Car Sales -- October, 2016; New 4Q16 GDP Estimate -- November 1, 2016

From NPR:

• overall, sales fall
• GM was probably the winner, despite sales falling
• GM sales fell 1.7%
• comparing October, 2016, with October, 2015: two fewer selling days this October
• 17.7 million sales this October
• Americans moving away from sedan; toward SUVs
• Ford will delay sales figures due to fire at company's headquarters in Dearborn, MI
• GM exceeded expectations: SUVs, trucks, and crossovers offsetting declines elsewhere
• Fiat Chrysler: sales down 10%! Two bright spots: Ram and Maserati.
• Tesla: up by 4%

EV sales are generally reported later in the month; usually a week or so after the others report -- having said that most manufacturers are have already reported for the month of October:

• Chevrolet Volt, steady
• Tesla Models S and X way down, but that's understandable as we move toward Model 3
• Nissan Leaf, steady

In fact, among the EVs, every make/model appears "steady" -- no breakouts, no serious declines; just same 'ol, same 'ol.

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4Q16 GDP Estimate

From The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

Latest forecast: 2.3 percent — November 1, 2016.

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2016 is 2.3 percent on November 1, down from 2.7 percent on October 31.

After this morning's Manufacturing ISM Report On Business from the Institute of Supply Management, the forecasts of the fourth-quarter growth rates of real consumer spending and real nonresidential equipment investment declined from 2.4 percent to 2.1 percent and 4.3 percent to 2.7 percent, respectively. The forecasts of the growth rates of real residential investment and real nonresidential structures investment declined from 3.2 percent to 2.2 percent and 0.5 percent to -0.7 percent, respectively, after the ISM Report and the construction spending release from the U.S. Census Bureau.

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Gasoline Demand

I've said before that if I had to select only metric to track the US economy it would be gasoline demand.

This graph says it all:

Pretty striking, I would say, and I did not hear anyone talking about this precipitous fall. I'm sure the analysts have it all figured out.

Holy Mackerel -- The Unicorns Are Out Tonight; Odds And Ends While Watching The World Series; Nothing About The Bakken -- November 1, 2016

Top of the first, Cubs take a remarkable lead, going 3 - 0.

Now, top of the third, bases loaded, one out ... and now a grand slam -- 7 - 0 and we're not even at the halfway point of the game.

The unicorns are prancing. I wonder who got the ball up in the stands! Wow! I hope it was some 7-year-old child. Wow!

Scary fourth inning for the Cubs, but they escape with just one run for the Indians -- it easily (?) could have been four more runs.

I go back and forth, but I suppose, if pressed, I would say I would like to see the Cubs win the series. 

Bottom of the 7th, still a 5-run game.

Wow, another two-run home. 9 -2 the final. What a game!

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The Colonial Explosion

The Colonial Pipeline explosion -- so where are all the protests? Why is President Obama or Hillary Clinton not out front and center telling us that this is another example of the danger of pipelines.

The Washington Post provides the answer to the discerning reader. This is the reality: there is no way the northeast is going to get enough gasoline without pipelines. Shut down the Colonial and Americans will see how really fragile the energy grid is in this country and The Washington Post points it out:

Colonial’s Line No. 1, 36 inches in diameter, carries approximately 1.3 million barrels a day of gasoline from Houston to Linden, N.J., branching off along the way to provide more than a third of the supplies for the entire East Coast.

“I think the issue of pipeline safety is important, given several recent high-profile accidents,” said Jason Bordoff, director of Columbia University’s center on global energy policy. “It certainly is a reminder of the vulnerability of East Coast gasoline supply.”

Bordoff said the Energy Department had considered creating a reserve for refined products after Hurricane Sandy, in part because of the East Coast’s dependence on limited pipeline infrastructure. Hurricane Katrina also caused gasoline shortages in places such as Atlanta because refineries along the Gulf of Mexico could not supply the southeastern portion of the pipeline network. But no reserve has been created.

Let's see -- when was Hurricane Sandy? 2012. Four years ago and no Plan B.

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Note To Reader Via E-Mail

Not Ready For Prime Time

Politics

I know I'm biased ... coming from the Drudge Report ... but it certainly seems like top Democrats are concerned about Hillary, going "wobbly" as Thatcher would say -- first the note you sent me with Obama's comments about Hillary, and now the former DNC chairperson suggesting that Hillary made a mistake "attacking Comey." Top democrats just don't say that about their nominee in the last week of the campaign. So, that's the first thing.

The second thing: with the huge premium increases in ObamaCare, it seems everyone is reporting how terrible 2017 ObamaCare is going to be. Even HHS seems to be giving up. Every media outlet from The Washington Post to The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal implies that ObamaCare is at its tipping point. When Obama leaves office, ObamaCare will follow him.

So, a) top Democrats are going wobbly on Hillary (Obama and Rendell) b) even liberal news media reporting how high ObamaCare premiums are going and the trifecta, c) will be when Putin's Northern Fleet arrives at Syria, which could be this weekend, just before the election, next Tuesday..

Maybe I'm reading too much into all this but one certainly wonders.

The bad news doesn't have to get voters to switch their vote from Hillary to Trump, the bad news simply has to keep the wavering Hillary supporter from standing in line and voting.

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Hillary Attacks Comey: A "Huge" Mistake

I don't know if any politician is "happy" with FBI Director Comey -- neither the Republicans nor the Democrats. Comey was accused of ending the Clinton inquiry prematurely and then he was accused of re-opening a case that was supposedly closed.

The vast majority of Americans really don't follow these things that closely. But they do have respect for the FBI director. So when some politician -- especially the likes of a Hillary Clinton attacks the nation's top law enforcer (DOJ Loretta Lynch is seen as a political appointee -- which she is) -- this won't play well in Peoria.

Former DNC chairman, Ed Rendell, was "partially" correct when he said it was a mistake for Hillary to attack the FBI director. To be "fully" correct, he would have had to say that it was a "huge" mistake for Hillary to attack the FBI director. Hillary does not have time to "walk this back" before next Tuesday.

It will be interesting to see tomorrow's USC-Los Angeles Times poll.

Nine (9) Permits Renewed; Two New Permits -- November 1, 2016

Active rigs:

	11/1/2016	11/01/2015	11/01/2014	11/01/2013	11/01/2012
Active Rigs	34	70	193	180	186

One well coming off confidential list Wednesday:

• 30300, SI/NC, Hess, EN-Weyrauch C-154-93-2932H-8, Robinson Lake, no production data,

Two new permits:

• Operator: Whiting
• Field: Truax, (Williams)
• Comments:

Nine permits renewed:

• Slawson (7): three Gobbler permits, three Armada permits, one Neptang permit, all in Mountrail County
• Enerplus: one Hall permit McKenzie County
• HRC: one Fort Berthold permit in McKenzie County

Whiting abandons the P Peterson well in Williams County (#20563)

Two name changes, interesting:

• new name: West Clark 115-0136H, was West Clark 115-0136HPNC, McKenzie County (#31388)
• new name: Rolfson S 5198 12-29 6T, was Rolfson S 5198 12-29 6TPNC, McKenzie County (#31990)

Takeaway For ObamaCare According to Washington Post -- Shop Around (Note: Only One Insurer In Most Of Arizona) -- November 1, 2016

From The Washington Post:

Monthly insurance premiums for popular plans on HealthCare.gov are rising by 25 percent on average next year, according to government data. But the increases will be more dramatic in certain parts of the country, the numbers show.
Take somebody living in Phoenix, where the cost of the premium for a benchmark plan is growing by a whopping 145 percent to $507 a month in 2017 when compared to this year, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks how premiums are changing in some major cities.
In Birmingham, Ala., health care premiums for a similar plan are climbing by 71 percent next year to $492 a month. And in Oklahoma City they are growing by 67 percent.

Premium rate rise in major cities in these states:

• Arizona: 145%, to $507/person -- $2,000 for a family of four; with high deductible; high co-pay
• Alabama: 71%, to $492 / person -- ditto
• Oklahoma: 67% 

Personally, I don't see a lot of difference between $507 and $492, but then again, maybe that's just me.

Premium rates will generally be greater in rural areas than in major urban areas according to the linked article.

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Movie Review

IDMB movie review of Leonardo Di Caprio's global warming movie -- hoping to win a Nobel Peace Prize, no doubt:

Basically DeCaprio was told by Al Gore (who has made a hundred millions of dollars by preaching global warming after he retired from political life, gained a bunch of weight and had nothing to do) that anthropological global warming is real, and from that point onward DeCaprio was convinced. LOL!

Then DeCaprio presents the ole “97% of scientists” lie that has traveled around the world. In reality 66% of scientists have no opinion about AGW — Those opinions were conveniently thrown out of the messaged John Cook study. Then DeCaprio presents cherry picked anecdotal evidence, without ever questioning whether it’s a case of Texas Sharpshooting. Why didn’t he present the Vostok Station / Greenland ice core data to put the last 100 years IN PERSPECTIVE versus the last 5,000 years, 11,000 years and 420,000 years?

And if he’s such a big fan of anecdotal evidence over temperature data then why didn’t he mention that Greenland used to be green? That 20,000 years ago New York was covered by a mile thick glacier? Why didn’t DeCaprio interview Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, who is not part of “Big Oil” and doesn’t buy into AGW?

Because DeCaprio suffers from confirmation bias. The rest of this propaganda piece (I mean movie) continues under the ASSUMPTION that humans are causing the planet to warm and we all need to agree to tax ourselves more. No thanks.

The movie, by the way, bombed. 

Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due -- November 1, 2016

Russia's Northern Fleet, most recent update: the last ping was 20 hours ago, so not much change from previous report. The fleet's location 20 hours ago was at the east end of the strait separating Malta from Sicily -- so twenty hours ago, just slightly northeast of Malta, southeast of Sicily. This is about 6/11ths or about halfway between the Strait of Gibralter and Syria. The fleet has transited the Strait of Gibralter on October 26; they may have loitered for a day in the western Mediterranean. October 26 - October 31 (twenty hours ago): 5 days. So, about five more days to destination (Syria). Arriving about November 5, two or three days before US election?

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Oil History -- Courtesy of EAI

Whale oil. From EIA today:

On Tuesday, the Cleveland Indians are set to host the Chicago Cubs in game six of the 2016 Major League Baseball World Series.

In the 68 years since the last title for the Cleveland Indians, and the 108 years since the last World Series title for the Chicago Cubs, energy production and consumption patterns in the United States have changed a great deal…

In 1908, the last time the Cubs won the World Series, the United States produced less than half a million barrels per day (b/d) of oil, with crude oil production having only started approximately 50 years earlier.

At that time, crude oil was mainly refined to produce kerosene for use in lamps. The first Ford Model T automobile was produced in 1908, kicking off a shift in demand for petroleum products from kerosene for lamps to gasoline for automobiles….

The last time the Cleveland Indians won the World Series, in 1948, the United States produced 5.5 million b/d of crude oil. Crude oil production had been steadily increasing since declines in the 1930s and would continue to increase until production declines in the 1970s. --- EIA

It would have been nice to have given some credit to Gesner and Rockefeller. LOL.

The intense whale hunting drove the number of sperm whales down appreciably. It's estimated that nearly 236,000 whales were killed in the 19th century alone.

And then, in 1846, the industry reached peak sperm whale oil.

Whalers, after plundering the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, were having to chase smaller whales in colder and more extreme waters, while having to utilize bigger ships over longer periods of time. This led to fewer capital returns, causing the price of whale oil to double.

But the industry peaked at this time for another reason — and it had nothing to do with what was happening on the oceans. Rather, it was the invention of a new fuel source, one that, quite literally, saved the whales.

In 1849, Dr. Abraham Gesner, a Canadian geologist, figured out a way to distill kerosene from petroleum. His method allowed for the cheap and easy production of the much desired lamp fuel. Moreover, unlike sperm whale oil, it could be stored for longer periods of time and it didn't produce an offensive odor.

Gesner's innovation sparked the rise of the American petroleum industry in the 1850s, and by the end of the decade there were 40 kerosene plants in the United States. During the 1860s, John D. Rockefeller and Samuel Andrews worked to improve the efficiency of petroleum processing. Together, and backed by an army of investors, they set up a network of kerosene distilleries that would later develop into Standard Oil.

Combine this with a sperm whale oil industry that had just peaked, and the market for spermaceti quickly evaporated.

Had we run out of sperm whales and had there been no petroleum, we would probably be burning coal for electricity and we would all be driving EVs.

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Average Price Of WTI For Calendar Year 2016

This probably won't make sense to anyone but I want to capture this for the archives.

In late 2015 or early 2016, I set up five scenarios and "predicted" the average price of WTI for each calendar month in 2016 given those five scenarios. Had things turned out differently, the scenarios would have mattered; with the price of oil where it is today, the scenarios no longer matter.

At the end of each month, I replaced the "predicted" price of WTI for each scenario with the "actual" price of WTI for the month as taken from the television crawler or the Yahoo!Finance page as a proxy.

My thesis and process was this:

• Saudi's national budget is based on $100 oil.
• there is a Saudi price, a Brent price, and a WTI price. Saudi oil probable sells at a premium to the other two (right, wrong, indifferent -- probably not particularly significant for this exercise)
• Saudi will hemorrhage cash at oil prices below $100
• it was fairly obvious in late 2015 / early 2016, that we would not see an average of $100-oil for calendar year 2016 (what the Saudis needed)
• but if they could at least average $80-oil for the year, maybe things would not be so bad
• so I developed five scenarios (high to low) to see how the annual average would work out -- and at what price of oil had to be each following month to get to $80 oil
• the January - October data below is "actual" -- with the disclaimer noted above
• in four of the five scenarios I put end-of-year oil at $80 and $85
• even at end-of-year oil at $80 and $85, average price of oil for the entire year will barely average $50
• if oil gets to $50 for the remaining two months, the average price of oil for the year will have been about $44, almost half the bare minimum ($80) that Saudi would need
• to get to $80 average for the entire calendar year of 2016 (last column below), oil will have to go to about $260/bbl for the last two months of 2016 -- probably not gonna happen

It will be interesting if the chart for 2017 looks much different than the calendar for 2016:

	Scenario One	Scenario Two	Scenario Three	Scenario Four	Scenario Five	To Get to $80
January	35	35	35	35	35	35
February	35	35	35	35	35	35
March	35	35	35	35	35	35
April	45	45	45	45	45	45
May	47	47	47	47	47	47
June	50	50	50	50	50	50
July	45	45	45	45	45	45
August	45	45	45	45	45	45
September	45	45	45	45	45	45
October	48	48	48	48	48	48
November	80	80	80	80	50	260
December	80	85	85	85	50	260
2016 Average	49	50	50	50	44	79

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Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled US, From Missiles to the Moon To Mars

Nathalia Holt

c. 2016

This is really cool.

Some time ago I read a book on the woman who discovered/developed -- I am not sure of the correct word -- the rocket propellant that was instrumental in the US space program. I have notes of that book at this post.

I see now another book on the same subject, or at least similar subject, the one by Nathalia Holt. I immediately checked the index for Mary Morgan Sherman. Not there. It will be interesting to read this new book in light of the older book.

I will place notes of this book -- the Nathalia Holt book -- at this post.

By the way, another book along this line:

Hidden Figures: Black Female "Human Computers" -- WWII Through NASA (Space Race)
Margot Lee Shetterly
c. 2016
DDS: 510.92 LEE