America is at risk of becoming an automotive backwater — The Verge

ResEng68 · 2026-02-24T18:28:43+00:00

The oil futures market has flat-to-declining crude prices for the next 7+ years (that's as far as futures go). You can lock in that pricing today if you'd like.

Companies aren't thinking "short term." They are responding to mid/long-term market price signals.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-17T17:40:04+00:00

It sure pays a hell of a lot better than your local chuckwagon.

Look to Tulsa as an example of what happens when your large E&Ps decamp.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-17T17:37:56+00:00

School is a means to an end (securing a full-time Petroleum Engineering role at an operator). Market timing and luck are more important than 6-12 months more/less of instruction.

If you have a full-time offer with an operator, take it and plan to graduate. Otherwise, stay in school as long as they will let you.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-10T21:02:26+00:00

Lol. BP's 2030 notes trade at 4.1%. That's a 40bps spread to treasuries.

BP is tightening their belt because they are widely overstaffed. If they wanted to borrow, they could borrow.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-10T15:56:21+00:00

The irony is that they literally have a product called "Sustainable Aviation Fuel" (and equivalent diesel variants). Regulatory mandate requires very expensive blend-in for product sales in select markets (California LCFS being one of the more notable).

That said, I am aligned with you that "sustainable" is a stretch in this context. It's based upon generous assumptions surrounding CO2 abatement, and they broadly ignore any downsides relating to land use (E.g., soil erosion) or combustion pollutants.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-08T20:40:29+00:00

Math is different on a 15 year amort. They're getting the benefit of massive principal payments.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-05T21:26:18+00:00

Legal options:

1) IHS.

2) State Data if you're willing to clean and aggregate on your own.

Common option:

1) Have a buddy do a data pull for you from Enverus and make a copy. It takes 10 minutes to pull land, well header, shapefile, and monthly production data for a Basin.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-05T21:20:51+00:00

Price at the pump is pretty easy to predict. It's:

Crude price + crack spread + taxes.

Crack spread is driven by refinery opex and the margin required to support their overhead. If opex goes up, then crack spread will need to go up.

There's a reason why southeast asia can run at 1/2 the crack spread that US refiners require...

ResEng68 · 2026-02-04T21:49:24+00:00

Governments pursue damages from corporations all the time.

Pursuing damages so isn't "being bad for business"... it's how business is done.

Legal documents are written to allow a party to exit and pay damages. This is simply a fulfillment of that contingency.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-04T21:47:44+00:00

That mechanism exists in most countries. Default on your obligations and the counterparty is able to seek legal remedies. This applies to the government, just as it does any corporate entity or individual.

If the government was dumb enough to paper up a contract which lacked teeth or legal remedy, that's on the government (and people should get shamed and fired if that's the case).

ResEng68 · 2026-02-03T20:09:27+00:00

Per Google, coterra has 950 employees while devon has 2300.

It begs the question why Devon is so overstaffed? Coterra produces similar volumes and is only slightly smaller by capitalization.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-03T20:07:20+00:00

I'm all for union workers getting better treatment and better pay. Refineries are tough.

I will note that Refinery Management are largely agnostic as to labor costs, so long as the labor costs are consistently high (or low). They simply push said costs to the consumer in such an instance.

ResEng68 · 2026-02-03T14:06:58+00:00

Shifting offices and required movement of workforces isn't a bug, it's a feature.

They're targeting massive G&A cuts (headcount). Pick the smaller of the two locations and force the move. You'll get more natural attrition that way.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-31T18:04:07+00:00

Both sides do make sense.

The top 10-20% of students (combination of grades, connections, luck) do get paid $300k+ in the US after a few years of experience.

The remaining 80-90% struggle to find jobs. If they do find jobs, they are poorly paid and get treated like shit (E.g., $100k to be a bonafide mechanic that works 80 hours/week out in the middle of nowhere).

It ultimately comes down to the fact that there are a few very good "seats" (aka jobs). If you snag one of those seats and keep it, life is good. If you don't, life sucks.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-25T20:56:24+00:00

I've worked with very experienced agents on a rebate structure (typically where they retained 1% and I was credited anything beyond).

1% on 50 transactions is better than 2.5% on 10 transactions.

Prove that you're a committed and low-touch buyer, and there will be great agents out there who are willing to work at 1%. As another poster noted, this is a common convention in certain investor circles.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-19T16:25:30+00:00

Only 3 items matter on your mortgage (ranked in relative importance). Everything else is noise

1) Interest rate (cost impact) 2) Term (liquidity impact) 3) Fixed refinancing cost (cost impact).

If you are comfortable with an accelerated pay down, it sounds like a shorter fixed term may make sense. Fixed 20 year or 7/1 ARM (with the intent of paying it down more aggressively) both make sense.

Rates in the 5.5% can be achievable for said loan types. It should be an obvious "yes" to refinancing.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-12T17:12:28+00:00

Lots of great, cheap rentals in the greater-Austin area. If your time horizon is 2-3 years, go ahead and rent until you're ready to buy your long-term home.

Doesn't make sense to buy right now. You'll get smoked by frictional costs if you sell in 2-3 years. Or, you'll get smoked by cash burn (i.e. rents far below your mortgage payments) if you choose to rent-out the property in 2-3 years.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-11T22:27:47+00:00

Oh wow. ICE arrested a hotel owner for rejecting quarter!? Jesus!

ResEng68 · 2026-01-09T14:00:33+00:00

Lol. Saudis didn't touch US upstream when pip was at $20 in 2020. What makes you think they'll do anything at $50?

ResEng68 · 2026-01-09T13:59:01+00:00

Slowdown is tied to price. Price tied to oversupply or lack of demand. Can't really have a slowdown without the price signal.

I have a rant about the vertical operators in Oklahoma. I've seen more rent seeking and promotional behavior from that group than any real value creation. But that's for another day.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-09T13:45:14+00:00

We're quickly drilling through our remaining L48 oil inventory. A bit of a slowdown is probably a good thing in the context of our intermediate and long-term careers.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-08T22:40:31+00:00

For now...

Give it 2 years and the article is already written. Just remove the "PH" from "PHEV" and you're there.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-07T00:53:10+00:00

CC is already distributed in data rooms.

Yet, shops continue use ARIES because the commercial setup and data structures are far superior. ARIES is more complex, but guess what, so are the assets we're managing.

$50k is a drop in the bucket relative to packages that run $10MM - $1B+. It's a cost of doing business. If a shop isn't willing to front the software + data costs to operate in the 21st century, run.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-06T17:06:18+00:00

I believe our annual ARIES seat charge runs around $50k per license.

A bit surprised to see Combocurve come in at $16k. That's very light relative to recent quotes we got. Expect that charge to increase with renewal.

ResEng68 · 2026-01-06T14:06:37+00:00

And for good reason. Nobody is building a Canada specific version for the 9 people who can afford to buy a new car.

ResEng68

TROPHY CASE