/NC, WPX, Lawrence Bull 1-12HY, South Fork, no production data,
Sunday, January 13, 2018:
  • 31775, 3,193, Bruin, Fort Berthold 151-94-26B-35-15H, Three Forks, API: 33-053-07184, 12 million gallons of water; 87% water by mass, 55 stages; 14.6 million lbs, t8/18; cum 156K 11/18; Antelope-Sanish. For background, see this post.
Saturday, January 12, 2018:
  • 34195, 2,249, CLR, Radermecher 13-22H, Camel Butte, a huge well; see the Radermecher wells here; t9/18; cum 96K 11/18;
  • 33725, 2,621, CLR, Norway 5-5H, Fancy Buttes, t10/18; cum 3K 11/18;
  • 33646, IA/357,  CLR, Comlid 8-19H, Elidah, 4 sections, t --; cum --
  • 31778, 1,549, Bruin, Fort Berthold 151-94-26B-35-10H, Antelope-Sanish, 48 stages; 12.6 million lbs, a nice well; but not as nice as #31775 above; t8/18; cum 60K 11/18;
Active rigs:

$51.081/14/201901/14/201801/14/201701/14/201601/14/2015
Active Rigs67553651158

RBN Energy: part 4, how LNG exports will change gulf coast natural gas markets in 2019.
Liquefaction capacity additions will add about 5 Bcf/d of natural gas demand in 2019, with almost all of that happening along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast. The planned start-up of new liquefaction trains at the Sabine Pass, Corpus Christi, Cameron, Freeport and Elba Island projects means we can expect U.S. LNG export demand to double to nearly 9 Bcf/d by the end of the year. How fast will that new capacity and gas demand come on and how will the gas get to where it needs to be? Today, we take a closer look at the timing of the liquefaction capacity build-out and the related feedgas routes.

Sunday, January 13, 2019

Winter Storm GIA -- January 13, 2019; Meanwhile In Austria: Ten Feet Of Snow In 48 Hours; More On The Way

Updates

February 1 2019: the cover and the table of contents for the January 26 - February 1, 2019, issue of The Economist. It is my thesis that The Economist suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. I made the comment some time ago that if one had not business magazine other than The Economist one would think there is nothing else going on in the world other than the Trump presidency. I don't even recall many articles on "Brexit." This issue continues to prove the point. I did not find the word "Brexit" on the cover or in the table of contents, but certainly a lot related to Trump:





January 21, 2019: the cover and the table of contents for the January 5 - January 11, 2019, issue of The Economist.This was about the time Brexit and Theresa May were coming a head, first with the parliament voting against May's Brexit bill and thus triggering a "no-confidence" vote. May survived that vote. This issue of The Economist does not mention the word "Brexit" on the cover or in the table of contents, save for a lone letter to the editor. My impression of The Economist remains unchanged from the original post.



Original Post

I see ISO New England spiked to $115/MW earlier this evening.

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Sunday Night Reading

Readers may want to scan the headlines over at zerohedge before the week begins and we start getting inundated with fake news from US media outlets, and anti-American op-eds from The Economist. I don't subscribe to The Economist (a British weekly) but I generally scan a copy every week. If that's all one had to read, one would get the feeling that the only country with any economic challenges is the US. I don't recall much being written about Brexit.

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Austria Ski Slopes -- Too Much Snow

We were stationed overseas for thirteen consecutive years -- my wife says it was fourteen consecutive years. Most of those years were in continental Europe or in England. Every winter we went skiing in the Alps, either in Germany or in Switzerland.

Austria was particularly remarkable.

Now this, in today's news, from iceagenow:


Great memories. If I had all the money in the world, I would have a house in the Boston, MA, area and a house in Yorkshire, England. We would go skiing every winter in Austria. Or maybe we would just enjoy glühwein in front of the fireplaces inside the chalets, watching the younger skiers.

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Movin' On Out

From zerohedge:


Native North Dakotans are all moving to Phoenix.

Look at the "gainers": Nevada; Idaho (maybe more on this later); Arizona; South Carolina; Colorado; Delaware (interesting); North Carolina; Oregon; and, Florida. Montana is up there, also. What the table does not show is that the folks that move are the folks that can afford to move. Note where NY and California fall on the curve.

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Amazon Echo Dot

I'm having a blast with Alexa. And, yes, we now "subscribe" to Amazon Music Unlimited. My wife does not know that yet, that I am listening to AMU for thirty days free to see what it is like, but she keeps coming in to tell me how wonderful Amazon Music / Echo Dot is. Something tells me I will continue to subscribe after the introductory free period.

Yes, it's worth it.

I Don't Remember Loving You, John Conlee

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 And So It Goes

A couple of years ago when visiting Grand Canyon National Park, our daughters came across these old "ATT shells." I do not recall if they knew what they were -- or if I explained the shells to them. Can't recall.

But for the archives. Olivia,  using the old landline to talk to her older sister using her wireless phone.

Pocahontas Grabbing (A) Fire-Water -- Worst Stereotype In Memory -- January 13, 2019

The White House must be reading the blog. About a week ago, I posted this:

January 8, 2019, T+63, day 18: a reader suggested that Pocahontas swigging beer on social media is as bad a stereotype of the native American as one could imagine.

Now, from twitter this evening:

At YouTube:

Pocahontas grabbing (a) fire-water.

Well, This Game Is Over -- Except For Patriot Fans, No One Will Be Watching The Second Half -- January 13, 2019

ISO New England doing just fine. The "big storm" must have missed New England.

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The Literary Page

The Great Gatsby trivia never ends. Ms Corrigan has enough to last a lifetime in So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures, Maureen Corrigan, c. 2014.

One aspect of The Great Gatsby: the tangible fixation with cars.

Notably, and I had not seen this elsewhere, Jordan Baker, the golfer and close friend of the Buchanans, has the namesake of the Jordan sports car and the electric Baker. Great cocktail chatter.

Random Update Of The Enerplus Softshell Well -- January 13, 2019

This post will not be updated.

This well has been featured many, many times on the blog.
This well has been producing since 2015. It has plateaued to 5,000 bbls/month. It will produce for 35 years, maybe a hundred. Some North Dakota Madison wells with much less production are celebrating their 65th birthday this year. Just saying. Recent production for this well:
PoolDateDaysBBLS OilRunsBBLS WaterMCF ProdMCF SoldVent/Flare
SANISH11-201829580954408571452396863773
SANISH10-2018315683569388014208103262850
SANISH9-2018305557538694513894107442252
SANISH8-2018294883543980823436950612901
SANISH7-2018315722518274427467950616932
SANISH6-2018294924494488123634908213725
SANISH5-2018304958512591223797773816004
SANISH4-2018295324561375725555555319231
SANISH3-2018183629326658817421578111310
SANISH2-201811229422074451100938406996
SANISH1-2018150024024
SANISH12-20174815944159391125871281
SANISH11-20173073187836150635127255358517
SANISH10-20173174566792160635790273927369

Initial production:
SANISH1-2016292796627813258452456489770
SANISH12-2015313467335029335054331503020
SANISH11-2015294093240697373557306504062190
SANISH10-2015181049910173221728860265460
SANISH9-20151110101
SANISH8-20157834882551132116879828883
SANISH7-20151140473113693510
SANISH6-2015212669326920228040716376410
SANISH5-2015304036840663357863584589310
SANISH4-2015293856538050357659025545710
SANISH3-2015314007740245352158946542940
SANISH2-2015263257132469311444834410650
SANISH1-20152643490436184485587123528617978
SANISH12-20142435468360364302478812200222092
SANISH11-20142438036367892036045643045643

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