Pat Flynn of Futures magazine wrote an article about the current state of oil prices, and in his opening paragraphs he suggested the oil minister of Saudi Arabia is crowing about the success of his policy to crush the US oil producers – flood the market with oil, drop the price, thus putting the inefficient US producers out of business.
Hold the phone! Mr. Ali al-Naimi, don’t run that victory lap just yet. You might have reduced the number of rigs, true, but have you lowered the production numbers?
- Don’t believe the doomsayers proclaiming the end of the shale oil boom. It’s just getting more efficient.
Yup! Again, let’s go back to the fundamentals. There is a reason WTI crude cannot push above $60, despite Mr. al-Naimi’s claim that supply is lessening and demand is increasing.
- The doomsayers, however, are missing a key parallel trend: lower prices are prompting unprecedented innovation in the oil fields, increasing production per well and slashing costs.
Big data is giving the small oil producers a way back in, and it is working.
- That’s the main reason that even as rig counts have fallen, total production has held steady or continued to rise. In the Eagle Ford, a major shale formation in South Texas, production in April was 22 percent higher than the same month in 2014, according to Platts.
Yes, rig counts have fallen some 58% in this oil blood-bath, but production has not been curtailed enough for Mr. al-Naimi to do anything other than posture for his fellow OPEC members prior to the big meeting in Vienna …
- Wal-Mart Stores Inc said it would raise minimum wages for over 100,000 U.S. employees including some department managers and deli workers, its second wage hike this year.
This is the second wage increase this year for Wal-Mart. Earlier in February, the giant chain store announced raises for 500,000 folks. That is a good thing, as it seems our colleges and universities are turning out a lot of people well suited to retail services.
- About 40% of college graduates lack the basic skills associated with a college education — critical thinking and complex problem-solving skills.
Higher education reform is long overdue. Somehow, we got on this track of simply churning out graduates, people acquiring degrees in areas that have little relevance in this highly-technological world, young folks lacking the skills to compete for high-paying jobs.
- Hundreds of thousands of recent college graduates, thought to be underemployed, actually may be well placed as cab drivers and baristas. Many studied useless majors in college — businesses hardly need the thousands of international relations experts churned out by second-tier universities.
Yes, the Millenials are taking over the world, and technology is their thing, but they will not be alone, as the next generation (Z?) is demanding even more technological services, which means that colleges and universities must adapt, just as business has adapted.
- JPMorgan’s (JPM – Get Report) rollout of a fingerprint-identification app for the iPhone this week is the latest advance in a competition between banks to lure new mobile users with the latest technology.
Millennial, Millennial, Millennial … Sheesh …
- It’s an important platform for banks because millennials, the largest generation in U.S. history, prefer to handle many financial transactions on mobile devices, and mobile services are less costly to provide than traditional branches.
And there you have it. Not only are US oil producers using technology to be lower costs and produce more, but so are businesses. Big data is in, basket weaving is out (if one does not want a career with Uber, Starbucks, or Walmart), and the US government just had its data-collecting wings clipped. Big data just became a bit harder for Uncle Sam to acquire.
- In a significant scaling back of national security policy formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Senate on Tuesday approved legislation curtailing the federal government’s sweeping surveillance of American phone records.
Okay, the US Congress did its job, but one big question remains. Did we just trade one big brother for another?
- The storage of those records now shifts to the phone companies, and the government must petition a special federal court for permission to search them.
Did you say the phone companies get to keep the records? And who, pray tell, are the “phone companies?” The answer is: anyone with access to big data – Verizon, Apple, AT&T, and Sprint, yes, as well as Google, Apple, IBM, Yahoo, and … Did I say big brother? I meant brothers.
Trade in the day; invest in your life …
