Bloomberg story and video on oil price trends, by Asjylyn Loder and Bradley Olson 

READ AND WEEP.  The insurance protecting shale drillers against plummeting prices has become so crucial that for one company, SandRidge Energy Inc., payments from the hedges accounted for a stunning 64 percent of first-quarter revenue.

Now the safety net is going away.

The insurance that producers bought before the collapse in oil — much of which guaranteed minimum prices of $90 a barrel or more — is expiring. As they do, investors are left to wonder how these companies will make up the $3.7 billion the hedges earned them in the first quarter after crude sunk below $60 from a peak of $107 in mid-2014.

“A year ago, you could hedge at $85 to $90, and now it’s in the low $60s,” said Chris Lang, a senior vice president with Asset Risk Management, a hedging adviser for more than 100 exploration and production companies. “Next year it’s really going to come to a head.”

Messages from the Independence Day week-end:

The prosperity of American and Canadian energy industries depends upon the policies of their respective countries.  Today, we bring our readers insight on American policies from an Australian, Nick Adams, whose principles affect North American energy industries in general.  

We also provide you with insight on American policies from a Canadian friend.

As always, we encourage readers to connect the dots as you journey toward your own conclusions.

-dh

Letter from an Australian to America: Here's why I love you, USA

Nick Adams 
FoxNews.com
03 July 2015 
 
It’s December 1985 in Sydney, Australia. Two parents are at wits’ end. Something is not right with their 16-month-old child. For months, they have visited doctor after doctor. No one can tell them what is wrong. On the night before Christmas Eve, with their child more unsettled than unusual, they head for the emergency room at Children’s Hospital.
 
The ward is nearly deserted, but there is one overnight doctor – a young man with a smiling face and an accent. As he looks the child over, the smile evaporates: “I think your son has neuroblastoma. Get him in for tests first thing in the morning.” Next day, the parents’ worst fears are confirmed. It is Stage IV neuroblastoma, a rare type of childhood cancer.
The parents were mine. The child was me. The doctor, it turned out, was an American.
 
The cause of neuroblastoma remains unknown. Only 1 in 100,000 children get it. Notoriously difficult to diagnose, the tumor has usually spread by the time it is. At Stage IV, an infant has just a 5 percent chance of life. For three years, I underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and an operation.

Through the healing hands of God, the master physician, I defied the odds and lived. The instincts of the American doctor, fresh out of college, only in Australia for an internship, just in time, were crucial. So I haven’t only studied American exceptionalism. I’ve lived it. In fact, I’m alive because of it.    

American exceptionalism is often derided as a phrase of partisan polemics, or worse still, a mere hypothesis, or even a myth. But it is an incontrovertible reality, however unwelcome or unpalatable this might be to those whose ears are attuned to a different siren.
 
In 5,000 years of recorded human history, there has been no nation even resembling the United States. The American model has offered, and continues to offer, a greater chance for dignity, hope and happiness for more people than any other system.
 
As Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, put it: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” Lady Thatcher was right. The philosophy is one of individual liberty, free-market opportunity and belief that it's all a gift from God. America is the best idea the world has ever had, the greatest value system ever devised.
 
What are these values that make America exceptional?  Individualism, not collectivism. Patriotism, not relativism. Optimism, not pessimism. Limited government, not the nanny state.
God, not Caesar. Faith, not secularism. E pluribus Unum, not multiculturalism. Life, not death. Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Goodness, not moral equivalence.
America is about being bold, not bland. Brave, not meek. Striving for greatness, not mediocrity.
 
Tellingly, all of these values are aligned with what today is called a conservative outlook. On every single count, traditional America both viscerally and ideologically sides with conservatism.

America thus represents the greatest impediment to leftist aims, and it becomes the prime target of the progressive movement in all its manifestations. It is easy to love America simply for the enemies she makes.
 
American success – by design, not accident – is the most significant refutation of leftist ideals. That’s because America has fostered a society that allows its citizens the widest latitude for creativity and innovation. It rewards success without government approvals and bureaucratic interference. It embraces religious faith, aspiration and risk.
 
As a result, the people of America have been the most enterprising, market-oriented, individualistic and averse to taxation and regulation that have ever walked the earth.

America has also shown uncommon valor against the sword of tyranny. She has frosted the neighborhoods of tyranny and oppression, by freezing the sweat and chilling the bones of men harboring such aspirations. From the beaches of Normandy to the sands of Iraq, America has spread more freedom and fought more evil than any other country, expending enormous treasure.
 
Put simply, the world is a better place for America being in it. This is not to say America is perfect. She’s not. But she is the best thing we have.
 
People still cross oceans to get to this country. They are as willing as ever to empty their life savings to get to America, legally or illegally. They are as prepared as ever to sell the shirt on their back just to feel the American winds of freedom and opportunity. Nowhere else can so many come with nothing and achieve anything.
 
So I’m convinced that an American renaissance is not as distant, or as impossible, as many speculate. But neither will it roll in on the wheels of inevitability. We must revitalize an informed patriotism across the land.
 
We must recover a common recognition that the principles of freedom and responsibility found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are in every American's self-interest, irrespective of identity politics. This must become again, as it once was, the lens in which all Americans view cultural choices, political candidates and public policy.
 
Saving America requires bringing intellectual ammunition to the battle of ideas. Too many people have forgotten or never learned what makes America exceptional – and you cannot advocate what you cannot articulate.
 
Since almost losing my life before it began, I have firmly believed God saved my life for a particular purpose.
 
Is it a coincidence that I have been drawn to the United States for as long as I can remember? Is it chance that it was an American doctor who diagnosed what others had been unable to do? Is it accidental that the dreams in my heart all involve America? As a man of faith, I don’t believe so.
 
Today, at age 30, I proudly call myself an Australian by birth, a Texan by honorary appointment (thank you, Rick Perry) and an American by choice. I love America because it is confident, competitive, courageous, faithful, idealistic, innovative, inspirational, charitable and optimistic. It is everything as a nation that I wish to be as a person. That’s why I am devoted to helping achieve an American renaissance.
 
After freedom, inspiration is America’s greatest export. To me, as it was to Churchill, America is the hope that banishes all hopelessness. As Americans, you should never be intimidated into mediocrity or cramped into submission. You’ve been given so much more. For the sake of the world, you must remain the dream-makers and the dream-keepers.

Australian Nick Adams is a best-selling author. His next book “Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness,” will be released in February 2016.

__________________________
 
 

HALF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DO NOT DESERVE THE COUNTRY THEY HAVE:

Obama made it abundantly clear before he won the election in 2008, that he was going to TRANSFORM America . . . and for some unfathomable reason, the majority of people in the United States either didn't believe him, or had no idea what he meant by his promise to change the USA, while a HUGE number welcomed this promise.

A professor friend of mine from McGill University (Montreal), who was a young man in Germany during the War (not Jewish), but was too young to fight for the Nazis, remembered the nightmare his family lived through under Hitler. My friend knew better than most, what totalitarianism really meant, and that’s why his father moved the family of three to Canada as soon as they were able.

One of his favorite sayings was: “IF IT AIN’T BROKE DON’T FIX IT”.

THIS SAYS FAR MORE ABOUT THE PEOPLE THAN IT DOES ABOUT OBAMA:

AMERICA WAS NOT BROKEN. It worked better than any nation ever did. And all it needed was sound Conservative governance.

But no . . . the stupid people had to take America apart, and reassemble it unlike the creation of the Founding Fathers.

And even in 2012, AFTER the American people discovered what Obama actually meant when he promised to RADICALLY TRANSFORM America, more than half of the population who voted in that election voted for him AGAIN.

So . . . Who should we be more frightened of, Obama – or the fools who put him into office TWICE?

WHAT DO WE LEARN FROM HISTORY?

In 1924, a Narcissist wrote a book; he called it Mein Kampf (my struggle), which he described as his (sick) BLUEPRINT for a new Germany, based exclusively on his distorted and corrupt IDEALS . . . and even though his book gained little prominence then . . . HE CERTAINLY WAS ABLE TALK A GOOD TALK.

The world didn’t pay attention to this fellow named Hitler. And by 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and the rest is remembered as a violent and sad moment in history.

And as for Europe’s Jews . . . they could have saved themselves, only if they believed what the Nazi Narcissist said and wrote.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD HAS A NEW NARCISSISTIC SELF-BIOGRAPHER:

Before Obama was anyone. And before he did or achieved anything, he wrote not just one book, but two books about his own life and experiences. How narcissistic was that?

AND THE PEOPLE NEITHER LISTENED, QUESTIONED, NOR PAID ATTENTION:

AND NOW . . . Like Humpty Dumpty, America is so broken, that it seems to me; that all the Kings horses and all the Kings men, might never be able to but America back together again.

IS THERE ONE LAST CHANCE TO LOOK FORWARD TO ANOTHER JULY 4TH?

If there’s going to be salvation for the USA, it will come from the Republicans choosing the RIGHT man or woman to run as their candidate for the 2016 Presidential Election.

I have not changed my choices one iota, EXCEPT FOR DONALD TRUMP.

I still really like Scott Walker, I really like Carly Fiorina, I like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, I’m OK with Marco Rubio and most of the rest of the field, with the exception of Christie and Paul . . . two men I would not support.

And even though he is really low on my list, I could probably endorse Bush if it came down to it. Which I hope it does not.

AND THE REASONS I AM SO HIGH ON TRUMP ARE:

1 – He is no PATSY for the Media Bullies or the demagoguing LEFT.

2 – He is saying what everyone with a brain is thinking.

3 – He doesn't apologize for standing up for the USA . . . HE DOUBLES DOWN.

4 – The Bullies push him an inch – he pushes them back a mile.

5 – He is giving America real HOPE as America’s BACK ALLEY STREET-FIGHTER.

AND THE GREATEST REASON FOR ME TO LIKE TRUMP . . .

If the USA is going to go down to the LEFT . . . at least with Trump, the America we grew up loving, WILL GO DOWN FIGHTING. Not as America has declined since the heydays of Reagan . . . with a multitude of RINO WIMPS, who've replaced Reagan in all aspects of the Republican Party at the upper echelon.

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THIS . . . This is the most important election the world has seen, since the Liberty Bell first rang-out on July 8, 1776, heralding what might be THE ENTIRE PLANET’S last reason to celebrate July 4TH.

Best Regards . . . Howard Galganov