Locator: 48802TARIFFS.
Went into effect yesterday.
Already nations are showing concern.
Most recent, overnight: Japan is asking Trump for "repairs."
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Automobiles
This is where Japan is really, really, really hurting.
Think Toyota!
Link to The Wall Street Journal.
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Tariffs -- Japan
My hunch: Japan is going to have to come around quickly with those "repairs."
Locator: 48801TSMC.
Ticker:
Ken Fisher and Warren Buffett:
Ken Fisher: per AI, August 8, 2025:
The data above, if accurate, compared with the data below, if accurate, suggests that Ken Fisher has recently made a big (?) investment in TSM.
BRK: per Business Insider:
Locator: 48800PIPELINES.
A state official briefed regulators on two separate underground pipelines that companies plan to build across hundreds of miles of North Dakota, bringing natural gas from the oil fields in the west to mostly industrial users in the more populated east.
Both pipelines — one by Intensity Infrastructure Partners and Rainbow Energy Center, the other by WBI Energy — would span about 350 miles roughly from the Watford City to Fargo areas. Segments would come into service in 2029 and 2030. The companies didn’t disclose the projects’ costs.
The presentation to a state industrial panel of elected officials was among the first steps in a process for the state to sign on with a 10-year, $50 million-per-year line of credit. That is essentially a backstop so projects can proceed with the intent that the state back out one day when other users join. Companies won’t build a pipeline without firm commitments from users.
North Dakota has a critical need for more natural gas transportation as oil wells age and produce more natural gas relative to oil, North Dakota Pipeline Authority Director Justin K
Locator: 48799EPPING.
Search: north dakota basin electric largest project $4 billion.
This is 100% to support the growing energy needs in the Bakken. The project won't become operational until 2030. Think about.
Will be sited between Epping and Ray, ND.
North Dakota Monitor: state green lights natural gas power plant. Link here. Post 4:30 a.m. Friday, August 8, 2025.
North Dakota utility regulators on Thursday approved plans for a large natural-gas power plant that could become the largest single source of electricity in the state.
Public Service Commission Chair Randy Christmann said Basin Electric Power Cooperative’s plan is well-suited to Williams County and provides the first additional baseload power in 45 years.
“This is huge,” Christmann said, noting it would be the largest single plant in the state.
The nearly $4 billion project near Epping is planned to be built in two sections, with the first starting to generate power in 2029 and the second in 2030. Each unit would be capable of generating 745 megawatts of power.
The Bison Generation Station would burn natural gas, which Christmann said would benefit North Dakota’s oil and gas industry. It also would generate power by using steam produced by the plant to turn turbines — making it the first combined cycle power plant in the state.
In a June hearing, Basin Electric officials said the project was not developed to meet energy demands of data centers.
This is 100% to support the growing energy needs in the Bakken. The project won't become operational until 2030. Think about.
Basin Electric future projects will be needed to meet the needs of data centers.
From KFYR: link here.
Several large-scale industrial projects are coming to northwest North Dakota. With them comes the need for more power.
Officials with Basin Electric Power Cooperative met with the Public Service Commission in Williston on Monday to discuss how they plan to keep up with demand going forward.
With several planned data centers, oil and gas-related projects and potential residential growth in the region, making sure the lights stay on is important. Officials at Basin Electric said the proposed Bison Generation Station between Epping and Ray will help keep up with an ever-growing need for electricity.
The big winners? The local public schools. Wow.
“This project will significantly increase Basin Electric’s ability to supply energy capacity in the local area,” said Basin Electric Power Supply Planning Manager Benjamin Hertz.
Locator: 48798B.
Jobs numbers: revisions -- largest revision in 60 years -- on CNBC this mornig
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $64.22.
New wells:
RBN Energy: the stars align and the western Canadian heavy / WTI differential narrows.
Any number of things can impact the price of specific types of crude oil at various locations — supply interruptions, takeaway constraints and refinery outages, to name just a few. Every so often, the stars align and just about all those factors narrow the differential between, say, Western Canadian Select (WCS) and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at the U.S. Gulf Coast to near-record levels. Well, that’s happening now, for the first time in five years. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the shockingly small WCS/WTI differential and what’s driving it.
In recent months, the price differential for WCS — and Access Western Blend (AWB), another grade of Canadian heavy crude that is actively traded for physical delivery to Gulf Coast refiners and exporters — have held near their narrowest values since the depths of the pandemic in 2020 (dashed red rectangle in Figure 1 below). Based on data collected in RBN’s weekly Crude Oil TradeView report, these two grades of heavy oil, priced in the spot market for physical delivery as a differential to the NYMEX-CME Calendar Month Average (CMA) crude oil price, have been sustained at discounts tighter than US$(3)/bbl under CMA since the beginning of June (dashed black rectangle).
Figure 1. Price Discount for WCS and AWB Heavy Crude Oil in the Gulf Coast.
Source: Crude Oil TradeViewThis is the longest run of tight price differentials since the second half of 2020, when Canadian production curtailments in the wake of COVID disruptions created turmoil for the physical oil market. Only for a brief time in March 2022 (dashed pink circle) were differentials comparable to the current and 2020 tight price differential cycles. For most of the past five years, the differential has been between $(5)/bbl and $(20)/bbl, with the widest differentials coming in late 2022 and early 2023 when a host of international factors pressured the price discounts wider (see I Go to Extremes). These included the nearly yearlong sale of competing medium-sour barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and the heavy discounting of Russian medium-sour Urals crude that came about after its invasion of Ukraine and the international sanctions on that country as a result (see Synchronicity).
