Yves here. In case you harbored any doubts, the International Energy Agency (IEA), feels compelled to remind the consuming public that our current bout of cheap oil prices won’t be with us for all that long.
Read more...Yves here. We pointed out last month that the US was on the list of Saudi targets when it made clear it was not supporting oil prices at a level higher than $80 a barrel. Some readers rejected the idea that Riyadh would launch a price war to undermine the US, when in fact the desert kingdom has been mightily unhappy with US policies in the Middle East for some time (in case you managed to miss it, ISIS started out as Prince Bandar’s private army and odds are high that it continues to get Saudi support).
A major news story today, that the Saudis are letting oil prices drop further, provides more support for our jaundiced assessment last month.
Read more...Yves here. This post highlights an issue that has also been flagged by Wolf Richter, that fracking depends on junk bond financing that has been made unnaturally cheap by the machinations of the Fed. Steve Horn conflates QE with the Fed’s super-low interest rate policy known as ZIRP, when they are distinct, but they have been implemented with the same idea in mind, that of encouraging investors to make riskier investments, particularly riskier loans.
Horn cites sources that suggest that the Fed could start undoing its rock-bottom rates in 2015. Bear in mind that that’s a minority view.
Read more...Yves here. As oil prices have come into focus as a result of a recent Saudi decision to facilitate a reset at a lower price per barrel, they’ve come into focus yet again as a critical nexus of economic and political power, and that’s before you get to the complicating overlay of climate change considerations.
This article by Gail Tverberg takes a more sophisticated, multi-persepctive approach than the overwhelming majority of articles on this topic. One of her big messages is that there is no way the world economy is getting divorced from oil any time soon.
Even so, I have some minor points of contention. For instance, she correctly points out that oil producers, even the Saudis, need oil prices to be at a moderately high prices to sustain national budgets. But Riyadh has a very low production break even point, a large cash horde, and plenty of borrowing capacity. The desert kingdom could afford a price war, say to hurt geopolitical enemies or to forestall investment in and development of alternative energy sources. Low oil prices make other energy sources look unattractive, and volatile prices also deter investment, making it well-nigh impossible to forecast cost advantages (if any) and end user takeup.
Read more...Yves here, as John Helmer explains in this post, one of the many focuses of economic warfare between the US and Russia is production of iron ore, in which Russia is a large player. Helmer describes how Urkaine is pushing to produce iron ore at the minehead, which means in Africa. Not only would Russia suffer, but Australia and Brazil would take collateral damage.
Read more...Yves here. Even though the cease fire and the self-rule/amnesty deal for the eastern part of Ukraine might be the beginning of the end of that proxy war, the US is far from giving up its efforts to weaken Russia. John Helmer describes how the US is deploying one economic weapon, that of targeting Russia’s titanium exports.
Read more...Yves here. As we’ve written, austerity in Europe and Chinese efforts to rein in construction-related lending have delivered enough of a hit to global growth so as to start denting oil prices, which were holding up in large measure due to tensions in the Middle East. This post suggests that more oil price weakness is in the offing. This is a big negative for the fracking boom, needless to say, and may give environmentalists more time to stymie further development.
Read more...With the ink still drying on Mexico’s historic energy reform, global oil and gas majors are salivating at the prospect of gaining access to one of the world’s largest and until recently most nationalized energy markets. One of those companies is the Spanish electricity giant Iberdrola, which expects to massively expand its operations in Mexico through increased investments of close to €1 billion.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: €1 billion is chicken feed in this age of inflated corporate balance sheets. Indeed, for some corporations such a sum is probably hardly worth getting out of bed for these days. However, in Mexico it can go a very long way, much further than it can in Europe or the US – especially when you have paid moles lobbying for your every interest at the highest level of government.
Read more...Richard Smith was early to take a dim view of R. Hunter Biden becoming a director of a Ukraine’s biggest private gas producer, Burisma Holdings:
This has to be a hoax, right?
It’s so bizarre that you almost have to assume it’s a hoax. It sounds more like a cliched movie plot — a shady foreign oil company co-opts the vice president’s son in order to capture lucrative foreign investment contracts — than something that would actually happen in real life. But the indications as of this afternoon are that the board appointments actually happened, and that a Ukrainian energy company has retained the counsel of the vice president’s son and the Secretary of State’s close family friend and top campaign bundler.
Michael Hudson reports in a Real News Network interview that the commercial and geopolitical logic behind the Biden role, and the bigger US and World Bank/IMF program, is to push fracking onto a decidedly unreceptive population in eastern Ukraine.
Read more...As the heir-in-waiting to the title of world’s largest economy, China finds itself in a strange position in terms of its oil consumption.
In September 2013, China became the biggest net importer of crude, beating out the U.S. for the first time. This came as no surprise, given how rapidly China’s thirst for oil has grown, although landing in top place happened a little ahead of U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) predictions that it would take place in 2014. However, where the U.S. has been shoring up its own internal production, China has lagged behind. Between 2011 and 2014, U.S. oil production rose by 31 percent, as opposed to China, which saw its own production increase by a little more than 5 percent over that time. This leaves China utterly dependent on oil imports, a vulnerable position to be in at a time when its economy is beginning to wobble.
Read more...Ambrose Evans-Pritchard makes a compelling argument in his latest article: that the $5.4 trillion of investment poured into fossil fuel exploration and development projects over the last six years includes quite a lot of investments that will never show an adequate return. He argues that when that sorry fact starts to be recognized, the losses could be the wake-up call to investors who have shrugged off risk as financial assets climb to ever-more-implausible valuations.
Read more...Over the last year, some deep truths about oil and the oil industry have begun to bubble to the surface. Not necessarily that they were ever hard to see, but they were easy to obscure and maybe more importantly, without too much effort, ignore. No longer.
Read more...Why the much-envied position of being a chronic exporter isn’t quite a bed of roses.
Read more...Dave here. In case you were thinking that the Great Game was obsolete or something. Needless to say the referendum passed, this was written slightly before the release of the results. By Nick Cunningham, a Washington DC-based writer on energy and environmental issues. You can follow him on twitter at @nickcunningham1. Cross-posted at Oil Price. […]
Read more...To many, the answer to the specter of Russian natural gas dominance is clear: unleash America’s natural gas abundance and displace Moscow. But will that work?
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