Locator: 49076PERSONALITY.
Incredible interview. As good as anything I've seen on "Squawk Box," CNBC.
Thursday, September 11, 2025
David Rubestein On Squawk Box -- September 11, 2025
Focus On Corn -- September 11, 2025
Locator: 49075CORN.
See update; important post.
Think:
- ethanol
- corn syrup
- cattle feed
- chicken feed
Link here.
USDA shocked the market with the August World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate (WASDE), in particular the record corn yield of 188.8 bu., which was well above trade guesses and nearly 10 bu. above last year. But they also surprisingly raised harvested acres pushing corn ending stocks back over 2 billion bushels. The report was more friendly for soybeans with a net decrease in carryout.
North Dakota corn yield, bushel per acre, plants 4.6 million acres:
Iowa corn yield, bushel per acre, plants 13.5 million acres:
Record yield:
David Hula may not break that record this year. Link here.
Two questions:
- dollar margins on these record yields vs "average yields" in the midwest;
- to what extent could AI increase "average yields" in the midwest;
OpenGPT prompt:
Corn. US. Yield per acre. David Hula is recognized as the king of corn production, yield per acre, based on intensive methods, see: https://www.agweb.com/news/crops/corn/600-bu-acre-corn-cards-year-david-hula-reigning-world-record-holder. The question is whether his methods are transferable to the midwest (Iowa, North Dakota) and whether David Hula's methods are cost effective, or significantly different than profits from corn production in the midwest.
Open GPT reply:
Short answer first: Yes — many of David Hula’s techniques are transferable to Midwest corn acres, but not all, and not without cost.
Hula’s approach is a systems approach (genetics + placement + nutrition + water + intensive in-season management). Parts of it scale profitably on Midwest farms; other parts (extreme rates of inputs, daily monitoring, heavy irrigation, contest-style management) are expensive and show rapidly diminishing returns on large acres. Below I summarize what he does, what transfers well, what doesn’t, and how to evaluate whether it makes sense on a particular Iowa / North Dakota farm.
Bottom line:
-
Transferable: genetics, planter/stand optimization, better fertility timing, precision ag, scouting — these are low-to-moderate cost changes with good upside.
-
Not broadly transferable (or not profitable at scale): contest-level input intensities, heavy irrigation dependence, and the extreme labor/management intensity applied to single yield-contest plots.
-
Best approach: run small on-farm trials, use extension budgets to model profitability, and adopt the high-value, low-risk pieces first.
What is corn used for?
New Apple Chips Announced September 9, 2025
Locator: 49074APPLE.
N1 and C1X.
Both big deals.
- The N1. Replaces to some extent / great extent Apple's reliance on Broadcom.
The C1X:
Also: Thread. And Matter. IoT. Slow adoption for home use, or perhaps it's just me. But huge competition between Apple and Amazon for this space.
I don't have Apple Home but I have:
- electronic access to front door; keyless entry; awesome;
- Blink security; excellent, monthly fee which has just been increased;
- garage door opener;
- storage unit door opener;
- community access to gate community;
So, I have minimal "Home IoT" use but I still have five apps on my iPhone (none are Apple) and/or five hardware gadgets that connect through my iPhone.
Supercomputer Update -- September 11, 2025
Locator: 49073SUPER.
New supercomputer: unclassified computer at Lawrence Livermore to complement existing El Capitan; link here. At the blog, supercomputers are tracked here.
- this might catch your eye: AMD and HPE;
- the speed of El Capitan can be attributed to its AMD Instinct MI300A accelerated processing units, which combine CPU cores, GPU cores and high bandwidth memory.
- also important to the supercomputer are contributions from HPE,
including its Cray Supercomputing EX solution, direct liquid-cooling
system and Slingshot interconnect.
- El Capitan: #1
- Tuolumne: #10; on-line late 2024/early 2025
- of note:
The computing power El Capitan offers is unprecedented, lab officials repeated at the dedication event.
At peak performance El Capitan offers over a 22-fold increase in computing performance over Sierra, previously the fastest system at the lab, according to documents from the event. This means high-resolution simulations that would have taken weeks or months will only require hours or days on El Capitan.
Despite being about 1/10th the size of El Capitan, Tuolumne ranks as the 10th fastest supercomputer in the world thanks to its identical architecture and components to El Capitan.
“I think calling Tuolumne number ten doesn’t do it justice,” Budil said. “Our open science machine is bigger than our current, last generation national security machine. So this step is truly revolutionary for us in terms of capability.”
Screenshot from wiki, September 11, 2025:
On stage for the announcement: AMD's CEO -- Dr Lisa Su.
Thursday -- September 11, 2025
Locator: 49072B.
Thursday Night Football: only on Amazon Prime tonight. Commanders at Packers.
Market, implied opens:
- Dow: up 110 points
- S&P 500, after hitting another record yesterday: up 14 points
- NASDAQ: up 62 points
Inflation: from Yahoo Finance today.
Of all the news that came out yesterday, and there was a ton of news, for investors and US consumers, I think this was the biggest story. Caught CNBC talking heads, especially the morning crew and Steve Liesman slack-jawed (Trump was right: tariffs no big deal; and energy prices coming down will bring inflation down):
New supercomputer: unclassified computer at Lawrence Livermore to complement existing El Capitan; link here. At the blog, supercomputers are tracked here.
- this might catch your eye: AMD and HPE;
- the speed of El Capitan can be attributed to its AMD Instinct MI300A accelerated processing units, which combine CPU cores, GPU cores and high bandwidth memory.
- also important to the supercomputer are contributions from HPE,
including its Cray Supercomputing EX solution, direct liquid-cooling
system and Slingshot interconnect.
- El Capitan: #1
- Tuolumne: #10; on-line late 2024/early 2025
- of note:
The computing power El Capitan offers is unprecedented, lab officials repeated at the dedication event.
At peak performance El Capitan offers over a 22-fold increase in computing performance over Sierra, previously the fastest system at the lab, according to documents from the event. This means high-resolution simulations that would have taken weeks or months will only require hours or days on El Capitan.
Despite being about 1/10th the size of El Capitan, Tuolumne ranks as the 10th fastest supercomputer in the world thanks to its identical architecture and components to El Capitan.
“I think calling Tuolumne number ten doesn’t do it justice,” Budil said. “Our open science machine is bigger than our current, last generation national security machine. So this step is truly revolutionary for us in terms of capability.”
Peak oil: IEA revisions.
- IEA via oilprice; scathing report based on reporting from Bloomberg's Javier Blas; must-read;
- Anas Alhajji concurs; for two reasons -- reality; and Trump. That's what he says.
Carpool lanes: nationwide -- no longer will EVs get special privilege to use carpool lanes;
- will have major impact in California;
- sort of just happened -- again, Trump policy
- link here;
- does President Trump ever sleep; does he ever quit thinking about these things?
*****************************
Back to the Bakken
WTI: 463.48.
New wells:
- Friday, September 12, 2025: 20 for the month, 113 for the quarter, 553 for the year,
- 41519, conf, MRO, Partridge 41-13H,
- 40691, conf, Petro-Hunt, Wollan Creek 152-96-34D-27-2H,
- 40359, conf, Hess, BL-Davidson-155-96-0211H-9,
- 39742, conf, Grayson Mill, Darlene 13-24F 5TFH,
- Thursday, September 11, 2025: 16 for the month, 109 for the quarter, 549 for the year,
- 41520, conf, MRO, Clawson 11-18H,
- 39743, conf, Grayson Mill, Darlene 13-24F 6TFH,
RBN Energy: a new drill down report on waxy crude production in the Uinta Basin.
Oil and gas producers’ interest in each of the U.S.’s shale and tight-rock production areas has waxed and waned over the past quarter century or so. First it was the Barnett Shale, the birthplace of the Shale Revolution in the late 1990s. Then came the Fayetteville, Haynesville, Marcellus/Utica, Eagle Ford, Bakken, Permian, Denver-Julesburg (DJ) and SCOOP/STACK. And, as always, E&Ps are looking for “the next big thing.” The Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah certainly isn’t a Permian, Bakken or Eagle Ford, and it may not even be a DJ, but production of its unusual waxy crude has been on a tear lately, and a lot of people are asking how much further Uinta production can grow and how long those higher levels could continue. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss highlights from our new Drill Down Report on the Uinta.
In just a few years, the Uinta Basin has been transformed from a quirky, waxy-crude curiosity with only modest production volumes to a burgeoning unconventional play with output of about 180 Mb/d (see Figure 1 below) and initial production (IP) rates that compare favorably with the best wells in the Permian. But while Uinta producers have “cracked the code” for producing increasing volumes of waxy crude from horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, there are serious questions about how much further the basin’s output can grow and how long large production volumes can be sustained.
Figure 1. Uinta Basin Crude Oil Production. Source: Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining
For one thing, while the Uinta’s two types of waxy crude (black and yellow) have a number of very favorable characteristics — medium-to-high API gravity, very low sulfur and acid content, and ideal for making high-value lubricants — waxy crude’s semi-solid state at ambient temperatures presents a host of logistical challenges.
When it emerges from wells, it needs to be stored in heated tanks. To be transported to market, waxy crude needs to be loaded in insulated tanker trucks (often double-tankers) and driven either to one of the five refineries in the Salt Lake City area or to one of two rail terminals southwest of the basin for long-haul shipment in special insulated and coiled railcars. At refineries, waxy crude again is stored in heated tanks and moved within heat-traced pipes to prevent it from solidifying and literally gumming up the works.
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