Authored by Alex Kimani via OilPrice.com,

• EIA: U.S. Energy production rose 4% to nearly 103 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2023.

• Dry natural gas production increased 4% in 2023 and 58% since 2013 while crude oil production has grown 9% since 2022 and 69% since 2013.

• On the flip side, U.S. energy consumption fell 1% largely driven by a 17% decline in coal consumption.

For decades, the United States has been a net consumer of energy, using up more energy than it produces. However, a sharp increase in oil and gas production following the shale boom as well as the ongoing renewable energy revolution has helped change the energy trajectory over the past 15 years. And now the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported that U.S. energy production exceeded consumption by record amounts in 2023. 

According to the EIA, U.S. Energy production rose 4% to nearly 103 quadrillion British thermal units (quads) in 2023, a record for the country. On the other hand, energy consumption fell 1% to 94 quads during the same period, implying production exceeded consumption by 9 quads, the widest margin since 1949.  

Dry natural gas production increased 4% in 2023 and 58% since 2013 while crude oil production has grown 9% since 2022 and 69% since 2013. Meanwhile, renewable energy production rose 1% compared to the previous year and a 28% increase since 2013, hitting eight quads of energy. Solar energy production recorded an impressive 15% Y/Y growth in 2023 while wind production fell 2%.

On the flip side, U.S. energy consumption fell 1% largely driven by a 17% decline in coal consumption. Coal demand has been on a tailspin for years to its lowest level in more than a century thanks in large part to its shrinking role in electricity generation due to a high carbon footprint.

“Natural gas production has continued to increase despite lower prices because natural gas is produced as a byproduct of crude oil production. That’s especially true in the Permian Basin, which accounts for almost half of U.S. crude oil production,” said Chris Higginbotham, an EIA spokesperson.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Oil Price Rally Resumes

The oil price rally that had reversed course in recent weeks on demand concerns is now back on track. Brent crude price has increased to $86.60 per barrel at today’s close from $77.52 on June 4 while WTI has increased from $73.25 per barrel to $83.41 with oil demand exceeding expectations.

According to commodity analysts at Standard Chartered, global oil demand in April averaged 101.77 million barrels per day (mb/d), 470 thousand barrels per day (kb/d) higher than earlier forecasts. StanChart has reiterated its forecast that oil demand will hit an all-time high in June, with May demand projection revised 0.2 mb/d higher to 103.3 mb/d while the June projection has been revised 0.3 mb/d higher to 104.1 mb/d. 

Meanwhile, the big natural gas rally that kicked off in late April has now taken a breather. 

European natural gas futures have been trading in a narrow range around €35 per megawatt-hour as traders weigh ample storage levels against supply concerns. The long run of sub-par EU gas inventory builds continues, with inventories having lost ground relative to the five-year average on 57 of the past 62 days. According to the latest Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data, inventories stood at 85.25 billion cubic meters (bcm) on 16 June, a y/y decrease of 0.06 bcm and 12.93 bcm above the five-year average. The w/w build was 1.75 bcm, which is 1 bcm less than the five-year average. The move away from extreme surplus has combined with concerns over the viability of the remaining Russian flows into the EU to help support front-month Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) prices. Europe’s gas prices have settled in the EUR 33-36 per megawatt hour (MWh) range on 19 of the past 20 trading days. 

 U.S. natural gas futures fell below $2.61/MMBtu in Friday’s intraday session after the EIA’s storage build report. According to the report,  U.S. utilities injected 52 billion cubic feet of natural gas into storage last week, slightly below the expected 53 bcf build. U.S. gas inventories are now 20.6% above the seasonal norm. Natural gas prices are headed for a third consecutive week of declines due to increased output, as higher prices in recent weeks encouraged producers like EQT Corp. (NYSE:EQT) and Chesapeake Energy (NASDAQ:CHK) to resume drilling. Gas output in the Lower 48 states averaged 98.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in June, up from a 25-month low of 98.1 bcfd in May. On the demand side, hotter-than-normal weather is projected through at least July 12, maintaining high gas consumption for cooling purposes.

Update (1615ET): Democrat strategists are throwing many things against walls and hoping some stick as the gaslighting continues.

Bloomberg reports that the Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating Joe Biden as early as mid-July to ensure that the president is on November ballots, while helping to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week’s poor debate performance.

Democrats had already planned to nominate Biden, 81, before the convention in order to ensure he appears on the ballot in Ohio, which had an Aug. 7 deadline for candidates to be certified.

A potential date for Biden’s nomination is July 21, when the Democratic convention’s credentials committee meets virtually, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The panel is meeting to finalize procedures before the party’s convention in Chicago starts on Aug. 19.

Interestingly, former President Trump’s sentencing hearing is set for July 11th, so he may well be in prison by then given the amount of pressure we assume is being placed on Judge Merchan’s shoulders to “lock him up”.

Additionally, July 21 is just three days after Trump is scheduled to accept his party’s nomination at the Republican convention in Milwaukee.

The desperate attempted message from all this narrative-shaping is simple – …nothing to see here, move along.

Except we all saw the fireworks factory exploding with our own eyes.

*  *  *

At a Camp David gathering on Sunday, President Biden’s extended family urged him to ignore the growing number of voices asking him to quit the race — and many of his loved ones blamed his disastrous debate on his advisors. According to Politico, the two who most forcefully encouraged the 81-year-old Biden to continue were his wife Jill and his son Hunter — the two people whose opinion he reportedly values most.

The reports will strengthen a growing sense that Jill Biden is putting her own interests above that of her humiliated and failing husband. As one Democratic advisor told the New York Post over the weekend, “Jill Biden likes being First Lady…she doesn’t want to give that up.”

Meanwhile, Hunter, who doesn’t exactly have strong reputation for sound judgment, is said to long for Americans to see a version of his father that — as paraphrased by the Times — is “scrappy and in command of the facts.” Much as he once was in denial about his drug problem, Hunter now seems incapable of admitting that that version of his father is gone forever: 

Imagine the mental decline coming for Joe in the next 4 years.pic.twitter.com/p9UiyfEK2a

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) June 30, 2024

Biden family members are said to have blamed the debate debacle on three advisors: Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer — who played the role of Trump in practice sessions — and Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klain, who was in charge of the debate training. Aides to Biden denied these reports from multiple outlets. 

With Biden having spent a full week at Camp David gearing up for the debate, his family members and others are claiming the team worked the 81-year-old too hard, and tried to pack him full of too many statistics. They even fault advisors for a debate-night makeup job that transformed his summer-tanned face to one that was pale and unhealthy-looking. Relatives also blamed debate-host CNN for not “fact-checking” Donald Trump and not telling Biden which camera would be on him as he blankly stared a thousand miles into space with his mouth agape.   

A very important PSA about senior abuse. pic.twitter.com/jIxPKc7Qb6

— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 28, 2024

John Morgan, a top donor and friend of Biden’s brother Frank, was not at the family meeting, but joined the delusional pile-up on Biden’s advisers, telling the Times that the week-long debate prep — which involved rehearsals at various times of the day — was excessive:

“It would be like if you took a prizefighter who was going to have a title fight and put him in a sauna for 15 hours then said, ‘Go fight.’ I believe that the debate is solely on Ron Klain, Bob Bauer and Anita Dunn.”

Unlike his family, the president is said to still hold confidence in the trio. Klain assured the Times that Biden will see the race through, saying, “He is the choice of the Democratic voters…We had a bad debate night. But you win campaigns by fighting — not quitting — in the face of adversity.” 

Of course, Biden is “the choice of Democratic voters” largely because the Democratic National Committee made sure he was the only choice available. A post-debate CBS News poll found that just 54% of registered Democrats think Biden should be in the race. The poll found 41% of Democrats think Biden lacks has the requisite mental and cognitive health. More importantly, 72% of all voters give him a failing grade on mental health.   

The family gathering at Camp David was reportedly scheduled before the debate, with the expectation that it would be a celebration of his performance and an opportunity for the extended Biden family — including his children and grandchildren — to be photographed by famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. 

🚨Zoomed in video of Jill Biden leading Joe off the debate stage.

This is insane. pic.twitter.com/QJhkfetdWz

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 28, 2024

In the wake of a historically-horrendous performance that’s prompted many liberal pundits and the New York Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial boards to urge Biden to quit, the gathering morphed into a summit meeting in which Biden and his family discussed the future of his campaign.  

In one of the more pathetic vignettes illustrating the Biden family’s failure to grasp the depth of Biden’s political woes, the Times reports that “at least one of the president’s grandchildren has expressed interest in getting more involved with the campaign, perhaps by talking with influencers on social media.” 

That should do it! 

A woman from Seattle has now officially been charged with trying to influence the outcome of a Federal trial by dropping off $120,000 in cash at the home of a juror. 

31 year old Ladan Mohamed Ali left the cash along with instructions to convince others to acquit the defendants, according to a report from KOMO.

KOMO reported that “the bribe also included a set of instructions to the juror to ‘inject racism into the case’ and to use the Feeding Our Future defendants’ status as immigrants to gain sympathy from other jurors.”

Now, she, along with her co-conspirators Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 35, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, 23, Said Shafii Farah, 42, and 24-year-old Abdulkarim Shafii Farah, will be defendants themselves.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Andrew M. Luger commented: “These defendants engaged in a chilling attack on our justice system. They sought to buy a juror and use her to infiltrate the jury with their own false arguments – arguments that had nothing to do with the evidence or the law.”

Prosecutors added: “As part of the scheme, the conspirators decided to target Juror 52 because she was the youngest juror and they believed her to be the only juror of color. The conspirators conducted online research to obtain Juror 52’s personal information, including her home address and information about her background and family members.” 

“They conducted surveillance of Juror 52 to confirm her home address and obtain information about Juror 52’s daily habits,” they said.

The indictment read: “Ladan Ali handed the gift bag to a relative of juror 52 and explained there would be more money if juror 52 voted to acquit the defendants.”

“Fortunately for all of us, juror 52 could not be bought and she terminated their scheme. It is an obvious and blatant attempt to enflame the jury so they disregard their duty to render justice based on the evidence. Through this blueprint for acquittal, the defendants made it clear they wanted to infiltrate the jury not only with a bribe, but with a well-thought out plan to corrupt our system and undermine the rule of law.”

On June 2, the night before closing arguments in the trial, Ali and Farah drove to a juror’s house with bribe money in gift bags, according to the indictment.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota told KOMO News that Ladan Ali is not in custody and is expected to self-surrender for an initial federal court appearance later this week.

ABC News reported that this trial was the first in the Feeding Our Future fraud case, where dozens are accused of misusing federal child nutrition funds during the COVID-19 pandemic to buy luxury items.

The DOJ has charged 47 defendants in the $250-million fraud scheme involving misappropriated and laundered funds from the Federal Child Nutrition Program.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” 

– Often attributed to Abraham Lincoln

After last Thursday’s debate, Biden himself laid to rest the Democratic lie that he was robust and in control of his faculties. In truth, he demonstrated to the nation that he is a sad, failing octogenarian who could not perform any job in America other than apparently the easy task of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief in charge of our nuclear codes.

In 2019, Democratic primary candidates often hit rival Joe Biden for his apparent senior moments and incoherence.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden often became in bizarre fashion animated and nasty (“you ain’t black”/“fat”/“lying dog-faced pony soldier”/“junkie”).

His “corn pop” stories were grotesque and had a senile accentuation of his earlier “super-predator” and “clean” black riffs.

As president, his mental decline progressed geometrically, in the sense that every three months, Biden became far, far worse than during the prior 90 days. His handlers long ago had determined that masking his feebleness at the expense of the security and safety of the nation was a small price to pay to retain power.

What followed was the most comprehensive deceit in presidential history, analogous to insisting that frail and dying FDR in 1944 was just fine as the November election approached or that Woodrow Wilson was expertly running the country as he lay bedridden and near comatose.

Any who questioned the vigorous Biden narrative was trashed as “ageist.”

Special counsel Robert Hur was dubbed a “hack” for accurately describing Biden as so amnesiac he would win nullification acquittal from a sympathetic jury.

An array of court sycophants periodically gave interviews, insisting that the robust Biden was smarter and wiser than ever. His press secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre, helped coin a new slur, “cheap fake,” for any who collated video and audio clips demonstrating that Biden was obviously non compos mentis. Would she say the same today after the about-face CNN panelists reviewed Biden’s serial debate lapses to support their now-opportune advocacy that he not run for reelection? Would she wish to be a passenger in a car driven by Biden?

In sum, the “dynamic Biden” farce was finally laid to rest by a debate, but not before it had served the original leftist Faustian bargain. Under the guise of COVID, an enfeebled and stationary Biden outsourced his entire 2020 campaign to toady journalists and surrogate politicians.

His task was to pose from his basement as the uniter, ‘good ol’ Joe from Scranton,’ serving as the pseudo-moderate veneer for the most far left agenda in recent history. In the bargain, Joe and Jill enjoyed the privileges of power and status, while they farmed out the presidency to an array of former Obama subordinates and the hard left of what is left of the old Democratic Party.

The useful lie continued throughout his presidency, escalating in direct proportion to Joe’s mounting stumbles, brain freezes, rambling, and incomprehensible speech. When our president said something either outrageous or unfathomable, the public was to assume that it was intemperate to attribute his failures to senility.

So, the nation became acculturated to deciphering about 60 percent of what he said and writing off the rest to his never-to-be-spoken-of disability. It was the cognitive bookend to the ruse that FDR was able to stand and walk—although far worse because being wheel-chair bound is not a limitation for a president, whereas cognitive incapacity of Biden’s magnitude most certainly is.

The Biden lie was the crown jewel of a number of other left-wing/media fabrications. The more they spread, the more they seemed absurd, and the more they were refuted—so all the more others took their place and the more their promulgators never apologized but simply moved on to their next one. The common denominator was that all the lies, during their existence, were useful to the progressive project.

The Russian collusion hoax helped lose Trump the 2016 popular vote. Its resumption during his presidency ate up 22 months of his administration during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller farce.

The October surprise laptop disinformation lie may have cost Trump the 2020 election. But it was concocted so that Joe Biden could stare at the debate camera and swear to the American people that Trump was a liar, citing “51 intelligence authorities” who insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was a likely hallmark of Russian disinformation.

We were asked to believe that clever Russian disinformationists fabricated all the sick photos and selfies of poor Hunter, knew the Biden family’s intimate tensions and fault lines as evidenced in the computer’s texts and emails, and were able to package and deposit the computer to either a Russian operative masquerading as a computer repairment or have it delivered to the supposedly useful idiot. The truth was, the FBI had the laptop during the debate and had long verified its authenticity—and thus kept mum as its brethren intelligence apparatchiks lied to the nation.

What the untruth did not fully reveal was that Biden’s campaign foreign policy guru, Anthony Blinken (the current Secretary of State), cooked up the entire ruse. He enlisted former CIA grandee Mike Morell, who then rounded up on spec the confessed lying duo of John Brennan and James Clapper, who in turn drafted still more deceivers, among them the once esteemed Leon Panetta.

And the lie worked perfectly as envisioned, far better than even Russian “collusion.” The nation was deceived into believing that the “asset” Trump was reduced once again to colluding with Putin to enlist his former KGB soldiers to smear the upright Biden family and thus warp yet another election.

Note that all these lies were never retracted. No one ever apologizes. No one is ever punished, even when the lie is given under oath. No one ever has any regrets. And no one ever has any hesitation to lie again, given the utility of the prior untruth.

We were told by the deceitful Alejandro Mayorkas that the border was “secure” as he deliberately destroyed it and welcomed in over 10 million illegal aliens. That lie survived even the absurdity of years of nightly news clips (“cheap fakes?”) of thousands swarming an open border. And it died only when the 2024 election approached and the Biden administration read polls showing that a vast majority wanted the border closed and illegal entrants deported. Then suddenly, the lie that the border was secure transmogrified into the back-up lie that “Republicans would not help us close the now-insecure border.” Translated into Orwellian terms, the border that was crossed by 10 million was always secure but could have been made even more secure had Republicans joined Democrats to secure what was already “secure.”

We live in an era of lies. Sometimes they are purely political, like the Charlottesville “both sides” yarn. And sometimes they change history, like the fabrications that bats and pangolins, not the communist Chinese Wuhan virology lab, birthed the COVID-19 virus, or the Anthony Fauci contortion that his offices did not fund and help out, stealthily and in circumvention of U.S. law, deadly gain-of-function virology research in communist China.

Yet another lie was institutionalized: the January 6 riot was a full-fledged, carefully planned armed insurrection to overthrow the government. In contrast, the four months in 2020 of killing, assault, arson, and looting that saw over 35 dead, 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, $2 billion in damage, and a federal courthouse, a police precinct and a historic church torched were “cries of the heart” from the oppressed and victimized.

Those untruths ensured that hundreds of mostly naïve protestors who showed up in the capitol soon became convicted felons serving long sentences, while the 14,000 arrested for the 2020 mayhem were mostly released as overzealous but otherwise sympathetic activists.

These lies changed the course of the nation. They are birthed by the incestuous marriage of a Washington-New York political culture and a corrupt media.

The purveyors are Juvenal’s “who will police the police.” They are the administrative overseers in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the various cabinets and agencies. They feel they are exempt from any consequences for the damage they do, given that in their day jobs they operate as judges, jury and executioners.

Finally, while all governments lie, the left is far more adroit at it because, in their any-means-necessary/the-ends-justify-the-means credo, they spread supposedly good “lies” that stop the Hitlerian Trump, neuter the creepy deplorables/irredeemables/chumps/clingers or save the good people from the MAGA anti-vaxers and assorted yahoos.

Will the lies continue?

Indeed, they will thrive until the people slash the administrative state of its unaccountable and unelected “experts”; until they indict those in the future like Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan and their brethren who lie under oath or to federal investigators; until they ostracize and utterly discredit those like Mayorkas, Fauci, and the Bidens whose deceptions took hostage an entire nation; and until they tune out a bankrupt media, the power cord of the entire Pravda enterprise.

In 2023, American Baby Boomers owned 52% of the country’s net wealth despite comprising only 20% of the population.

Based on Federal Reserve data, this graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, illustrates the distribution of wealth in the United States from 1990 to 2023 by generation.

Generations are defined by birth year:

• Silent Generation (born before 1946)

• Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964)

• Gen Xers (born 1965-1980)

• Millennials (born 1981-1996)

Baby Boomers Own Over Half of the Wealth

Baby Boomers are often considered one of the luckier generations in terms of timing.

Most did not experience wars and benefited from strong economic growth driven by falling interest rates, a roaring stock market, global monetary expansion, and high earnings. Consequently, this group’s wealth grew from $4.5 trillion in 1990 to $76.2 trillion in 2023.

Meanwhile, Gen X’s share of American wealth rose from 15% in 2013 to 26% in 2023. In contrast, with most of the cohort over 80 years old, the Silent Generation saw its share of the national wealth total drop from 79% in 1990 to 13% in 2024.

Contrary to their ‘broke generation’ label, millennials have defied expectations. They saw their wealth reach historic highs after the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing more wealth by their 40s than previous generations. In a significant leap, millennials’ share of wealth in America increased from a modest 1.4% to a promising 9.2% between 1990 and 2023.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out this graphic, which shows the retirement savings that Americans currently hold.

Authored by Tad Dabrowski via Wirepoints.org,

The latest state-to-state migration numbers from the Internal Revenue Service confirm what Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker consistently denies: Illinois is bleeding people.

IRS data for the 2022 tax filing year released last week shows Illinois once again lost out in the battle for Americans as they migrate between states each year. In all, Illinois netted a loss of 87,000 residents, with 175,000 moving into Illinois from other states and 262,000 moving out. That loss was the third-largest in the country, with only California and New York netting bigger losses of residents. Wirepoints documented in detail last week who were the nation’s biggest winners and losers overall.

Not only did Illinois lose a net 87,000 residents, but the state also lost the incomes those residents took with them. Illinois gave up a net $9.8 billion in Adjusted Gross Incomes (AGI), with outgoing residents taking with them more than $19.3 billion in AGI, while those moving in only brought in $9.5 billion. The net loss of AGI was also the nation’s third largest.

In all, Illinois lost residents, on net, to 40 states, giving up a total 87,877 residents, while it netted a tiny gain of 632 residents from 7 states. Illinois broke even with Hawaii and Nebraska.

The full detail of Illinois vs. each state in the country is provided in the appendix below.

The IRS report of more Illinois resident losses piles on top of those already reported by the U.S. Census and a host of moving companies like United Van Lines. Illinois was one of only three states in the country to shrink during the last Census decennial count (2010-2020), while the last three years of Census estimates show another 240,000 in fresh population losses. The moving companies, meanwhile, have consistently reported in recent years Illinois as having the first or second most net outbound traffic in the country.

Illinois’ loss of population relative to the rest of the country has resulted in a major drop in Illinois representation in Congress. Whereas the state had 24 U.S. House Representatives after the 1970 Census, today the state has just 17. Illinois most recently dropped from 18 as a result of the 2020 decennial count.

The IRS data is particularly important because it is not based on surveys or statistical analysis. Instead, it is hard data based on actual tax returns. The IRS knows where each tax filer lives and if and when they move. It also knows each tax filer’s income and the number of dependents in each family. That makes it easy to calculate which states are attracting the most people and how incomes are shifting between the states. It also allows trends to be tracked.

A look at IRS data since 2010 shows Illinois has accumulated a net loss of more than 1 million people due to domestic outmigration to other states, only partially made up by births and international immigration. Those out-migration losses are among the worst in the country.

It’s important to note that the IRS data does not track the movement of people who do not file tax returns. That will become increasingly important as the record number of illegal immigrants flowing into the U.S. are eventually counted. Illinois’ population numbers in the 2030 decennial count could be significantly impacted by illegal immigration.

The big winners vs. Illinois

Unsurprisingly, Florida was the biggest net taker of Illinoisans and their wealth in 2022.

As the IRS reported, 12, 521 Floridians moved to Illinois, but 31,620 Illinoisans moved to Florida. The net gain for Florida was 19,099 new residents from Illinois alone. That gain also came with a net of nearly $3.3 billion in new AGI for Florida. In all, a massive gain for Florida and a massive loss for Illinois.

That same dismal story for Illinois can be repeated several times over vis-à-vis Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Wisconsin and more. The full data on people and income movement between Illinois and the nation’s other 49 states can be found in the appendix.

A particularly troubling fact is that every one of Illinois’ neighbors took people from the Prairie State. Indiana netted a gain of 9,196 residents vs. Illinois. Wisconsin picked up 6,323. Kentucky, 1,113.

In all, Illinois lost a net 21,050 residents to its six neighboring states.

Acknowledging a problem

Gov. Pritzker has repeatedly refused to acknowledge Illinois’ population and outmigration woes despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He’s even said that the IRS migration data “is not migration data.” The collapse in congressional representation alone should be a wake up call that Illinois is consistently losing the nationwide competition for people, their talents and their incomes.

That lack of acknowledgment means the governor and the state’s General Assembly continue to ignore the major woes facing Illinoisans. The nation’s highest property taxes. The country’s second-highest gas taxes. A six-year high in violent crimes in Chicago. Twelve years in a row in which Chicago has led the nation in total homicides. A massive prioritization of illegal immigrants over the state’s own residents. An educational system which many parents, in Chicago in particular, continue to flee. A lack of school choice because lawmakers last year killed off the state’s only small, tax-credit scholarship. The list could go on and on.

Increasingly, Illinoisans can’t see their future here. Until things change – and it starts with an acknowledgement of the problems – they’ll continue to flee.

Read more from Wirepoints:

• IRS migration data: Big blue states biggest losers of people, wealth. Big red states biggest winners. – A Wirepoints 50-state survey

• When it comes to population growth, there is no greater contrast than Illinois and Florida

• New Census data: 75% of Illinois cities shrank last year, Chicago population drop nation’s 3rd-worst

• The well-educated are fleeing Illinois, too

*  *  *

Appendix

Missile and drone attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have disrupted crucial maritime shipping routes, sparking supply chain snarls. Major shipping companies have been forced to reroute tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid conflict. As a result, shipping rates have surged, and a key measure of global sea transport is on track for its largest annual increase since 2010.

Bloomberg cites new data from shipbroker Clarksons Research that reveals shipping activity measured in ton-miles is set for the second-largest annual increase on record and the highest since 2010. This is primarily because of the instability around critical maritime chokepoints across the Middle East.

The gauge of global sea transport, which multiplies the volume of cargo transported by the distance it sails, is nearing an increase of 5.1% compared to 2023, or 3.2 trillion ton-miles. The jump in the index comes as vessels have been rerouted from the Red Sea to the Cape of Good Hope, adding thousands of miles and weeks to a journey from Asia to Europe.

Attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have only worsened in recent weeks. Houthi rebels have launched boat drone attacks against commercial vessels linked to Western nations. 

Clarkson analyst Trevor Crowe said longer journeys have been disappointing in the aims of reducing global carbon emissions. Meanwhile, he said an “encouraging start to the year” in trade volumes is also driving up ton miles, indicating that the rise isn’t just due to extended journeys.

Bloomberg noted, “The impact of the Red Sea disruption on ton miles has been most acutely felt in container shipping, with about 690 ships currently sailing around the Cape of Good Hope,” adding, “Average seaborne trade hauls will rise by 2.8% this year compared with 1.8% a year earlier.” 

As we’ve noted, a more conventional supply shock is underway—nowhere near the nuclear-level hit by government-enforced lockdowns several years ago. This has put a strain on global containerized shipping capacity, sending rates for 40-foot boxes soaring in recent months. 

Rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East signal further supply chain snarls. This underscores the continued need to improve supply chain resilience by reshoring production.

Commodity traders are closely watching a triangle pattern forming in New York cocoa prices.

According to Bloomberg, top grower Ivory Coast’s cocoa production is forecasted to rise in the next growing season. This news pressured prices to the lower support level of the triangle, around the mid-$7,500 per ton mark, and down from the near $12,000 level achieved in mid-April when traders were spooked by adverse weather conditions denting global supplies in Ivory Coast and Ghana. 

The West African producer is likely to harvest 2 million tons of the chocolate-making ingredient in the 2024-25 crop year that starts Oct. 1, according to people familiar with the matter, who cited early pod counting.

The outlook for the upcoming year compares with the 1.8 million tons the International Cocoa Organization estimates the country will harvest by the end of the current season in September. Ivory Coast’s output averaged 2.2 million tons in the five years before 2023-24.

The country has sold 800,000 tons of the 2024-25 harvest already on the forward market, the people said, asking not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. However, forward sales have since been paused by the industry regulator Le Conseil Cafe-Cacao, they added. -Bloomberg

With prices easing due to the beneficial impact of improving weather conditions and better crop outlooks for the next growing season in West Africa, famed commodity trader Pierre Andurand remains bullish on cocoa futures. 

Andurand Capital Management remains “very convinced” in its “long cocoa thesis,” noting in a recent letter to investors seen by Bloomberg that tight supplies and stronger-than-expected demand will continue boosting prices. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Proponents of critical minerals as the way to have a world running solely on renewables and electric vehicles are not providing the full picture as their assessments of necessary investments and the speed of the energy transition sound unrealistic, according to OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais.

Policymakers and forecasters, as well as advocates of a fast energy transition, need to carefully consider if the needed investments and volumes of critical minerals supply are feasible in their net-zero scenarios, Al Ghais wrote in an article published on OPEC’s website on Monday.  

Mining projects to extract critical minerals have long lead times from discovery to first production.

“Moreover, critical mineral mining is also an extremely energy-intensive activity, and one that today runs on hydrocarbons. It could not function otherwise,” OPEC’s top official wrote.

Coal and natural gas are vital for the processing of raw critical minerals to refine them into battery-grade products ready to be used in clean energy and electric vehicles (EVs).

“Petroleum-based products are also used for excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks on site, as well as various forms of transportation to move minerals from supply to demand centres,” Al Ghais said.

Oil products and other fossil fuels are also used for the production of solar panels, wind turbines, and EVs.

“The oil industry, renewables and EVs are not separate from each other. They do not work in silos,” said the head of OPEC, which reiterated its position that oil and gas cannot be removed from the global energy system and simply replaced with EVs and solar and wind power plants.

“Is it realistic to think renewables can meet the expected electricity expansion alone, particularly given the world has invested over $9.5 trillion in ‘transitioning’ over the past two decades, yet wind and solar still only supply just under 4% of the world’s energy, and EVs have a total global penetration rate of between 2% and 3%,” Al Ghais wrote.

Last month, Al Ghais said that peak oil demand is not on the horizon, blasting the International Energy Agency’s prediction that global oil demand would peak before 2030.