August 28, 2015 -- Part III

First: another huge "thank you" to the reader who caught my huge mistake in a posting yesterday. The reader sent me a comment, which I posted, and then left the post up overnight, but then took it down this morning. It was a doozy of a mistake. Again, I really appreciate readers letting me know when I make a mistake (don't write me about typographical errors, unless they are really bad or need immediate correcting -- I make a lot of typographical errors; I try to catch them later).

Tweeting now: No. 1 reactor at a nuclear power plant in Fessenheim, France, shutdown due to a failure of unknown cause - @Lebienpublic. [Comment: I can only imagine.]

Warmists and the White House are desperately hoping for a devastating Hurricane Erika to hit on/near the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina -- ten years ago -- but not much is happening (dynamic link shows not much movement; not much wind, at least compared to storm off west coast of Mexico).

Friday, August 26, 2015 -- Part II; McDermott Receives Record Contract From Saudi Aramco; Massachusetts Health Policy Premiums To Double Rise In 2015; Triple Rise In 2014

This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Rigzone is reporting that McDermott was awarded a record services contract by Saudi Aramco for work in various fields offshore Saudi Arabia. No other details were provided in that short note. The press release said not much more.

This site has blogged several times about Saudi's $35 billion, 5-yera program announced in 2012, to grow crude oil production. Saudi recently announced one or two new refineries with total capacity of 800,000 bopd, IIRC, and which I simply round to 1 million bopd of new crude oil requirements for Saudi's domestic use.

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The Apple Page

Macrumors is reporting that Apple Watch sales totaled 3.6 million units in 2Q15, putting it in second place following Fitbit. Fitbit sells their heart rate wrist monitors for $70. Apple's least expensive Apple Watch is around $400.

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Trainwreck

So much for all those Reuters, Bloomberg, and, AP stories telling us ObamaCare would control health care costs. The Boston Globe is reporting:

Health insurers in Massachusetts will boost rates more than 6 percent for small businesses and individuals in 2016, a troubling sign that costs are once again accelerating.

The increase, approved by the state Division of Insurance last week, is more than double the rise in premiums at the beginning of this year and triple the rise in 2014. 

In case you missed that: the rates approved for 2016 will double the rise in premiums in 2014 and will triple the rise in rates that occurred in 2014.

More from the linked article:

The new rates will affect about 300,000 people who buy health insurance on their own or work for small businesses with 50 or fewer employees and will renew plans in January.

The increases will hit only a small slice of the state’s overall commercial insurance market of about 4 million, analysts said, but they may be a precursor to premium increases in the broader market, representing a setback to efforts to contain the state’s already high health care costs.

They far exceed the state’s goal of keeping total health care spending growth below 3.6 percent a year. Next week, officials will report whether the state’s health care industry is meeting that target.

“This could be a problem,” said Barbara Anthony, the state’s former undersecretary of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Pioneer Institute, a Boston think tank. “If the benchmark means anything, and if we’re trying to keep the growth of health care expenditures under control, a number like that presents challenges.”

This report is in line with earlier reports this year about the horrific rise in premiums across the United States. 

Friday, August 28, 2015

Is the decision / announcement finally coming next week? There are rumors that President Obama will make it official next week, before the Labor Day weekend, that he will deny a permit for the Keystone Pipeline. If so, it looks like he's milked that story for all the campaign funds he felt he was going to get. 

Bloomberg is reporting:

If there was any question over whether this year’s oil crash would give rise to a new era of energy megadeals, there isn’t anymore.

Schlumberger Ltd.’s proposed purchase of gear maker Cameron International Corp. for about $15 billion helped make the last 12 months the most active in decades for global energy mergers.

Three of the last five quarters have exceeded $160 billion in deal volume, surpassing even the late 1990s, a period when many of the world’s largest energy corporations were formed.

Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc, Chevron Corp. and Total SA all expanded by absorbing smaller rivals towards the turn of the century, becoming what some now call the "supermajors." U.S. crude averaged about $21 a barrel from 1998 to 2000, bottoming out in December 1998 near $10. Adjusted for today’s dollars, the fourth quarter that year saw about $157 billion in deals including the combination of Exxon and Mobil. In the second quarter of this year, there were about $258 billion in global energy deals announced.

Active rigs:

	8/28/2015	08/28/2014	08/28/2013	08/28/2012	08/28/2011
Active Rigs	76	195	181	191	199

RBN Energy: update on moving US LPG to Mexico. (Archived.)

There are four ways for U.S. sourced LPG to reach Mexico: by ship, by pipeline, by rail or by truck. Given all the expansions at U.S. export terminals, it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of the LPG being exported from the U.S. to Mexico is moved by ship, or that the future of U.S. LPG sales to Mexican distributors will likely involve bigger vessels (armadas of which are now being built).

The largest U.S. export facility is the Enterprise LPG export terminal on the Houston Ship Channel; the facility, whose current loading capacity is 300 Mb/d (or 9 MMb/month), was running flat-out, until the new ETP/Sunoco Nederland terminal came online.  Now volumes are down slightly, but will probably be coming back up soon.  Later this year  its capacity will increase to more than 500 Mb/d (just over 16 MMb/month).

The second largest U.S. export dock is owned by Targa, that can export up to about 240 Mb/d of propane and/or butane (7 MMb/month) from its recently expanded Galena Park Marine Terminal, also near Houston, and third largest Sunoco’s new Nederland, TX export terminal (an element of its larger Mariner South project) can handle up to 200 Mb/d (6 MMb/month).  

The newest entry in the Gulf Coast race to export is Occidental Petroleum’s new Ingleside LPG export terminal (near Corpus Christi), which when fully operational will be capable of loading up to 100 Mb/d, and then in the second half of 2016 Phillips 66 hopes to start up a new, 145 Mb/d export terminal in Freeport, TX.

There are LPG exports in the works on the U.S. West Coast. Petrogas Energy owns and operates an LPG export terminal in Ferndale, WA that is capable of handling up to 30 Mb/d, but two other proposed LPG export projects have hit major snags and may need to be re-sited. In March 2015, the plan by Sage Midstream’s Haven Energy Terminals subsidiary to build a 47 Mb/d export facility in Longview, WA, was rejected by port officials, and in May 2015 the mayor of Portland, OR withdrew his support for Pembina Pipelines’ plan for a 37.5 Mb/d terminal there. (Yet another project was unveiled on July 30, 2015; AltaGas said it’s considering a possible LPG export facility in British Columbia whose initial phase could handle up to 25 Mb/d.)

Press Release From Halcon Regarding Financial Status -- August 27, 2015

Link here.

This is not an investment site. Do not make any investment or financial decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

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For The Granddaughters

It is to some degree pure coincidence that I am reading two science books at the same time. One is biology, the other is chemistry.

• Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life, Nick Lane, c. 2015
• The Disappearing Spoon: The History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements, Sam Kean, c. 2010

Today, while reading Sam Kean, the chemistry book, the author notes that Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA in 1869 and

"self-servingly declared that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) would prove improve important in biology. Unfortunately, chemical analysis showed high levels of phosphorous in it. Back then (1869), proteins were considered the only interesting part of biochemistry, and since proteins contain zero phosphorous, DNA was judged a vestige, a molecular appendix."

Then, in a most extraordinary endnote, the author writes:

Interestingly, biologists are slowly coming back around to their original view from Miescher's day that proteins are the be-all and end-all of genetic biology. Genes occupied scientists for decades, and [the interest in genes] will never really go away. But scientists now realize that genes cannot account for the amazing complexity of living beings and that far more is going on. Genomics was important fundamental work, but proteomics is where where there's real money to be made.

That was written (or at least published/copyrighted) back in 2010.

Quick, fast forward to 2015 and we have Nick Lane's book which is  all about the "energy trail" involving proteins and membranes and the complexity of life.

Two books that should be read by high school juniors/seniors planning on majoring in biochemistry or a related field going on to university.

Winds -- Hurrican Erika -- August 27, 2015

Reminder: watch Hurricane Erika winds here (obviously a dynamic link; Hurrican Erika won't be here one month from now.)

I think that's tropical storm Jimena off the west coast of Mexico (Pacific storm).