Baltic Dry Index. 1209 +09 Brent Crude 52.56
The big story this
morning is the devastating rains falling on Texas and the city of Houston.
While that’s first and foremost quite rightly a humanitarian story, from this
blog’s perspective, the story is about what commercial impact this storm will
have on the US economy, given the region’s importance in oil and gas
production, refining, and energy products distribution to the rest of the US
economy. While it’s too early to know for sure, I suspect that this storms
impact will act as a big drag on the US economy, given the region’s prominence
in the energy sector, and if the storm extends into Louisiana, the commodity
export sector. For today and the next
few days though, the humanitarian story takes precedence.
Below, this morning’s
early storm assessment. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by
the impact of Tropical Storm Harvey.
---- Meanwhile, officials in Fort Bend County, Houston’s southwestern suburbs, late Sunday issued widespread mandatory evacuation orders along the Brazos River levee districts. County officials were preparing for the river to reach major flood stages late Sunday. County Judge Robert Herbert said at a news conference that National Weather Service officials were predicting that the water could rise to 59 feet, three feet above 2016 records and what Herbert called an “800-year flood level.” Herbert said that amount of water would top the levees and carries a threat of levee failure.
Rescuers pluck hundreds from rising floodwaters in Houston
By MICHAEL GRACZYK 31 minutes ago
HOUSTON (AP) — Harvey sent devastating floods pouring into the nation’s
fourth-largest city Sunday as rising water chased thousands of people to
rooftops or higher ground and overwhelmed rescuers who could not keep up with
the constant calls for help.
The incessant rain covered much of Houston in turbid, gray-green water
and turned streets into rivers navigable only by boat. In a rescue effort that
recalled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, helicopters landed near flooded
freeways, airboats buzzed across submerged neighborhoods and high-water
vehicles plowed through water-logged intersections. Some people managed with
kayaks or canoes or swam.
Volunteers
joined emergency teams to pull people from their homes or from the water, which
was high enough in places to gush into second floors. The flooding from Harvey,
which made landfall late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered
dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm, was so widespread that authorities had
trouble pinpointing the worst areas. They urged people to get on top of their houses
to avoid becoming trapped in attics and to wave sheets or towels to draw
attention to their location.
---- Meanwhile, officials in Fort Bend County, Houston’s southwestern suburbs, late Sunday issued widespread mandatory evacuation orders along the Brazos River levee districts. County officials were preparing for the river to reach major flood stages late Sunday. County Judge Robert Herbert said at a news conference that National Weather Service officials were predicting that the water could rise to 59 feet, three feet above 2016 records and what Herbert called an “800-year flood level.” Herbert said that amount of water would top the levees and carries a threat of levee failure.
Judging from federal disaster declarations, the storm has so far
affected about a quarter of the Texas population, or 6.8 million people in 18
counties. It was blamed for at least two deaths.
As the water rose, the National Weather Service issued another ominous
forecast: Before the storm that arrived Friday as a Category 4 hurricane is
gone, some parts of Houston and its suburbs could get as much as 50 inches (1.3
meters) of rain. That would be the highest amount ever recorded in Texas.
More
August 27, 2017 / 3:33 PM
Houston devastated by deadly flooding from Harvey, more rain ahead
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Catastrophic flooding triggered by Tropical Storm
Harvey inundated Houston on Sunday, forcing residents of the fourth most
populous U.S. city to flee in boats or hunker down in anticipation of several
more days of “unprecedented” rainfall.
Harvey came ashore late on Friday as the most powerful hurricane to hit
Texas in more than 50 years and has killed at least two people. The death toll
is expected to rise as the storm triggers additional tidal surges and
tornadoes, with parts of the region expected to see a year’s worth of rainfall
in the span of a week.
The storm turned roads into rivers and caused chest-deep flooding on
some streets in Houston as rivers and channels overflowed their banks. More
than 26 inches (66 cm) of rain had fallen in parts of Houston in the past 48
hours, the National Weather Service said on Sunday, with more on the way.
Harvey struck at the heart of the country’s oil and gas industry,
forcing operators to close several refineries and evacuate and close offshore
platforms. The massive flooding knocked out 11 percent of U.S. refining
capacity and a quarter of oil production from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
“What we’re seeing is the most devastating flood event in Houston’s
recorded history. We’re seeing levels of rainfall that are unprecedented,” said
Steve Bowen, chief meteorologist at reinsurance firm Aon Benfield.
Total precipitation could reach 50 inches (127 cm) in some coastal areas
of Texas by the end of the week, or the average rainfall for an entire year.
The center of Harvey was about 105 miles (170 km) from Houston and forecast to
arc slowly toward the city through Wednesday.
----The Gulf is home to almost half of the nation’s refining capacity, and the reduced supply could affect gasoline supplies across the U.S. Southeast and other parts of the country. Shutdowns extended across the coast, including Exxon Mobil’s Baytown refinery, the second largest U.S. refinery.
Gasoline futures rose as much as 7 percent in early trading on Sunday
evening. Heating oil futures, a proxy for distillates like diesel fuel, were up
as much as 3 percent, with supplies expected to be curtailed.
The outages will limit the availability of U.S. crude, gasoline and
other refined products for global consumers and further push up prices,
analysts said.
All Houston port facilities will be closed on Monday because of the
weather threat, a port spokeswoman said on Sunday night.
----Flood
damage in Texas from Hurricane Harvey may equal that from Katrina, the
costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, an insurance research group said on
Sunday.
More
`Tragedy of Epic Proportions' Looms as Harvey Pounds Houston
By Brian K Sullivan, Jen Skerritt, and Joe CarrollWhile the metropolis has dealt with some of the nation’s worst deluges, elected officials, meteorologists and emergency managers say it’s never faced anything like the current record floods, which may worsen as the downpour is expected to last for days.
“Houston has another 100 hours of this,” said Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist at The Weather Company in Andover, Massachusetts. “Words really can’t express the impacts this will have, when all is said and done. There is no historical comparison. It is simply a tragedy of epic proportions.”
After smashing ashore Friday as the strongest storm to hit the U.S. since 2004, rains and flooding from the slowed cyclone became the biggest threat. More than 25 inches of rain has already fallen in some areas and another two feet is possible, the National Hurricane Center said in an set of advisories at about 11 p.m. New York time.
----Harvey, which had stalled northwest of
Victoria, Texas, started to drift back toward the Gulf of Mexico, the hurricane
center said. The worst would be if it re-intensifies Monday into Tuesday before
swinging back into the southeastern Texas coast, Rossio said. While the storm
may intensify slightly as it moves over water, the hurricane center said it’s
not forecasting significant strengthening.
----Gasoline futures on Monday surged to the highest in two years. If the storm does significant damage to the refineries in the region, the effects could ripple to other parts of the country that rely heavily on the Gulf Coast for fuel supplies.
The rain is also wreaking havoc on the largest U.S. cotton producer, hitting Texas at a time when many farmers are storing excess supplies on fields following a bumper harvest. Ports at the Texas Gulf account for about 24 percent of U.S. wheat exports, as well as 3 percent of corn shipments and 2 percent of soybeans, according to the Soy Transportation Coalition, citing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The threat to shipments of corn and soybeans, the top U.S. crops, comes from Harvey’s potential impact in Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico. The region handles about 60 percent of the country’s soybean exports, as do 59 percent of corn shipments, Mike Steenhoek, executive director for the group, said Thursday in an email.
More
Harvey's Cost Reaches Catastrophe as Modelers See Many Uninsured
By Sonali Basak
Hurricane Harvey’s second act across southern Texas is turning into an
economic catastrophe -- with damages likely to stretch into tens of billions of
dollars and an unusually large share of victims lacking adequate insurance,
according to early estimates.
Harvey’s cost could mount to $24 billion when including the impact of
relentless flooding on the labor force, power grid, transportation and other elements
that support the region’s energy sector, Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with
Enki Research, said by phone on Sunday. That would place it among the top eight
hurricanes to ever strike the U.S.
“A historic event is currently unfolding in Texas,” Aon Plc wrote in an
alert to clients. “It will take weeks until the full scope and magnitude of the
damage is realized,” and already it’s clear that “an abnormally high portion of
economic damage caused by flooding will not be covered,” the insurance broker
said.
Many forecasters were hesitant over the weekend to make preliminary estimates for how much insurers might pay, potentially speeding recovery. Researchers were shifting from examining Harvey’s landfall Friday as a roof-lifting category 4 hurricane to the havoc it later created inland as a tropical storm. Typical insurance policies cover wind but not flooding, which often proves costlier. Blaming one or the other takes time.
In the Houston area, rainfall already has surpassed
that of tropical storm Allison in 2001, which wreaked roughly $12 billion of
damage in current dollars. In that case, only about $5 billion was covered by
insurance, according to Aon.
Most people with flood insurance buy policies backed by the federal
government’s National Flood Insurance Program. As of April, less than one-sixth
of homes in Houston’s Harris County had federal coverage, according to Aon.
That would leave more than 1 million homes unprotected in the county. Coverage
rates are similar in neighboring areas. Many cars also will be totaled.
“A lot of these people are going to be in very serious financial
situations,” said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information
Institute. “Most people who are living in these areas do not have flood
insurance. They may be able to collect some grants from the government, but
there are not a lot, usually they’re very limited. There are no-interest to
low-interest loans, but you have to pay them back.”
----Costs
still will likely soar for insurance companies and their reinsurers, biting
into earnings. As Harvey bore down on the coastline Friday, William Blair &
Co., a securities firm that tracks the industry, said the storm could
theoretically inflict $25 billion of insured losses if it landed as a “large
category 3 hurricane.”
More
August 28, 2017 / 3:57 AM
Nikkei eases, insurers skid on Harvey impact fears
TOKYO, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Japan’s Nikkei share average edged lower on
Monday, as investors assessed the impact of a weaker dollar following a central
bank conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as the damage from Tropical
Storm Harvey.
Japanese property & casualty insurers’ shares skidded as investors
fretted about the broader impact of the major storm that hit Houston on Sunday.
The Nikkei was down 0.1 percent at 19,430.65 at the end of morning
trading, after logging its sixth straight weekly fall for its longest losing streak
since January 2014.
A stronger yen weighed on stock market sentiment. The greenback was down
0.3 percent at 109.14 yen.
The dollar came under pressure after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen
made no reference to U.S. monetary policy in her speech at the Fed’s annual
conference in Jackson Hole, while the euro surged after European Central Bank
President Mario Draghi refrained from mentioning the euro’s recent strength.
“Investors’ focus has turned from Jackson Hole to the U.S. storm over
the weekend,” said Norihiro Fujito, a senior investment strategist at
Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.
“We don’t know many details at this time, but we can see the footage of
the damage and we know that it is a very serious situation in Houston,” he
said.
Coastal refineries in the storm area account for a quarter of U.S. crude
oil refining capacity. The U.S. Department of Energy said it was ready to
release crude oil from the nation’s emergency stockpile if needed due to the
impact of Harvey, though crude cannot be processed if refineries remain shut.
More
Asian Equities Mixed as Harvey's Impact Assessed: Markets Wrap
By Garfield Clinton Reynolds and Andreea Papuc
Asian
stocks fluctuated and U.S. equity futures fell as investors weighed the damage
from Tropical Storm Harvey on U.S. oil refining centers. The greenback
maintained losses after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen failed to provide clues on
monetary-policy tightening.
Benchmarks
in Tokyo swung between gains and losses, while they dropped in Seoul and Sydney
with S&P 500 Index futures. Gasoline futures jumped as the wider impact of
the storm that shut more than 10 percent of U.S. fuel-making capacity was
becoming more evident. The euro traded near the highest since 2015 after
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi refrained from talking down the
common currency at Jackson Hole.
With the much-anticipated central-bank meeting now behind them, investors this week will be eager for signs of constructive progress in U.S. politics after comments on Friday from Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, cut through much of the gloom that had been generated by recent White House scuffles. Cohn said in an interview he expects tax reform to pass this year and that he didn’t intend to resign over the president’s reaction to riots in Virginia.
Treasury traders face a week headlined by Tuesday’s auction of bills that mature Sept. 29 -- the deadline Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has called critical for raising the debt ceiling. They will then look forward to inflation and payrolls data that will be key for determining the Fed’s next moves. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester urged her colleagues to look past recent weak inflation data and to stick to their gradual pace of lifting interest rates.
Also at the Jackson Hole symposium on Friday, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the recent pace of growth in the world’s third-largest economy is probably unsustainable and pledged to continue with very accommodative monetary policy “for some time” because the BOJ is far from its inflation target.
More
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
No crooks or scoundrels today, unless you consider
the inhabitants of Scotland’s capital city scoundrels, today how Edinburgh got
its name.
Northumbrian king or Celtic tribe - how did
Edinburgh get its name?
Published: 18:55 Saturday 26
August 2017
It was once commonly thought that the name of the Scottish capital was simply a render of ‘Edwin’s Burgh’, which was said to directly relate to the 7th century King Edwin of Northumbria.
This was the version of events explained to me by my primary school teacher, Mr Torrance, many, many moons ago, and, as a child, I had no reason to question it. However, while there’s little doubt that the word burgh is a variation of the old English ‘burh’, meaning fort, the claim that Edin derives from Edwin flies in the face of chronological fact.
It was once commonly thought that the name of the Scottish capital was simply a render of ‘Edwin’s Burgh’, which was said to directly relate to the 7th century King Edwin of Northumbria.
This was the version of events explained to me by my primary school teacher, Mr Torrance, many, many moons ago, and, as a child, I had no reason to question it. However, while there’s little doubt that the word burgh is a variation of the old English ‘burh’, meaning fort, the claim that Edin derives from Edwin flies in the face of chronological fact.
The most likely theory, as
widely-accepted by modern-day scholars, is the one described by the late Stuart
Harris in a book which took him eleven years to compile, the excellent The
Place Names of Edinburgh. In this weighty tome, Mr Harris gives an in-depth
explanation.
He explains that the name was
coined by the Votadini, a British tribe which had inhabited much of what is now
the Lothians since before the Roman invasion. In the poem Y Gododdin, dating
from the late 6th century, the Votadini (or Gododdin to give them their Welsh
title) described the place as both Eidyn and Din Eidyn. Din Eidyn was the great
capitol of the Gododdin people and translates as simply ‘Fort Eidyn’. The
Gododdin name provided the basis for Edinburgh’s Scottish Gaelic ‘Dùn Èideann’,
and was used to name the New Zealand city of Dunedin.
Around the world there are dozens of places which have borrowed our city’s name. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, on Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic, is the most remote settlement on Earth. Stuart Harris declares the ‘fanciful form’ Edwin’s Burgh as a ‘palpable fake that appears in the time of David I and was probably an attempt to manufacture a link’ with the king of Northumbria.
Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that King Edwin, who reigned from 616 until his death in 633, ever set foot in Edinburgh. His descendants, however, would conquer the ancient Gododdin stronghold. According to the Annals of Ulster, the Angles of Bernicia captured Din Eidyn in 638 and subsequently renamed it ‘Edin-burh’, adapting the name used by the Gododdin. The exact meaning of ‘Eidyn’, says Mr Harris, is obscure, but there can be little doubt it belonged to the Votadini and was coined a good number of years before any Northumbrian kings by the name of Edwin entered the fray. The city appears as ‘Edenburgh’ in the 14th century Mappa Mundi, leading some to suggest a Biblical origin, but, again, this is false. While it is still up for debate, Stuart Harris’ interpretation behind the etymology of Edinburgh remains the most plausible version we have.
Around the world there are dozens of places which have borrowed our city’s name. Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, on Tristan de Cunha in the South Atlantic, is the most remote settlement on Earth. Stuart Harris declares the ‘fanciful form’ Edwin’s Burgh as a ‘palpable fake that appears in the time of David I and was probably an attempt to manufacture a link’ with the king of Northumbria.
Furthermore, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that King Edwin, who reigned from 616 until his death in 633, ever set foot in Edinburgh. His descendants, however, would conquer the ancient Gododdin stronghold. According to the Annals of Ulster, the Angles of Bernicia captured Din Eidyn in 638 and subsequently renamed it ‘Edin-burh’, adapting the name used by the Gododdin. The exact meaning of ‘Eidyn’, says Mr Harris, is obscure, but there can be little doubt it belonged to the Votadini and was coined a good number of years before any Northumbrian kings by the name of Edwin entered the fray. The city appears as ‘Edenburgh’ in the 14th century Mappa Mundi, leading some to suggest a Biblical origin, but, again, this is false. While it is still up for debate, Stuart Harris’ interpretation behind the etymology of Edinburgh remains the most plausible version we have.
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards?
Faster, more precise, more stable: Study optimizes graphene growth
Ten billion atoms in rank and file
Date:
August 25, 2017
Source:
Technical University of Munich (TUM)
Summary:
Each atomic layer thin, tear-resistant, and stable. Graphene is seen as the
material of the future. It is ideal for e.g. producing ultra-light electronics
or highly stable mechanical components. But the wafer-thin carbon layers are
difficult to produce. Scientists have manufactured self-supporting graphene
membranes, and at the same time systematically investigated and optimized the
growth of the graphene crystals.
Each atomic layer thin, tear-resistant, and stable. Graphene is seen as
the material of the future. It is ideal for e.g. producing ultra-light
electronics or highly stable mechanical components. But the wafer-thin carbon
layers are difficult to produce. At the Technical University of Munich (TUM),
Jürgen Kraus has manufactured self-supporting graphene membranes, and at the
same time systematically investigated and optimized the growth of the graphene
crystals.
Graphene breaks all records. It is the thinnest and most stable material
in the world, ultralight, tear-proof, electrically conductive, and highly
resilient. Since it was discovered in 2004, the two-dimensional structures
composed of carbon atoms have fueled the imagination and inventive spirit.
Science fiction authors consider the material suitable for building cables to
drive space elevators. Material researchers are experimenting with graphene
displays, transistors, and electrodes, which purport to make the electronics of
the future lighter, more stable, and longer-lived. In the scientific community,
films of highly pure graphene are highly coveted, as they allow gases and
liquids to be packaged in an ultra-dense manner.
"Currently, however, the basic requirements are still lacking.
There are various manufacturing processes which are suitable for the mass
production of graphene. However, this material is not free of defects. Graphene
of the highest crystalline quality cannot be reproducibly manufactured in this
manner," explains Sebastian Günther, Professor for Physical Chemistry at
the TUM. His team has now succeeded in analyzing, monitoring, and optimizing
the growth of graphene crystals through chemical vapor deposition (CVD for
short). The findings were recently published in the Annalen der Physik (Annals
of Physics).
Theory and caveats in practice
Theoretically, it is very easy to produce graphene: All that is needed
are a heated glass vessel, a reactor, in which carbon-containing gas such as
methane is fed into, as well as copper as a catalyst. At temperatures of around
1,000 degrees Celsius, the methane decomposes on the copper surface to produce
hydrogen and carbon. While the hydrogen subsequently leaves the copper surface,
the carbon atoms collect on the surface of the copper film used during this
chemical precipitation from the gaseous state -- a process called chemical
vapor deposition. Here, the atoms cross-link and form graphene
"flakes," spot-like two-dimensional structures with the typical
honeycombed structure. What remains is the hydrogen, which can be extracted via
suction.
However, in practice, the devil is in the details. "The biggest
problem is that the two-dimensional crystal structure is often not entirely
homogeneous, because growth begins simultaneously at multiple locations,"
explains Jürgen Kraus, who carried out the experiments. "At first glance,
it appears that a continuous graphene film is appearing on the copper, but the
hexagonal honeycombs are not all oriented in the same manner, and the structure
is weakened at locations where they meet."
Such defects can be avoided by ensuring that the surface of the copper
is as free of crystallization nuclei as possible.
With his experiments, the chemist was able to demonstrate that
contaminants could best be removed with the help of oxygen gas -- i.e. through
oxidation. However, in order to avoid undesirable side effects, care must be
taken to ensure that the copper catalyst is only exposed to the minimum
possible amounts of oxygen.
Crucial for success: Gas concentration and temperature
In the second part of his experiments, Kraus analyzed how various
partial pressures and temperatures affect the formation of graphene during
chemical vapor deposition. If the gas composition used contains too much
hydrogen, no graphene grows at all; if it has too little hydrogen, the layers
become too thick. It is only when all parameters are selected such that growth
occurs "close enough" to the thermal equilibrium that highly pure
graphene without defects is formed in a crystal lattice.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: 21,891 +207 Up. NASDAQ: 6,348 +250 Up. SP500: 2,470 +171 Up.
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