It’s been a tough run for energy stocks.
Oil at $100 a barrel is long gone. Investors have exited their losing positions, and now, as 2019 comes to a close, investor apathy in the sector is at a decade low, according to Tyler Hardt, founder of Pelican Bay Capital Management LLC, but the year ahead could be a turning point, he said.
With the American shale revolution contributing to an oversupply, the collapse of oil prices and stocks triggered the fall of several titans, including gas driller Chesapeake Energy Corp. and oil servicer Weatherford International PLC.
The crash was suspicious.
Struggling with profitability and volatile commodity prices, the sector has seen a flight of capital in what was once a hotbed of merger-and-acquisition activity. With the collapse of oil in late 2014, energy firms have been slowly adopting the mantra of “capital discipline,” or a focus on steady returns and profitability, after being pushed by investors.
“Without fresh capital to cover their widening cash burn, the E&Ps [exploration and production companies] were finally forced to live within their means and take a sharp axe to their capital budgets,” Hardt said in an interview.
Arguing things can’t get much worse, optimists are beginning to enter the picture. Citi is readying for a rotation into E&P stocks, while Goldman Sachs thinks energy is entering a “bottoming phase” in 2020.
So much for global warming and ¢limate ¢hange.
The days of relentless domestic production growth are ending, industry pioneers said in November. As such, a key focal point for investors will be calling on shale producers to shut down rigs and stop burning through cash.
“The dearth of new conventional projects beyond 2020, combined with slowing US shale growth, will likely catch the world by surprise and usher in a new era of oil scarcity and higher prices,” Hardt said. He thinks 2020 “will most likely be the turning point.”
You have been warned, American consumer.
Yet the industry’s challenges are far from over with the rise of environmental, social, and governance investing. Looking ahead, drillers will likely face increasing scrutiny regarding the environmental impact of their operations......
Like off the Galapagos Islands.
Fortunately, the New York Times tells me the spill is under control.
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The only plan is to buy back the stock like ConocoPhillips.
Either that or dump it:
"Japan wants to dump nuclear plant’s tainted water. Fishermen fear the worst" by Motoko Rich and Makiko Inoue New York Times, December 23, 2019
IWAKI, Japan — The overpowering earthquake and tsunami that ripped through northern Japan in March 2011 took so much from Tatsuo Niitsuma, a commercial fisherman in this coastal city in Fukushima prefecture.
The tsunami pulverized his fishing boat. It demolished his home. Most devastating of all, it took the life of his daughter.
Now, nearly nine years after the disaster, Niitsuma, 77, is at risk of losing his entire livelihood, too, as the government considers releasing tainted water from a nuclear power plant destroyed by the tsunami’s waves.
That sound you just heard was my jaw dropping to the floor.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet and Tokyo Electric Power Co. — operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where a triple meltdown led to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl — must decide what to do with more than 1 million tons of contaminated water stored in about 1,000 giant tanks on the plant site.
On Monday, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry proposed gradually releasing the water into the ocean or allowing it to evaporate, saying a controlled discharge into the sea would “stably dilute and disperse” it. The ministry ruled out alternatives like continuing to store it in tanks or injecting it deep into the ground. Abe’s Cabinet will make the final decision.
Yeah, pollute the oceans even more with radioactive water or let it evaporate so that it will rain down on us.
I wouldn't be surprised if they sold it for fracking purposes.
Btw, whatever happened to the ice wall? It melt?
The water becomes contaminated as it is pumped through the reactors to cool melted fuel that is still too hot and radioactive to remove. For years, the power company, known as TEPCO, said that treatment of the water — which involves sending it through a powerful filtration system to remove most radioactive material — was making it safe to release, but it is actually more radioactive than authorities have previously publicized. Officials say that it will be treated again and that it will then be safe for release.
The lies just keep on coming. That's why the article was a Xmas eve dump.
Regardless of government assurances, if the water is discharged into the sea, it will most likely destroy the livelihoods of hundreds of fishermen like Niitsuma. Consumers are already worried about the safety of Fukushima seafood, and dumping the water would compound the fears.
Hey look, a real fear not some fake foboia.
With Fukushima preparing to host baseball games during the Summer Olympics next year, and the plant running out of land on which to build storage tanks, the debate has taken on a sense of urgency.
When the "debate" takes on a sense of "urgency" it is time to hit the brakes. That's how one is lied into wars.
As you can see, getting rid of the radioactive water isn't about your health or the environment; it's about making Japan look when the world visits next year.
Until last year, TEPCO indicated that with the vast majority of the water, all but one type of radioactive material — tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that experts say poses a relatively low risk to human health — had been removed to levels deemed safe for discharge under Japanese government standards, but last summer, the power company acknowledged that only about a fifth of the stored water had been effectively treated.
SIGH!
Last month, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry briefed reporters and diplomats about the water stored in Fukushima. More than three-quarters of it, the ministry said, still contains radioactive material other than tritium — and at higher levels than the government considers safe for human health.
Authorities say that in the early years of processing the deluge of water flowing through the reactors, TEPCO did not change filters in the decontamination system frequently enough. The company said it would re-treat the water to filter out the bulk of the nuclear particles, making it safe to release into the ocean.
Are we supposed to believe them after constantly lying and minimization for eight years?
Some experts and local residents say it is difficult to trust such assurances. “The government and TEPCO were hiding the fact that the water was still contaminated,” said Kazuyoshi Satoh, a member of the city assembly in Iwaki. “Because next year is the Tokyo Olympics, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to present the image that everything is ‘under control,’ ” said Satoh, referring to a speech by the Japanese leader to the International Olympic Committee when Tokyo was bidding to host the 2020 Games.
I see I'm not alone in my concern.
The power company acknowledged that it had not made it easy for the public to get information. The water treatment data “has not been presented in a manner that is easy to understand,” said Ryounosuke Takanori, a TEPCO spokesman. “As long as the water was stored in the tanks, we thought it didn’t matter whether the water” exceeded safety standards for discharge, said Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager in the Fukushima Daiichi decontamination and decommissioning office.
Niitsuma, for whom fishing is not just a livelihood but also a balm against grief over the loss of his daughter, said he thought both TEPCO and the government needed to come clean. “I want them to see the reality squarely and disclose information fully,” said Niitsuma, who goes out alone on his 2-ton boat at dawn three times a week.
The question of whether the water could be decontaminated to safe levels is a matter of degree, scientists say. If the water is processed so that the only radioactive materials that remain are low levels of tritium, said Kazuya Idemitsu, a professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University, releasing it into the ocean would be “the best solution in terms of cost and safety.” Idemitsu added that functioning nuclear plants around the world release diluted water containing tritium into the ocean.
Some scientists said they would need proof before believing that the Fukushima water was treated to safe levels. “I want to see the numbers after they’ve removed these additional radionuclides,” said Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist in marine chemistry and geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “Then, and only then, can I make a judgment on the quality of the rationale for releasing it or the consequences of releasing it.”
What are they, some sort of kook conspiracy theorists?
More than 20 countries still have import restrictions on Japanese seafood and other agricultural products that were imposed after the 2011 disaster. Earlier this year, the European Union lifted its ban on some products.
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Most people don't know that the reactor was designed by GE.
At least you can easily hail a ride at Logan (at last, a state plan that works -- well, quasi works. It's a public-private partner$hip).
Related:
"A peculiar sight greeted motorists on a busy freeway outside Detroit on Friday: a bright green liquid oozing from a retaining wall on Interstate 696. Its appearance snarled traffic and prompted lane closings to allow for a hazardous materials cleanup that started Friday and could last for several more days, Michigan environmental officials said. The mystery substance is believed to be hexavalent chromium, said Jill A. Greenberg, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. She emphasized that there was “no imminent risk to the public,” and that hazardous materials crews determined that the air and public drinking water had not been contaminated. Hexavalent chromium is a cancer-causing manufacturing component that was featured in the 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich.” In Michigan, the green liquid was traced to a nearby plant, Electro-Plating Services Inc., in Madison Heights, Michigan, Ms. Greenberg said."
I would take a grain of salt with that "water" if I were you.
Related: The Child of Gaza
Also see: Spring Hill Runs Dry
Just ignore the radiation and ‘forever chemicals’ in the water supply, 'kay?
"For decades, those who have participated in snowball fights in one Wisconsin city have risked getting in trouble with the law, but that may be about to change. A 1962 ban on throwing projectiles in Wausau lumps snowballs into the same category as rocks and other items that can cause serious harm. City Council president Lisa Rasmussen said that recent negative national attention over the rarely used ordinance has raised questions about whether it could be time to take snowballs off the naughty list. “Maybe it’s worth giving a look to see if that list could be amended, to mitigate that odd news story that keeps coming up like a bad penny,” Rasmussen said. Wausau police and the mayor even made a video showing officers having a snowball fight....."
Can you make a snowball out of coal ash?
"Congress saves coal miner pensions, but what about others?" by Mary Williams Walsh New York Times, December 24, 2019
NEW YORK — The $1.4 trillion spending bill passed by Congress last week quietly achieves what a parade of select committees and coordinating councils could not: rescue a dying pension fund that is the lifeblood of nearly 100,000 retired coal miners.
See: House sends a $1.4 trillion spending deal to Senate ahead of Friday shutdown deadline
For the first time in 45 years of federal pension law, taxpayer dollars will be used to bail out a fund for workers in the private sector, and now that there’s a precedent, it might not be the last.
It's being called a “blueprint.”
The coal miners belong to one of about 1,400 pension plans that cover a large group of workers in a single industry or trade. These so-called multiemployer plans cover more than 10 million workers in unions including the Teamsters, the American Federation of Musicians, the Screen Actors Guild and, in Pettit’s case, the United Mine Workers of America. Even President Trump has a multiemployer pension, worth about $70,000 a year, earned in his reality-TV days, but nearly three-quarters of the people with this type of pension are in plans that have less than half the money they need to pay promised benefits, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency that insures pension plans. Chronic underfunding, lax government oversight, and serial bankruptcies have left them in dire straits, and the guaranty corporation’s program backing up these plans — which operated under the assumption that they were inherently strong — would be wiped out by the failure of just one of the major pension pools.
Looks like corporate pension funds are next in line for a bailout, as a bonus by any other name is.....
The solution approved by Congress uses the Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Fund, which is partly supported by a per-ton fee that all coal companies pay. In 1992, Congress allowed the fund to help pay for retired miners’ health care, and the new legislation — the Bipartisan American Miners Act — uses the fund as a vehicle to support the pensions, too. The bill, among other changes, allows the Treasury to send up to $750 million a year into the fund as it covers the unfunded pension obligations.
A failure to act would have had dire consequences: Tens of thousands of miners, many in already economically distressed areas, would have lost their benefits, and coal pensions support not just families but sometimes whole towns.
The collapse of the miners’ plan was hastened by the parade of bankruptcies that have hit the industry in recent years. By this fall, just one major employer, Murray Energy, was still paying into the fund. On Oct. 29, Murray declared bankruptcy — the eighth coal producer to do so this year.
Wasn't Trump going to put them all back to work?
Usually, leaving a multiemployer pension plan is an expensive proposition for a company. It must pay off its share of any shortfall to leave, but bankruptcy provides a cheap exit ramp, because the pension plan is treated as an unsecured creditor — the kind that goes to the back when everyone lines up to be paid, but when companies get out of the pension pool, their employees stay in — and become the responsibility of the companies still kicking in money. As more companies failed, it only increased the pressure on the others to get out.....
Who is in front of line when the pyramid collapses?
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Also see: Newspaper publishes secret report on former W.Va. bishop
May God help them all.
Anybody feel a breeze?
"Trump attacks on wind turbines, low-flow toilets, and LED lightbulbs set up campaign clash with Democrats" by Toluse Olorunnipa and Juliet Eilperin Washington Post, December 23, 2019
PALM BEACH, Fla. — While Democratic presidential candidates have called for sweeping measures to eliminate the US carbon footprint, President Trump is promising voters a world free of the everyday inconveniences associated with combating climate change — rolling back lightbulb regulations, ordering a study on low-flow toilets, and turning bans on plastic straws into a campaign rallying cry.
Never mind the poisoned water in the toilets and sinks or the million tons of radioactive water to be dumped in the Pacific, the campaign debate will swirl around lightbulbs, low-flow toilets, and straws. I can see the entire campaign needed a plunger.
Democrats respond by arguing that the president’s comments on climate — which are often false and frequently veer into the bizarre — are out of step with science and modern-day voters who want to protect the planet.
Have they read a newspaper lately?
Trump’s antienvironmentalism message was encapsulated in a weekend speech to a conservative group in South Florida that included a diatribe against wind-powered turbines — arguing that building them produces ‘‘a tremendous amount of fumes’’ and that the ‘‘windmills,’’ as he calls them, are noisy, unattractive, and kill too many birds.
‘‘I've seen the most beautiful fields, farms, fields — most gorgeous things you've ever seen, and then you have these ugly things going up,’’ he said of the wind turbines. ‘‘And you know what they don’t tell you about windmills? After 10 years, they look like hell.’’
He's right about the look. California's scenic vistas have been destroyed by them.
The broad nostalgia encapsulated in Trump’s ‘‘Make America Great Again’’ slogan has become increasingly specific as he has zeroed in on consumer-facing issues like environmentally-conscious appliances, carbon-reducing fuel standards, and plastic straw bans. Often operating on his own feelings rather than scientific evidence, the president has castigated Democrats’ environmental agenda as unworkable and counterproductive.
Trump has made the same nostalgic appeal on other issues — ranging from his mocking of the #MeToo movement to his unfounded claim that his election allowed people to say ‘‘Merry Christmas’’ again, but when it comes to energy-related issues, the regulatory moves of Trump’s administration have easily merged with his campaign messaging.....
Same as this article, and did you know Massachusetts is a battlefield in the war on Christmas.
Btw, the Grinch gets a bad rap. His neighbors down in Whoville are disturbing the peace with their songs and the cops won't do anything about it. Not only that, they stripped him of his Second Amendment rights and discriminate against him because of the color of his skin (ask the Wicked Witch of the West about that).
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Related:
A Trump policy ‘clarification’ all but ends punishment for bird deaths
The New York Times says that "across the country birds have been killed and nests destroyed by oil spills, construction crews, and chemical contamination, all with no response from the federal government, according to e-mails, memos, and other documents while the president has asserted that the oil industry has been subject to “totalitarian tactics” under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 as habitat loss and pesticide exposure already have brought on widespread bird-species declines.
Candidate Steyer on climate change:
He will declare a ‘state of emergency’ on day one, and the billionaire's number-two priority is getting big money out of politics.
Related:
Julio Borges empties his boot of water as he tries get his truck to start after it was inundated with flood waters on Dec. 23, 2019 in Hallandale, Fla. The area received up to 12 inches of rain during an overnight storm that hit the area causing flooding that even forced Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to shut down flight operations early Monday morning (Joe Raedle, Getty Images).
Must have dried up overnight:
George Trosset Jr. and George Trosset, the two that started it all, high five each other. Thousands turned out to watch hundreds of Surfing Santas catch some waves in Cocoa Beach for the 10th annual Surfing Santas event Tuesday morning. 10 years ago George Trosset, his son George Jr. and his daughter-in-law went surfing in Santa and Christmas costumes behind their house on Christmas Eve. The event has grown and now raises money for two local non profits - Grind for Life, which helps with financial assistance for cancer patients, and the Florida Surf Museum (Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today).
Baker pushes workforce development plan
Related:
Mid-December revenue down 4.4 percent
The tax collections in Massachusetts have posted consecutive years of big gains, leaving budget surpluses and enabling the state to bolster its savings.
Why are they sitting on money when the schools, MBTA, roads, and bridges are falling apart and health care costs are soaring?
"Pharmaceutical industry mounts opposition to state’s effort to curb drug costs" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff, December 23, 2019
As they finalize rules to control the cost of prescription drugs, state officials are meeting new resistance from the pharmaceutical industry.
Administration officials and the Health Policy Commission have been drafting detailed regulations to implement the law, but the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, which represents biopharmaceutical companies, said the proposed regulations go too far.
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, raised similar issues, telling state officials it is “deeply concerned” about several aspects of the proposed regulations.
Governor Charlie Baker first proposed a plan to tackle drug costs in MassHealth in January and drew immediate fire from pharmaceutical lobbyists, but a coalition including Health Care For All, AARP Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, the Massachusetts Medical Society, and other groups told state officials this month that the proposed MassHealth regulations “will save money for the state and taxpayers, while also protecting the 1.8 million residents who rely on the MassHealth program for their health care.”
Some of the new MassHealth drug pricing provisions are already in effect. Since the law was enacted this summer, MassHealth officials said they already have negotiated discounts with five drug companies for 11 drugs, saving about $10 million. Before discounts, the cost of drugs in MassHealth has grown to about $1.9 billion per year.
Related: Overprescribed: High cost isn’t America’s only drug problem
The definition the definition of “high” blood pressure has been lowered so that doctors will prescribed more medications, and is based on a large, taxpayer-funded study run by the pharmaceuticals.
Also see: Statins Are Overprescribed For Heart Disease Prevention
Yeah, be sure to take your pre$criptions -- especially after the opioid sales have fallen off after that crisis was foisted upon us.
At a recent public hearing, Dr. John Christian Kryder, a board member of the Health Policy Commission, noted the difficult task for state officials.
“The tradeoffs here are enormous if we don’t get it right and create an environment where drug development does not occur,” he said.....
That's what they said about weed (or more correctly, the oil from the vapes) and they still got it wrong as Massachusetts’ marijuana law is now seen as an example of what not to do.
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Related: Mass. to open monitoring centers for drug users who overdose
Why not make it legal then?
This from the people who are all bunged up over weed.
Maybe you will have better luck in New Hampshire or Maine.
