Locator: 52057B.
Time change: over the weekend -- same ol', same ol'.
Hurricane season: coming to an end, and despite all the fear-mongering by climate-change apologists, this was among the weakest US hurricane season ever (and one of the hottest summers ever).
Crypto hack: it is truly beyond the pale that North Korea could hack/steal $6.3 billion from a US cyrpto site. Too bad there's no adulting in Washington.
The stock market upheaval: many, many story lines. Most analysts appear to be missing the real story. I'll come back to the market late next week.
Iran: by the way, speaking of folks missing the real story, some day we will learn why the Israeli-US-Iran was so necessary.
The ports: is the red-green alliance to interrupt oil ports around the world starting
today? It gets tedious. It turns out the global effort to disrupt port
activities amounts to nothing more than a 3-day weekend for European
dockworkers.
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Back To The Bakken
WTI: $103.50 --> $104.10 (it may have hit $105 overnight; not sure). Does anyone know what's going on?
New wells reporting:
- Sunday, November 1 2026: 0 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
- Saturday, October 31, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
- Friday, October 30, 2026: 66 for the month, 66 for the quarter, 565 for the year,
RBN Energy: can a massive ultra-deepwater project with Woodside Energy help turn Pemex around? Link here. Archived.
Petróleos Mexicanos, Mexico’s state-owned oil and gas company, has
been mired in debt and plagued by operational and other challenges for
many years, but a high-profile joint venture (JV) with Australia’s
Woodside Energy may — emphasis on may
— signal the beginning of a turnaround. The $7.2 billion, 100-Mb/d
Trion project, Pemex’s first ultra-deepwater development, is proceeding
on schedule and on budget and is slated to deliver its first oil in
2028. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll discuss Pemex’s troubled past (and
present) and why its Trion Oil Project JV with Woodside — and the
prospects for more partnerships with Woodside and Brazil’s Petrobras in
the deepwater Gulf — could help.
Established
in 1938 with Mexico’s nationalization of 17 foreign-owned oil and gas
producers, Pemex’s initial focus was onshore production, mostly in
Tabasco, Veracruz and Chiapas states in southeastern Mexico; by the
1960s, its crude oil output there was topping 300 Mb/d. But a big
discovery was in the making.
In July 1961, a
fisherman named Rudo Cantarell noticed a bubbling black oil slick on the
blue-green waters of the Bay of Campeche, about 50 miles west of the
Yucatán Peninsula. He told his fellow shrimpers and anyone else who
would listen, but no one believed him until he finally convinced Pemex
officials in Ciudad de Carmen to come take a look in 1971. Their visit
to the site eventually led to exploratory drilling: The first test well
in 1976 — in waters only 250 feet deep —produced extraordinary volumes
of crude oil (upwards of 35 Mb/d) and the massive oil find was quickly
named in Rudo’s honor: the Cantarell Field — light-blue shaded area in
Figure 1 below. (Rudo was given a modest job at Pemex and a pension.)
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The Book Page
Background: in October, 2026, I got interested in Alexander and read three books --
- Dividing the Spoils,
- Arrian's Alexander's Campaigns,
- The Cleopatras.
I'm pretty much complete with these three books ... and then, out of the blue, in my inbox -- a National Geographic article on Aristotle's school. Incredible coincidence. So, here's the link: Aristotle's school.
