Oil prices jumped on the first trading day of 2016 as Middle East tension outweighed a selloff in financial markets around the world. Oil markets remain oversupplied and depressed, but geopolitical flashpoints have a historical tendency to disrupt market trends. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia carried out a mass execution of 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite cleric Nemer al-Nemer. The executions prompted condemnations from around the world, but in Iran protestors threw Molotov [Read more]
$10 Trillion Investment Needed To Avoid Massive Oil Price Spike Says OPEC
OPEC says that $10 trillion worth of investment will need to flow into oil and gas through 2040 in order to meet the world’s energy needs. The OPEC published its World Oil Outlook 2015 (WOO) in late December, which struck a much more pessimistic note on the state of oil markets than in the past. On the one hand, OPEC does not see oil prices returning to triple-digit territory within the next 25 years, a strikingly bearish conclusion. The group expects oil prices to rise by an average of about [Read more]
Strippers Suffering From Low Oil Prices
With Prices Below $50, what is a stripper to do? With OPEC breaking down and any kind of coordination among its members on price cuts looking increasingly unlikely, it now appears that oil prices could remain below $50 a barrel for a year or more. As producers confront this unpleasant reality, some will finally start to significantly curtail or even shut down operations. And that is going to severely hurt an all but invisible group; strippers in the United States. A stripper is a small [Read more]
Why Is The U.S. Reluctant To Bomb ISIS Oil Fields?
There has been some revealing new information coming out recently regarding the strategy against ISIS. One aspect many find troubling is the apparent failure of U.S. and coalition forces to sufficiently target and destroy oil infrastructure located in ISIS territory, which accounts for a significant portion of the terror group's annual income. The argument goes, if we want to impact their operations, we should target their primary sources of income, and choke off their operational funds. So, why [Read more]
Oil Jobs Lost: 250.000 And Counting, Texas Likely To See Massive Layoffs Soon
Crude oil just capped off a third straight week of declines, as WTI nears the $40 per barrel threshold. Goldman Sachs is once again raising the possibility of oil dipping into the $20s per barrel. That spells more pain for the energy sector. Many companies have already slashed spending and culled their payrolls, but the total number of job losses continues to climb. According to Graves & Co., an industry consultant, oil and gas companies have laid off more than 250,000 workers around [Read more]
Saudis Planning For A War Of Attrition In Europe With Russia’s Oil Industry
Russia's central bank recently warned about the growing financial risks to the Russian economy from Saudi Arabia encroaching upon its traditional export market for crude oil. Russia sends 70 percent of its oil to Europe, but Saudi Arabia has been making inroads in the European market amid the oil price downturn. The result is a heavier discount for Russia's crude oil, the so-called Urals blend. Bloomberg reported that the Urals typically lands in Rotterdam, a major European destination, at a [Read more]
Political Climate Shifting Against The Oil And Gas Industry
Oil and gas companies have had a tough time over the past year trying to weather the storm of falling oil prices. But the political and financial winds are moving in the wrong direction for the industry, raising more "above ground" problems at a time that they can ill-afford it. Drilling oil and gas wells requires a lot of money. For companies that have seen their revenues vanish because of collapsing oil prices, access to credit is obviously critically important. But U.S. financial [Read more]
Oil Megaprojects Won’t Stay On The Shelf For Long
One casualty of the oil price downturn could be the megaproject. For years, as conventional oil reserves depleted and became increasingly hard to find, oil companies ventured into far-flung locales to find new sources of production. Extracting oil from these frontier areas required more advanced technology and a lot more capital: Ultra deepwater, Arctic offshore, heavy oil sands, and increasingly, the Lower Tertiary. Often these megaprojects projects were only the purview of the largest [Read more]
Stop Blaming OPEC For Low Prices
We are a little more than a month away from OPEC's next meeting, which will be held in Vienna on December 4, 2015. OPEC altered the course of the oil markets last year when it decided to cast aside its traditional role of maintaining balance through production cuts. Instead it pursued a strategy of fighting for market share, contributing to an immediate rout in oil prices. WTI and Brent then went on to dive below $50 in the weeks following OPEC's decision. OPEC is widely expected to [Read more]
Oil Market Showdown: Can Russia Outlast The Saudis?
November 27, oil consuming countries will celebrate the first anniversary of the Saudi decision to let market forces determine prices. This decision set crude prices on a downward path. Subsequently, to defend market share, the Saudis increased production, which exacerbated market oversupply and further pressured prices. While the sharp decline in crude prices has saved crude consuming nations hundreds of billions of dollars, the loss in revenues has caused crude exporting countries intense [Read more]