Monday Morning Links -- First Class Stamps Now Cost $0.46 But They Are Good "Forever"

Active rigs in North Dakota: 191.

WSJ Links

Section D: not in the paper today?

Section C (Money & Investing):
Key to oil: location, location, location: a must-read for those interested in investing in well-known publicly traded companies. Even Baytex is mentioned.

Section B (Marketplace):
Wow! Barnes and Noble expects to close as many as a third of its retail stores during the next decade. Great news for independents, mom-and-pop's, used book stores, Amazon. With the closure of the huge bookstore down the street from my home in San Antonio, it's pretty much now the wonderful Half-Price Books, perhaps the best used book chain in the US?

Fisker speeds up its search for suitors. One battery story after another.

And who saw this coming: Huawei ('wah-way') is now the third-biggest smartphone seller. Too much trouble to find the WSJ link; multiple other sources.  Jumped ahead of RIMM and Nokia.

Section A:
Immigration debate gears up. The GOP will screw this up also. Folks on both sides are asking the wrong questions.

Page 3: postal rates, volume, nice graphics.

Op-ed: if Chavez believes that the nation's oil billions belong to the people, why not give it to them directly? Another piece on windmill tilting.

Op-ed: if Lefty moves to Florida, he will find plenty of elite athlete company. [If he doesn't move to Florida, he's a fool.]

Last week, Lefty's rival, Tiger Woods, acknowledged that he left California for Florida in 1996 when he turned pro because of the difference in state tax. California's top marginal rate then was 9.3% for individuals earning more than $32,000. The move was particularly farsighted given that rates on high earners in California have since soared.
n November, voters in California approved a ballot measure raising the top rate on income over $1 million to 13.3% (the increase applies retroactively to last year). According to SportsIllustrated.com, Mr. Woods grossed $56.4 million in 2012. As a Floridian, he will keep about $7.5 million that he otherwise would have owed to the state of California. His net tax savings over his 16-year career come to about $100 million. Mr. Mickelson last year earned $60.7 million. Paying the 13.3% California rate, he will owe the state $8 million.
"The day California passed the tax increase, I received three calls from concerned athletes," accountant Steve Piascik, president of Piascik & Associates, told me. His firm is one of the largest representatives of professional athletes in the country.
Some examples:

• Torii Hunter, LA Angels of Anaheim, CA, who recently signed with the Detroit Tigers, calls home: Prosper, TX.
• Serena and Venus Williams grew up in Compton, CA, but moved with their father to Florida in the early 1990s. They currently reside in Palm Beach Gardens, FL, close to where Michelle Wie lives. She grew up in Palo Alto, CA.
• Sloane Stevens also now lives in Florida, near the same area. A lot of tennis pros have set up shop in Florida.
• Sam Querrey, 2nd-ranked American in tennis, moved to Las Vegas (no income tax state) from Thousand Oaks, CA.

The writer fails to mention all the NBA stars who have publicly talked about taxes, contracts, and no-income tax states. Let's see: LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, the entire Spurs team.  

I've always wondered why Warren Buffett, a stickler for details and smart decisions, hasn't helped his secretary by moving the entire company to a non-tax state. Mr Buffett has often talked about how much tax his secretary pays. Of course, Nebraska is now likely to become the 10th state to have no income tax. 

Keystone XL 2.0 Timeline

February 28, 2014 (E) White House approves with conditions. Any decision later than this will impact the mid-term elections.

January 30, 2014 (E): On President Obama's desk. 

January 15, 2014 (E): State Dept makes recommendation. Other departments can object. In early 2013, State Department said they would not make decision before end of 1H13, and then revised it by saying "not before March, 2013," so the January 15, 2014, date may be six months too long.

November 15, 2013 (E): Mandatory 30-day wait.

October 15, 2013 (E): State Dept publishes final SEIS in the Federal Register.

September 30, 2013 (E): State Dept compiles comments and answers any "substantitve" concerns.

June 30, 2013 (E): EPA places summary in Federal Register.

June 15, 2013 (E): 45-day comment period ends.

May 1, 2013 (E): EPA's mandatory 45-day comment period. Impacted by new EPA chief.

March 4, 2013: EPA has to review the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS). No deadline to complete.

March 1, 2013: State Department's Keystone Pipeline report Friday. This was a draft statement.

Archived Presentations

Bloomberg West Coast statistics and the Bakken, June 21, 2013

Bakken Activity Update, June, 2013, a PDF file

The Bakken revolution, what every investor needs to know, May, 2013

Geologic Factors Affecting Production Across the Bakken, Colorado School of Mines, May 2, 2013

The Rolfstad Presentation, April, 2013

NDSU Housing Study, 2013

IPAA archived presentations.

• "Anon 1" suggests starting with the January 21, 2013, Private Capital Conference, Houston, TX. At that list of conferences, start with Karen Harbert's presentation and then David Miller's presentation.

How is the Bakken affecting the nation's GDP? Professional Logistics Group presentation, January, 2013.  Best presentation of the year?

Bentek: Bakken to 2.2 million bopd, September 22, 2012.

Mike Filloon's better articles:

• Three misconceptions about the Bakken, July, 2013 

 CO2 EOR: 1% increase in production -->$150 billion in more oil, UND/EERC - 2012

Monday Morning

Wells coming off confidential list have been posted.

RBN Energy: Canadian west coast pipelines -- another great update and Pipelines 101.

Hess to sell refinery on east coast; get out of the refining business altogether, it sounds like. More to follow, perhaps.

Hess Corporation announced today that it will pursue the sale of its terminal network in the United States. Hess also announced that it will complete its exit from the refining business by closing its Port Reading, New Jersey refinery.

The terminal network is located along the U.S. East Coast and has a total of 28 million barrels of storage capacity in 19 terminals, 12 of which have deep water access. The terminals previously served as the primary outlet for Hess’ share of production from its HOVENSA joint venture refinery, most of which was used to supply Hess’ Retail and Energy Marketing businesses.

With the closure of the HOVENSA refinery in 2012 as well as Hess’ ability to access refined products from third parties to supply these marketing businesses, the terminal system is no longer core to the company’s operations. The company’s St. Lucia oil storage terminal in the Caribbean with 10 million barrels of capacity will also be included in the package for divestiture. In addition to the proceeds from the sale of the terminal network, the transaction should also release approximately $1 billion of working capital for redeployment to fund Hess’ future growth opportunities. 

Three refineries closed/re-opened/whatever in the Philadelphia area this past year. Tea leaves are telling us something. Remember: Hess committed $2.2 billion to the Bakken this year -- 185 wells is what I guess.

CAT earnings: $1.91 (vs $1.60). The company reported earnings of $1.91 a share, excluding a write-down of 87 cents a share relating to a China holding. That compared to earnings of $2.32 a share in the year-earlier period. The market liked the news: CAT is surging in pre-market trading.

Another Refiner Looking For Increased Access to Bakken Oil: Calumet, On Lake Superior, Wisconsin

Updates

September 23, 2013: The Bismarck Tribune reports that the proposed Calumet Lake Superior crude oil terminal has been put on hold; it may not make economical sense competing with pipeline and rail.

February 24, 2013: The Dickinson Press provides a huge amount of detail regarding this crude oil loading dock on Lake Superior.

So much oil is being pumped out of western Canada and North Dakota these days that there isn’t enough room to fit it all into pipelines.

Even with oil companies pouring the black gold into thousands of rail cars every day, and building new rail stations and laying track, rail cars can’t handle the load.

So officials at Calumet LLC, owners of the Superior oil refinery, are considering building a $25 million crude oil transfer dock in Superior, where oil would be loaded onto tankers and barges and moved across the Great Lakes to refineries in Ontario, Michigan, Ohio and even the East Coast.

Calumet will seek permits and do preliminary work this year and would conduct dredging, dock, pipeline and storage construction in 2014 and be ready to ship oil by March 2015.

It’s estimated that, because of the small size of the supply pipeline, the terminal could fill a single tanker or barge about once every three or four days.

Comment: there's a good chance activists will get this project stopped/delayed. If the Keystone XL is approved, this terminal "goes away," according to the article. Rail: $9/bbl; by boat across the Great Lakes, $3.50/bbl -- transportation costs.

Original Post

Link here to Bloomberg Business:

Petroleum refiner Calumet Specialty Products Partners is exploring whether to build a crude oil loading dock on Lake Superior, near its Superior, Wis., refinery, to ship crude oil on the Great Lakes and through connecting waterways, the company said Friday.

"Calumet is currently assessing the viability of the project and gauging interest in the marketplace," Todd Borgmann, vice president of business development at Calumet, said in a statement. "We would expect to have this project fully operational during the shipping season of 2015 and are currently in talks with potential customers and partners."

Wow, it never quits, does it?

Pipelines are the cheapest way to move petroleum products, Bellamy said, but their delivery points are fixed. Railcars, barges and ships can move to different delivery points. That allows crude to go to the highest bidder.

Indianapolis-based Calumet processes crude oil and other feedstocks into lubricating oils, solvents and waxes used in consumer, industrial and automotive products. Calumet also produces gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Calumet has 11 facilities in northwest Wisconsin, northwest Louisiana, northern Montana, western Pennsylvania, Texas and eastern Missouri.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

I continue to enjoy David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years. He has an incredible number of stories that (might) explain some of the origins of modern rituals. On page 169 when talking about slavery and death, Graeber noted:

In West Africa .... the same principles applied ... once he had been finally removed from his own milieu through capture the slave was considered as socially dead, just as if he had been vanquished and killed in combat ... among the Mande, at one time, prisoners of were brought home by the conquerors were offered [rice] and milk porridge -- because it was held that  man should not die on an empty stomach....

... and thus the origin of the last meal before execution. I suppose some might argue that the last meal is related to Jesus' last meal but the West African practice is certainly interesting.