The Political Page, T+304 -- November 22, 2017

Kneelers: NFL considering keeping players off the field during the national anthem ceremony. Trump says that's worse than letting them kneel. In this case Trump is wrong. He should know better. This is exactly how parents discipline unruly children: put them in the corner. More importantly, the kneelers want attention, keeping them off the field takes away that which they need/want. NFL is correct on this one. Keep the children in the corner.

Global Warming: after "historic" snowfall, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort will open early.

Weather station data available via the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center reported 53 inches of snow in Rendezvous Bowl, 45 inches at the Raymer plot and 36 inches at midmountain. Over 100 inches of snow have fallen in the upper elevations, with a storm front moving in Monday night expected to drop up to 11 inches at the higher elevations.

Resort business development director Bill Lewkowitz said the amount of snow on the upper mountain is incredible.

[Resort spokeswoman] said that in her tenure at the resort, which spans almost a decade, this is the second-largest amount of terrain that is planned to be skiable on opening weekend.

Struggling: NY Times is struggling with the question whether to fire reporter for sexual transgressions. LOL. Maybe the NY Times will lower the bar. US Congress seems not to mind one way or the other: won't release its own list and won't expel/censure Al Franken -- and in the latter case, we even have photos.

First Time Unemployment Claims Plunge As Forecast -- November 22, 2017 -- Most Important Concept In RBN Article Today: Dispatchable

Reminder: great camera deal at Costco expires today. Canon EOS T6 vs Nikon 3400. There's some suggestion that smartphone cameras are driving DSLR cameras. Counterintuitive. Acer 14" Chromebook has price drop of $99 -- now about $199. I understand from some of my readers that the Chromebook is the "standard" out in California for many elementary, middle, maybe high school students. What a great country.

Biggest story of the week not being reported: Prince Salman was supposed to be crowned king this week; haven't heard a thing.

WTI: if it holds, we could have a huge day in the oil sector. WTI briefly hits $58/bbl -- something not seen since 2015. This "jump" in the price of oil may be function of lack of heavy oil for refiners: Keystone's northern leg is shut down due to leak in South Dakota; Venezuela may cut deliveries to US.

OPEC challenge: wild swings in Iraq oil production. From Bloomberg via Rigzone:

OPEC has an Iraq problem: the group’s second-biggest exporter is lurching between quota busting and production-crimping crisis, clouding the policy-making picture as ministers decide how long they need to extend output curbs.

Exports from Iraq’s northern fields plunged by about 40 percent in the first half of November after clashes between the federal army and fighters from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region disrupted fields in the disputed Kirkuk province. After consistently exceeding its output quota all year, Iraqi production dropped in October when the fighting started.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, due to meet next week in Vienna, is already grappling with volatile production in Nigeria and Libya, and Iraq adds another layer of unpredictability. For policy makers, the short-term disruption risks masking a longer-term truth: Iraq, which only got a production quota last year after decades of exemptions, has never felt comfortable with constraints and wants to maximize the country’s potential output.

Newcomer's guide to oil and gas; a new series being introduced at Rigzone.

Jobless claims: huge drop

• down 13,000 to 239,000 (forecast: 240,000)
• previous: 252,000 (revised upward from 249,000)

The market: futures up

• NASDAQ and Russell 2000 both hit new highs
• Deere surges 
• P&G: childish (I'm boycotting P&G products) 
• DE and CAT leading indices higher
• truck manufacturing: on west coast, a huge truck manufacturing company has now gone to mandatory Saturdays to keep up with orders

Observation:

• Apple introduces a new $750 - $1,000 iPhone every year and people stand in line to buy one
• GE microwave ovens last at least ten years before folks find a reason to buy a new one

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Back to the Bakken

Coming off confidential list today:

• 33180, conf, Hess, BL-A Iverson-155-96-1312H-5, Beaver Lodge, no production data

Active rigs:

$57.89↑↑	11/22/2017	11/22/2016	11/22/2015	11/22/2014	11/22/2013
Active Rigs	55	36	65	191	184

RBN Energy: the changing economics of power generation in Texas.

Market forces are driving an overhaul of power generation capacity in Texas — the largest electricity-consumer in the U.S. Oversupply and low power prices have increased competition for the state’s power generators, forcing them to shut down older or less efficient plants or plants burning more expensive fuels. Just last month, Vistra Energy — the state’s largest provider of coal-fired generation — announced plans to shut down more than 4.0 GW of coal-fired generation capacity by early 2018, the equivalent of nearly one-fifth of the state’s total coal-fired generation capacity as of August (2017). At the same time, generation capacity for natural gas, wind and solar-sourced power are on the rise. Today, we look at the latest power generation trends in Texas and their potential effects on gas demand.

Market economics, and to some degree federal environmental rules, have been forcing U.S. power generators to rejigger their fleet of generation plants for some time now. It’s not unusual for utilities to retire older, less efficient plants and bring on new, more efficient and economical plants as better technologies becomes available. But in the past decade, that turnover kicked into overdrive as the Shale Revolution dramatically increased the availability and reduced cost of one of the primary fuels used to generate power — natural gas. Lower-48 gas production has surged from around 50 Bcf/d 10 years ago to more than 70 Bcf/d now, while national average spot gas prices have dropped from upwards of $5.00/MMBtu prior to 2010 to $2-3/MMBtu in recent years. This has happened at the expense of another major generation fuel — coal.

That’s because utilities practice economic dispatch — firing up the least expensive units first and the most expensive units last — with the economics being highly sensitive to the variable cost of the resource required to run the plant. We’ve discussed this in previous blogs on the topic -- but, in short, baseload generation — the minimum required by the grid around the clock — is served by the consistently least expensive, most reliable generators, which is usually nuclear plants. Traditionally, the next-cheapest power after nukes has come from coal-fired plants, followed by natural gas. But as gas supply surged and gas prices fell, economics began to favor gas over coal and prompted utilities to use a lot more of their existing gas-fired power generating units as well as to build more gas-fired generation capacity. Coal prices fell too, in response to the stiffer competition from gas. But because of regulatory pressures to burn lower-emission fuels, lower coal prices were not enough to prevent a lot of coal-to-gas switching in the power sector. Moreover, the lower price environment in some cases led to coal producers either temporarily or permanently shutting down mining operations and further reducing coal supply, and coal-fired power plants followed suit.

Without the blog, I never would have thought about "dispatchable generation" -- a reader alerted me to that some years ago. Solar and wind energy are not dispatchable. 

Coincidentally, a reader sent me a link to this article overnight: can the gas glut kill the Permian.

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Notes For The Granddaughters 

What my son-in-law brought home for Christmas, a Western Star.

The Energy And Market Page, Part 2, T+304 -- November 21, 2017; Two New Permits; Three DUCs Reported As Completed

Market surges, records may be set. NYSE new highs, 217, including: Deere; Diageo; D. R. Horton;

• new lows: 25

WTI: looks like it could be a great day for oil; up almost 1% shortly before the close.

Remember when Chavez was giving away Venezuela oil to Joseph Patrick Kennedy? No more.  Venezuela now asking for free oil to keep its refineries open. Flashback: Mar 10, 2013 - For years, the eldest son of the late Robert F. Kennedy has relied on the Venezuelan strongman to prop up his charity with tens of millions of dollars in donated oil. The steady flow of heating oil allowed the former congressman from Massachusetts to portray himself — and Chavez — as heroes to the poor ... Amid continuing economic turmoil, Venezuela skipped heating oil contributions to an energy assistance program based in Massachusetts for a second consecutive winter, imperiling the popular program. The decision by Venezuela's Citgo Petroleum Corp. to bow out of the program founded by Joseph P.

Net neutrality: not consistent with a populist president; this is the kind of deal that could cost a president a second term

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, relationship, or travel decisions based on anything you read here or think you may have read here.

CBS and the kneelers:

Dish Network Corp. subscribers face a Thanksgiving weekend without CBS shows including football matchups like the NFL's Dallas Cowboys versus Los Angeles Chargers after the network's programming was pulled from the service over a fee dispute.

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Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$57.09↑↑	11/21/2017	11/21/2016	11/21/2015	11/21/2014	11/21/2013
Active Rigs	55	38	65	191	184

Two new permits:

• Operator: Windridge
• Field: Short Creek (Burke County)
• Comments: a relatively new operator but we're seeing the company more often in the news

Three producing wells (DUCs) reported as completed:

• 24111, 604, Enerplus, Beaver Creek 149-94-31D-30H-TF, Eagle Nest, t11/17; cum --
• 24113, 695, Enerplus, Zion 148-95-02B-11H, Eagle Nest, t11/17; cum --
• 28790, 848, CLR, Melgaard 2-23H1, Sadler, t11/17; cum -- 

Link Of The Day -- How To Spot Santa This Year -- November 21, 2017

Here's the link.

Guess what it is.

When you get to the link, push down and hold on your track pad / hold down clicker on the mouse while "moving" the cursor.

Also, in most views, there is a little target which might be easy to miss. If you click on the little target, additional information will pop up.

Again the link: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.5602853,-95.0853914,2a,75y,208.19h,93.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szChzPIAn4RIAAAQvxgbyEg!2e0!7i10000!8i5000.

I don't know yet, if the link is dynamic.

Thank you to Don for sending me this link. It will be great to share with grandchildren.

And it's very possible one might be lucky enough to spot a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer on December 24 - 25. But you will have to look closely. Before then, google "North Pole video."

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Global Warming 2017
Australia

For the archives, link here.  Australia becomes the poster child for idiotic green energy policies.

Global warming hysteria has wrecked the supply of electricity in Australia, causing widespread blackouts. That is quite an accomplishment, considering the abundant resources available in that nation-continent. It takes a special brand of idiocy on a national scale to accomplish such a feat.

It was already "unacceptable" that we banned nuclear power here, despite exporting uranium for some of the 449 nuclear plants overseas that safely produce more than 10 per cent of the world's electricity.

It is also "unacceptable" that we've now banned fracking for gas in Victoria, Northern Territory, Western Australia and much of NSW, also thanks to unscientific green scares.

Our Chief Scientist says this technology is "completely safe" when well regulated and it's been used in the United States to unlock such vast new supplies of cheap gas that it's driven down prices and made the US self-reliant on energy.

So for no sane reason we've banned two major sources of electricity. But even more "unacceptable" is that we've decided that coal – our biggest source of all – should also be banned.

Coal-fired stations produce 73 per cent of our electricity and the cheapest and most reliable. Yet activists convinced politicians these stations were heating the world dangerously by releasing lots of carbon dioxide, the gas which feeds plants. Never mind that the world has, in fact, barely warmed over the past two decades.

And then this:

Wind power is so expensive and unreliable that South Australia has since suffered two huge blackouts and has the world’s most expensive electricity.

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Global Warming 2017
Norway

This is a difficult article to access. The best way to do it, is to google it, simply putting the entire title of the article and the author into the google search box. Clicking on the link will download a pdf on your desktop. But again, it's difficult and you may have to play around a bit. 

Article: Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2: on the construction of the “Greenhouse Effect Global Warming” dogma.

by Tom V. Segalstad, Mineralogical-Geological Museum, University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract

The three evidences of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that the apparent contemporary atmospheric CO2 increase is anthropogenic, is discussed and rejected: CO2 measurements from ice cores; CO2 measurements in air; and carbon isotope data in conjunction with carbon cycle modelling.

It is shown why the ice core method and its results must be rejected; and that current air CO2 measurements are not validated and their results subjectively “edited”.

Further it is shown that carbon cycle modelling based on non-equilibrium models, remote from observed reality and chemical laws, made to fit non-representative data through the use of non-linear ocean evasion “buffer” correction factors constructed from a pre-conceived idea, constitute a circular argument and with no scientific validity.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is maximum 4%. Any CO2 level rise beyond this can only come from a much larger, but natural, carbon reservoir with much higher 13-C/12-C isotope ratio than that of the fossil fuel pool, namely from the ocean, and/or the lithosphere, and/or the Earth’s interior.

This is very difficult to read, but if one tries, I'm sure one can understand it. 

From Readers -- November 21, 2017

I haven't done this before but I don't want to lose the links or the comments, and information contained in comments won't show up in a google search, so I will place the comments here, and perhaps come back to them later.

From a reader, November 20, 2017, which accompanied this post:

The looming global impact of almost unfathomable amounts of natural gas was described in detail by a Seeking Alpha analyst, David Addison, in yesterday's piece " Battle for Dawn".

This follows the stunning announcement last week from Tellurian that they will build a 20 train LNG facility on Lake Charles for $15 billion ... half the historical price for these plants. The LNG project is the Driftwood, being built by Bechtel. [I track the US LNG export terminals here.]

The size and economy of these infrastructures will boost natgas consumption worldwide, possibly even to Melbourne, Australia, where a company is tentatively planning on a floating regassification structure (FSRU) to - perhaps - import LNG from the US as it may well be cheaper than their own Queensland LNG plants.

Absolutely amazing potentialities ahead, due in no small part to the tenaciousness, the foresight of people like Hamm, Papa, McClendon and the people of North Dakota who all helped birth this new reality.

From a reader, November 20, 2017, which accompanied this post:

The Mountaineer Xpress mentioned above - very large at 2.7 Bcfd - is crucial, along with the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, in opening up the southeast to Appalachian Basin gas.

There are plans to build numerous, large Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power plants (CCGT) to provide cheap electricity to Virginia, the Carolinas, possibly Georgia and Florida.

The renewable folks are going absolutely crazy in their attempts to stifle the build out of these pipelines. 

From a reader, November 20, 2017, which accompanied this post:

Oddly, the same date as the Tellurian announcement, another study shows the capacity of new lines approved over the last two decades was more than twice the amount of gas actually produced and consumed daily in 2016.

• https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2017/11/13/new-gas-pipeline-capacity-sharply-exceeds-consumption-report-says/

RBN Energy reported the same in their series on Marcellus/Utica takeaway over a year ago

US gas production in 2016 was below that of 2015:

• https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9070us2m.htm

And our imports, mostly from Canada were greater than our exports:

• US exports: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9130us2m.htm
• US imports: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9100us2m.htm

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Notes to the Granddaughters