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What is your basis for objection to GMOs?
Why would prospects for a better Mexico improve if NAFTA goes away?
I really am curious. I don't understand why so many people r anti-nafta. I think there r far bigger impediments to both Mexican and US industrial growth.
I don't think they can be separated.
This may seem like a strange or strained analogy but I don't see the opening of markets in developing nations as being much different from the European Renaissance coming out of the dark ages. People always want stuff that enables them to live more easily, safely, and enjoyably
EXAS +4%
My interpretation of your intended meaning was increased consumption of manufactured goods alongside natural resource development which feeds manufacturing and may be the currency of the technologically developing nation. I conveniently ignored the emergent middle class part. I dont think emergence of middle classes is particularly accurate or necessary. However, I think increased integration of previously 'shielded' nations into international commerce (globalization) is a relevant investment theme.
I'm not sure I'd focus on an emerging middle class that wasnt pre-existing. In a strict sense, a middle class is relative to a particular societal context. Many tribal groups had relatively large middle classes but used 'low/no' technologies relative to neighboring societies. 18-19th century French traders in North America made money on the adoption of new technologies by those folks regardless of the distribution of members in the classes of those tribal societies. However, i doubt Native Americans were a significant consumer group within a worldwide context.
As another example, China had a middle class 25 years ago but many members of that middle class didnt have immediate, personal access to telephones. Obviously, that's not the case now. The shift of the Chinese 'middle class' from rural areas to urban locales and access to more disposable income doesnt seem much different in general form to what happened in the US over the past 150 yrs.
In each cases i think increased industrial production, manufactured product consumption, and technology adoption was due to increased interaction with trading partners of other nations (of course, the interactions werent all necessarily peaceful).
end o'ramble
I find it useful
The speculation on yahoo is that USPSTF may modify their draft ruling regarding cologuard in EXAS's favor and that news has leaked. Whether or not that's true, one of the blue cross groups has agreed to pay for cologuard (June 1) and my guess is that others will follow so a USPSTF revision could be moot.
Thank you. There's not bad vs very good.
QURE has been bludgeoned over past 2 days, presumably in response to recent webcast or conference presentation of p1/2 hemophilia results. R those results really that bad or am I missing something else? Thx
obama and his ilk are expert practitioners of the empty gesture and have been so for quite awhile. It's absurd for Hellerstein to claim leadership and then note that other liberal states that are also irrelevant with respect to natural gas have already done what MA just did. Maybe he should read his electricity bill a bit more carefully.
And i wont be shocked if Hawaii does pass a similar bill if they havent done so already. Same sort of stupid people run that state.
What next, Hawaii?!
It's not just Sci-Hub. Also Library Genesis (libgen). There r many US & western European univ personnel who r complicit in facilitating Sci-Hub, eg the necessary login info, books, & articles 'donated' rather than stolen
another depressed oil story:
May 27 (Reuters) - U.S. oil drillers cut rigs for a ninth week in the last 10, energy services company Baker Hughes Inc said on Friday, even as crude prices this week tested a seven-month high at $50 a barrel.
Prices were on track to recover for seven out of the last eight weeks, and are now at the high end of a level that analysts and producers had said could soon trigger a return to the well pad. Drillers cut two oil rigs in the week to May 27, bringing the total rig count down to 316, the lowest since October 2009 and about half the 646 rigs of a year ago, Baker Hughes said in its closely followed report.
Before this week, drillers cut on average 11 oil rigs per week for a total of 218 so far this year. They cut on average 18 oil rigs per week for a total of 963 in 2015, the biggest annual decline since at least 1988 amid the biggest rout in crude prices in a generation. The rig count has dropped since hitting a peak of 1,609 in October 2014 as U.S. crude futures fell from over $107 a barrel mid-2014 to a near 13-year low around $26 in February. U.S. oil futures have recouped about half of their losses. They broke above the $50-mark on Thursday and were trading around $49 on Friday with analysts predicting range-bound markets for the next few months as supply outages slowly help clear a glut of crude. U.S. oil executives and analysts have said any price rise above $50 could fuel a resurgence in new drilling projects.
"For approximately two weeks, crude has held steady in the $45-50 range. During the first quarter earnings season, a number of exploration and production companies indicated that prices near that range could lead them to add rigs," analysts at Simmons & Co, energy specialists at U.S. investment bank Piper Jaffray, said this week in a note. "These anecdotes lead us to believe that a modest improvement in the rig count could develop beginning in the coming weeks," Simmons said.
The U.S. rig count generally reacts to prices with a three or four-month lag. Further ahead, crude futures were fetching around $50 for the balance of 2016 and over $51 for calendar 2017. The rig count is one of several indicators of future production. U.S. crude output is expected to fall from 9.4 million barrels per day in 2015, the highest since 1972, to 8.6 million bpd in 2016 and 8.2 million bpd in 2017, according to federal estimates.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)
i figure you will like this because they use the phrase: "false sense of precision" and Dew will like it becuz it has a picture of a duck
http://www.oilandgas360.com/ducs-in-a-row-for-2016-its-anybodys-guess/
the point of the above is that i dont think there will be a huge rush to drill new wells. As you point out, Fort Mac will soon reinstate production to the tune of 1 MMbbls/day. That will knock oil back below $50/bbl. When consumption does increase to the point where prices are driven >$50/bbl, then you'll first see the DUC wells disappear first. According to the article above, that's good for another 300k bbls/day. I imagine there's a lot of hedging being put in place now which will be another moderator.
Flattish over last 3 months. BK is very plausible scenario as bonds portend. Management says they need mid $40s to make money on their only producing asset. While they have many assets, they r with that 1 exception, non revenue generating and this is an asset buyer's market so their return on their exploration successes could be very poor - much to my displeasure. I also haven't heard squat about what the Angolan govt owes them which is prob a bad sign. That money will b critical to CIE's survival.
While I agree w your bottom line, I would apply a more cynical view. The Saudis r adopting the Brazilian model - taking foreign fools' money and spending at home on welfare projects. The BT Barnum school of prudence.
The title is a bit hyperbolic. It may not be clear to many readers but as the writer infers (implies?), there is frequently a difference between farming and the owner of the farm land and the owner is usually not a bank. I've heard of farmer-lessor's going belly up recently and lease rates and bonuses paid to landlords have dropped but bidding for farmland - leases or ownership - is still very competitive. In addition, even w the successive 10% annual drops in lease rates shown in the article, land prices are still about 10x what they were 30 yrs ago. It may not be completely relevant but the farming business model for most farmers who own 100s to 1000s acres is completely different from what it was in 1986.
OT: if trump is GOP nominee, the only way I don't c it happening is if she's indicted
nah. Regarding the nuke plants, i was thinking of cooling water requirements. I dont know if they can use seawater. There are obviously nuke plants on ocean front property and some in arid climates so it might not be a problem. The solar panels are likely to face big sand related problems and they may also have water problems. The build and maintenance costs of the canal would be enormous so if this really gets going, then it will send a loud message about how afraid the saudis are of iran.
1000 km saudi canal to bypass Straits of Hormuz
http://www.oilreviewmiddleeast.co.uk/technical-focus/saudi-arabia-to-build-artificial-canal-for-oil-transportation-reveals-report
i'm not sure how well the 10 nuclear power plants and 50 GW of solar panels will work out in the desert. i'm assuming the canal will carry seawater.
"..sharply lower profits in both upstream and downstream ops, which doesn’t usually happen"
yeah, not a happy circumstance but completely consistent with that booming economy that obama is crowing about (yay 0.5% GDP growth).
Pioneer has been very savvy w hedging and continental just the opposite.
The comment about producers selling future production every time the price pops along with the intransigence of SA and Iran is why I don't think we'll get a V recovery. Some folks insist on talking about break even production prices for those countries and how they'll be bankrupt in ~3 yrs but somehow the break even price mysteriously keeps dropping and the folks that matter in those countries know they have other cards to play b4 they have to worry about bankruptcy.
Is there anyone else in the industry who is speculating about a V recovery?
I don't see any indication of that expectation and companies r still laying off. SLB said they thought they were down in each of the last 2 qtrs yet they've laid off 1000s in both.
I hope to b wrong on the low side but I don't expect WTI to avg more than $40/bbl for the yr
My guess is that Exxon's algae interest is/was related to the US DoD's mandates and funding for biofuels. However, as one of your links points out, algal oil is very expensive (aurora's being $10M/ton). I suspect some of aurora's problems can be directly ascribed to their management. I tried to buy some algae from them in early 2013 for my research and they were quite unresponsive.
from a geologic perspective i dont think investing in lithium is a wise move - at least as a long term investment. Lithium is common in near surface environments and easily identified, e.g. the 2 principal sources are pegmatites and brines. The lithium- (and tantalum) rich pegmatites that have historically been mined in Canada are big but expensive relative to processing brines. Identifying pegmatites is fairly trivial. Lithium-rich brines are not uncommon, e.g. the geothermal brines in southern California are extremely enriched in lithium (e.g. if my memory is correct, up to 0.6 wt%) and sending a platoon around the world analyzing a bunch of brines costs next to nothing.
So if there's a gigantic spike in lithium prices you can rest assured that what happened with the Mountain Pass rare-earth deposit will happen with the Salton Sea brines as well as some other places. People will set up plants to feed the market just in time to go bankrupt.
edit: just to make a point about how commoness of lithium-cesium-tantulum pegmatites, see Fig 1 in http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1008/OF13-1008.pdf
many of the pegmatites are in NAM so those resources are obviously safer than those in SAM, Africa and Asia although those do have the cheap labor and no environmental overhead advantages
the WSJ pointed out ~ 2 weeks ago that amongst other beauties in the rule changes is a requirement for each partner in an offshore project to bond as if they were the sole operator. Supposedly this is being done because the BOEM is seeing an increase in bankruptcies (shocking !!) and they want potential liabilities to be covered. Of course, this may very well push some tenuously solvent companies into bankruptcy. Obama is now doing to part of the O&G industry what he did to coal companies.
As for the illiterate Jacqueline Savitz (cited in the Bloomberg article as saying: "These are the richest companies in the world...so I don’t feel we’re asking too much of them to ask them to do it as safely as possible"). Who cares about facts and reality when you have an agenda?
these are the richest companies in the world over past 2 yrs - only 2 oil companies -
1st Qtr 2016
1 Apple Inc. 607,500.0
2 Alphabet Inc. 516,600.0
3 Microsoft 435,400.0
4 Exxon Mobil 351,000.0
5 Berkshire Hathaway 349,400.0
6 Facebook 324,711.1
7 Johnson & Johnson 300,700.0
8 General Electric 297,000.0
9 Amazon Inc. 281,900.0
10 Wells Fargo 275,389.1
1st Qtr 2015
1 Apple Inc. 724,773.1
2 Exxon Mobil 356,548.7
3 Berkshire Hathaway 356,510.7
4 Google 345,849.2
5 Microsoft 435,400.0
6 Petro China 329,715.1
7 Wells Fargo 279,919.7
8 Johnson & Johnson 279,723.9
9 ICBC 275,389.1
10 Novartis 267,897.0
even if we go back to 2013, there are only 3 oil companies in the mix (Chevron crept in). Perhaps she and her ilk should cast their envious, berning eyes on pharmaceutical, software, and financial institutions rather than spewing nonsense about oil companies
One of the things I've noticed this year is that there appears to be a lot less effort to maximize planted acreage.
Cyclodextrins are a large family of compounds. The active compound in Febreze is a cyclodextrin.
<I>Biotech breakthrough: Sunlight can be used to produce chemicals and energy </I>
Lol. Stop the presses.
I suspect this will get some attention from the biomass processing and fuels crowd but I'm wondering how sensitive chlorophyllin is to sulfides in raw biomass. I'd bet on 'very' so I'm not sure the enzyme would have much advantage over synthetic catalysts and both being expensive.
Compare to the Chinese response.
Your statement is a more precise version of my intended meaning. Either way it doesn't refute my criticism of the author's faulty analysis.
Sure.
"development of low-carbon sources such as wind, solar and nuclear. These efforts are already having an impact: China’s coal consumption declined by an estimated 3.7% in 2015...."
China is obviously in the midst of an economic slow down. Why is that not responsible for the decline in coal consumption? No data is given to support the writer's conclusion.
"As it stands, China is on track to achieve — and probably exceed — its previous targets. For instance, China announced in 2014 that it would halt its dramatic rise in coal use by 2020, and the latest data suggest that the country may have already accomplished that goal."
So fuzzy as to be meaningless. If data exist, then it would be useful to show in some form rather than expecting the reader to simply believe the comment. I used to expect more from Nature.
"Green says that the Chinese government’s latest energy statistics suggest that emissions may have dropped in 2015 — which leaves open the possibility that China’s emissions have already peaked."
Again with the fuzz. Emissions drop in 2015; even if true, is that a trend? And when did people start accepting Chinese govt statistics without some sort of independent corroborating evidence?
As I said it: it is more of a propaganda piece rather than an objective, scientific analysis .
The Nature editor should be embarrassed. That article is shear propaganda. Completely lacking in analytical rigor.
Article is about California - not New Mexico or the Oglala aquifer. Clovis CA is a town next to Fresno
i have no idea regarding sizes and proximity of XOM/XTO and Pioneer leases.
T Bone was pushing the idea of XOM purchasing Pioneer last year. Good thing XOM is run by better minds.
I wouldnt be surprised if some of the assets that XOM picks up are offshore. They can be patient regarding development and production.
i think XOM has made statements that they are looking at using the proceeds from their recent bond offering to buy assets rather than companies. Parsley and Pioneer are not distressed so they aren't particularly ripe for picking but there are a lot of companies that are asset rich but cash poor and have looming bond maturities. I saw a rumor today that XOM might go after CHK. XOM might pick up some CHK assets (buying the company would be seriously stupid) but there's much better to be had and patience will probably be very rewarding.
"Imagine, pulling out of financials and going all into the oil/nat gas arena"
this will become more and more of a reality. They opened a "unconventionals" research lab in Oklahoma City last year and while all the other service companies are firing people by the bus load, GE has been hiring.
I'd bet that GE picks up large chunks of the assets being shed from HAL and BHI to satisfy gov't regulator requirements for sanctioning the merger. If the HAL/BHI merger doesnt happen, then i'd look for GE to take its pick of whichever carcass they prefer. Excepting SLB, most of the other service companies are either on the verge of bankruptcy or dont have any cash so GE can low-ball offers. Even if SLB wanted to admit that those companies had some superior services/products, they wouldnt be allowed to compete.
Back in mid 2000s many folk in SLB thought GE was going to take a shot at buying SLB (there seemed to be a sense of fear that was going to happen).
On a somewhat related front: i'm curious what people think about the substantial discount being given BHI at the moment relative to the HAL offer. It's worth noting that BHI is next door to GE Oil and Gas in Houston
Looks like they're buying out ~60% of their debt and a good chunk of it is due a 3-5 yrs out so looks like they r making a good deal for the company at your expense and they anticipate survival. However, I'm obviously not a bond guru.
Ensco is in a bad position because there is obviously a glut of rigs and some of their biggest customers are either kleptocracies or are effectively kleptocracies. Getting paid in such cases is a problem. Historically, companies have anticipated getting paid 6-9 months after the due date but now, payment may b extended indefinitely or for countries like Venezuela, they may eventually pay in bonds for the national oil company which r worth a fraction of the face value (Dew provided a link a few days ago regarding this).