John Foote

I once had the wind maps. There are some decent corridors, but nothing like Texas. Want to ruin Riyadh's day, take out a water pipeline, forget the oil. They'll in serious trouble in less than 48 hours. Imagine 9 million people without water of any sort, and nothing but sand for hours in every direction. I don't think painting white was for efficiency, rather cultural preference. I always wondered what sick mind came up with black clothes for the women. There are so many easy, relatively inexpensive yet massive gains to be had in KSA. Instead let's spend a dumb trillion $ into a futuristic city the width of a single road. If that isn't the emperor's new clothes on steroids, what is? The system there is determined to waste resources and inflate spend.

The so called SMART grid, for the whole, can be much better. To work in the USA, and it can, it needs the ability to opt in, and out, and there has to be financial benefit for the consumers. Years ago the City of Austin has elements of SMART grid you could opt into. I signed up for my "free" thermostat, tying into my very efficient HVAC system. And such a thing can prevent brownouts and blackouts. But after six or so months I removed my free, state of the art thermostat. Why? I didn't mind the AC letting the upstairs get 82 to 84 in the day when I wasn't around or was downstairs. But the dam thing would cycle on and turn the house into an icebox at 3am, helping to keep a load on the grid. I always had a manual option override. But went to my own programmable thermostat. The Texas power generation industry knew of the weatherization risks. 1 cent a KW is the estimated cost. For my place, $2 a month. I like nuclear, but that was the biggest single underperformer, and yes, it had nothing to do with the nuke side of things, but that is irrelevant, every system has vulnerabilities. Some refineries in Texas pro-actively shut down because of the weather. The Oil and Gas industry knew this would happen. The power people too though they probably believed they could rolling blackout and best cased power production instead of likely and didn't anticipate people being out for three days or more. Running around playing info-games after the fact is pretty silly. The source of the generation is not the issue. Just in a market based environment, which I prefer, you need the right minimums to be able to play in the game. And as individuals we can have/should a plan B. Small generation, excellent personal weatherization and you should have a few days of food and liquids in your house. I say liquids because you don't need just water to hydrate. I might have tapped into my beer/wine/spirit collection while cozied up to the fireplace. Most of us who did time overseas should have retained some "go bag" mentality. Personally I never lost power though the having to boil water impacted me. First I used up the standard stash. Live close to regional hospital and fire station, you part of the grid doesn't go down much. These are conscious decisions on my part, but I do think the State of Texas could do better. Always, we can do better.

UAE is faux progressive. See what happens to an Emirati if they co-habitat openly, or renounce Islam. The hired help is given more leeway, partly for global press, partly to attract/keep talent. KSA has a real challenge in trying to become a financial center because talent doesn't want to live there. Last I noticed the UAE has never waged any war against Israel, so I don't know how the Abraham agreement is a peace treaty in the classic sense of stopping a war. I do view the normalization as good and even somewhat bold. But UAE and KSA have been privately been playing nice with each other for a while. King Faisal is doing somersaults in his grave. UAE (and KSA) not funding Palestinians as was historically done, especially in Arafat's time, that is a big deal. The Palestinians I met had little use for Shia-ism, they are pretty much all Sunni, and yet viewed Iran as the only country fighting for them. These same Palestinians were less than complimentary of UAE and KSA. Although I think they are simplistic thinking KSA could just buy the peace. It doesn't work that way.

1mBPD? probably more like 3m in peak summer. In the eastern part of the country there is significant use of natural gas. But not enough produced to pipe it around the country. Even oil, did you know tankers leave Ras Tanura and head for the west cost of KSA. There is a large east/west oil pipeline now, but not enough capacity to keep the west in desal water and electricity. Yes, they absolutely should embrace inefficiencies. The years of heavily subsidized energy to business and consumer punished efficiency measures. Now I can buy gasoline for less in Texas. Importing from Qatar is not an option, It is perhaps the real reason they were about to invade a few years ago. Clearly they should use solar more, but it has significant limitations. It's a niche' source, a large niche' perhaps, but a niche' source. There were major efforts at developing unconventional gas while I was there, but it's not an economical play for them for several reasons. Normalizing with Qatar and being friends is the more sensible play. The UAE also trash talks Qatar, but the UAE also powers their Aluminum reduction facility, and some of the electrical grid, with Qatar gas.

I remember why I quit coming to this website regularly. Oil and gas issues, even coal and renewable, are tertiary. And I am a political atheist, perhaps agnostic is the better word. I've never seen a CEO of a large company really be able to control the minions in the way folks here seem to believe govts and political parties control things. Years ago when I was running a couple of my own small companies one thing that struck me, the control I craved and drove me to owning decisions was a drug that could never be satiated. The closest thing there is to high level control is the influencing the flow of capital. Anyone who thinks Trump was the man to grab that bull by the horns ignored his history of making enemies and moving on to the next gullible creditor. His rhetoric was appealing, the reality appalling. It's not dems/reps taking down Facebook/Twitter access, or Qnon, it's perceived economic impact to private money. That is capitalism with massive oligarch influence yanking the strings. Oligarchs were happy for the tax policies, but the erratic populism became too high a cost. Even Koch has stated regretting funding so much of what put Trump in place. When Trump bit those kind of hands, the food supply was always going to be cut off.

Yet last I noticed one of the few countries creating a rich elite, who often leave. I've lived in a totalitarian country. Absolutely on a daily basis people work, play, and have fun. But there are lines you cannot cross and lies you have to accept. I'd take the improvements the Chinese managed in Taiwan over the improvements in the PRC everyday of the week, and twice on Sundays.

Dealerships in the USA have been a thorn in the automakers side for years. If there is group I most detest it's the Toyota folks who control the Gulf States, Gulf States Toyota, much to the chagrin of Toyota themselves. The set up goes back a long ways when Toyota was getting going in the US and hooked up with dealers GM had kicked to the curb. I once traveled 1,200 miles to save a couple of grand and avoid that particular cartel.

The gap, technically and in volume, chip production wise, is quite substantial, and US policy is working hard to keep it that way. You can't American made and ship to SMIC soon. Imagine trying to do Fabs without AMAT, or Lam. You can't. A source of grief to the folks that buy the tools. In efforts not widely publicized, but similar to how the US tries to keep Iranian oil off the market, foreign tool manufacturers are also under heavy pressure not to sell state-of-the-art. Maybe five years ago technology, but not state of the art. If someone, anyone, thinks you could knock off high end semiconductor manufacturing tools, it would have been done some time ago. It takes a few years and over the years it's gone from a garage industry and tools made by the original semiconductor companies, to highly specialized and full of theoretical PhD physicists with years in the business. Hard to clone them. And the process recipes are extremely well guarded quite well. TSMC figured out 8 nano meter and even Intell struggled, and buying from the same manufacturers. Leading edge tools are collaborative with the manufacturer as well. I've seen the specs on what goes to China. Mid-90s stuff. Still very impressive. The strange relationship between Taiwan and the Mainland benefits them both. Nixon was right, above all money is the power they seek, and taking down Taiwan would cause economic disruptions hard to overstate. More for the West than China, but a definite lose/lose. The IOT, internet of everything, that will explode the use of semiconductors. As BTO would say, you ain't seen nothing yet. The pie is expanding faster than ever. Tools that were expected to be obsolete 15 years ago, new ones are being built for raw capacity, and the factories making the tool are booked to capacity and looking to expand. Most of the chips in China won't be leading edge design, and yes, China is on a fab building spree like the world has never known. But it will be five years before it really starts to impact.

If I had been there I would have bought a minimal amount of shares. But not as an investment. It would help prevent a really bad annual review, and a nice memento to frame on the wall.

Just an empty campaign promise, where is Trump's health care that replaced the ACA? Never proposed an alternative, and I don't expect anything significant out of Biden on this. What are the odds anything like this gets to the Senate floor. On a related note ban fracking on a significant level and old King Coal would benefit, retaining some competitiveness in the electrical generation market. An example of the stupidity of just trying to do one thing, and while doing it, the end result the opposite of what you want.

TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, those are the big dogs, and only TSMC is a foundry, so many chip companies now are fabless, or just run pilot R&D lines. You are so right, hard to underestimate TSMC's importance. That said, so much of 5G isn't 8 micron state-of-the-art. Analogue chips, essential for the tech, and more likely to be 40 microns. Working on a project with the US Broadcom. That wonderful modern smart phone has 100s of chips, but only two or three leading edge ones in some senses. The US still has some leading edge chops, just need more thru put.

The Al Midra panels did come on line for a time. The building housing the inverters suffered an HVAC failure, and the inverters fried. I doubt they every fixed it. They also added panels to the shade panels for North Park 1 and 2 parking lots. Those never came on line. DIfferent contractors for the different portions of the job so everyone gets paid doing their part, and nothing works. I know this must came as a surprise to you. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Saudi-Aramcos-Landmark-IPO-Is-Costing-The-Kingdom-Billions.html The clear stupidity of the IPO, and the cost of it, is becoming obvious to everyone as well. The only reason for the theoretical high market cap is they only sold a small part, and mostly to themselves.

It's not the oil we want at this point. It's their money. They might be running a deficit, but still reserves left for a time.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-strategy-insight/sole-survivor-saudi-arabia-doubles-down-on-oil-to-outlast-rivals-idUSKBN26R3PA Just in case you thought KSA learned their lesson trying to flood the market to kill shale, think again. I'm not confident they can sustain 13 million a day.

Pretty sure they still get their natural gas from Qatar, just through a pipeline, and contracted to do so through 2032. No point to LNG. It fuels their aluminium plant and of course electricity. Iran is also one of the UAE's major trading partners.