Heavy Oil Is Dead. Long Live Heavy Oil -- February 12, 2022 -- Updated December 25, 2024

Locator: 44528GRAPHITE.

InsideEVs: link here.

EVs: link here. 

• scorecard
• cash burn 
• graphite
•  not for me. 
• "Energy transition is dead" is followed here. 
• EVs charging. 
• batteries.
  
• cold weather -- reality sets in -- January, 2024
• resale value -- a deal-breaker

**************************
Updates

December 25, 2024, link here: US graphite manufacturers want Chinese tariffs to rise to 920%. This comes at a time when President-elect wants to significantly increase tariffs on Chinese exports.

• currently, 25% tariff on most graphite imports from China
• China holds 93% of the world’s battery-grade graphite supply
• US holds just 1% of this market

“We estimate the incremental cost could be about US$135 per kWh, representing a 125 per cent increase in the DC-block to around US$255 per kWh,” Justin Clare, managing director at the investment bank, said, as carried by the South China Morning Post. 

The cost of the anode typically accounts for up to 15% of the cost of an entire battery, Clare noted. 

• holy grail for EV batteries: $100 / kWh
• raising the graphite tariff will make it more difficult to reach that target

Australia-based Novonix has just announced a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for a loan of up to US$754.8 million to partially finance a proposed new facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that would manufacture synthetic graphite primarily for use in EV batteries.

*********************************
Archived
This Page Begun February 12, 2022

Link here.

Heavy oil is dead. Long live heavy oil. 

Bottom line:

• batteries need a cathode and an anode
• cathode: lithium
• anode: graphite
• synthetic graphite in only graphite "modern" batteries will use
• natural graphite does not meet criteria for "modern" batteries
• synthetic graphite is made from heavy oil

derivatives:

• explains why western Canadian oil is so "valuable" (think Keystone XL pipeline)
• had the Keystone XL been built, it's very possible a "graphite" refinery would have been built somewhere in Texas to provide the graphic Tesla needs for its batteries
  
• there are two reasons we never hear about the anode:
• the use of heavy oil destroys the narrative; and,
• there is absolutely no shortage of synthetic graphite

Links:

• greentechmedia, all the way back to 2019, this problem was identified;
• Ed Conway's thread on twitter, September 12, 2022
• no mention of need for synthetic graphite
• better explanation?
• manufacturing synthetic graphite

****************************
The Music Page

The birth of the Muscle Shoals sound. Link here. Per Rick Hall himself. Fame Recording Studio.

Contemporaries and Near Contemporaries

 

The producers:

• Bumps Rockwell, 1918 - 1985
• Sam Phillips, 1925 - 2003
• Rick Hall, 1932 - 2018
• Phil Spector, 1939 - 2021

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Updates

March 15, 2018: Chinese battery material manufacturer Gem has signed a three-year cobalt offtake agreement with Switzerland-based mining and trading company Glencore, tying up increasingly tight supplies of cobalt for use as feedstock in its production of ternary battery materials.

Spot cobalt metal prices in China have risen by nearly 50pc in the past year to 600-635 yuan/kg, according to Argus' latest assessment on 13 March. The rise in cobalt prices has forced many Chinese battery manufacturers to consider using substitute materials or to reduce the cobalt ratio in NCM ternary cathode material.

NCM lithium-ion material typically comprises 50pc nickel, 20pc cobalt and 30pc manganese (5-2-3 NiCoMn) in China. But many producers aim to change the proportion to 6-2-2 or 8-1-1 NiCoMn by the second half of 2018.

Later, 12:45 p.m. CT: why I love to blog. About three days ago I sent Don an e-mail regarding cobalt. He replied with a link to USGS Minerals -- see the original post for the link. Now, this morning, this from Argus Media: low-cobalt batteries "vital to EV development." Data points:

• a trade group: the development of low-cobalt rechargeable batteries is crucial for the widespread adoption of EVs
• European EV manufacturers already require 25% of global cobalt capacity for the production of rechargeable batteries
• requirement is expected to rise significantly
• greater availability of boron and borates could lead to wider adoption of lithium borate batteries
• cobalt is a crucial cathode component in rechargeable lithium ion batteries
• the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to about half of the world's cobalt reserves
• by the way, I believe there is a trope / meme repeated in the article: "Sweden's Volvo will halt the development of gasoline engines from 2019"; this trope / meme has been stated many ways; some have said that Volvo will no longer manufacture vehicles using ICE. In fact, it is my understanding that after 2019, Volvo will produce hybirds and EVs. It's hard for me to believe that Volvo, in just two years would have absolutely no ICEs in their vehicles. My hunch: 90% hybrids initially (the other 10%, EVs) and then a plan to gradually reduce that figure

Original Post 

USGS Minerals Information: link here.  At the link, clicking on the "year" will download a pdf. Check out cobalt, page 50 of the 2017 update. It should scare every company that relies on batteries, including Apple. And Tesla. Speaking of Tesla, see chart below.

**************************************

Chart of the day:

Headlines from Rigzone today:

• Texas governments gain from US "global power broker" status
• US to overtake Russia as top oil producer by 2019 at latest -- IEA
• Big Corn says "no deal" after White House biofuels meeting; Iowa (6) wins; Pennsylvania (20) loses
• Saudi Arabia won't substantially raise output over the next 2-3 years even if OPEC production cut agreement not extended
• SandRidge lays off 30% of Oklahoma City staff 
• Oil dips as industry report shows swelling spare US -- posted yesterday: the American Petroleum Institute was said to have reported U.S. crude stockpiles expanded by 933,000 barrels last week. If confirmed in a government tally scheduled to be released on Wednesday, inventories will have racked up increases in four of the past five weeks: consistent with my re-balancing data
• Total interesting in building 150,000 bpd refinery in Iraq

Making America great again:

Bakken chart of the day:

***********************************

 Back to the Bakken

Active rigs:

$62.98↓↓	2/28/2018	02/28/2017	02/28/2016	02/28/2015	02/28/2014
Active Rigs	57	41	38	119	192

RBN Energy: How much Canadian gas can the US west coast take? Wow, that's a great question, after all the articles about the difficulty getting "the pipeline" through British Columbia to the west coast.

Memo To The Kennedy Clan: Head To NYC Central Park; Take The Grandchildren And Their Sleds; It's Spring; We Haven't Seen This In 130 Years -- March 22, 2018

This was never forecast two months ago, nor was it forecast 20 years ago, but we know to the hundredth decimal point the global temperature in 2118 (57.82 degrees Fahrenheit).

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The Market

On another note, TSLA crashes through the $310 floor. Late last week the CNBC "Fast Money" folks heartily recommended TSLA. Whatever.

*************************

Notes to the Granddaughters

From Convergence: The Idea At The Heart of Science, Peter Watson, c. 2016

I think this is my third entry regarding this book. One can do a search for the other entries. 

This note will be from Chapter 3: Beneath the Pattern of the Elements

Arianna (the oldest granddaughter) and I have spent a lot of time together on the periodic table. She knows it as well as anyone her age.

"Atomic weight" is now a historical term. Relative atomic mass is preferred these days.

A raft of priority disputes: who first noticed the periodicity of the natural elements; the intervals appeared to recur at multiples of eight of hydrogen.

• Mendeleyev: born in Siberia Russia; mother and son moved to Moscow, then to St Petersburg
• 1855: qualified as a teacher; took gold medal for the best student of his year
• government grant to Paris, to study under Henri Regnault, the man who first established that absolute zero was -273 degrees Celsius
• then to Heidelberg, where he worked with Robert Bunsen (of Bunsen burner fame) and Gustav Kirchhoff (who between them [Kirchhoff and Bunsen] developed spectroscopy, using a prism to refract light) -- when an element is heated, the light it emitted produced its own characteristic spectrum of colors
• returned to St Petersburg in 1861 (about the time of the US civil war); realized he was virtually alone in Russia in being up to data on discoveries in chemistry
• while writing his textbook, noted the periodicity while putting some notes on the back of an envelope (true, no apocryphal)
• worked three days, three nights without sleeping; fell asleep; dream led to the Periodic Table of Elements
• two bold claims
• where atomic weight of elements did not place them where their properties indicated they should go, he said the atomic weights had been predicted wrongly
• he left gaps where no atomic weights were know, predicting that the gaps would be filled in later
• he also noted that elements in the same group all had the same valency, the same affinity for other elements (measured by the number of hydrogen atoms they typically combined with); this tended to confirm that valency was related to chemical properties
• [valency/electrons: chemical properties; nuclear: physical properties of the element]
• Mendeleyev was the man who really first understood the layout of the periodic table and its significance
• chemistry came of age: alongside Newton's in physics and Darwin's in biology
• 1955: element 101 was named mendelevium
• now, on to physics
• Heinrich Hertz, b. 1857
• Hertzian waves = radio waves
• Guglielmo Marconi read the paper; rushed home to see whether Hertz's spark oscillator might be used for signaling
• Hertz left experimental physics for theoretical physics; died of bone disease at age 37
• quickly the rest of the chapter:
• a new form of energy: cathode rays; Rontgen; accidentally put his hand in between the cathode-ray tube and a screen (the rest is history); Becquerel (another accident) discovered "fluorescing" (naturally occurring radioactivity
• the discovery of radioactivity: Marie Curie; thorium, 150x more active than uranium; an "element" 330x more active than uranium (turned out to be two elements: polonium and radium)
• the discovery of the electron: Cavendish Laboratory; James Clerk Maxwell, d. 1879; laboratory only five years old; then Lord Rayleigh, short director-ship; then 28-y/o Joseph John (J. J.) Thomson -- like Mary Somerville before him, could use mathematics to bring order to physics; Thomson called them "corpuscles"; others called them "protyles"); today they are called electrons, a name first proposed by the Anglo-Irish physicist and astronomer George Johnstone Stoney; discovery quickly dwarfed by that of the quantum
• the discovery of the quantum: Max Planck, 1900, 42 years old, two years younger than JJ Thomson; University of Berlin; 1897: the year Thomson discovered electrons; Plank began work on the project that was to take his name; sketched an equation to explain the behavior of radiation in a black body -- electromagnetic radiation was not continuous, as classical physics had claimed, but could only be emitted in packets of a definite size
• the organization of the atom: Ernest Rutherford, March 7, 1911; notes taken by James Chadwick, a student at the time, in Manchester; alpha radiation; alpha particles (helium atoms); beta radiation; electrons with a negative charge [a third type of radiation, similar to X-rays, was discovered in 1900 by French physicist Paul Ulrich Villard; the most penetrating radiation of all, being stopped only by lead, called gamma radiation -- so, we had alpha, beta, gamma]
• the unification of JJ, Planck, and Rutherford: Niels Bohr -- "On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules," the collective title of Bohr's three papers on the subject ("The Trilogy," became a classic, and after three years in Manchester, offered a professorship in his home city of Copenhagen)

Then on to Chapter 4: the unification of space and time, and of mass and energy.

But the chapter that will probably interest me the most, Chapter 12: "A Biography of Earth: The Unified Chronology of Geology, Botany, Linguistics, and Archaeology."

Heavy Oil Is Dead. Long Live Heavy Oil -- February 12, 2022 -- Updated December 25, 2024

l

EVs: link here. 

• scorecard
• cash burn 
• graphite
•  not for me. 
• "Energy transition is dead" is followed here. 
• EVs charging. 
• batteries.
  
• cold weather -- reality sets in -- January, 2024
• resale value -- a deal-breaker
  

Updates

December 25, 2024: tariffs: American graphite manufacturers want 920% tariffs on Chinese graphite. Link here.

• current tariff on Chinese graphite: 25%
• China: holds 93% of the world's battery-grade graphite supply
• US holds just 1% of this market
• sector's Holy Grail: $100 / kWh EV battery
• won't get there if the price of graphite increases significantly
  
• Australia-based Novonix has just announced a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for a loan of up to US$754.8 million to partially finance a proposed new facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that would manufacture synthetic graphite primarily for use in EV batteries

*********************************
Archived
This Page Begun February 12, 2022

Link here.

Heavy oil is dead. Long live heavy oil. 

Bottom line:

• batteries need a cathode and an anode
• cathode: lithium
• anode: graphite
• synthetic graphite in only graphite "modern" batteries will use
• natural graphite does not meet criteria for "modern" batteries
• synthetic graphite is made from heavy oil

derivatives:

• explains why western Canadian oil is so "valuable" (think Keystone XL pipeline)
• had the Keystone XL been built, it's very possible a "graphite" refinery would have been built somewhere in Texas to provide the graphic Tesla needs for its batteries
  
• there are two reasons we never hear about the anode:
• the use of heavy oil destroys the narrative; and,
• there is absolutely no shortage of synthetic graphite

Links:

• greentechmedia, all the way back to 2019, this problem was identified;
• Ed Conway's thread on twitter, September 12, 2022
• no mention of need for synthetic graphite
• better explanation?
• manufacturing synthetic graphite

*****************************
Trivia

The link to Ed Conway's thread has a fair amount of material on the Phillips 66 refinery in "northeast England." It is located near the small village of South Killingholme on the south side of the Humber Estuary, across the water from Hull. Yorkshire is to the north of estuary; to the south, Lincolnshire. Specifically, the Humber Estuary forms the border between Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. 

The city Hull was a major trans-North Atlantic city during the great Scandinavian emigration to America. My Norwegian grandfather took a ship from Trondheim, Norway, to Hull, where he disembarked, caught a train to Liverpool on the west coast, and caught a cargo/passenger ship to America.  

While in Yorkshire in the early 2000s, I had the opportunity to visit Hull. I was not impressed; it had turned into a drab, dreary industrial city. I’m sure I missed the nicer part and more scenic areas of the city and surrounding area. I certainly missed the geographical importance and historical importance of Hull, having familiarized myself with it only after returning to the states.

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The Book Page

Again, if interested in origin of solar system, earth, fossil fuel, origin of life, this is currently the best new book on the market right now for armchair / amateur biologists, geologists, fossil fuel aficionados. 

• How The Mountains Grew
• John Dvorak
• c. 2021
• Pegasus Books, August 2021

Life on earth began with three major events, as they were; life on earth began with fits and starts.

Reminder:

• the Super Event: 2.7 bya
• Colombia: 1.8 bya
• the Boring Billion: 2.1 bya - 1.1 bya
• maybe only one organism during this period: Grypania, at 2.1 bya; evolving life came to an end;
• from 2.1 bya into the Ediararan period 
• so when you say, "the Boring Billion," one organism: Grypania.
  
• Rodinia: 1.1 bya
• [Gondwana: 0.6 bya]
• Pangea: 0.3 bya

Pre-Cambria:

• until recently, there was no evidence of life prior to the Phanerzoic eon, Paleozoic era, Cambrian period
• but now, the black shale of the pre-Cambrian: Aspidella terranovica
• Aspidella
• 610 - 555 million years ago; could date as far back as 770 million years ago;
• Ediacaran disk-shaped fossil; uncertain affinity: animal or plant?
• one single species: A. terranovica
• 4 to 10 mm in size
• jellyfish? Refuted. Movement may have resembled modern sea anemones (Cnidaria -- the "c" is silent; pronounced "ni-daria" -- root word same as "knife" -- from "burning / cutting" sensation when stung by a jellyfish)
• Ediacara Hills: south Australia.

Ediacaran period:

• follows the Cryogenian Period (635 mya)
• ends with the beginning of the Cambrian period (541 mya)
• marks end of the Proterozoic Eon and the beginning of the Phanerozoic Eon

Of note:

• there is evidence for a mass extinction during this period from early animals changing the environment;
• the relative proximity of the Moon at this time meant that tides were stronger and more rapid than they are now.
• Tieds were necessary for life to begin on earth

So, the first attempt at life on earth: died out completely or came to close to dying out completely.

• I need to go back and re-read Wonderful Life by Stephen J. Gould.

The Cambrian explosion:

• did some Ediacarans survive the Ediacaran extinction?

The Permian extinction: 

The Cretaceous extinction:

Battery Hell -- EVs -- Cathodes And Anodes -- An Update -- Decide 21, 2023

Locator: 46370BATTERIES.

Busy, busy day. On today's list:

• Director's Cut: link here.
  
• 177B Bleecker Street, link here.
  
• cathodes:
  
• art
• evolution
• GDP: link here.
  
• OPEC
• Apple (AAPL)
  
• Santa Claus rally: link here.
• Mullen: huge jump in share price today; 1-100 reverse split.
  
• Cintas: nice jump in share price; earnings reporting; best estimates.
  
• French toast
• SNAP: link here.
  
• no shame
  
• winter solstice: 9:27 p.m. tonight, December 21, 2023 -- at this moment, we turn the corner to slightly longer days; also called the hibernal solstice; early 17th century: from late Latin hibernalis, from hibernus ‘wintry’. Shakespeare was at his peak in the early 17th century -- could it be .. let's look -- possibly and probably not -- one source says first used, 1646, but a more authoritative source (OED) suggests 1626, and Sir Henry Neville died 1615, William Shakespeare, 1616. 

As you go through this blog and the linked articles, think about this:

Tesla is undoubtedly the leader in EV battery development and manufacturing.

If Tesla is having this much trouble, imagine the problems GM and Ford face. Both of these companies have stepped back from BEVs, which, of course, gives the advantage to a company that is only involved with BEVs, Tesla.

The Reuter's article is an incredible article. We've discussed it before. 

The terminals:

• cathodes: lithium
• anodes: heavy oil

The Reuter's article linked below leads me back to a nice primer on cathodes and anodes: heavy oil is dead. Long live heavy oil. 

From the linked Reuter's article:

AUSTIN, Texas, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Elon Musk says prototypes are easy, production is hell. And when it comes to the long-awaited Cybertruck, Tesla's hell is its pioneering 4680 battery.

Tesla delivered the first of its futuristic stainless steel-plated electric pickups last month and CEO Musk said in October that it would probably hit an annual production rate of a quarter of a million vehicles at some point during 2025.

But Tesla is still a long way off that kind of production pace, and one of the main bottlenecks is the speed it can make the 4680 batteries used in the Cybertruck with its new dry-coating technology, nine people familiar with the matter said.

AUSTIN, Texas, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Elon Musk says prototypes are easy, production is hell. And when it comes to the long-awaited Cybertruck, Tesla's hell is its pioneering 4680 battery.

Tesla delivered the first of its futuristic stainless steel-plated electric pickups last month and CEO Musk said in October that it would probably hit an annual production rate of a quarter of a million vehicles at some point during 2025.

But Tesla is still a long way off that kind of production pace, and one of the main bottlenecks is the speed it can make the 4680 batteries used in the Cybertruck with its new dry-coating technology, nine people familiar with the matter said.

Tesla's Giga Texas factory is currently churning out 4680 battery cells at rate only sufficient to power about 24,000 Cybertrucks a year, or about a 10th of the required output, according to Reuters calculations based on a combination of public data and unpublished figures provided by sources.

Being able to ramp up battery output massively by dry-coating electrodes - rather than using the slower, more costly wet-coating - was a key factor behind Tesla's forecasts in 2020 that it would more than halve battery costs, cut investment significantly, and create smaller, greener factories.

The nine people, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Tesla had yet to crack dry-coating at the industrial scale needed to make 4680 batteries fast enough to hit its production targets.

The people said dry-coating the anode in the 4680 cells was not problematic but Tesla was struggling with the same technique for the cathode - the most expensive component in a battery.

Friday, October 16, 2015

Active rigs:

	10/16/2015	10/16/2014	10/16/2013	10/16/2012	10/16/2011
Active Rigs	67	189	184	187	195

RBN Energy: why aluminum producers rely on crude refiners.

Petroleum coke (known as petcoke or “coke”) is produced by refinery coker units that break up residual fuel oil to squeeze out the last drops of lighter components used to make gasoline and diesel – leaving a solid carbon based residue. Petcoke is also the only commercial source of material used to manufacture electrolytic anodes that play a critical part in making aluminum. As a result – these industries are effectively joined at the hip - although you wouldn’t know it because the two rarely cooperate. As we explain in today’s blog - that may need to change going forward because a looming petcoke shortage could disrupt aluminum production and prices.

This blog series is based on the recently published “Alliance Anode Coke Study” prepared by Turner, Mason and Company, AZ China Ltd and Cascade Resources.

For those of you wondering why RBN Energy’s blog would suddenly veer off into the world of metals and in particular aluminum – tighten your seat belts and bear with us while we explain the relationship between crude oil and aluminum.

Aluminum is almost exclusively made using the Hall-Heroult electrolysis process where electricity at very high currents is passed through a molten electrolyte containing dissolved alumna (a compound of aluminum and oxygen produced from bauxite) at around 960 ^oC (1,760 ^oF). The alumina is reduced to its component parts – with the aluminum accumulating in reduction cells on one electrode (the cathode that transmits the current). The other electrode (the anode) is comprised of multiple blocks of carbon – typically around 1 metric tonne (MT) in weight – suspended in the electrolyte. These anodes are primarily manufactured from petcoke as well as a pitch based binder.

The anodes are consumed during the electrolysis by reaction with oxygen to form CO2.

Around 0.4 to 0.45 MT of carbon anode are consumed to produce 1 tonne of aluminum metal. Bottom line – you need about half a tonne of petcoke to make a tonne of aluminum. Who knew?

The US exports its greenhouse-gas emissions -- as coal. Profitable coal. The Washington Post is reporting (a series):

Gillette, Wyo. — A few feet below this prairie town lies one of North America’s biggest coal deposits, a 100-foot-thick slab of brittle black rock spanning an area the size of Rhode Island — nearly all of it owned by the U.S. taxpayer.Just a dozen nearby mines, scattered across a valley known as the Powder River Basin, contain enough coal to meet the country’s electricity needs for decades. But burning all of it would release more than 450 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — more than all greenhouse-gas emissions from all sources since 2000.

The Obama administration is seeking to curb the United States’ appetite for the basin’s coal, which scientists say must remain mostly in the ground to prevent a disastrous warming of the planet. Yet each year, nearly half a billion tons of this U.S.-owned fuel are hauled from the region’s vast strip mines and millions of tons are shipped overseas for other countries to burn. Government and industry reports predict a surge in exports of Powder River coal over the next decade, at a time when climate experts are warning of an urgent need to reduce coal burning to prevent global temperatures from soaring.
Each shipment highlights what critics describe as a hypocrisy underlying U.S. climate policy: While boasting of pollution cuts at home, the United States is facilitating the sale of large quantities of government-owned coal abroad.

“We’re a fossil-fuel-exporting super­power that goes around lecturing the rest of the world about cutting emissions,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was an adviser on climate during the Clinton administration. “The United States is reducing its domestic coal use and then simply exporting some of those emissions abroad.”

The production of electricity is the leading source of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the global demand for electricity, particularly in developing nations, will only grow. Coal accounts for 40 percent of the electricity produced globally — and more in China and India.

The Port of Los Angeles reports steep shipping decline in September, 2015. The Los Angles Times is reporting:

With a 9.4% drop in imports, the largest container port in the U.S. appears to be bearing the brunt of languishing trade. --That's the "story line" but there is much more to it.

Shipments through the Port of Los Angeles fell at a steep rate last month, extending a downward trend over the past year that suggests the port is bearing the brunt of sluggish U.S. international trade. In September, Los Angeles handled 124,286 loaded twenty-foot equivalent units, a standard measure for container cargo. That was off 17.5% from last September, the 12th straight month that loaded export containers declined from a year ago.

Imports declined 9.4% year-over-year, to 372,991 inbound containers. Shipping at many of the largest U.S. ports has been tepid in recent months. Foundering demand for U.S. goods in the troubled European and Asian economies has clipped exports and overstocking earlier this year by American retailers has led many of them restrain imports heading into the fall. But most ports aren’t reporting the deep declines that Los Angeles is coping with.

At the neighboring Port of Long Beach, imports fell 1.9% in September while exports were up 6.1% from the same month last year.

For January through August, the major ports of New York and New Jersey, Savannah, GA, and Seattle and Tacoma, WA, reported double-digit gains in loaded import containers.

Imports at the Port of Oakland were flat for the first nine months of 2015 through September while Long Beach has reported an increase of 2.1% in imports over the same period last year.

The East Coast ports have reaped the benefits of congestion on the West Coast earlier this year related to protracted contract negotiations with the dockworkers’ union there.

The talks wrapped up in late February, but the West Coast has been slow to fully recover their cargo volumes as many shippers shifted their goods to different routes after months of uncertainty at the Pacific ports.

Overall, including an additional 233,029 empties, Los Angeles saw a decline of 5.8% in total container volume in September—the largest drop since the height of West Coast port congestion earlier this year. The inbound container volume at Los Angeles also fell 8.5% from August to September, a break from historic patterns that see business grow as retailers bring in goods for the holiday sales season. Los Angeles is facing tough comparisons to 2014, when it handled 8.3 million containers, the most since 2007. A spokesman for the Port of Los Angeles said 2014 was a near-record year, and beating last year’s volumes has been challenging in the wake of this year’s congestion problems.

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Syria

This is why Obama refuses to meet with "Russia" to discuss Syria -- according to The Fiscal Times.

Vladimir Putin’s ongoing effort to keep the U.S. off balance has forced the White House into yet another politically awkward choice. The Obama administration has officially refused a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and a high-level delegation of Kremlin officials, following an offer from the Russian government to open up talks about the ongoing conflict in Syria.

The offer, extended by the Kremlin, was ostensibly an effort to begin coordinating the two countries’ military efforts against the terror group ISIS.

However, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that the administration has no interest in aligning with the Kremlin in Syria.

The Obama administration, of course, has very obvious reasons for declining high-level talks with Russia on coordinating the two countries efforts against ISIS – not lest (sic) of which is that the White House doesn’t appear to believe that Russia really is doing much to counter the terror group that has taken over large parts of Syria and Iraq in the first place.

Syria is currently in the grip of a three-way war, in which the forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad are fighting against rebel groups seeking to overthrow the regime, as well as ISIS. The rebels and ISIS, in addition to fighting Assad, are fighting each other.

For the archives:

• From the WSJ, Henry Kissinger, October 16, 2015
• Comment at this article:

Foreign policy novice Obama has destroyed 40+ years of positive American influence in the Mideast and handed Putin the keys: http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-path-out-of-the-middle-east-collapse-1445037513 "That geopolitical pattern is now in shambles. Four states in the region have ceased to function as sovereign. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have become targets for nonstate movements seeking to impose their rule. Over large swaths in Iraq and Syria, an ideologically radical religious army has declared itself the Islamic State as an unrelenting foe of established world order. It seeks to replace the international system’s multiplicity of states with a caliphate, a single Islamic empire governed by Shariah law."

The Market And Energy Page, T+216 -- August 24, 2017 -- $45 WTI Incentivizes E&P

OPEC cut (wink, wink) update: via Twitter, Libya and Nigeria (both exempt from the cut) reached 18-month and 4-year (respectively) highs for light sweet oil. WTI futures are down this morning.

Texas is back! From Oil & Gas Journal, the Texas upstream oil and gas economy grew in July for an eighth consecutive month after contracting during the previous 24 straight months. The July expansion reflected sizable year-over-year improvements in the rig count, drilling permits, and the value of Texas-produced crude oil and natural gas, along with renewed industry employment growth. All that hand-wringing over "breakevens" of $65 --

“Oil supplies remain plentiful because domestic producers are becoming increasingly efficient at producing crude oil at lower costs, so a $45/bbl oil market provides more incentive than in the past,” he said.

Estimated crude production in Texas during July totaled 103.5 million bbl, up 5.7% from July 2016. With oil prices in July averaging $43.10/bbl, the value of Texas-produced crude amounted to $4.46 billion, up 9.6% year-over-year.

From: https://postimg.org/image/nwaj8ai5v/ (see comments).

Dow futures: up 52 almost 70 points. Trump? Jobless claims? WTI? Jackson Hole? Hillary not president? First Muslim governor in Michigan?

Sears: to close 28 more stores. Despite huge beat! Expected to lose $2.48/share, only lost $1.16/share. Wow. Revenue also beat forecasts, $4.37 billion vs an estimate of $4.21 billion. But same-store sales fell 11.5 percent, worse than the expected 7.1 percent decline.

Trending: coal. From Argus Media via Twitter -- Indonesia, Vietnam to enchance coal co-operation.  But look at this: NY Times reporting that US government study hints at future support for coal -- again reported everywhere -- no links -- apparently increasing alarm over stability of the grid.

Trending: Mexico in a world of hurt. Mexican crude production continues to slide; federal revenue dropping at a frightening rate. Stories easily found; no links. Platts is reporting, of course.

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

For energy investors, the question for the day: is it time to start investing in oil again? Has we turned the corner with regard to the price of oil? If so, where should one invest? Upstream, midstream, downstream? Big Oil? Shale producers? Just idle chatter. I'm posting this so I have something to look back on five years from now.

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Taking A Bath

I don't recall whether the figure was $7 billion or $9 billion. If I had to wager on it, I would say it was $9 billion.

I'm referring to a note by a BHP analyst the other day. The analyst suggested that if the BHP shale portfolio came in at less than $9 billion, the company was going to take a "huge bath." Above $9 billion, perhaps not so bad. It is being reported that BHP spent $20 billion to enter US shale (the Eagle Ford and the Permian) in 2011 -- at the height of the boom -- and is now in the process of exiting US shale where it has not been able to succeed.

So, $9 billion.

Today, Rystad reports that it values BHP's shale portfolio at $7.5 billion at $60 oil (wink, wink) and at $5.1 billion at $50 oil (which we still haven't returned to in quite some time):

• BHP Billiton's U.S. onshore portfolio is valued at $7.5B at $60/bbl WTI oil, and $5.1B at $50 oil, energy consultant Rystad Energy calculates
• In a $60/bbl scenario, Rystad says BHP's Eagle Ford acreage has a value of $4.2B, with the Black Hawk field - the "sweet spot" in the Eagle Ford Shale - is valued at $2.8B and the Hawkville field in the condensate area of Eagle Ford at $1.3B
• Rystad says BHP’s Permian Delaware acreage is valued at $2.3B, and the consultant sees companies such as Anadarko Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell as potential suitors that could find synergies with their existing positions in those areas

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Convergence:
The Idea At The Heart Of Science

Peter Watson

c. 2016

DDS: 509WAT

The author argues that the decade of the 1850s is the "crucial decade" -- the decade when convergence began.

Convergence is a history of modern science but with a distinctive twist. The twist has been there for all to see, but so far it has not been st out as clearly as it deserves. The argument is that the various disciplines -- despite their very different beginnings, and apparent areas of interest -- have in fact been gradually coming together over the past 150 years ... one interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe.

The story of Mary Somerville, first half of 19th century. Self-trained mathematician. If she were not a woman, she would have been elected to the Royal Society. Wrote five books on science (cosmology, geography, physical sciences, molecular and microscopic science.

Her most important work: On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1834). Its aim was to reveal the common bonds -- the links, the convergence -- between the physical sciences at a time when they were otherwise being carved up into separate disciplines.

The author references an ancient concern of Aristotle, called the Ionian Enchantment. Then, in the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas attempts to reconcile Aristotle's science and Christianity  in Summa Theologica. Then Newton brings order to the heavens 400 years later. Then, Descartes, Condorcet, and Schelling. The author argues that Mary Sommerville's approach was much more modern in writing about "convergence."

William Whewell: generally credited with coining such words as "scientist," "physicist," "ion," "anode," and "cathode." The latter three he supposedly proposed to Michael Faraday.

Somerville died at age 92 in 1872. Two years after her death a new all-women college at Oxford was named in her honor, producing its share of no less remarkable figures -- Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, and Margaret Thatcher among them.

For Mary Somerville, the fundamental lesson of Connexion was religious...her own most powerful experiences were with nature and, above all, with mathematics. This was where God showed himself, she believed -- in the purity of mathematics and in the way a few equations united the manifest diversity of the observable world.

And this takes us to just page 13. A most fascinating book.