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Since mid 2014 US MSM propagate the following bogus narrative: There is an oil glut in the USA market in particular despite the fact that the USA increasing their import of oil. To cry about glut on oil in the country which imports more and more oil is something new to me. That can happen only if some produced oil is subpar and nobody wants it (comment from blog post World oil supply and demand Econbrowser)
The Great Condensate Con?We have seen a large year over year increase in US and global Crude + Condensate (C+C) inventories. For example, EIA data show that US C+C inventories increased by 100 million barrels from late 2014 to late 2015, and this inventory build has contributed significantly to the sharp decline in oil prices.
The question is, what percentage of the increase in US and global C+C inventories consists of condensate?
Four week running average data showed the US net crude oil imports for the last four weeks of December increased from 6.9 million bpd in 2014 to 7.3 million bpd in 2015. Why would US refiners continue to import large–and increasing–volumes of actual crude oil, if they didn’t have to, even as we saw a huge build in US C+C inventories? Note that what the EIA calls “Crude oil” is actually C+C.
I frequently cite a Reuters article that discussed case histories of refiners increasingly rejecting blends of heavy crude and condensate that technically meet the upper limit for WTI crude (42 API gravity), but that are deficient in distillates. Of course, what the refiners are rejecting is the condensate component, i.e., they are in effect saying that “We don’t want any more stinkin’ condensate.” Following is an excerpt from the article:
U.S. refiners turn to tanker trucks to avoid ‘dumbbell’ crudes (March, 2015)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-usa-refiners-trucks-analysis-idUSKBN0MJ09520150323
In a pressing quest to secure the best possible crude, U.S. refiners are increasingly going straight to the source.
Firms such as Marathon Petroleum Corp and Delek U.S. Holdings are buying up tanker trucks and extending local pipeline networks in order to get more oil directly from the wellhead, seeking to cut back on blended crude cocktails they say can leave a foul aftertaste. . . .
Many executives say that the crude oil blends being created in Cushing are often substandard approximations of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the longstanding U.S. benchmark familiar to, and favored by, many refiners in the region.
Typical light-sweet WTI crude has an API gravity of about 38 to 40. Condensate, or super-light crude that is abundant in most U.S. shale patches, ranges from 45 to 60 or higher. Western Canadian Select, itself a blend, is about 20.
While the blends of these crudes may technically meet the API gravity ceiling of 42 at Cushing, industry players say the mixes can be inconsistent in makeup and generate less income because the most desirable stuff is often missing.
The blends tend to produce a higher proportion of fuel at two ends of the spectrum: light ends like gasoline, demand for which has dimmed in recent years, and lower-value heavy products like fuel oil and asphalt. What’s missing are middle distillates like diesel, where growing demand and profitability lies.
My premise is that US (and perhaps global) refiners hit, late in 2014, the upper limit of the volume of condensate that they could process, if they wanted to maintain their distillate and heavier output–resulting in a build in condensate inventories, reflected as a year over year build of 100 million barrels in US C+C inventories.
Therefore, in my opinion the US and (and perhaps globally) C+C inventory data are fundamentally flawed, when it comes to actual crude oil inventory data. The most common dividing line between actual crude oil and condensate is 45 API gravity, although the distillate yield drops off considerably just going from 39 API to 42 API gravity crude, and the upper limit for WTI crude oil is 42 API.
In 2015, the EIA issued a report on US C+C production (what they call “Crude oil”), classifying the C+C by API gravity, and the data are very interesting:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=23952
Note that 22% of US Lower 48 C+C production consists of condensate (45+ API gravity) and note that about 40% of US Lower 48 C+C production exceeds the maximum API gravity for WTI crude oil (42 API). The above chart goes a long way toward explaining why US net crude oil imports increased from late 2014 to 2015, even as US C+ C inventories increased by 100 million barrels, and I suspect that what is true for the US may also be true for the world, in regard to the composition of global C+C inventories.
Following is my analysis of global C+C production data versus estimated global crude oil production data, through 2014, using the available data bases:
Did Global Crude Oil Production Peak in 2005?
http://peakoilbarrel.com/worldwide-rig-count-dropping-again/comment-page-1/#comment-546170
How Quickly Can US Tight/Shale Operators Cause US C+C Production to Increase?
Because of equipment, personnel and financial constraints, in my opinion it is going to take much longer than most analysts expect for US operators to ramp up activity, even given a rising price environment.
Except for the 2008 “V” shaped price decline (which bottomed out in December, 2008), and the corresponding US rig count decline, the US (oil and gas) rig count has been around 1,800 to 2,000 in recent years. Note that it took about five years to go from around 1,000 rigs in 2003 to around 2,000 rigs in 2008, and it even took two years to go from around 1,000 rigs in 2009 to around 2,000 rigs in 2011.
And assuming a 15%/year rate of decline in existing US C+C production and assuming a 24%/year rate of decline in existing US gas production, the US has to put on line around 1.5 million bpd of new C+C production every year and around 17 BCF per day of new gas production every year, just to offset declines from existing wells. Based on 2013 EIA data, the estimated annual volumetric loss of production from existing US gas production exceeds the annual dry gas production of every country in the world, except for the US and Russia.
Generally the idea of oil glut in the USA and simultaneously increasing imports is something from Orwell novel 1984, where is was called doublespeak. If you’re an oil producer, you don’t pump oil unless you have orders for it. If you pump oil without orders, then you need your own storage to store it. You don’t ship any oil without getting paid for it. So oil glut theory claim that they are producers which have oil stored instead of shipped to customers and nobody wants this oil. So it is rotting in storage instead. And this bogus "theory" is propagated by MSM for more then 18 month now. The best example of article that subscribes to this fallacy I found in NYT:
Stock Prices Sink in a Rising Ocean of Oil
The world is awash in crude oil, with enough extra produced last year to fuel all of Britain or Thailand. And the price of oil will not stop falling until the glut shrinks.
The oil glut — the unsold crude that is piling up around the world — is a quandary and a source of investor anxiety that once again rattled global markets on Friday.
As prices have dropped, the amount of excess production has been cut in half over the last six months. About one million barrels of extra oil is now being dumped on the markets each day.
But that means the glut is still continuing to grow, and it could take years to work through the crude that is being warehoused, poured into petroleum depots or loaded onto supertankers for storage at sea.
The shakeout will be painful, taking an even bigger toll on companies, countries and investors.
I think the author never saw a real oil tanker and does not understand how much it costs to keep oil in tanker for, say, a year. Regular lease of 200 barrel oil truck is around $4000 a month. and at $40 the cost of 200 barrels is just $8000. So don't try this in your backyard ;-). An ultra-large crude carrier, with a 3 million barrel capacity can well cost around $40,000-60,000 a day. So in one day you burn 1000-1500 barrels (if we assume 40 pre barrel) of your stored oil. That comes to 10-15% of stored oil in one year just in leasing costs (reuters.com)
As this is a skeptical page, one thing the creates strong doubts in MSM coverage of the current oil prices slump is the idea of oil glut and Saudis supposed decision to "defend their share of the market" by supposedly flooding the market with oil (in reality they were unable significantly raise their exports (only by 0.3 Mb/d in 2016) and used predatory pricing since mid 2014 to slam the oil prices). There are strong indications that that was the political decision make by Saudi elite to hurt Iran after decision to lift sanctions was made by G7+Russia in mid 2014. It is due to this decision the country started to dump their oil on the market at artificially low prices undercutting other producers. They simply presented discount for each region they sell for their oil, essentially putting a price on each barrel they sold.
But to cry about glut on oil in the country that imports more and more oil is something new to me. This is something from Orwell novel 19884 and is called doublespeak. and that's was exactly the situation with the USA in 2015. So MSM are deceiving the public. But why and what is the real situation, if we can decipher it ?
The first thing to understand is that at a given stage of developing of drilling and other related technologies there is such thing as minimal price of oil below which production can be continued only at a loss. After all a well often costs $8 million, which need to be amortized for life of well. Which in case of shale/tight oil is approximately five-six years with more half of oil extracted in the first two years. The cost is much higher for non-conventional oil producers then for conventional producers. Canadian tar sand production is even more expensive. Deep water drilling is somewhere in between conventional and non-conventional oil.
There are different estimates, but most analysts agree that shale/tight oil producers need around $70-$80 per barrel to be able to pay their debts and around $50-$60 to break even. Slightly less for deep water oil ($40-$50). The picture below illustrated difference prices to produce different types of oil ( see below) is reproduced from What Me Worry About Peak Oil Art Berman, December 27, 2015 ):
This means that production of light oil from tight zones need the price of $70-80 per barrel to break even. The same applies to extra heavy, deep water, and EOR projects. The implication seems to be that most industry investments do require higher prices and 2010-2013 were gold age for this types of oil as prices were close or above $100.
There were elements of glut in condensate and light oil before export restrictions were lifted because the US refineries were tuned to different type of oil. some even rejected blended oil as output from such oil in various fractions was different from "classic" oil to which refineries got used and that was cutting their profits. But that's about it.
The key problem for shale/tight oil companies is that they have chance to stay afloat only at around $70-$80 per barrel and most get to much debt in 2010-2013 trying to increase production to survive the current price slump. In North America, 42 companies with $17 billion in debt filed bankruptcy in 2015, the highest level since the financial crisis in 2008. Of these filings, 36 companies with $16.7 billion in debt filed in the U.S.
Here is an old article Crude oil is surging (May 21, 2015) that asks important question "How we can have a glut of oil one week and the next we don't "
Crude oil is having a big day. West Texas Intermediate crude oil rallied by more than 3% to cross back above the $60 per barrel mark. On Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration said that crude inventories fell by 2.7 million barrels last week.
It was the third straight week of declines in inventories, which have seen a huge swell in recent months to the highest levels in at least 80 years. Earlier this week, we highlighted comments from Morgan Stanley, noting that following the oil crash, drillers are now prioritizing profitability over their output of barrels.
Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, was also higher, up by more than 2%. Here's a chart showing the jump in WTI...
mad man
I can't understand, as everyone of us that are not greedy SOB's. How we can have a glut of oil one week and the next we don't . I wouldn't leave this country for another , I'll stand and fight for what we had in the past!
We have to rid this county of the #$%$S that think they are running it! Dem.'s or GOP's are all #$%$'s! . This is not for the PEOPLE BY PEOPLE any more. WE ALL have to try and fix it .
H e
Crude is surging because the US dollar has no backbone anymore and losing it's world's reserve currency status.
okeydokey
Market manipulation. Nothing more. As for Business Insider, this is a propaganda rag.
heybert17
I really enjoy reading all the expert opinions on oil. One says it will plummet, another says it will surge, and another says it will stay steady. What are these people "experts" of? It can't be oil or they would all say the exact same thing.
Here is another similar thread:
Steve,likbez, 12/25/2015 at 3:44 pmI agree with your post about market dynamics between customers having to pay through their purchasing power in order to retire loans created by financial industry for oil companies.
But there are a few things that make this oil crash little bit “strange” to say at least:
- OPEC (and mainly Saudis + GCC) did actually something by not doing anything and that is refusing to cut their production. Well that is “man made” decision as Oman oil minister said and not decision by invisible hand of market. I interpret this mainly as political decision and not economical.
- Second. Wall Street was pretty much shocked if not pissed by that Saudi decision. I interpret that to be political reaction as well.
- There is no worldwide collapse of demand that justify 65-70% fall of the oil price. I am sorry but Wall Street is creating ninja loans for cars, student loans, mortgages from the thin air with the same speed in the US. I would say that is political decision as well. Worldwide collapse is not happening as of now either that would justify 65-70% drop of price. Contraction is happening in Europe but very very gradually except in some marginal countries like Greece, and war torn countries in ME and Africa. But these marginal countries did not even have any big consumption to begin with.
- Shale oil producers based on their balance sheet were bankrupt from Day 1. Why LTO even got the loans to begin with? That is also political decision and not an economic. Why are we waiting even a year after low prices for any major mergers, buyouts or bankruptcies? I am sorry but 100% of LTO are bankrupt so why Wall Street is extending and pretending and keeping them on a life support? Well it is again political decision.
So yes there are some market dynamics around this oil crash but there are a lot of political dynamics as well.
Ves,Ves, 12/25/2015 at 5:32 pmThanks for the post. I agree with your reasoning.
To me too such a dramatic drop of oil prices looks like an engineered event, and is not only the result of supply and demand discrepancies. I think coming online way too many projects served a role, but not a decisive role. There was a political will to achieve that result.
One factor that might be in play ( it is NOT 100% reliable info) is that Saudis appropriated all or large part of Iran quota during sanctions period.
So on July 14, 2014, when agreement about lifting sanctions was reached, Iran asked to Saudis to compensate them for all this period. Saudis refused and started all this fun with declarations that they will defend their market share by all means possible.
Obama was surprisingly strongly “pro-deal”: On Tuesday Obama promised to use his veto on any domestic attempts to undermine the deal. “I am confident that this deal will meet the national security needs of the United States and our allies, so I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal,” he said.”
Subsequently “sell as much as you can” regime for all OPEC members was instituted during the last OPEC meeting — no countries quotas anymore. Which, in a way, is the dissolution of OPEC.
So this “conspiracy theory” presupposes that this was the way Saudis reacted to lifting Iran sanctions, which threatened their share of oil market and also empowered their bitter regional enemy due to high oil prices. And they probably were angry as hell about the US administration duplicity — betrayal of the most reliable ally in the region, after the same trick with Mubarak.
Also it might well be that the agreement to lift sanctions from Iran was explicitly designed as a perfect Trojan horse for dropping oil prices to ease pressure from G7 economies which were in “secular stagnation” state. With Europe suffering from the cut from Russian market. In this case this was a real masterpiece of “divide and conquer” strategy.
Thanks likbez.I don’t pay too much attention to the price because the price is just the consequence of what buyers and sellers agree on. So there is no “engineering” in the classic sense of how we interpret in the real life. What bothers me is the amount of new and unprofitable shale oil that come to the market in the relatively short period of time. Well that is political engineering.
I thought for a while that this is all classic bubble of greed but then that did not make sense either. We know that bankers like bubbles because they always make money on swings, either going up or down. And that is ok with me; I accept that is how things work on this planet. But they could make bubbles with tulips and make money too? It has been done before. Oil is little bit different. You don’t piss oil on these swings when you are not making any money even on upswing.
So it is kind a troubling to see what is really going on. It looks to me that some breakdown of communication happened between major oil producers and major bankers. But time will tell.
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Apr 18, 2018 | community.oilprice.com
Report post " What exactly do we get from Russian that we couldn't do without? " <== The willingness to ally with the U.S. vs the Chinese.
There is no denial of what Russia has done in the last few years, and it's wrong! However, what is entirely missing from the western media is the U.S. ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock, and George Kennan have been warning the American political elites since the 90's, prior to Putin was even known and in politics, that the American foreign policy is steering us straight into confrontations with Russia! It's not if but when it will happen REGARDLESS OF who is in Kremlin! Nobody cared to heed because we were indulging ourselves as the sole superpower in the world.
Neither has the American media reported even our old friend, Gorbachev, is praising Putin and has harsh words for the U.S. In a nutshell, the Russians don't like to be treated as a nobody country, ie. with decisions of world affairs already made and shoved at their face, and they can either put up or shut up! However, that is exactly how Washington has conducted business with Russia until the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. Would the American public put up with a revolution led by a Russian politician in Mexico City or Ottawa, even though it's Mexican or Canadians self-determination? Then what makes us think the Russians would tolerate John McCain leading an anti-Russian revolution in Kiev, even if it's Ukrainian self-determination? Don't forget the U.S. directly invaded Grenada when they were exercising their self-determination to ally with the USSR!
This is not about defending Russia. The Russians can take care of that themselves. Rather, can the U.S. afford to have Russia and China solidify their alliance again? It's already happening unless we can adopt a sensible Russian policy to turn it around. Who would you rather ally with? Someone (like the U.S.) who expects you to be a subordinate vs another (like China) who is willing to treat you as an equal?
One can certainly argue how it is possible to ally with a country like Russia, who sponsors dictators, meddles in our elections and tramples on other nation's self-determination. If you are willing to be honest with yourself, just Google it. There is not one thing we accuse of the Russians that our politicians are not doing it overseas, by MULTIPLE magnitude! The biggest gripe the Russians have toward the U.S. is "are you preaching democracy or hypocrisy?" Yes, one sin doesn't justify another, but why our politicians can't uphold this principle when they are committing treacheries overseas?
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Apr 13, 2018 | www.presstv.com
Syrian state TV said that the attack hit the country's army depots in the area of Homs, Reuters reported.
A Reuters witness said that at least six loud explosions were heard in Damascus with smoke rising over the Syrian capital where a second witness said the Barzah district, the location of a major Syrian scientific research center, was also hit in the strikes.
Meanwhile, Syrian state television reported that "Syrian air defense blocks American, British, French aggression on Syria." It added that 13 missiles were shot down.
The US has been threatening Damascus with military action since April 7, when a suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, reportedly killed 60 people and injured hundreds more. The Syrian government has already strongly denied using chemical munitions in the flashpoint town.
Joe ,
People think this is about Syria, it is not. It's about oil price. Watch on Monday and the days following oil price will rocket up, and Iran, Russia, US will all be celebrating privately. The Chinese stock market will fall because oil will cost them more.
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Mar 29, 2018 | www.ft.com
Martin Wolf : How China can avoid a trade war with the US
... the plan to impose 25 per cent tariffs on $60bn of (as yet, unspecified) Chinese exports to the US shows the aggression of Mr Trump's trade agenda. The proposed tariffs are just one of several actions aimed at China's technology-related policies. These include a case against China at the World Trade Organization and a plan to impose new restrictions on its investments in US technology companies.
The objectives of these US actions are unclear. Is it merely to halt alleged misbehaviour, such as forced transfers -- or outright theft -- of intellectual property? Or, as the labelling of China as a "strategic competitor" suggests, is it to halt China's technological progress altogether -- an aim that is unachievable and certainly non-negotiable. Mr Trump also emphasised the need for China to slash its US bilateral trade surplus by $100bn. Indeed, his rhetoric implies that trade should balance with each partner. This aim is, once again, neither achievable nor negotiable.
...A still more pessimistic view is that trade discussions will break down in a cycle of retaliation, perhaps as part of broader hostilities.
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Feb 20, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Palloy | Feb 20, 2018 8:52:02 PM | 34
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."
Ever since US Crude Oil peaked its production in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors would have their profitability damaged, "assets" downgraded, and borrowing capacity destroyed. At this point their shares would become worthless and they would become bankrupt. The contagion from this would spread to transport businesses, plastics manufacture, herbicides and pesticide production and a total collapse of Industrial Civilisation.
In anticipation of increasing Crude Oil imports, Nixon stopped the convertibility of Dollars into Gold, thus making the Dollar entirely fiat, allowing them to print as much of the currency as they needed.
They also began a system of obscuring oil production data, involving the DoE's EIA and the OECD's IEA, by inventing an ever-increasing category of Undiscovered Oilfields in their predictions, and combining Crude Oil and Condensate (from gas fields) into one category (C+C) as if they were the same thing. As well the support of the ethanol-from-corn industry began, even though it was uneconomic. The Global Warming problem had to be debunked, despite its sound scientific basis. Energy-intensive manufacturing work was off-shored to cheap labour+energy countries, and Just-in-Time delivery systems were honed.
In 2004 the price of Crude Oil rose from $28 /barrel up to $143 /b in mid-2008. This demonstrated that there is a limit to how much business can pay for oil (around $100 /b). Fracking became marginally economic at these prices, but the frackers never made a profit as over-production meant prices fell to about $60 /b. The Government encourages this destructive industry despite the fact it doesn't make any money, because the alternative is the end of Industrial Civilisation.
Eventually though, there must come a time when there is not enough oil to power all the cars and trucks, bulldozers, farm tractors, airplanes and ships, as well as manufacture all the wind turbines and solar panels and electric vehicles, as well as the upgraded transmission grid. At that point, the game will be up, and it will be time for WW3. So we need to line up some really big enemies, and develop lots of reasons to hate them.
Thus you see the demonisation of Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela for reasons that don't make sense from a normal perspective.
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Feb 16, 2018 | consortiumnews.com
Mild-ly -Facetious , February 16, 2018 at 5:42 pm
F Y I :> Putin prefers Aramco to Trump's sword dance
Hardly 10 months after honoring the visiting US president, the Saudis are open to a Russian-Chinese consortium investing in the upcoming Aramco IPO
By M.K. BHADRAKUMAR
FEBRUARY 16, 2018[extract]
In the slideshow that is Middle Eastern politics, the series of still images seldom add up to make an enduring narrative. And the probability is high that when an indelible image appears, it might go unnoticed -- such as Russia and Saudi Arabia wrapping up huge energy deals on Wednesday underscoring a new narrative in regional and international security.
The ebb and flow of events in Syria -- Turkey's campaign in Afrin and its threat to administer an "Ottoman slap" to the United States, and the shooting down of an Israeli F-16 jet -- hogged the attention. But something of far greater importance was unfolding in Riyadh, as Saudi and Russian officials met to seal major deals marking a historic challenge to the US dominance in the Persian Gulf region.
The big news is the Russian offer to the Saudi authorities to invest directly in the upcoming Aramco initial public offering -- and the Saudis acknowledging the offer. Even bigger news, surely, is that Moscow is putting together a Russian-Chinese consortium of joint investment funds plus several major Russian banks to be part of the Aramco IPO.
Chinese state oil companies were interested in becoming cornerstone investors in the IPO, but the participation of a Russia-China joint investment fund takes matters to an entirely different realm. Clearly, the Chinese side is willing to hand over tens of billions of dollars.
Yet the Aramco IPO was a prime motive for US President Donald Trump to choose Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip. The Saudi hosts extended the ultimate honor to Trump -- a ceremonial sword dance outside the Murabba Palace in Riyadh. Hardly 10 months later, they are open to a Russian-Chinese consortium investing in the Aramco IPO.
Riyadh plans to sell 5% of Saudi Aramco in what is billed as the largest IPO in world history. In the Saudi estimation, Aramco is worth US$2 trillion; a 5% stake sale could fetch as much as $100 billion. The IPO is a crucial segment of Vision 2030, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's ambitious plan to diversify the kingdom's economy.
MORE : http://www.atimes.com/article/putin-prefers-aramco-trumps-sword-dance/
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Feb 03, 2018 | oilprice.com
J.P. Morgan beat all other investment banks in their forecasts for the price of Brent crude this year, setting its projection at US$70 a barrel. To compare, the second most bullish forecast on Brent is from Bank of America at US$64 a barrel, while Goldman is even more cautious and has not yet upgraded its Brent price forecast from its US$62 a barrel prediction.
J.P. Morgan's reasoning is the same as the other banks': the global economy will continue to expand, which will stimulate growth in oil demand and healthy prices. This dynamic will also drive WTI prices higher, with the average for the year seen at US$65.63 a barrel by J.P. Morgan's oil analysts.
Despite the upbeat mood, the investment bank's analysts do recognize the danger of growing U.S. and other non-OPEC production. So, while their price forecasts are for the average level of Brent and WTI this year, the bank's senior oil analyst Abhishek Deshpande noted in an interview with CNBC that "This 2018 is going to be a year of two halves. The first half is going to be a ... half of demand, and the second half is more about supply, which is coming back in reaction to the higher oil prices." The first half of the year will be so strong, Deshpande believes, that Brent could hit US$78 a barrel in the first or the second quarter. Yet in the second half of the year, drillers will increase their production in response to the higher prices, and this higher production may weigh on the benchmarks.
There is also something else that may occur before too long: a price correction resulting from the record-high bullish positions on the six most popular oil-related futures contracts. In his latest column , Reuters' John Kemp warned that despite the already record number of long bets on these six contracts, money managers are continuing to place more, with the number of net long bets on Brent alone rising by an equivalent of 14 million barrels in the week to January 23. In total, net long bets on the six contracts swelled by 44 million barrels to 1.484 billion barrels. More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Mamdouh G Salameh on January 30 2018 said:
- Three Factors That Could End The Oil Rally
- Why Is The Shale Industry Still Not Profitable?
- Texas Set For Another Oil Boom
The positive oil fundamentals of the global oil market can easily support an oil price ranging from $70-$75 a barrel in 2018. If similar positive market conditions continue into 2019, then we can see oil prices rising to $80/barrel or even higher in 2019 and hitting $100 or higher by 2020. A $70/barrel will be the for for Brent oil prices in 2018.Citizen Oil on January 30 2018 said:Prices will also be supported by a fast re-balancing of the market and also by an understanding between Saudi Arabia and Russia to maintain the OPEC/non-OPEC production cut agreement well beyond 2018 with some adjustments to reflect changing market conditions.
On the supply side, the global oil market will ignore exaggerated claims by the EIA and IEA about US shale oil production averaging 10.3 million barrels a day (mbd) in 2018 and rising to 11 mbd by 2019. My projection for US shale oil production in 2018 is 9.25 mbd made up of 5.10 mbd of shale oil and 4.15 mbd of conventional oil. My projection allows for a 5% depletion in US conventional wells.
The oil price has to rise beyond $100/barrel before one can talk about a price correction. I have always expressed the view that a fair price is $100-$130/barrel. Such a price will provide a great impetus to the global economy.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, LondonThe daily oil prediction nonsense. Wasn't it just a few months ago the daily nonsense was "lower for longer" LOL Haven't heard that one for a while. Predictions we'd be in a $ 40 to $ 50 oil environment for years if not decades . Oh yeah, then we'd be at $ 10 when everyone drives an EV.
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Feb 02, 2018 | oilprice.com
too much hype surrounding U.S. shale from the Saudi oil minister last week, a new report finds that shale drilling is still largely not profitable. Not only that, but costs are on the rise and drillers are pursuing "irrational production."Riyadh-based Al Rajhi Capital dug into the financials of a long list of U.S. shale companies, and found that "despite rising prices most firms under our study are still in losses with no signs of improvement." The average return on asset for U.S. shale companies "is still a measly 0.8 percent," the financial services company wrote in its report.
Moreover, the widely-publicized efficiency gains could be overstated, at least according to Al Rajhi Capital. The firm said that in the third quarter of 2017, the "average operating cost per barrel has broadly remained the same without any efficiency gains." Not only that, but the cost of producing a barrel of oil, after factoring in the cost of spending and higher debt levels, has actually been rising quite a bit.
Shale companies often tout their rock-bottom breakeven prices, and they often use a narrowly defined metric that only includes the cost of drilling and production, leaving out all other costs. But because there are a lot of other expenses, only focusing on operating costs can be a bit misleading.
The Al Rajhi Capital report concludes that operating costs have indeed edged down over the past several years. However, a broader measure of the "cash required per barrel," which includes other costs such as depreciation, interest expense, tax expense, and spending on drilling and exploration, reveals a more damning picture. Al Rajhi finds that this "cash required per barrel" metric has been rising for several consecutive quarters, hitting an average $64 per barrel in the third quarter of 2017. That was a period of time in which WTI traded much lower, which essentially means that the average shale player was not profitable. Not everyone is posting poor figures. Diamondback Energy and Continental Resources had breakeven prices at about $52 and $37 per barrel in the third quarter, respectively, according to the Al Rajhi report. Parsley Energy, on the other hand, saw its "cash required per barrel" price rise to nearly $100 per barrel in the third quarter.
A long list of shale companies have promised a more cautious approach this year, with an emphasis on profits. It remains to be seen if that will happen, especially given the recent run up in prices. But Al Rajhi questions whether spending cuts will even result in a better financial position. "Even when capex declines, we are unlikely to see any sustained drop in cash flow required per barrel due to the nature of shale production and rising interest expenses," the Al Rajhi report concluded. In other words, cutting spending only leads to lower production, and the resulting decline in revenues will offset the benefit of lower spending. All the while, interest payments need to be made, which could be on the rise if debt levels are climbing.
One factor that has worked against some shale drillers is that the advantage of hedging future production has all but disappeared. In FY15 and FY16, the companies surveyed realized revenue gains on the order of $15 and $9 per barrel, respectively, by locking in future production at higher prices than what ended up prevailing in the market. But, that advantage has vanished. In the third quarter of 2017, the same companies only earned an extra $1 per barrel on average by hedging. Part of the reason for that is rising oil prices, as well as a flattening of the futures curve. Indeed, recently WTI and Brent have showed a strong trend toward backwardation -- in which longer-dated prices trade lower than near-term. That makes it much less attractive to lock in future production.
Al Rajhi Capital notes that more recently, shale companies ended up locking in hedges at prices that could end up being quite a bit lower than the market price, which could limit their upside exposure should prices continue to rise.
In short, the report needs to be offered as a retort against aggressive forecasts for shale production growth. Drilling is clearly on the rise and U.S. oil production is expected to increase for the foreseeable future. But the lack of profitability remains a significant problem for the shale industry.
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Jan 30, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Guym says: 01/28/2018 at 7:39 am
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/US-Condensate-Output-Set-To-Increase-In-2018.htmlGuym : 01/28/2018 at 1:36 pmHeadline and story are disconnected. That is very possibly a reality, but not developed within the article. Too bad, as it was the closest thing to reality posted in awhile. Assume it is a problem with Oiprice, as garbage info is what interests them the most.
They are going to have major problems transporting this, too.Guym : 01/28/2018 at 4:10 pm
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSL1N0UV1YB20150116Blending it will become a problem: http://www.argusmedia.com/pages/NewsBody.aspx?id=1254610&menu=yesTimthetiny : 01/29/2018 at 5:05 amDo you really think we are going to increase production by one million barrels with primarily condensate? On second thought, if they could get to Canada, they could make a killing on condensate: http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/encana-pivots-to-78-per-barrel-condensates-from-prolific-montney-basin/amp
The average eagle Ford is 45-50. Most operators won't consider anything under 40 from shale as it's too heavy. Again with the misinformation.Mike : 01/29/2018 at 6:37 amIts possible to create isopach maps for gravity of oil throughout the Eagle Ford trend; it varies. Higher initial GOR and higher gravity liquids leads to higher EURs; the best EF wells are generally in the very volatile, liquids rich gas leg in Dewitt County, for instance. Higher gravity stuff also can mean lower prices at the WH and market difficulties.Guym : 01/29/2018 at 8:05 amI don't see any blatant misinformation here. I see people trying to understand what is going on. I suggest Berman's twitter feed for some good poop on oil and condensate quality. Light tight oil IS getting lighter and it is a very serious problem with end users. We will never become hydrocarbon independent in America simply because of the quality of the stuff we now produce.
So what's the plan in America? Send LTO to Corpus and ship it to China or anyone else that will take the stuff. We can't use anymore of it in America. Instead of developing heavy markets to blend LTO with, so America can use America's oil and not export it, we have developed this stupid "isolationistic, energy dominance" plan that is shortsighted and pissing the rest of the oil producing world off.
We're trying to 'prove' something to the rest of the world. In another decade or so when we have exported all of our LTO away and OPEC and others have us entirely by the ying-yang again, we'll look back and ask, "who in the hell was in charge?"
Exporting America's oil away is stupid. But then again, less than 20% of America's population has a savings account so no sweat. Let the kids fend for themselves.
T- Then why are they producing it? Under 40 is too heavy?? That's what the frigging refiners buy. Average Eagle Ford produced now, is probably 40 to 45. I am constantly looking at completion reports, and not just re-quoting some expert. Yes, mine at 33, would be exceptional, and I didn't mean to confuse. Over 45 causes problems. Misinformation is caused by listening to experts, and not doing your own research with primary data.If all of the Eagle Ford or tight oil was at an API gravity of 33, we probably would not be importing as much oil. Nor, would we ever have had the huge inventory build.
Over 45, you have a smaller number of options. There are a few refineries in W Texas set up for this, there are a few more refineries set up, but they are small in number and production, and are hard to transport to. Blending becomes difficult, per my post. Bigger option is to export it.
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Jan 30, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Energy News: 01/29/2018 at 7:22 am
2018-01-29 Chatham House Events – Iraqi Oil Minister confident that an oil export capacity of five million barrels per day will be realized by the end of 2018 – a "landmark in the oil industry"Current Iraqi oil reserves of 153 billion barrels due to reach 175 billion in the coming years, says oil minister Luaibi at Annual MENA (Middle East & North Africa) Energy conference
Iraq's oil minister Luaibi said the country seeks to ramp up refining capacity and reduce imports of refined products :"I am determined that Iraq will become a product exporter instead of product importer".
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Jan 21, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
John x Ignored says: 01/18/2018 at 9:12 pm
Will be interesting to see US shale production in response to increasing frac hits, increasing costs, mounting debt wall. These are all legitimate issues which IEA seems to overlook when issuing rosy predictions. Three Stooges thought they could repair a hole in a pair of pants by cutting it out .same logic as IEA.Guym x Ignored says: 01/19/2018 at 5:20 pmYeah, it's those items and more. The biggest they overlook is declines from production. The past two years, they have concentrated in sweet spots, to keep their chins above water. In doing so, they have miraculously brought production back up to 2015 highs, and not much more, although the EIA is reporting imaginary oil. Underneath all that production, wells are declining at a rapid rate. The biggest rates are what they drilled last year. Those wells will produce less than half of what they produced last year. So, how many wells would need to be completed to increase production over a million barrels in 2018? More than current capacity, that's for sure.Dennis Coyne x Ignored says: 01/19/2018 at 6:40 pmHi Guym,Guym x Ignored says: 01/19/2018 at 7:48 pmI agree.
Although tight oil output has increased at an annual rate of close to 1000 kb/d over the past 12 months (Dec 2016 to Nov 2017), I doubt that rate of increase will continue, probably about half that unless oil prices rise more than I expect (and I expect we might get to $85/b by Jan 2019).
I'd say it's a crap shoot as to whether it goes up, or down with about the same number of completions in 2018 as 2017. Ok, let's say we have more completions, I still can't say it will go up 500k barrels. While people place statistics on depletion rates, I haven't seen a well, yet, that can comprehend statistics. As a matter of fact, they defy statistics.
There are 180k producing wells in Texas. There were about 5400 completions in 2017. That's about 3% of total producing wells.
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Jan 20, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Stephen Hren: 01/20/2018 at 10:55 am
I believe the oil price will be extremely volatile over the coming decade. There are major developments in both the supply and demand for oil that are very independent of each other and unlikely to move in tandem, with the likely result that there will be ebbs and flows of both supply and demand that have little relationship to one another, causing wild price swings.I would summarize these as follows:
SUPPLY: The development of medium- and long-term supply appears to be severely curtailed by fracking and a limited supply of suitable sites for new exploration. CEOs are likely worried that any developments will not be profitable because shale will overproduce and knock down prices again. Until a clear picture of this phenomenon is apparent, it will curtail the willingness of oil companies to tackle bigger and more expensive projects. Possible new medium-term supply appears to exist in Mexico's Gulf, Guyana, South China Sea, off-shore Brazil, Canadian Tar Sands, possibly the Arctic. The problem with developing these resources is fracking.
Fracking leads to a quick hit of oil, based primarily on debt infusion, that quickly dissipates – hence I like the term "frack cocaine". It prioritizes rapid expansion of oil supply in the short term to the detriment of medium and long term investments. What Wall Street giveth, Wall Street can also taketh away. The shale oil industry has a similar profile to developing countries like Mexico in 1994 and Argentina in 2005. The flow of money can halt abruptly, and the consequences could be disastrous. The short-term oil will quickly go away, but the investments for serious longer term oil supply will likely be too little, possibly much too little.
Political trouble will likely lead to disruptions in Venezuela, Nigeria, and Libya. The cold war between Iran and KSA will likely remain cold, but if proxy wars get out of hand, massive oil supply disruptions will likely ensue.
DEMAND: The outlook for short and medium term demand is quite good. Global growth is strong, and entrenched systems of car production that favor ICEs will continue. Longer term, EVs and self-driving EVs in terms of taxi systems pose serious threats (perhaps least of all to the US, where distances tend to be longer, density is lower, and gas taxes are cheapest). GM is deploying self-driving cars as a taxi service next year based on the EV Bolt. Developing countries have a big incentive to embrace this technology for their populations: small diesel engines that primarily power scooters and taxis and larger bus engines lead to horrible air pollution, and electricity can be generated within borders rather than imported (whether by coal, gas, wind or solar doesn't matter, so far as oil demand is concerned). Europe's love affair with diesel cars is over and gas taxes (and parking prices) remain high, making EVs and EV-based taxi services very appealing. Battery technology is about to enter a new wave, with solid-state lithium ion batteries that are basically dendrite-free (hence much longer life), super-safe, easier to charge, and 2-3 times the range of current technologies now in production. Specifically I am looking at Toyota, who has promised such a vehicle by 2022. All other manufacturers better be able to match Toyota by then or very soon after, or they will leave everyone in the dust just like they did with hybrids. Lithium-based batteries and lithium itself could see major price swings based on this rapid increase in demand.
Or, of course, the global economy could fall off a cliff at any moment. Fwiw, I see a price range for oil over the next decade as between $25-$250, with very little pattern to its rise and fall. Volatility will be key. Oil may peak and fall several times based on fracking and other short-term trends – a very bumpy plateau. I reckon by 2030 the peak in oil will be obvious, although some will call it from supply while others will call it from demand, based on their preferences. By that date, little to no investment in oil will likley make financial sense, and it will begin to whither away as a global industry. This will be from a combination of reduction in demand due to an EV technological wave that will unstoppable by then, and political collapse that occurs in the interim in countries heavily depending on exporting or importing oil.
Should be an interesting decade!
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Jan 19, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
x says: 01/19/2018 at 9:55 am
Ron is absolutely right about the creaming issue. Major oil producing countries, Saudi Arabia chief among them, are using technology to stave off production declines. These YouTube videos are a perfect example of the extreme lengths being employed to continue production:Michael says: 01/19/2018 at 10:12 amThese videos underscore how uniquely valuable oil is as an energy source and how no other substitute will ever come close to matching its utility.
When the decline kicks in, these technologies will ensure that the cliff will be steeper. While I believe we are living at the absolute peak of world production and that decline will kick in soon, I'm not so concerned about specific predictions. It will happen soon enough and when it does the impact will be severe.
I think of this problem in personal terms -- my son was born in 2000. He will live to see a world of diminishing oil production (as well as sea level rise, resource conflicts, and many other problems). Does anyone doubt that by the time he is 30 (2030) world oil production will be in decline? Does anyone doubt by the time he is 50 (2050) the world will be a drastically different place than it is today? I have lived through the peak period. I cannot envision what comes after. I can only hope that my son finds a way through it.
"Does anyone doubt that by the time he is 30 (2030) world oil production will be in decline? Does anyone doubt by the time he is 50 (2050) the world will be a drastically different place than it is today?"
Perhaps. But such sentiments were very common ten, fifteen years ago, and they were directed toward today, not 2030. So, yes, I do "doubt" it, but that's not saying much, as it's a subject I find interesting but useless to speculate about.
I'm checking in here for the first time in about 9 years. I'm an old-time peaker, who jumped ship in 2009 when it became clear the dire predictions of Campbell, Deffeyes, et al., were failing to materialize.
This doesn't mean I think oil is infinite or anything. I do think our capacity to predict doom is much more circumscribed than our abilities to avoid it.
(I like the new editing feature on this site.)
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Jan 16, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
SouthLaGeo
x Ignored says: 01/12/2018 at 7:11 pmInteresting BOEM report attached – their prediction of GOM oil and gas production from 2018-2027.George Kaplan x Ignored says: 01/13/2018 at 3:14 am
They predict oil production will increase from 1.65-1.67 mmbopd in the 2017-2019 window to 1.74-1.77 mmbopd in the 2023-2027 time frame. They include future production from current reserves, contingent resources and undiscovered resources. Contingent resources are mainly field expansion projects, new fault blocks, new reservoirs, and resources from discoveries that have not been put on production.
They have initial production from undiscovered resources occurring already in 2019 – suggesting that a few discoveries will be made and be on line by the end of 2019. Seems rather ambitious even for subsea tiebacks.
Given the lack of GOM exploration success in the last few years, my biggest challenge to these predictions are their estimates of production coming from new discoveries. They show about 1 BBO of production comes from currently undiscovered resources in this 10 year window.SLG – hope you are well and had a good holidays. Here is my updated effort at the same thing. I've added some new discoveries, but not as big or developed as fast BOEM show. I've included all qualified fields as named entries except a few discovered in 2016 and 2017, and for a lot I've had to make guesses for reserves based on the expected development size (numbers in brackets show nameplate capacity). I might be able to improve things a bit when BOEM reserve numbers for end of 2016 come out, but it's still not going to look much like their estimates. It's noticeable that there's a lot of activity in short term, small tie backs now – but these only add about 5 to 10 kbpd and immediately start to decline. So like you I don't know where they are getting such high contingent resource production additions from unless it is all on existing developments – I guess if a lot of fields get to grow like Mars-Ursa has and Atlantis might this year then there'd be enough, but that seems unlikely to me, especially at the rate they show it.SouthLaGeo x Ignored says: 01/13/2018 at 8:47 am
Thanks George, and same to you for the new year.George Kaplan x Ignored says: 01/13/2018 at 11:53 am
I've made a stab at comparing numerous production profiles for the 2018-2027 window – your's from above, my midcase and downside estimates from a little over a year ago, and BOEM's estimates – both their total estimate, and their total estimate minus any new resources/discoveries.
I plan to expand on this in a future post – including revised EUR estimate ranges.
They are all models with something worthwhile to add to the discussion, which is not what I would say about the EIA projections. They just add have some kind of growth rate, with no basis in actual numbers, and make it look fancy by adding a hurricane effect – and yet this is the number usually quoted in the MSM. I think their predictions a couple of years ago had an exit rate for this year of 2.2 mmbpd – miles off, and when they do try to provide bottom up justification they look ridiculously ill informed.Fernando Leanme x Ignored says: 01/15/2018 at 4:49 am
Maybe they have a higher oil price forecast? Or they don't bother to see if what gets put on line is worth developing? I know this is hard, but try preparing a forecast with prices increasing 3% per year above inflation for 30 years, and you will get a higher forecast.Dennis Coyne x Ignored says: 01/15/2018 at 10:28 amhttps://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=12-AEO2017®ion=0-0&cases=ref2017&start=2015&end=2030&f=A&linechart=ref2017-d120816a.3-12-AEO2017&sourcekey=0 \The BOEM probably uses the EIA AEO 2017 reference price forecast.
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Jan 16, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
George Kaplan x Ignored says: 01/14/2018 at 8:26 am
One thing I haven't figured out with Canada is how they come up with the reserves estimates. If you look at the Alberta oil sands quarterly reports all the projects that are operating, in development (not many now) or approval are listed. Even given the long operating times for these projects the reserves included can't be much more than 50 Gb left. Presumably these are also the best prospects, and given some have lost quite a bit of money in the last couple of years, and often just operate as arbitrage – turning energy in gas to energy in oil – then the remaining 100 and more Gbs must be really difficult to get at. Presumably it will need even more and longer wells (i.e capital) and natural gas (which would have to come from shale now I think); and maybe the EROI cliff starts setting a real limit somewhere, no matter what the price rises to, as the deposits get deeper, thinner, harder, heavier or whatever it is that has made them less attractive.OFM x Ignored says: 01/14/2018 at 9:57 amThanks , guys.Jeff x Ignored says: 01/15/2018 at 3:32 amIn a long term emergency situation, I believe the process of permitting and getting started on construction will take place on a war time economic pace, once it becomes clear that the emergency is long term.
I don't know any more than the next layman about pipelines or railroads, other than welding, which is a minor consideration in terms of the big picture. But it seems to me that laying another pipe, or another track parallel to an existing pipeline or track could happen pretty fast, maybe within a year, or two at the longest, once the decision is made to do so on an emergency footing.
When it comes down to arbitraging gas for oil, George makes a really important point. Eventually gas is sure to get to be really expensive, given that depletion never sleeps, and when it does, this means cost of oil sands will necessarily have to go up quite a bit, maybe even to the point that it becomes necessary to burn some oil sands crude on site to continue production.
If things get to this point, the environmental camp will have a hissy fainting fit, but I doubt it will matter, because once the majority of people realize that they are going to be doing without gasoline, they will forget all about the environment and this includes the ones who don't even drive, as often as not.
The vast majority of us depend on the smooth functioning of the automobile centric economic model to make a living. Even though she doesn't drive, a waitress who lives over the restaurant where she works won't be able to pay her rent if half of her regulars cut way back on eating out due to being short out of work or working short hours themselves. Even divorce lawyers can't make much money when people don't have it to lose. Fruit's good for you, an apple a day is priceless, if it's all the fruit you can afford, but I can buy chicken and beans cheaper than I can buy apples at the nearest supermarket, and compared to chicken and beans .. apples are starvation food. If the overall economy crashes, apples will be a luxury rather than an every day item for people thrown out of work or on short hours. If growers lose even a fifth of our market, half of us will be out of business, and the other half won't be buying very many new cars.
Bottom line, environmental considerations are NOT going to stop the exploitation of the oil sands, or coal to liquids, or any other tech that will keep the economic wheels turning.
There's NOTHING that we can substitute for affordable oil in the very short term, and how fast we can switch to electrified transportation is anybody's guess.
Mine is that we are going to be utterly dependent on having pretty close to as much oil as we do now, on a daily basis, for at least another ten years, and probably closer to twenty. Maybe by then there will be enough electric vehicles on the road to offset depletion and demand growth due to growing population.
The pipeline issue is not complex at all. Canada's heavy oil is landlocked in Alberta (and Saskatchewan) and need to be transported to US or to the coast (west or east). Provinces that produce oil are pro new pipelines but British Columbia (transit and export province) is against. I fully understand landowners (especially first nations) that neither want new pipelines nor expansion of current ones. Once a pipeline has been constructed it will transport crude for many decades, enable production to increase, possibly leak and it´s uncertain what will happen when the pipe reach its end of life.Fernando Leanme x Ignored says: 01/15/2018 at 4:59 amTo some, pipelines are more than just a few bucks.
"When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money."
The keystone XL pipeline and a full upgrader (by full I mean a 200,000 BOPD plant making 38 degree API syncrude) should help reduce the bottleneck. The upgrader takes about 7 years to design, permit and build. Meanwhile they'll have to make dilbit and ship that to the USA gulf coast,The situation in Venezuela is very fluid. Turning production around and raising it to 2.5 mmbopd may take ten years if the current conditions are allowed to continue during 2018. I have a difference of opinion with some youngsters I see discussing more emphasis on light oil production. Problem is I know they are mostly inexperienced MBAs well versed in PowerPoint but lack education or experience taking over an oil field, refurbishing it, and getting it to increase production. I've been doing that on and off since 1978, and it's not easy.
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Jan 13, 2018 | www.thedailyeconomist.com
According to one source out of the Far East, China's Yuan denominated oil contract is set to go live for trading on Jan. 18.
While not an official date announced from government sources, according to an anonymous member of the Futures market where the new oil contract will trade, this is the expected date for Beijing to begin its latest challenge to the long-standing Petrodollar system.
According to the Shanghai-based news portal Jiemian, which cited an unidentified person from a futures company, trading is expected to start Jan. 18. Multiple rounds of testing have been carried out and all listing requirements met. The State Council, China's cabinet, was said to have given its approval in December, one of the final regulatory hurdles. The push for oil futures gained impetus in 2017 when China surpassed the U.S. as the world's biggest crude importer. - ZerohedgeWhile the Chinese markets are not expected to immediately take dominion over the West's Brent and WTI oil markets, several countries which include Venezuela, Russia, Qatar, Pakistan, and perhaps even Iran appear ready to transition away from dollar based oil trade. Additionally, many more nations will likely be willing to dip their toes into this market as it proves itself to be a viable alternative to dollar hegemony, and as protection from foreign policy threats from the U.S. which often uses the dollar as leverage in economic sanctions.
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Jan 11, 2018 | oilprice.com
Ed Morse of Citi says that Venezuela's production could fall below 1 mb/d , which would essentially be a loss of 700,000 bpd by the end of the year.
The losses from Venezuela, combined with potential outages in Iraq, Libya and Nigeria, could reach 3 mb/d in 2018, Citi said .
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Jan 11, 2018 | oilprice.com
Busting The Five Biggest Oil Market Myths
By ZeroHedge - Jan 09, 2018, 3:00 PM CST
RigThe oil market has come to be defined by several narratives over the past couple of years: market rebalancing, OPEC versus shale, Russia's delicate relationship with OPEC, OPEC's conformity with production cuts with the latest deal extension running to end of 2018 and shale's resilience to lower prices.
But these frameworks have created a narrow ideology that could harm the way producers participate in the oil market this year and beyond.
Myth 1: OPEC's exit strategy means exit
The idea that the 24 producers who came together and struck a deal to cut production by 1.8 million b/d in November 2016 are somehow going to 'exit' the alliance later this year is misleading. There will be no exit when OPEC, Russia and other non-OPEC producers decide the market has rebalanced -- based on OECD stock levels reaching their five-year average -- rather a continuation of the grand alliance under amended, and most probably looser, terms.
OPEC's hands are somewhat tied: unwind from the deal and undo all the good work achieved, and so it must continue managing the market in another guise to create stability and encourage long-term investment in oil.
Gary Ross at Platts Analytics has been talking of cuts "into perpetuity" since the historic deal was made and informed industry sources note that the exit strategy is the wrong phrase to be using. But while there is uncertainty as to what that new agreement will look like, the market will anxiously hang on to the exit strategy term and these jitters could serve to keep an ultimate cap on prices.
Myth 2: OPEC's top priority is market rebalancing
Market rebalancing may be the measure, backwardation may be the means but price is the ultimate goal.
When prices tanked after a nine-month extension was agreed in May 2017, there was clear disappointment from OPEC sources even if publicly the whims of the market were dismissed and ministers anxiously waited for prices to recover in the medium term.
The difficulty with a price target is that nobody knows what an optimal long-term sustainable price is so the goal posts keep shifting. Besides, different price levels create new supply-demand dynamics and the price may be influenced by more than just underlying fundamentals such as geopolitical risk.
Related: Is This The Beginning Of An Oil Sands Revival?
Thus, for now OPEC's clumsy priority is market rebalancing. It just needs remembering that bringing down the more than 100 million barrels in stocks to its five-year average could prove elusive given the oversupply in recent years.
There is also the flipside risk in which OPEC tightens too much. Indeed, Saudi Arabia oil minister Khalid al-Falih has admitted that OPEC may need a more concrete goal at its June meeting and when it alters its market management strategy it may well coincide with a new long-term target.
Myth 3: Russia will end its alliance with OPEC
Russian oil companies have begrudgingly stayed on board with the deal due to the iron hand of President Vladimir Putin and steely determination of oil minister Alexander Novak.
Russia is not so at ease with ongoing market management and the fanfare and media circus that surrounds OPEC. Russia also arguably needs the extra revenue less and is more worried about losing market share in Europe and Asia to competition from rising U.S. shale oil exports. But the growing political nexus between Russia and Saudi Arabia, Russia's increasing swagger as joint head of this broad OPEC alliance (as noted at the November 30 meeting in Vienna with everyone awaiting Novak's arrival) as well as the budgetary need for sustained higher prices means Russia could well be in it for the long haul.
Putin is keenly aware of the U.S.-Saudi ties and has been building relations with Saudi Arabia since 2007 when it offered the kingdom nuclear aid.
Indeed, the overriding concern for the world's biggest oil producer is that, should the agreement unravel, prices could plunge putting the country back at ground zero. It may be an inconvenient truth for both, but to wield the necessary global energy influence, OPEC and Russia need each other indefinitely.
Myth 4: The battleground is OPEC versus U.S. shale
Ever since OPEC did an about-turn on its pump-at-will strategy and started working on a market share approach that was first brokered in Algiers in September 2016, the battle between OPEC and shale has been exaggerated. What may have started out as a move to crush U.S. shale in 2014 has transformed into a broader coexistence at the end of 2017 in a bid to find an equilibrium that allows profits to be made and coffers to be filled by all producers.
(Click to enlarge)
There has been growing dialogue between U.S. frackers and the oil producer group.
It could be argued that OPEC's first mission was to stop the runaway train that was OPEC output as producers ramped up production month on month as competition intensified. It could also be argued that the real target for OPEC is still unconventional and uneconomic oil as once investment becomes a free for all, OPEC risks a repeat of an oil boom and bust and the volatility it is trying to guard against. But at what point will deepwater, oil sands and Arctic drilling in general become economic enough to persuade investors to commit?
For example, the U.S. deepwater Gulf of Mexico sector has struggled since crude dropped in late 2014, but costs have dropped and efficiencies improved, and analysts suggest the sector may be at a turning point if prices are maintained.
Myth 5: U.S. shale is simply resilient
U.S. shale producers may well be predicted to make capex gains in 2018, they may have made technological innovations in drilling and completions that have brought down costs and they may have adapted to a lower price environment. In fact, Platts Analytics predicts a U.S. shale production growth of 900,000 b/d in 2018. But, despite all this, a productivity inflection point may well have been reached, a crossroads for investors.
(Click to enlarge)
Cyclical cost efficiencies and geological productivity are beginning to unwind with a combination of inflation and a broadening from the sweetest spots and core acreage.
Related: China Is About To Shake Up Oil Futures
In the Permian, rig efficiency peaked in July 2016 according to the EIA, and has since consistently decreased, while the Eagle Ford and Anadarko (Woodford) plays have experienced a significant drop-off in rig productivity. Moreover, investors want a return on their capital and have tired of capturing resources without seeing value being maximized. For almost a decade, the U.S. exploration and production industry has outspent its cash flows in drilling costs, requiring a constant inflow of debt and equity financing to keep going.
With prices back above $60 a barrel, can investors make a healthy sum? With the biggest producers now the oil majors, their shareholders may prefer returns over market share.
By Paul Hickin via Zerohedge
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Jan 09, 2018 | www.reuters.com
Oil rose further above $68 a barrel on Tuesday, touching its highest since May 2015, supported by OPEC-led production cuts and expectations U.S. crude inventories fell for an eighth week.
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Jan 08, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
HVACman
x Ignored says: 01/05/2018 at 5:23 pmCarrying over from islandboy's EIA thread:Boomer II x Ignored says: 01/05/2018 at 11:20 pmhttp://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/trump-proposes-vast-expansion-offshore-drilling
From post above:
TRUMP PROPOSES VAST EXPANSION OF OFFSHORE DRILLING
(Zinke) "This is a start on looking at American energy dominance,"Regardless of emotional reaction to this announcement, I am skeptical of its viability.
My skeptical mind tells me, when all else fails, look at the numbers. The numbers per MMS chart on Wikipedia:
Undiscovered technically-recoverable oil resources on the outer continental shelf, 2006:
Washington/Oregon – 0.4Bbo Nor Cal – 2.08 Bbo Central Cal – 2.31 Bbo So Cal – 5.74 Bbo All Atlantic + east FL – 3.84 Bbo GOM – 44.92 Bbo North Slope – 23.6 Bbo Alaska less NS – 3.0 BboTotal 85.88 Bbo
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/758Syms2006OCSMapWithPlanni.png
I conclude that most of the "new" oil unleashed by this stunning decision is in the GOM and and the North slope, both of which are well-known by the industry and which have been open to Federal leases in the past. After Shell's bad experience, oil will take a much higher price to get any bids for the NS and for the GOM, this is just BAU. The Atlantic and Pacific Coasts don't have enough resource to be worth exploring, much less leasing.
OK, there are some sharp oil people here on the forum and I'm just a dumb HVAC engineer. Help me. Am I missing something? Are they actually going for the natural gas, and is it worth going after?
Either Trump and his energy folks are so determined to stick it to environmentalists that they are willing to hurt the industries they claim to help, or they know this won't amount to anything but it will impress their hardcore supporters.shallow sand x Ignored says: 01/06/2018 at 12:10 amI sincerely doubt most states will cooperate with allowing all the shoreline and shallow water infrastructure needed to replicate the GOM.Greenbub x Ignored says: 01/06/2018 at 7:24 pmCan anyone see FL allow pipelines running to tank farms located on the shoreline?
I understand the states control from the shore to 3 miles out.
If I am wrong, please point out how.
Shallow, you aren't kidding about these reckless frackers:Mike x Ignored says: 01/06/2018 at 6:57 amI believe that is a good summary HVAC, as is Boomers suggestion that this offshore development legislation is cursory and an otherwise meaningless gesture made toward an agenda that involves eliminating regulations for the oil and gas industry and "unleashing" America's energy might on the rest of the world.Always skeptical of "technical recoverable guesses," my suggestion is to focus on product prices instead and the current reduced level of activity in the GOM. Oil prices are volatile because of the fiscally irresponsible, short investment nature of the shale oil industry and offshore development takes years and years to bring to market. There is natural gas coming out of our ears at the moment because of the shale phenomena; the price is tanking back to the mid $2's and there is no place to put anymore gas.
This is another nail in this administrations coffin, from my conservative perspective. It is enraging the environmental left and will help assure the biggest Democratic turnout in history in 3 years.
Then, much like Trump turned over Obama's legislation regarding offshore drilling, this one will be turned over as well. I don't think a 3 year time frame and price volatility gives the offshore industry enough time to do anything with this, personally. Its fluff.
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Jan 08, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Energy News x Ignored says: 01/06/2018 at 8:09 am
Alberta Canada – Total Production (crude oil + condensates + upgraded bitumen + bitumen)
November at 3,412 kb/day, up +304 m/m. Average production in 2017 to November, up +250 kb/day over 2016 full year.
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Jan 08, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Longtimber x Ignored says: 01/07/2018 at 1:00 pm
Unexpected cargo? A million barrel of NG Condensate in a Tanker? Still afloat and burning Sunday morning 30+ missing. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-07/iranian-oil-tanker-bursts-flames-after-colliding-chinese-ship-near-south-korea?page=1Hightrekker x Ignored says: 01/07/2018 at 1:09 pmMessy -- but this is late stage capitalism.
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Dec 29, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Energy News says: 12/29/2017 at 11:54 am
EIA 914 Survey, October crude oil production 9,637 kb/day, +167 kb/day m/m. September revised down -11 kb/d to 9,470 kb/daydclonghorn says: 12/29/2017 at 12:00 pmTexas October 3,767 kb/day, September 3,561 kb/day revised down -13 kb/d
Gulf of Mexico October (Hurricane Nate) 1,449 kb/day, September 1,649 kb/day, revised -1 kb/d
EIA estimated Texas production at 3767000 bpd vs Dr Dean's above estimate of 3305000 bpd a difference of 462000 bpd. Wow that is a big difference.Dean says: 12/29/2017 at 12:13 pmYes, it is unreal: either at the Texas RRC they had really HUGE problems in the past months collecting data, or the EIA used only model estimates without any form of revision.Dean says: 12/29/2017 at 1:55 pmThe correcting factors of the Texas RRC have not changed much and they showed they usual variability, so that I cannot explain why there is such a big divergence between corrected RRC data and EIA. They only problem that I can think of (on the part of the RRC) is that the hurricane completely disrupted their work: does anyone know whether the offices and data servers of the Texas RRC were damaged during the hurricane? Thanks for the information.
I had a very interesting discussion on Twitter: operators in Texas confirmed me that the RRC offices were not affected by the hurricane and data reporting proceeded normally. At this point the only (legal) reason left to explain the divergence is that the EIA has started including NGL into their numbers:https://twitter.com/ZmansEnrgyBrain/status/946796541406208000
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Dec 31, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
shallow sand says: 12/31/2017 at 11:20 pm
Mike.shallow sand says: 01/01/2018 at 8:43 pmUnless I missed it I am still waiting for TT to explain how he finances the huge AFE's he must routinely get from $10+ million STACK and SCOOP wells.
Was doing some tax work earlier today and noted for June 2017 oil we got $40.71 per barrel. If 12/29/17 close holds we get $56. $15.29 more on every barrel is huge for us as it is for everyone who operates wells Be it you XOM Harold Hamm Russia OPEC etc. As I recall oil prices rebounded in late 2016 then shale went nuts and the price tanked. Their shares tanked too as I recall.
Say TT owns 10% of a shale monster well that cranks out 200K BO in year one. Say his NRI is 8%.
So he got billed $1 million for his part of the well. A $15 higher oil price nets him $240 000 more in year one before deducting severance tax.
So I assume TT would rather get an extra $240 000 in year one and have shale not go crazy talk and crazy drill again as opposed to being able to crow about political crap?
Mike do you know any non-op's on shale wells? How the heck do they finance them?
PS. I know you think it's cold down there in Texas but in my part of the Mid Continent it will be -5 F later tonight. 1 stinking degree F right now. Ouch!!
TT. If you came into shale with a lot of rock solid conventional paid for in full I can see how you could come up with the money.Mike says: 01/01/2018 at 8:48 pmHowever I am then also sure that you just like us went from making a killing on low decline conventional and $90 oil to making much much less and in your case were using almost all cash to pay for new shale well AFE's.
Even if you have zero debt I assume you at least have an un drawn credit facility just in case a good big deal were to arise. And therefore I assume you were none too pleased when your borrowing base dropped by more than 2/3 from 2014 to 2015 and again another 20+% in 2016 due to shale over production crashing oil and NG prices.
If you are big enough to cash flow several shale AFE I assume you have net production of somewhere between 2 000-10 000 BOEPD?
So let us say 5 000 BOEPD. Again just hypothetical to show what shale did to a larger private independent owned by maybe 2-4 shareholders who got very rich 2005-14.
2014 say you could have cashed out for $500 million. 2016 likely cashed out for 1/3 to 1/4 of that. Quite a hit to the net worth.
Further in 2014 you maybe cleared $90+ million pre income taxes before CAPEX on that 5 000 BOEPD? 2016 that went to $18 million maybe and of course you are getting AFE and JIB on the shale that is draining that the near zero? So no shareholder dividends or distributions in 2015 and 2016 after getting big ones in prior years.
We are small and not in a shale area but we have been around the block Dad has been in since the Arab Embargo. Pretty much everyone had to fire someone in 2015-16 it's good if you didn't. Pretty much everyone had the rug pulled out from under them just like in 1986 and 1998.
Thing is I think even most of the shale guys aren't real happy about shale. They know shale overproduction will drag the price. Same bittersweet deal as farmers growing a bumper crop. Farmers made the most $$ during 2012-13 even though most places 2012 was terrible drought. US commodity producers never do good during periods of oversupply. Just the middle men do good then.
Again I'm just speculating on how you do things numbers etc. I may be all wrong. If I am I apologize.
I just know in 2015 and 2016 there were a ton of shale wells completed that won't payout. Maybe not as many in 2017 but they are still out there. Further they hurt cash flow especially when you cannot control the expense recognition time frames as a non-op.
I am so glad we did not own non-op where drilling was going on 2015-17 as it would have sucked away all our cash and then some plus sold our flush production at market lows.
I am happy to see you want $70 even higher than me. So I'll leave you alone now. Take care. I think maybe deep down you too hope US doesn't ram through 10 and then 11 million BOPD next year?
Your 2% production tax in Oklahoma is going back to 7% tee tee; you and Mr. Blackmon are definitely on the same 'mindless' page regarding the future of shale oil: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2017/12/31/the-oil-and-gas-situation-a-preview-of-2018/#7b9a4fe67613Boomer II says: 01/01/2018 at 9:30 pmYou are insulting to people here who actually understand the basic arithmetic of the oil business a little better than you give them credit for. There is very clear mounting evidence that things are not getting better in your industry they are actually getting worse. You on the other hand seem to struggle with reality. Five days ago gas was trading at $2.55 per MMBTU not $4 and after royalty deductions interest expenses etc. etc. 5 BCF will not come close to paying for a $10-11M well. I understand now that even after 35 years of whatever it is you do you can't insult me anymore than you have already tried. I would have to value your opinion first.
If you want to win friends and influence people here on POB it would be helpful if you were to give us your name your company's name where these awesome wells are so we can check production data and tax roles etc. That would give you credibility and strengthen your arguments. Otherwise you are just a cute name embarrassing as that is to my beloved Texas who likes to brag about how much money he makes in the shale oil business. We're interested in the big picture here not you personally.
I still get the feeling that this is a sales job. Why tout the industry doing so great if you don't need investors and lenders?Boomer II says: 01/01/2018 at 2:56 pmI found this. It is from 2016 and it is based on privately held companies. Oil and gas extraction companies was the least profitable industry.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 5:35 pmI just found the same article for 2017. Oil and gas still tops the list.
https://blogs-images.forbes.com/sageworks/files/2017/09/least-profitable-industries-ttm-07312017.png
@TTSurvivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:01 pm
Cling to whatever makes you feel good dude. I guess when you're favorite industry produces a lot of product but can't make any profits doing so one has to find the silver lining wherever they can. Shale is a Ponzi scheme. It won't be long until the music stops and the investors lose their shirts.My credentials are irrelevant to the fact that shale oil is a profitless venture. If not for profit then what's it all about? Take a long hard suck on my ass fuck face. Fucking retard.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:33 pmshale oil is a profitless venture. Deal with it fuck head.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:53 pmHere's one for the Texas teabagger aka the Lone Star State scrotum sucker.Im guessing it didn't go to business school.Lloyd says: 01/01/2018 at 11:28 pmUntil you post a name and a company you can't complain about anyone else's credentials. We know who Mike is. You are nameless likely lying and probably a charlatan. And the emojis prove you are a moron.Lloyd says: 01/02/2018 at 10:57 pmWatcher I didn't say he had to identify himself I just pointed out that he was a hypocrite to demand other people's credentials without presenting his own.Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 9:01 amTo the Teabagger I say "Put up or shut up." Though I do prefer "shut up".
-Lloyd
Hi Texas TeaSRSrocco says: 01/01/2018 at 10:35 amI agree with Mike that LTO producers are not profitable (as a group). I have suggested that if oil prices remain under $65/b (WTI price) that US output may increase by about 600 kb/d (average annual C+C output) in 2018 compared to 2017. If oil prices are higher output may be higher if you tell me what that average oil price will be in 2018 I can make a better output estimate.
I also agree with Mike that I do not know what the future oil price will be. Generally higher World output levels result in lower oil prices (as in 2015-2017) and generally lower oil prices result in lower profits for oil companies ceteris paribus.
ShallowEnergy News says: 01/01/2018 at 3:24 amThe oil price may improve in 2018. However it will likely go DOWN CONSIDERABLY first before it continues higher. According to the COT REPORT (Commitment Of Traders) there is a record Commercial Short Position against oil going back 23 years.
You will notice right before oil fell from $100 in 2014 there was also a high amount of Commercial Short Positions. Today that level is even higher.
steve
EIA Today In Energy: What are natural gas liquids and how are they used?Energy News says: 01/01/2018 at 4:38 am
Table on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSarQ0wUEAACODP.jpg
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=5930#World demand for oil products – JODI Data – As everyone knows January is the seasonal low for demand. Comparing demand in December to January of the next year shows an average drop of -2.2 million barrels per day.Longtimber says: 01/01/2018 at 2:54 pmChart on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DScZ25HX4AAdDwB.jpg
Rather Crude product sort out by molecular weight: WTI is refined to 6% Diesel while global crude average is 34% Diesel.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 8:06 pmOne more for the Texas TeabaggerWatcher says: 01/02/2018 at 12:43 pmGeorge don't want to scroll way up.George Kaplan says: 01/02/2018 at 2:32 pmDon't suppose you know if oil fields do blending prior to sending to assay? Doesn't seem too very conspiratorial. Someone could gin up a rationale and no one would complain provided the refiner gets the same blend as assayed.
Most are blends – i.e. a bunch of producers discharge into a pipeline and what comes out the end is the cargo – it varies a bit depending on the relative flows from each platform and they might have to blend further in the tank farm (e.g. Forties delivers Brent crude I think from 15 to 20 different platforms).George Kaplan says: 01/02/2018 at 3:20 pmI can only think of one time there might not be blending of some kind which is if an offshore platform with storage (e.g. FPSO) unloads as repeated cargoes which always go to one specific refinery (probably the platform operators – but even then there are usually more than one owner and they often take the cargos separately in proportion to their stake).
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hassan_Harraz/publication/301842929_BENCHMARKS_OF_CRUDE_OILS/links/572a065b08aef7c7e2c4ede8/BENCHMARKS-OF-CRUDE-OILS.pdfWatcher says: 01/02/2018 at 6:26 pmThis is from 2015/2016 – but prices are still light/sweet -> expensive; heavy/sour -> cheap. The only thing that can mess that up is if there are transport bottlenecks which is why WTI is a bit cheaper than Brent (it wasn't before LTO came on line).
Tapis is still the lightest and costliest although almost none of it is produced it is still a useful benchmark against which other oil can be rated.
Although there are benchmark crudes I think every cargo is basically a negotiated price between the refinery and the producer (there can be penalties if it isn't quite the quality agreed on and it could even be rejected and I think there is an adjustment based on the latest benchmark prices as the contract price would have been negotiated well ahead of delivery). And that is about as much as I know about the trading business except there is a lot of money that can be made and lost on very small margins and variations.
source of interest my recall of Bakken and Eagle Ford assays of yrs ago and how with an increase in API degs reported in the new assays the middle distillate yield hasn't changed. Should not be -- well it's possible but should not be likely.Watcher says: 01/02/2018 at 1:16 pmhttps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-02/peak-mexicoEnergy News says: 01/02/2018 at 6:06 pmUS implied domestic demand monthly figures – seasonalDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 6:35 pm(Finished Motor Gasoline + Finished Aviation Gasoline + Kerosene-Type Jet Fuel + Distillate Fuel Oil + Residual Fuel Oil + Lubricants + Asphalt) but no NGLs
From here: EIA – Finished Petroleum Products – Products Supplied: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_snd_d_nus_mbblpd_m_cur.htm
The January dip in demand table on Twitter
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSki1qFWsAAK6zX.jpg
Yearly averages & the year over year change. 2017 to Oct.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSko0eLXcAEyl8L.jpg
First chart from comment aboveDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 6:36 pm
Second chart in link from energy news. Thanks!
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Dec 21, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/21/2017 at 10:58 am
Mr. Kaplan,Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/21/2017 at 11:20 amCondensates in a classic sense are part of light distillate group and are traded at a 20%discount to Brent. There is some demand to upgrade heavy oil, yet this comes at a cost. However, the group of light distillates includes also LPG amongst others.
The US exported last week 3 mill barrels per day of propane and other light distillates which just fetch the price of less than 20 USD per barrel.
In my estimate the US has to pay USD 60 per barrel for imports and gets on average USD 30 per barrel for exports. This is a serious mismatch and cannot be solved by an increase of Shale condensate production.
Dennis,Watcher, says: 12/22/2017 at 1:59 amHowever 45 API is still way above the specification of 38 API for WTI. In other words none of the Shale production can be sold as crude oil and must be classified as condensate or more general as light distillates earning substantial price discounts on worldwide market.
If the giant South Pars field in Iran starts up, there are gigantic capacities of these grades coming to the market, depressing prices even further. There is no doubt that Shale production experiences a significant quality problem.
This is in my view also the reason why Shale companies have such catastrophic financial difficulties: they receive not enough cash to cover the high production costs and high depletion.
I'm not gonna go back and find the links again.Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/22/2017 at 4:22 amWTI is no longer 39.6. It's well over 40. That's from the most recent assay data. Historical analysis means nothing if definitions change, and they have changed.
Can search the archives here, or can use rational thought. WTI now includes lighter oil coming out of shale in West Texas. As I recall the assay was at Cushing which also blends it with Bakken flow. The definition has changed.
My recall is officially, not just from the assay.
Watcher,Dennis Coyne, says: 12/22/2017 at 8:41 amThis is exactly the dilemma of Cushing. Officially it is a WTI trading hub, yet in reality most of the inventory cannot meet the the specifications for a WTI grade. It is therefore very difficult to reduce inventory at Cushing.
See link below 2013-2014 avg was about 41:Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/22/2017 at 9:24 amAPI Gravity-≥37 and ≤42 • Monthly averages in 40 to 42 range. Occasional values above 42. • Seasonal variation with winter being slightly higher. • December 2014 average was 41.6. • If your assay does not reflect ~41 API, it probably warrants review.
and
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRAPUS2&f=M
Dennis,Krisvis says: 12/22/2017 at 10:50 amAs far as I can see it from the data this includes all oil input including oil imports, heavy oil from Canada and conventional oil from GOM . Nevertheless, there is a clear upward trend.
Why do you think the US has still to import over 10 mill bbl per day in crude oil and products? There must be a clear reason for it, if not for quality reasons. People would not send for fun oil around the world without reason.
And the reason is that Shale does not produce crude oil, but condensate and light distillate products. It is just in the wrong market and Shale condensate and lighter products must be sold in the worldwide market at a cheap price. This is also the reason the US has still a high oil deficit, despite high condensate and light distillate products exports.
This point was well discussed by Jeff Brown who called it the great condensate con. PAA in the conference call clearly indicated export market is needed for Permian to expand. Delaware basin produces mostly condensates.Krisvis says: 12/22/2017 at 10:59 amBrown asks, "Why would refiners continue to import large–and increasing–volumes of actual crude oil, if they didn't have to–even as we saw a huge build in [U.S.] C+C [crude oil plus condensate] inventories?"
What I see now if that EPD and CME are adopting COQA recommendations and implement them in 2019.Dennis Coyne says: 12/22/2017 at 10:45 amUS refiners did not like the dumb bell crude when you mixed too light a crude with too heavy a crude. Distillation test will reveal that. Lately the Asian buyers of US crude did not like the fact it produced too much light gas. I saw EPD came up with the specs. and it was immediately followed by CME.
US light oil needs an export market or a condensate splitter is needed
Hi Watcher,The definition has not changed it has been 38-42 for a long time, but it is correct that the average WTI has increased from about 39.6 historically to about 41 in 2013 and 2014 and it has occasionally risen above 42 on a monthly basis.
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Jan 02, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Cats@Home says: 01/02/2018 at 8:04 pm
U.S. oil production booms to start 2018
Updated 8:39 AM; Posted 8:39 AMBy The Washington Post
http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2018/01/us_oil_production_booms_to_sta.html
U.S. crude oil production is flirting with record highs heading into the new year thanks to the technological nimbleness of shale oil drillers who have unleashed the crude bonanza.
The current abundance has erased memories of 1973 gas lines which raised pump prices dramatically traumatizing the United States and reordering its economy. In the decades since presidents and politicians have mouthed platitudes calling for U.S. energy independence.
President Jimmy Carter in a televised speech even compared the energy crisis of 1977 to "the moral equivalent of war."
"It's a total turnaround from where we were in the '70s " said Frank Verrastro senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Shale oil drills can now plunge deep into the earth pivot and tunnel sideways for miles hitting an oil pocket the size of a chair Verrastro said.
The United States is so awash in oil that petroleum-rich Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil and natural gas company is reportedly interested in investing in the fertile Texas Permian Basin shale oil region according to a report last month.
That is a far cry from the days when U.S. production was on what was thought to be an irreversible downward path.
"For years and years we thought we were running out of oil " Verrastro said. "It took $120 for a barrel of oil to make people experiment with technology and that has been unbelievably successful. We are the largest oil and gas producer in the world."
The resilience of U.S. oil producers has come as the price of crude rose above $60 per barrel on world markets. Many shale drillers can start and stop on a dime depending on the world oil price. The sweet spot for shale profit is in the neighborhood of $55 to $60 per barrel.
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Dec 21, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 6:55 am
https://www.rystadenergy.com/NewsEvents/PressReleases/all-time-low-discovered-resources-2017Dennis Coyne, says: 12/21/2017 at 8:14 amALL-TIME LOW FOR DISCOVERED RESOURCES IN 2017: AROUND 7 BILLION BARRELS OF OIL EQUIVALENT WAS DISCOVERED
Rystad Energy concluded this week that 2017 was yet another record low year for discovered conventional volumes globally. Less than seven billion barrels of oil equivalent has been discovered YTD.
"We haven't seen anything like this since the 1940s," says Sonia Mladá Passos, Senior Analyst at Rystad Energy. "The discovered volumes averaged at ~550 million barrels of oil equivalent per month. The most worrisome is the fact that the reserve replacement ratio* in the current year reached only 11% (for oil and gas combined) – compared to over 50% in 2012."
According to Rystad's analysis, 2006 was the last year when reserve replacement ratio reached 100%; largely thanks to the giant onshore gas field Galkynysh in Turkmenistan.
Not only did the total volume of discovered resources decrease – so did the resources per discovered field.
An average offshore discovery in 2017 held ~100 million barrels of oil equivalent, compared to 150 million boe in 2012. "Low resources per discovered field can influence its commerciality. Under our current base case price scenario, we estimate that over 1 billion boe discovered during 2017 might never be developed", says Passos.
I think every drilled high impact wildcat well identified by Rystad at the end of 2016 has now turned out dry, with a couple postponed for lack of finance.
Thanks George.SouthLaGeo, says: 12/21/2017 at 8:38 amIt would be great if they gave the gas/liquids split all rolled up. Does it look to your eyes like a roughly 50/50 gas/liquids split in 2017, as it does to mine? (Talking about Rystad chart.)
2017 looks likes another very disappointing year for conventional discoveries. I wonder how unconventional resource adds have been over the last few years. I suspect that is how many of our big oil friends are achieving their annual resource add goals.George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 8:50 amThe EIA reserves are going to be interesting: even before the price crash the extension numbers, which is where all the LTO growth came from rather than discoveries, were starting to fall and reserve changes looked like they might be going negative, which I'd guess is due to decreases in URR estimates; e.g. below for Bakken.George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 8:50 am
And EF.George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 8:54 am
About 50/50, maybe slightly more gas because of the big BP find, which I thought was 2.5Gboe but they have as 2.Dennis Coyne, says: 12/21/2017 at 10:54 amThanks George,George Kaplan, says: 12/22/2017 at 3:22 amYes reserves decreased in 2015, probably due (in part) to a fall in oil prices from $59/b in Dec 2014 to $37/b in Dec 2015, the price in Dec 2016 was $52/b, using spot prices from the EIA, so perhaps reserves increased a bit in 2016, it will be interesting to see the 2016 estimate.
I think they have to use averages for determining economic recovery not spot prices – I can't remember now if it's six month or annual (or other – I think maybe six months to March and September when they reevaluate) – 2016 would be bout the same or a bit lower depending on the time frame.Dennis Coyne, says: 12/22/2017 at 8:59 amHi George,George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 6:56 amI am not sure exactly how it works.
I found this:
https://sprioilgas.com/sec-oil-and-gas-reserve-reporting/
Initially, SEC rules required a single-day, fiscal-year-end spot price to determine a company's oil and gas reserves and economic production capability. The SEC Final Rule changes this requirement to a 12-month average of the first-of-the-month prices.
Using this I get
2014, 101
2015, 54
2016, 42So 2016 reserves should decrease further if prices affect reserves.
EIA reserve estimates were due at the end of November, but still haven't appeared, maybe they don't look so good?Dennis Coyne, says: 12/21/2017 at 8:15 amHi George,George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 6:59 amLast year it was mid Dec, maybe at the end of the year. Not sure why it takes so long as these are 2016 reserves as of Dec 31, 2016.
https://www.rystadenergy.com/NewsEvents/Newsletters/UsArchive/shale-newsletter-december-2017Fernando Leanme, says: 12/21/2017 at 10:14 amEMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR COLLAPSING PRODUCTION RATES IN EAGLE FORD
We have recently observed strong empiric evidence for the theory that a positive tendency in initial production rates for shale wells does not always lead to similar improvements in ultimate recovery.
Cabot announced they are selling up in the EF and concentrating on gas (15,000 bpd), maybe more likr them to come.
I have had to work hard over the years to explain to management that oil completions have to be optimized, and that seeking the highest peak rate wasn't likely to be the best answer. This of course happens because high level oil company managers are good at sales and PowerPoint, but have opportunities for improvement in key areas.Dennis Coyne, says: 12/22/2017 at 2:38 pmHi George,Ron Patterson, says: 12/25/2017 at 7:00 amGreat article, thanks.
This confirms the suspicion of many that the high peak rates on newer wells (often with longer laterals and more frack stages and proppant, in short more expensive wells) don't boost cumulative output much. In the case of the Eagle Ford, wells in Karnes county (the core of the play) only increased output by about 40 kb over the older wells with less expensive completion methods.
Looking at Bakken data, it is clear that this is the case as well, with about a 10%to 15 % increase in cumulative output over the first 24 months and then similar output to older wells thereafter.
Many observers assume that a higher peak production from a well leads to higher cumulative output of the same proportion. That is if the peak goes from 400 kbo/d for a well projected to have an EUR of 200 kbo to a peak of 800 kbo/d for a newer well, it is often assumed that the new well will have cumulative output of 400 kbo. This is incorrect, in fact the newer well is more likely to have an output of 240 kbo an increase of only 20% rather than the 100% often assumed.
Another article citing that same Rystad report:George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 7:16 amShale Growth Hides Underlying Problems
However, Rystad Energy argues that there is some evidence that suggests those higher initial production (IP) rates do not necessarily translate into larger gains in the total volume of oil and gas that is ultimately recovered. A sample of wells in the Eagle Ford showed steadily higher IPs in recent years, but they also exhibited steeper and steeper decline rates.
It seems a bit unlikely that Canada is going to continue increasing production as shown above over the next 6 to 8 years (after 2018 ramp ups are complete). There are no major greenfiled developments currently under construction and these take at least 5 years from FEED to production, there are continuing redundancies in the oil patch as some of the large, recent developments move from development to operations, and there is no spare pipeline (or rail) capacity such that the oil is at about $10 to $15 discount which is likely to increase as Fort Hill's ramps up through next year (and new pipeline permitting and construction is likely to take even longer than the actual oil sands project).FreddyW, says: 12/23/2017 at 5:31 amWith Iran and Iraq – they may have oil in the ground, but they need huge,new surface production facilites to process it and supply water/gas for injection – those too take about 5 years to construct, assuming they can find some outside funding.
Dennis,Dennis Coyne, says: 12/26/2017 at 2:20 pm"OPEC has already demonstrated it can produce more, before they cut back in Jan 2017"
Yes OPEC may have some capacity to increase production. But many OPEC countries are in decline and Saudi Arabia does not have any Khurais or Manifa like fields left to develop. If I ruled Saudi Arabia then I wouldn´t produce more than 10 mb/d even if there were shortages. Better to stay on the platau a little bit longer. Iraq is the country with the biggest possibilities for increases. But they will do so when they are able to, not because of shortages. The other countries you mentioned have mainly expensive oil like tar sands in Canada, arctic in Russia and ultra deepwater in Brazil. Sure we can see increases there but it takes a long time to develop.
"I don't think oil producers were struggling at $100/b, they were overproducing so prices dropped."
US LTO increased production. But conventional prioduction not so much (outside OPEC). Remember this?
https://www.ft.com/content/35950e2a-a4be-11e3-9313-00144feab7de
(google for "ExxonMobil targets $5.5bn spending cuts")"There's also rail, ridesharing, telecommuting, public transportation etc. High oil prices will lead to changes."
Yes I agree on that. Changes will have to happen.
Hi Tech guy,Dennis Coyne, says: 12/27/2017 at 5:12 pmhttp://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/WEOWORLD
World real economic growth has been about 3.5% per year since 2012.
https://www.bis.org/statistics/totcredit.htm?m=6%7C380%7C669
For the World Debt to GDP has increased from 226% in 2012 to 243% in 2Q2017, for advanced economies over the same period debt to GDP went from 272% to 275% and for emerging economies over the same period 145% to 190%.
The story is better access to credit for emerging economies from 2012 to 2017.
A major recession is not very likely.
The IMF forecasts real GDP growth of 3.75% for the World from 2018 to 2022.
Hi Techguy,George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 7:25 amOil prices at over $100/b were no problem for the World economy from 2011-2014, real GDP grew at 3.5% per year. No reason $100/b oil would cause a recession.
The $160/b (2017$) will only be about 3.3% of World GDP in 2026, assuming medium UN population growth scenario and real per capita GDP growth at 1.5%/year and 84 Mb/d C+C output in 2026.
That's a lower level than 2014.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/weekly/Jeff, says: 12/21/2017 at 9:05 amThere was another big drop in US crude stocks by the twip – down 6.5 mmbbls with gasoline and diesel up 2 mmbbls combined. The crude level is fast approaching the middle of the 5 year average – how far does it have to undershoot before panic sets in?
US SPR drawdown this year is about 21.5 million barrels, this is usually not included when calculating the 5y average. Planned annual sales are similar for the next couple of years ( https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=29692 note that the figure shows fiscal year).Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/21/2017 at 4:49 pmThe story being told is that oil markets should be in balance next year or slight surplus if LTO maintains its pace. KSA low production during end of 2017 and the problems in Venezuela should result in continued stock drawdowns or only a small build during the spring (forties supports this too). Next summer driving season can be interesting, assuming the economy remains healthy. 2019 will be _very_ interesting since it will be revealed how much of the OPEC cuts were made voluntary.
As inventories are still way above historical averages, it is important to bear in mind that substantial infrastructure in form of tanks and pipelines have been constructed over the last few years. This increased the necessary working inventory to keep the system functioning. So, the critical inventory level might be much higher than in previous years.George Kaplan, says: 12/22/2017 at 3:26 amThey need a minimum amount of empty capacity to allow for blending and movement, not a minimum amount of stored volume to keep it working. The storage is to cover for upsets and to allow people to make money from arbitrage.FreddyW says: 12/22/2017 at 5:39 amYou are wrong on this point. SeeGeorge Kaplan, says: 12/22/2017 at 3:26 am
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-storage-kemp/should-we-worry-as-oil-stocks-hit-3-billion-barrels-kemp-idUSKCN0T92PP20151120The lowest value the commercial oil stocks have been since 1982 was 247 mb in 2004:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=WCESTUS1&f=WIt was propably close to the point where it was low enough to cause problems at that time. Why? Because from a commercial point of view, it´s just stupid to have more storage than you need. It´s cost money to store it and it´s better to sell it and get the money instead of just having it in storage. Also there is the SPR from where you can get oil if there is supply problems. So really no need to have large amounts of oil in storage.
I was speculating about future undershoot, not current conditions.Dennis Coyne, says: 12/22/2017 at 9:34 amHi George,Longtimber, says: 12/21/2017 at 4:17 pmYes that was how I interpreted your original comment. At least for US commercial crude stocks for the current week we are currently about 95 million barrels above the 2012 and 2013 average for the same week of the year, so perhaps another few years before any panic if stocks continue to decrease by 50 Mb per year as they did from 2016 to 2017. I chose 2012 and 2013 because oil prices were relatively high in 2012 and 2013 ($88/b and $98/b in Dec 2012 and Dec 2013 for WTI).
On rereading your original comment, I think when it gets near the lower edge of the 5 year average, panics sets in, it may take a few years.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-20/another-governor-demands-state-pension-abandon-fiduciary-duties-sell-fossil-fuel-invtexas tea, says: 12/22/2017 at 8:03 am
A factor in Future production if Pension Shale Patch backing is reduced? A sample position breakout in there."You can just say it is an industry in decline and there are better places to put one's money in." yes you can say "the industry is in decline" but then you would be wrong, not usual for you or many on the board. In this case however, the statement is not only wrong but delusional. Both production and demand are at record highs for oil natural gas and natural gas liquids. Of course why let facts get in the way of your political views, to quote a old line; fat, drunk and stupid in no way to go through life, sontwocats, says: 12/22/2017 at 2:03 pm
"Both production and demand are at record highs for oil natural gas and natural gas liquids. "Boomer II, says: 12/22/2017 at 6:40 pmBut profits and stock valuations are terrible over the past five to ten years. Drillers, Explorers, Services, I'd be shocked if you could find an index combo that has come even close to matching S&P, Biotech, Semiconductors, NASDAQ. Not positive but E&P et al might not even have beaten transportation over the past decade. If you've been invested in Oil and Gas you are officially a loser.
Now, high yield bonds might be a different story. But in the wake of all the bankruptcies for the past five years was 100% of all bonds paid? They might have been, not sure.
Oil companies themselves have changed the way they are investing. So I take that as a sign they, too, think their best times are behind them.Dennis Coyne, says: 12/24/2017 at 8:44 amIn terms of financial management, there are industries that have done better and are likely to do better than gas and oil. It's simply not a growth industry anymore.
Hi Boomer II,David Archibald, says: 12/21/2017 at 10:10 pmI think oil prices have an effect on investment, especially outside the LTO focused companies. For the LTO players they seem to focus on output growth regardless of profits, not a great long term business model.
Regarding the gap, a third of the consumption growth over the last decade was from China. If Chinese consumption plateaus, as it very well might, then consumption growth from here will be less and the gap smaller. But putting in an assumption to change an established trend would just add another point of failure. This piece isn't so much a model as a creation story, trying to figure out why past expectations weren't met and where the known unkowns might come from. A big one of these is what the Permian might end up doing. I think that is why industry is paying up to get into the Permian. If you are not in the Permian you don't have a future. And shareholders will pay any amount of money for you to keep your job.Paul Pukite (@WHUT), says: 12/21/2017 at 10:57 pmThe piece was prompted by Ovi's observation that Non-OPEC less the big three has been in decline since 2004 – very encouraging. There are some systems in which a price rise does not result in an increase in production simply because the resource is clapped out. The gold market last decade for example. The gold price rose at an average of about 17% per annum year after year but gold production fell. That is not supposed to happen. Now some mines are digging up rock with just over one part in a million of gold in it and that pays for turning that rock into mud.
Hickory, says: 12/22/2017 at 11:30 pmDavid Archibald says
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2014/04/14/meet-david-archibald-the-fringe-scientist-predi/198886
Thanks Paul. Good to know the bias of the author.Watcher, says: 12/22/2017 at 2:11 amThere was a July report for China imports that extrapolated to another 6.6% consumption growth year for them. No evidence of slow down. Ditto India.Watcher, says: 12/23/2017 at 2:24 amReminder to folks because it is a tad obscure. India's consumption growth is 8% but it's concentrated in an unusual way. LPG. They run motors on LPG, mostly motorbikes.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA/OFM, says: 12/23/2017 at 8:23 amVehicle miles driven. The increase is relentless as is US population growth. In the big smash of 2008/2009 there was a flattening of the increase but not really any sort of collapse. There was in oil price, but there was no need for it since consumption did not decline more than 5%. A quick look at historical consumption not just miles driven shows essentially the same tiniest of down ticks during that timeframe.
So I would say we need a new theory as to why price declines during recession. Doesn't appear to be less driving to work.
Consumption of oil would seem to decline a little bit right across the board during a recession, especially a big one. Construction machinery runs less, people travel less, buy fewer new things. It doesn't take very much by way of falling consumption to reduce the price of oil. The price of oil is highly inelastic, in the short term, and it's like milk.Krisvis says: 12/23/2017 at 10:04 amThe price of milk has to fall a long way before you can find uses for more than the usual amount.
People buy as much milk as they want for their kids, and maybe a little to cook with. NO MORE, even if the price goes down a lot. They don't have any use for it. So .. if it's coming to market, it has to sell cheaper in order for people to FIND uses for it. You can feed milk to the cat, and even to the pigs, if it's cheap enough. Farmers have been feeding excess milk to pigs just about forever, lol. I did so myself when we had more than we could use otherwise when I was a kid.
So . if the price of gasoline falls, maybe you take the ski boat to the lake one extra weekend , which can easily result in burning a couple of hundred gallons, round trip, as opposed to spending the weekend golfing at a cheap nearby course.
Or you drive the old car that's a gas hog more, because it saves putting miles on a newer car. When the price of gasoline bottomed out, I drove my old four by four truck a lot more than I would have otherwise, because I knew I would be retiring it before long, and wanted to get as many miles out of it as I could, saving wear and tear on the car .. which I'm planning on keeping indefinitely.
It broke down yesterday, and while it's not quite dead, I 'm thinking it's time to euthanize it, lol.
I'm also running my big yellow machines a lot more than usual, because when diesel is down close to two bucks, as opposed to four bucks or so, this saves me a hundred bucks a day, or more, if I stay with it, and I've got some pretty big long term projects such as a new lake, which I work on at odd times, whenever circumstances permit.
IF I were hiring out, which I don't , I would be able to offer a neighbor a hundred bucks or more off for a days work, with diesel at two, as opposed to four bucks. That would result in neighbors with cash, and thrifty Scots habits, spending some of their savings, doing long planned work sooner, or maybe going for a new small project.
Overall though construction falls off during a recession.
Most of the increase in total miles happens as the result of people driving new cars, and by and large, new cars and light trucks are far more fuel efficient than old ones.
And people who are broke spend as much on gasoline as they can afford, period. They MUST spend to get to work. If a tank at twenty bucks will get them to Grandma's house and back in their old clunker, they go. A tank a forty bucks often means calling rather than visiting.
It is pretty much a given that Permian oil needs export market. This is from PAA conference call.HuntingtonBeach, says: 12/24/2017 at 2:34 am" PAA comments: If you look at the amount of 45-plus gravity. It's about 300,000 barrels a day now, growing to 1 million plus. So, a lot of those volumes are coming, and that's really the crux of the benefit of a Cactus pipeline being able to take that directly to the water because I think we are going to see a lot of pushback from refiners. We are already starting to see it as far as the lightning of the general stream going up to Cushing.
The refiners don't want any lighter. So, it's an integral part of the strategy and a piece of everything we've been building."
Delaware basin produces 56% oil that is greater than API gravity 50 plus according to Woodmac.
Every week I see announcements to export US oil. Here are some.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171206005367/en/Wolf-Midstream-Partners-Plans-New-Permian-Basin#.Wik_YewJKuc.twitter
https://www.upi.com/More-US-oil-export-capacity-in-the-works/8051512568297/?spt=su&or=btn_tw
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171222005375/en/EPIC-Announces-Approval-New-Build-730-mile-Permian"OPINION-Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/27/2017 at 10:04 am
Don't be taken in by the surge in oil pricesBut oil prices have continued to be volatile. They went down from $114 per barrel in June 2014 to $26 per barrel in early 2016 and moved gradually upward to touch $64 per barrel in late November 2017. On the other hand, economic forecasts expect oil prices to continue to rise to a range of between $70 to $80 by the end of the first quarter of 2018. Futurists in the field base their expectations on the following indicators:
1) The cooperative program and understanding between the Kingdom and Russia, the two largest producers in the market. 2) The continuation of efforts to reduce oil surplus in the market 3) The agreement among OPEC members and some non-members to continue their programs of production reduction up to the end of 2018. 8. Last but not least, we need to develop a culture of saving to increase our capital buildup for the economy. This is not an easy task, and requires a total rehabilitation of our consuming behavior."Interesting development for natgas: Iroquois zone 2 spot prices just shot up to over 32 USD per mcf. This is nearly 1000% up from last month. As much depends now on the future weather, it shows how volatile the US gas market can be – despite massive efforts towards more supply.coffeeguyzz, says: 12/27/2017 at 11:07 amAs the industry has completely shifted the supply from the South to the Northeast, hurricanes are no more a threat to supply, yet freeze offs become now a major issue. Previously just the supply of the Rockies has been hampered by freeze offs. As this concerned just 10% of US total production, this has never been an issue for gas supply. However, as currently 70% of supply comes from the Northeast and the Rockies, freeze off could lead to serious supply disruptions, if the freeze continues.
The next weeks could now be very interesting.
Not freeze offs, simply lack of pipeline capacity in the face of unprecedented demand. When the receipt figures from the various transfer points are published, they should show 100% capacity utilization.Heinrich Leopold, says: 12/27/2017 at 11:47 amAt this posting, New England is burning oil for 17% of their electricity generation. Wholesale spot price for electricity is $230/Mwh, about 10 times regular pricing. Later this afternoon, demand is expected to increase more.
The supply is there in the pipelines, Mr. Leopold, there just isn't enough of them to satisfy demand during this cold spell.
Coffee,coffeeguyzz, says: 12/27/2017 at 12:35 pmI was expecting your reply. Thanks for your opinion.
Nevertheless, there has been huge infrastructure spending over the last years. The pipelines should be already in place.
However, freeze offs are not an issue just yet. If the gas wells freeze off later in the week (temperatures are going to zero down until Cincinnati) , the shortage of supply may be really a concern. There is just one week left and we know it.
This is one of the structural weaknesses of Shale gas:you probably do not have it when you need it the most.
Mr. LeopoldThe pipelines that have been completed greatly favor delivery west to southwest from the Appalachian Basin.
The Atlantic Sunrise is being built that will deliver into the NYC area via a hookup with Transco, I believe.
Deliveries to the north, that is New York State and New England have been virtually nil.
Yes, the storage aspects of all gas products is a challenge, and – as you mentioned – the coming cold days will highlight the vulnerabilities of the situation, sadly, at great expense to many.
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Jan 03, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Heinrich Leopold says: 12/21/2017 at 6:44 am
The main catalyst for more oil demand and higher oil prices is actually the US trade deficit.A high US trade deficit weakens the US dollar and thus ignites higher worldwide growth and oil demand.
This is why Shale condensate production is so important as it reduces the US trade deficit.
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George Kaplan, says: 12/21/2017 at 7:08 amJan 03, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Heinrich Leopold says: 12/21/2017 at 5:49 am
Mr. Archibald,Thank you for your report and for presenting your view about future developments. However, in my view the oil market experienced substantial structural changes besides the volume growth and increased demand from non-OECD countries. The Shale production increased oil volume growth, yet it also shifted growth towards light distillates and left the world oil market short of middle distillates.
This is best demonstrated by the dramatic change in the mix of US hydrocarbon market. As the US market is swamped by light distillates, it is actually hit by an extreme shortage of middle distillates, which is used for the production of diesel, aviation and shipping fuel, as well as heating oil. The recently EIA weekly supply estimate revealed that the US had to import 80% more distillate fuel oil than last year. Distillate fuel oil inventories are 25 mill barrels below last year and reach a multi year low. It is for this reason that the total imports surged again over 10mill bbl per day as the US has to cover the shortage of middle distillates despite a glut of light distillate production. In that sense the US has to import a growing amount of expensive conventional oil containing middle distillates and has to export the surging Shale condensate production, which does not meet the specifications of international crude oil benchmarks, at a low price.
As a consequence, the price of condensate will be falling considerably and the price of crude oil containing middle distillates will be rising in the near future.
Most of the worlds producing countries have production that is gradually getting heavier, condensate is wanted worldwide by refineries for blending and has a premium price over heavy oil grades, which is likely to continue (e.g. EF condensate $53, South Texas Heavy $48; Canadian Condensate $58, Canadian Sweet $49).
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Energy News says: 12/29/2017 at 3:43 pmJan 03, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
Kolbeinh says: 12/29/2017 at 2:00 pm
Politics is a major part of oil markets and keeping Russia at bay is a goal for the administration I guess.And so is the target of 3% gdp growth for the president. But the profound backwardation in the futures market for Brent at the moment tells me that reality is storage withdrawal until shortage for oil.
Especially distillates is under scrutiny because of lack of Venezuela heavy oil and too much light oil from Texas. Conventional oil worldwide is suffering from underinvestment and OPEC policy is as expected to serve their own interests. The main problem is easy oil mid API range (too much exploitation).
Liquefied Petroleum Gases (ethane+propane+butane) October production: 3 499 kb/day +281 m/mHeinrich Leopold says: 12/30/2017 at 8:26 am
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_gp_dc_nus_mbblpd_m.htm
Energy NewsDennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:20 amYour posts meets exactly my point as Shale increases the supply of light distillates yet does little to cover the growing worldwide shortage of middle distillates.
As the US exports mostly cheap light distillates and imports expensive real crude oil the recent trade numbers confirm a swift deteriorating goods trade deficit and consequently a sharply falling US dollar as we have seen over the last few days. All what Shale is currently doing is to depress the price of light distillates yet it leaves the growing supply shortage of real oil unaffected.
Hi HeinrichLongtimber says: 12/29/2017 at 11:43 pmThe increased LPG is due to increased natural gas production especially "wetter" natural gas. The has less to do with LTO output and more to do with shale gas output.
It also has very little to do with condensate which is liquids that condense at the lease (it is called "lease condensate") at ambient temperature and pressure.
LPG is at either higher pressure or lower temperature than ambient conditions.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-29/crypto-qatar-these-are-best-worst-assets-2017Heinrich Leopold says: 12/30/2017 at 6:47 am
NG -- Ugly.. A Trainwreck for 2017.
What Coke Nose Jim Crammer use to say? time to BACK UP THE TRUCK?
As it is too early to assess the impact of the current cold on gas production the recent 40% Canadian rig count slump may serve as a harbinger for the US for next weeks . It is not only freeze offs but but also transport infrastructure and pipeline constraints.Dennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:22 am
Hi HeinrichJeff says: 12/30/2017 at 9:00 amCanadian rig count always drops over the Christmas to New Year's holiday this is not unexpected.
Haven´t seen it posted here yet. Euan Mearns who sometimes post here has a new blog post on "oil price scenario for 2018": http://euanmearns.com/oil-price-scenario-for-2018/ . I like figure 4 think that Ian Schindler has showed something similar for longer time periods (70/80´s).Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:03 pmEuan lacks at least two factors but they are more or less impossible to forecast particularly: i) economic growth (demand) ii) how much of the OPEC cuts are voluntary. Also his calculation of natural decline is wrong he assumes all legacy production is in decline.
Hi JeffWatcher says: 12/30/2017 at 9:52 amThanks. I think Euan has the price about right ($80/b at the end of 2018 for Brent) but I disagree with him on World oil output in 2018.
I think World C+C output will increase at about 600 kb/d per year over the next few years until about 2020 and then will gradually slow down as LTO output and oil sands output will not increase rapidly enough to offset declining output elsewhere in the World by 2025 potentially there could be a short plateau until 2028 or a longer plateau from 2022 to 2029 the higher World output goes the more likely that any plateau will be very short. I agree with your assessment that Euan has overestimated the World decline rate at about 8% which for C+C would be about 6.5 Mb/d not all of World C+C oil fields are in decline some are on plateau and a few are increasing output (at the field level) though if one considers individual oil wells probably 99% of oil wells currently producing (weighted by daily output) are likely to be in decline.
Euan may be looking at things from that perspective which would mean (assuming my 98% guess is correct and that those wells decline at an average annual rate of 8%) we would need 6.4 Mb/d of newly completed wells just to offset the declining wells in order to remain on a plateau.
Euan believes the World will just be able to manage this I think higher oil prices will enable 7.1 Mb/d of oil completions Worldwide over the next year with a net increase in World C+C output.
We will not really even know World C+C output for 2017 until March 2018 (I use EIA estimates) and 2018 output will be unknown until March 2019.
The most recent 12 months of World C+C output (average monthly output from Oct 2016 to Sept 2017) was 80 999 kb/d based on EIA data.
The latest numbers out of China say oil consumption growth this year 2017 will be double last year's. This year is pegged at 6.5% with a month to go. India numbers as of Oct say their 2017 growth rate will be about 8% as it was last year.Energy News says: 12/30/2017 at 12:16 pm
China's crude oil stockpiles the latest numbers: There is a big difference between China's official numbers and analysts calculated numbers (China says +90 kb/day vs IEA up to +1000 kb/day)Krisvis says: 12/30/2017 at 2:21 pmBEIJING Dec 29 (Reuters) -- China had stored 37.73 million tonnes or 275 million barrels in nine bases by mid-2017 up from 33.25 million tonnes at the end of June the previous year according to the data from the National Energy Administration (NEA).
Adding 4.48 million tonnes of crude oil over the 12 months to June 2017 is equivalent to adding 89 600 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
Reuters (December 29 2017) https://www.reuters.com/article/china-crude-reserves/update-2-china-accelerates-stockpiling-of-state-oil-reserves-over-2016-17-idUSL4N1OT2HF
China's (commercial) crude inventories in November hit a seven-year low of 26.15 million tonnes Xinhua data showed.
Reuters (December 28 2017) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-stay-near-high-on-strong-u-s-refinery-runs-china-data-idUSKBN1EM04PYou'll remember this
LONDON October 12th 2017 (Reuters) -- China has built its crude oil stockpiles at a record pace in 2017 and while its purchases could tail off towards the year-end inventories could hit the billion-barrel mark in six months the International Energy Agency said.
The agency estimates that over the first half of 2017 Chinese stockbuilding hit a record 1 million b/day.
Anybody knows what the definition of crude oil by Texas RRC is? The reason I ask the question is because the production increase up to API gravity 40 is only 70K/day out of 767 K/day from November 2016 to October 2017. PAA said in the conference call that Delaware basin is producing mostly oil with APII gravity higher than 45 and needs to be exported as our US refiners will not touch it.Heinrich Leopold says: 01/02/2018 at 1:56 pm
KrisvisDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:19 pmThanks for posting your comment. This is exactly my point.
Shale produces mostly condensates and light distillates which are an excellent feedstock for the chemical industry. However this concerns just 15% of the oil market. At the beginning of the Shale boom Shale light distillates could substitute a lot of conventional oil which was previously used in the chemical feedstock market. This brought down the oil price.
As Shale oil has now serious troubles to enter the transportation fuel market (due to a lack of middle distillates) the US is forced to sell cheap light distillates on export markets and import on the same time expensive real oil containing middle distillates at a high price. So US imports of real oil are on the rise again. This is why we are seeing a rising oil price and US oil trade deficit again. The dollar has already reacted by a steep slump over the last days.
When one looks at the price of oil with API 40-45 it trades at a premium to heavy oil. Oil above 45 or 50 API is typically classified as condensate.Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:22 pmAs George has commented repeatedly most of World output is getting heavier and is more expensive to refine. There are many customers around the World that need the lighter oil to blend with heavier crude. In fact much of the US condensate goes to Canada to blend with bitumen so it will flow through pipelines.
For net crude oil imports for the US see
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRNTUS2&f=M
Wrong chart in comment above sorry( link has updated chart)Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:30 pm
This chart is from EIA (chart above used the EIA data Jan 2015-Oct 2017).texas tea says: 12/30/2017 at 5:14 pmThe US has had net imports of crude oil since 1945 (based on monthly data).
On an annual basis the last year the US was a net exporter of crude oil was 1943. Net imports of crude peaked (annual data) in 2005 at over 10 Mb/d and fell to 6.9 Mb/d in 2015 and rose slightly in 2016 (by 0.36 Mb/d) to 7.26 Mb/d in the most recent 12 months net imports have fallen to 6.99 Mb/d.
"Whatever the case nothing creates job and opportunities the way oil and natural gas exploration does at this time"Boomer II says: 12/30/2017 at 5:57 pm
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/GOP-Tax-Bill-Is-A-Boon-For-Oil-And-Gas.htmlchoke on it boys the truth comes out making america great again not just a slogan anymore
Companies losing money don't pay income taxes anyway. A cut won't do them any good.Boomer II says: 12/30/2017 at 6:04 pm
"Given President Donald Trump's obsession with reviving the dying industry it's almost surprising that the Republican tax bill doesn't contain any new breaks or incentives that explicitly help coal. 'Energy is actually the least of the beneficiaries in this bill and the simple reason is that energy already has so many carve-outs and exemptions in the tax code that a lot of U.S. based companies just pay hardly any income tax as it is ' said Pavel Molchanov an energy research analyst at the financial firm Raymond James. 'So there is virtually no effect on energy of any kind either positive or negative and that includes coal.'"Mike says: 12/30/2017 at 6:24 pmhttps://newrepublic.com/article/146388/tax-bills-gift-big-coal
Choke on this tee tee: because the shale oil industry can't keep its MasterCard(s) in its pants its overleveraged LTO oversupply is the direct cause of low volatile oil prices that has resulted in the loss of over 440 000 oil and gas jobs around the world since 2014. https://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/148548/More_Than_440000_Global_Oil_Gas_Jobs_Lost_During_Downturn . There are still an estimated 55 000 still out of work in America in EOR GOM and in stripper well production. Your beloved shale industry got nothing nada zip out of the new tax law except interest deduction limits which will hurt it not help it.Dennis Coyne says: 12/30/2017 at 8:30 pm
Hi MikeMike says: 12/30/2017 at 9:03 pmIf most of the LTO companies are losing money I don't think they pay federal taxes on losses so the reduction in tax deduction for interest paid would have no effect.
Am I missing something?
No but tee tee is. Its not easy you know getting thru.texas tea says: 12/31/2017 at 5:53 pmTake for instance the help the oil and gas industry is getting by opening ANWAR. Who is that going to help particularly since there is countless geological and depositional studies done that pretty much condemn the entire area? Or lets take the "roll back" of certain MMS/BSEE regulations regarding multi-string pressure and BOP testing in the GOM after the Macondo incident? That is stupid shit that dumb uninformed people buy into that has nothing to do with reality. Reality is those regulations were on the books and un-enforced. It cost BP what $80B to cut some corners? Nobody I repeat nobody is going to let that happen again. Whatever the current BS is about reducing regulations on the oil industry and helping American become great again by unleashing its hydrocarbon "might " on the rest of the world is laughable. Who is laughing all the way to the bank?
OPEC and Russia dat' who. They are watching America's energy policies get worse not better.
you can educate the ignorant but not the stupid who said that oh yea me. any one of my birddogs knows more about north slope geology than you mike. perhaps you can make a new years resolution try to be accurate at least once in 2019 gonna be hard for a "man" like you but give it a shotHuntingtonBeach says: 12/31/2017 at 7:59 pm
"you can educate the ignorant but not the stupid who said that oh yea me. "shallow sand says: 12/30/2017 at 9:00 pmEnough said
I am wondering if EIA is including NGLs as I see OK production has ramped up quite a bit. A lot of OK liquids are 55+ API.Guym says: 12/31/2017 at 8:40 am
Read the post twitter link Dean posted above. Most interesting is a post by a CPA who was involved with the 914 reporting. He thinks it is double counting the M&A production. However within his post he describes that the 914 survey is actually done by a third party contractor. In his discussion with him they were using the higher of projected drilling info or operator report. To put it in my perspective I don't see the 914 having anything like the consistency of the RRC. IMG Crown Energy Services is the third party contractor. Look up their website. Not a lot of time spent on it for a heavy duty IT company so no warm fuzzies there. One could speculate that the primary income is from the EIA contract. EIA paints themselves into a corner with wild projections on Texas production. They call up the third party contractor and question the figures they think are too low. Contractor has to do something to keep the contract don't they?Dennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:30 am
Now nobody at EIA can get fired for cooking the books because they have plausible deniability.
Hi GuymGuym says: 12/31/2017 at 11:30 amFrom May 2015 to July 2017 the 914 survey was pretty consistent (within 275 kb/d and 365 kb/d of drilling info estimate average 320 kb/d). Perhaps that has changed I would not put much weight on a Twitter comment by a CPA. We will see in a few months what the drilling info estimates are which are usually within 1% of the final output after 3 to 5 months. So by March or April we may know what Oct 2017 TX C+C output is.
As Mike says in Texas they are patient.
That CPA owns his own oil company who reports to the contractor. Do you?Dennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 4:15 pm
No. Has he been reporting NGL (in the US this would be natural gas plant liquids) to the contractor as C+C?Guym says: 12/31/2017 at 4:50 pmIn any case I agree with Mike patience is needed. Perhaps the 914 survey is now covering a much higher percentage of Texas C+C output relative to the May 2015 to July 2017 (27 month long) period.
Time will tell.
"Double counting M&A production" has nothing to do with NGLs. He was admonished by the contractor for under reporting production that was sold off. Instead of using his figures they used his old wells as listed in the drilling info estimate. Hence double reporting it. But what was more interesting is the contractor part. They can send out the survey but can determine whatever they want to include.Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 8:53 am
Hi GuymDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 8:48 amThe EIA contractor checks with operators when reported numbers are different than expected and sometimes they use the drilling info data instead if the numbers don't look right.
The numbers are revised over time as more data comes in. These are estimates nobody knows final output for many months (for the entire state of Texas or all of the US).
Hi GuymDennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:34 amThe link below covers the 914 survey methodology. Yes mergers and acquisitions are a potential problem. The EIA does it's best to account for these to avoid double counting.
About 450 of the largest oil and gas companies that produce about 90% of US oil and gas output (of approximately 13 000 petroleum producers in the US) fill out the 914 survey.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/production/pdf/eia914methodology.pdf
Hi Shallow sandWatcher says: 12/31/2017 at 11:21 amNo not NGL only crude plus lease condensate. The EIA has never based C+C on API gravity just liquids produced in the oil field as far as I know.
A bit of recap for newcomers:George Kaplan says: 12/31/2017 at 11:40 amAPI gravity is a density measurement of oil. Measures how heavy it is compared to water. The higher the API number the lighter the oil. Refineries do not create "middle distillates" out of nothing. They extract them from oil. "Middle distillates" are middle heavy liquids within oil. Diesel and Kerosene. Read truck/tractor fuel and jet fuel. Gasoline is a light distillate. Heavy distillates would be something like bunker fuel or asphalt.
This is all within the same liquid called "crude oil". Traditional labels are applied as regards the word "quality". High "quality" crude oil was light and "sweet". Sweet refers to having low content of materials that cause problems in refining. Like sulphur or vanadium. But tradition has run up against the new nature of crude oil. It has gotten too light. It often lacks middle distillates.
Here is a chart posted a year or so ago by Jeffrey Brown: https://imgur.com/a/cqtvu
I have examined assays of many different oil types from all over the world. Jet fuel boils about 160 degs C and the heaviest diesel boils up around 350 degs C. So "middle distillates" that are actual fuel for things that matter are in the assay between those temps.
https://www.statoil.com/en/what-we-do/crude-oil-and-condensate-assays.html
Scroll down to their .XLS spreadsheets for various blends that they have assay'ed. I would say it does not conform to the chart. BUT. There are some caveats scattered around. "Blend". Dumbbell liquid. This means if oil from one field doesn't have what you want in it you add oil from another field to it to get the constituent parts. Assay it and declare it looks good. BP has an assay website as do others like Capline from Marathon.
All this was to address the question above -- "what is the definition of oil". Study all that and you'll see that the definition is whatever the money agenda says it should be that moment.
Crude oil is only getting lighter in the US everywhere else it's getting heavier and the light LTO is likely to be in greater demand for blending. Refineries set up for heavier oil usually have crackers -- either fluid crack crackers or hydrocrackers -- which can convert heavier components to gasoline and diesel but can only go so far and blending lighter oil allows the throughput to be maximised. There is no current problem from the oil range of oils being produced.Energy News says: 12/31/2017 at 12:22 pm
HOUSTON (Reuters) -- Several oil pipeline companies this month agreed to move ahead on multi-billion-dollar projects that would link Texas shale fields to Gulf Coast export hubs offering new outlets for burgeoning output expected in 2018.texas tea says: 12/31/2017 at 6:09 pm
That information must leave many readers here perplexed. You have pipeline companies refineries etc. building out the infrastructure to process and transport the oil but Mike tells us it's all hype not to be believed geez and even Dennis agrees with him what are we to believe? I bet they did not do their due diligence probably just read a few presentation and decided hey lets go spend a few billions of dollars for the hell of it Right Mike? I think I will follow the money on this one and not the want-to-be pretend only in cyber space oil men bloggersshallow sand says: 12/31/2017 at 8:33 pm
TT.Mike says: 12/31/2017 at 9:33 pmAll I'm worried about is you shalies killing the oil price again. 2015-17 not good for anyone actually making $$ from the commodity of oil. (Corporate management gets theirs regardless of profits so I don't count them).
And if your response is "compete" I will know you are not for real on owning oil. Because I don't know how a non-op can make $$ on wells that do not payout. Shale CEO's can but non-ops can't IMO. So I don't know how you could be happy seeing Shale getting ready to kill the oil price again?
The only thing I can see killing $55-65 WTI at this point is overproduction of US shale. And it will hurt them too if they overproduce. The shareholders not the management. But it should absolutely destroy non-ops like you if we once again have $25 oil and $1.50 gas.
Corporate shale CEO's receive enormous salaries and compensation packages based on booking fake reserves. The profitability of their corporations or shareholder equity means little to them. Midstream companies that gather shale oil and shale gas are totally reliant on the shale oil industry to continue to be able to borrow more money. They are sheep in a flock. The entire thing from the top down is a façade using OPM. Nobody borrowing this money is personally on the hook; there are no personal loan guarantees nobody is going to be ruined when the entire thing collapses. The scheme is based on getting as much as you can as fast as you can and getting out unscathed.Why promote or cheerlead for an industry that is obviously grossly unprofitable and that is going to ultimately leave hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars of debt for our children to deal with? Because you don't care. You don't give a rat's ass. Because exactly like a corporate shale oil CEO royalty owners receiving income from shale wells free and clear of all costs don't care about debt about profitability about depleting our nations remaining hydrocarbon resources and conservation they just care about themselves.
The Peak Oil Barrel community can decide for itself who the "pretenders" actually are.
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Jan 03, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
x says: 12/23/2017 at 7:09 am
Dennis, I am not capable of predicting what the price of oil is going to be in six months, much less six years. Neither are you. Shallow and Fernando, both oily folks, might state a "range" scenario but if you were to pen them down they'd likely say they don't know either.Mike says: 12/24/2017 at 12:06 pmIf the predictor of our hydrocarbon future has to "qualify" those predictions based on what the price of oil might be, I am sorry, I don't see the point in the prediction at all. You, Mr. Archibald, and many others all miss the point entirely with regard to LTO growth in America. You assume that because LTO has grown, it will continue to grow. You focus on oil prices to make your predictions come true and ignore, entirely, that shale oil extraction in America is not nationalized, it is managed by private enterprise. Private enterprise must succeed, it must be profitable enough to drill new wells from old wells. Now, because of poor business decisions in the past the US LTO industry must manage its old debt, ultimately pay down that old debt AND create sufficient net cash flow to drill new wells without getting further in debt. It cannot do that at prices short of $100 or more for a sustained period of time. It is a business, Dennis; I am sorry you cannot seem to grasp that.
In the oil business debt is having stage 2,3 or 4 cancer. Ignoring its treatment is not the cure. Again, take Shallow's CLR's diagnosis: it has $6.6B of debt and only $10M of COH. If independently audited its reserves would not cover its long term debt. It is basically insolvent. It belongs in Hospice Care. You are relying on corporations like that to make your predictions come true.
I suggest you quit worrying about the price of oil and start focusing on profitability and debt. You seem to embrace debt as being acceptable in the reserve growth LTO business model. That is a very bad mistake, a mistake common to people that have never been in the oil "business," that must write checks, receive revenue from the sale of oil and gas production and be profitable. Or not eat.
Instead I suggest you focus on where the money is going to come from to keep funding this miracle of US LTO growth. That growth potential is not price sensitive, it is capital sensitive.
Rune has a good handle on it all, indeed. Regarding LTO debt and new tax laws, he was kind enough to recently send me this:Peter says: 12/22/2017 at 3:27 amhttps://wolfstreet.com/2017/12/22/what-will-the-tax-law-do-to-over-indebted-corporate-america/
Merry Christmas, Dennis.
Hi DennisTechGuy says: 12/26/2017 at 1:56 amIf global oil demand increases by around 1.5mbld as it has done over the last few years then $90 + oil is very possible. Obviously it also depends on how strongly US tight oil grows and what OPEC will do.
At the moment US growth and OPEC spare capacity could drive down prices again. I believe in around 3 years time there will be very little OPEC spare capacity and increases from the US, Canada, Brazil, Iraq new developments etc will not be able to meet the extra demand.
Many people do not realise how many electric vehicles would have to be sold to cope with a world where oil production stops growing. About 30 to 40 million of the 100 million vehicles would have to be fully electric, hybrids would not be enough.
Peter Wrote:OFM says: 12/21/2017 at 4:34 am"Global demand has been slowing down in recent years, so the graph does not show a gap of 8 million between demand and supply."
Seems likely that global demand will likely to decline as Western & Asia populations continue to grow older. Currently the global economy has been propped up by ZIRP and lots of QE (China, Japan, EU, & US). Worldwide Debt has nearly doubled since 2008 due to cheap & easy credit. Sooner or later there will another global recessions that forces a reduction in Oil demand.
The big factors for future energy costs is the lack of CapEx in replacing consumption and the lack of finding replacement reserves. A lot of big western projects that would have replaced depletion were cancelled. Western Oil companies opted to drill in Wall Street (ie Stock buybacks) or buying up smaller companies instead of developing newer fields (Artic and Offshore).
I suppose sooner or later Middle East Producers will follow the Western Oil Companies by choosing to Drill Wall Street instead (ie the Saudi Aramco IPO).
My guess is that Oil pricing does not increase much (excluding geopolitical events/natural disasters) over the next 2 years. I think the odds favor a decrease in prices and consumption over the next 2 years caused by another global recession: Interest rates are rising at a time when consumers are borrowing more to meet ends, and consumers savings rates are near zero (perhaps going negative again).
I don't do any modeling and number crunching. Couldn't even if I wanted to, due to lack sufficient statistical and computer skills.Chain Oil says: 12/23/2017 at 10:46 amBut I don't see where all this new production is supposed to come from, without the price going up. There's nothing in the news I read here, or at a number of other places, indicating that any huge new fields that are going to be cheap to produce have been discovered in recent times, and are in the process of being developed.
So how is it that new production adequate to offset the inevitable decline of the huge older fields that still supply the bulk of the oil, PLUS enough more to actually increase production somewhat, can be achieved without the price going up quite a bit?
Where's the new CHEAP oil supposed to come from, considering that oil companies these days are going after ever smaller and more expensive to produce fields ?
Some of my neighbors, and some of my family members, have amazed everybody who knows them, including their physicians, by continuing to be productive workers right on into their eighties.
But when they did finally " decline " or "deplete" they went down hill pretty damned fast. Men and oil fields are subject to the SENECA CLIFF.
I disagree with our honorable and esteemed founder Ron Patterson about the odds of some of us pulling thru the coming bottleneck more or less whole, but I'm of the opinion he's right about a lot of production being maintained these days by practices such as infield drilling and water flooding and so forth that will result in pretty sharp declines in production at many major oil fields sometime in the not very distant future.
Maybe the people who think like Tony Seba are right, and our need of oil is peaking now, or will peak, very soon. I don't see it happening within the next ten years though, because I just don't see electric vehicles displacing oil burners so quickly, considering the size of the vehicle fleet, and the number of relatively new ICE cars that will continue to be sold for some years yet.
Matt Simmons was ahead of his time, like a lot of people who are hailed as visionaries after they're gone, but he nailed it when he said rust and depletion never sleep.
Demand for use as auto and light truck fuel may indeed peak and plateau in rich western countries, but unless the world wide economy goes sour, demand overall won't peak until batteries or fuel cells get to be fully competitive in up front terms.
Money has a hell of a lot of time value, and most people aren't going to lay out a lot of money up front unless they earn an excellent return by doing so . This is particularly true in the case of small businesses and the large majority of individuals, because they don't HAVE a lot of money to lay out up front, and lack good enough credit to borrow enough to pay a significant premium for an electric vehicle, considering their other needs for borrowed money.
The oil biz is unlike any other, because most of the key players are GOVERNMENTS, and governments have never been noted for their business acumen.
Sure governments want to make money on their oil, but the ordinary rules that allow us to predict what other industries will do just don't apply well to oil, because politicians have too many other things to consider, in addition to the bottom line.
Consider this. Suppose you are the head of government, with enormous power, dictatorial power, so that you can do more or less as you please. You must have money coming in at all times, and once you're selling oil , you're HOOKED on the money.
So you own your country, as a practical matter, and you therefore own your own ( national ) oil company. Oil's cheap. You expect it to STAY cheap for years. But maybe you know a buyer that will pay you a hell of a lot of money for your oil company, fifty times, a hundred times, maybe , the net cash flow you're getting after paying the oil company's expenses. Now if you were an ordinary businessman, such as the ones with an MBA from any of the Ivies, you would sell in a flash, and take that cash and put it into another business.
But since you're a little tin pot dictator, or even time dictator, like the king of Saudi Arabia, you won't give selling even a passing THOUGHT. ( Remember it always takes at least an exception or two to prove a rule, lol, and in the case of the Saudi's selling a little .. it's a pig in a poke, and they're going to maintain total control, and they're just MAYBE pricing it at a very large premium, lol) .
You CAN'T sell, it just doesn't work that way, because you have to control the oil industry in order to control your country. Politicians who expect to stay in power more or less forever very rarely sell national assets that generate cash. The money they could skim off isn't worth as much to them as the power that comes with control. Sure they sell a money losing operation such as a water works sometimes, because that HELPS them stay in power.
But even though they are constrained from selling the assets, they are virtually always compelled to sell produced oil, and the lower the price, the MORE they need to sell, ouch! And the bigger the bind they're in for cash, the less likely it is that they will be making the long term investments necessary to bring new production online , or even spending the cash to preserve current production by properly managing the oil fields.
The amount of money actually spent by the big independent super national oil companies on new production is trivial, compared to the amounts spent by national oil companies, and they aren't spending much, not even a piddly hundred million here and there, if they can avoid doing so.
I kept my old Daddy's orchard up and running right thru some very tough times, losing money a lot of years, making almost nothing some other years, because it was his LIFE, his passion. And I had every reason to believe that good times would return, because almost everybody backed way off on planting new trees, and lots of growers simply quit altogether.
But I didn't plant new trees, because I was getting old myself. My neighbors who did are doing VERY well the last few years, as farming goes, because prices are very good in relation to costs, and will stay that way until the industry as a whole manages to over do production again. Both oil and apples involve long lead times, lol. If oil production capacity falls short of demand, the price will go up, substantially, and stay up a long time, as long as the economy holds up, and as long as there aren't viable substitutes. Batteries are nice, but it's going to take a LONG time for batteries to displace more even five percent of oil consumption.
I'm as far from an expert as east is from west, but according to everything I read, investment in the oil industry is at very low levels, world wide, and oil wells are like apple trees Ya gotta have new ones, cause the old ones quit on ya.
I'm dead sure oil will go up unless the world wide economy goes to hell. But .. I've been dead wrong before. ;-)
Thank you soooo much for that brilliant essay, written clearly and understandably for us laymen.
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Jan 03, 2018 | peakoilbarrel.com
says: 12/27/2017 at 8:37 pm
So, is there a big wall of US shale oil coming from Texas that will dash my "happy times" of $55-65 WTI?Heinrich Leopold x Ignored says: 12/30/2017 at 8:12 amSo thankful to get up to this level after 36 months of headaches about the oil price. Seems the only thing that could screw it up is US shale, which apparently is set to explode in 2018.
I saw someone touting Halcon stock today on SA. Making a big deal about having little debt. Too bad they flushed about $3 billion of debt when they went BK. I'm sure Mr Wilson (CEO) is, "still getting his" so to speak.
My brother is griping about why he hasn't been able to draw a salary for the last three years, heck all the shalie management has! Have to remind him we aren't in the shale fantasy land. He knows, he's just blowing like I'm prone to do.
If I don't post anymore this year, happy New Year everyone!! Things are looking up, just hope the shale industry doesn't torch it again!
Shallow sand,Energy News x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 4:36 amIN my view you will be sleeping well in the next year. Shale increases mostly the supply of condensate and light distillates, which does little to cover the worldwide shortage of middle distillates. So, the price of 'real' oil will very likely increase over the next future whereas the prices of light distillates (propane, butane, pentane , LPG, NGPL composite .. ) are very likely depressed. Light distillates can substitute middle distillates to some degree, yet the potential is limited. So, in that sense I wish you a happy and successful New Year.
INEOS Forties Pipeline System Media Update – 28/12/2017Stephen Hren x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 12:59 pm
All restrictions on the flow of oil and gas from platforms feeding into the pipeline system have been fully lifted. All customers and control rooms have now been informed.
https://www.ineos.com/businesses/ineos-fps/news/ineos-forties-pipeline-system-media-update/
https://uk.reuters.com/article/forties-oil/update-1-ineos-sees-forties-oil-flows-back-to-normal-around-new-year-idUKL8N1OS0VUhttps://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/world/americas/venezuela-oil-pdvsa.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=HomepageMushalik x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 4:37 amOil production in Venezuela appears to be in free fall.
Shale gas revolution did not last long for BHP – the Fayetteville storyHeinrich Leopold x Ignored says: 12/30/2017 at 6:37 am
http://crudeoilpeak.info/shale-gas-revolution-did-not-last-long-for-bhp-the-fayetteville-storyThere is no question, Shale is a disaster for investors. Nevertheless, it is a blessing for Wall Street as high oil and gas production ensures dollar stability and a growing bond bubble. The only question is when will investors will wake up. As it is perfectly OK for small companies to sacrifice themselves and burn the cash of investors through, big companies are less willing to do so. Who is next? XOM, Statoil , APA ?Energy News x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 7:31 amThe ratio of commodities / S&P500 is at a record low, S&P_GSCI / S&P_500Dennis Coyne x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 7:33 am
The S&P GSCI currently comprises 24 commodities from all commodity sectors – energy products, industrial metals, agricultural products, livestock products and precious metals.
Bloomberg chart on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSCfWj6W4AA7xyW.jpghttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-27/all-that-new-shale-oil-may-not-be-enough-as-big-discoveries-dropGeorge Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 9:39 amDiscoveries of new reserves this year were the fewest on record and replaced just 11 percent of what was produced, according to a Dec. 21 report by consultant Rystad Energy. While shale wells are creating a glut now, without more investment in bigger, conventional supply, the world may see output deficits as soon as 2019, according to Canadian producer Suncor Energy Inc.
Are we not now near enough to 2019 to say that there just isn't time to bring major new conventional projects on-line before mid to late 2019? The only offshore projects that could be approved and developed earlier than that would be single well tie backs using the wildcat/appraisal well as a producer, probably no more than 5 to 10 kbpd and in immediate (and likely rapid) decline, and would be dependent on there being spare processing capacity on a nearby hub (i.e. production the new production would be mitigating decline not adding output).George Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/29/2017 at 5:00 amBut the issue isn't lack of discoveries this year, as the headline implies, it's the lack of recent FIDs which might be in part because of the drop off in discoveries in 2012 to 2015 (for all oil, but particularly easily developed oil), coupled with high debt loads, and prices that aren't high enough (or at least not yet for long enough) to allow development of what resources there are available to the IOCs. As prices rise and IOCs become more confident and are able to pay dividends as well as fund longer term developments then the really low discoveries in 2015 to 2017 might give them far fewer options than people expect (noteworthy is that any discoveries in that period that have been attractive, like Liza, have been immediately fast-tracked, so there really isn't much of a backlog of attractive projects at all).Dennis Coyne x Ignored says: 12/30/2017 at 7:37 amHi George,George Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 9:50 amHeadlines are almost always not quite right.
I was basing my comment on what the article said. Many of the companies are aware that discoveries have been low and not many projects will be coming online soon.
Mexico may be heading for a period of accelerated decline (above 10%). Their two onshore regions and the southern marine region are falling at 15 to 20%, and the largest producing region (Northern Marine, which includes KMZ and Cantarell) looks like it may be starting to accelerate. The non KMZ nd Cantarell fields had been the only ones increasing, but look to now be in decline or at least on plateau, and by PEMEX forecast KMZ should be off plateau in the next couple of months or so. Mexico has now stopped exporting light oil (which mostly comes from the three smaller regions, with KMZ and Cantarell producing heavy and medium heavy) and will presumably be looking for increasing imports of it, which is probably good for the Texas LTO producers. Operating rigs have recently been declining fast.George Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 9:53 am(Apologies if this has already been posted)
ps – for numbers: last month C&C was down 35 kbpd, and overall 210 kbpd y-o-y (almost exactly 10%).Lightsout x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 10:11 amHi GeorgeGeorge Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 11:27 amDo you have any information on how the ramp up of production is going for the Western isles project following first oil on 15th November.
On a side it looks like the Weald basin myth is starting to unravel.Not yet -first numbers for December start-up should be in March, it's a question of limiting their losses at current prices I think. All the wells were predrilled so ramp up should be fast but I wouldn't be surprised if they get pretty low reliability in the first 6 to 12 months given all the construction problems they had. Also interesting that Catcher started up on time, against most expectations. Wonder if Clair Ridge will make it this year – do you know if there are big tax benefits from depreciation for starting within a given calendar year in the UK (or might be financial yar end is more important)?George Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/29/2017 at 10:19 amThis shows how fast the SW marine region fields are now falling (a lot of small fields were added 2007 to 2015 and are now in steep decline).Greenbub x Ignored says: 12/30/2017 at 1:26 amThere seems no reason this and the two land regions shouldn't continue to fall at current rates (they may even accelerate given how the rig count has dropped), and if KMZ follows the predicted PEMEX curve Mexico could drop around 350 kbpd this year, possibly the same in 2019 in decline (but with 60 kbpd additions due from Abkatun), but maybe approaching as low as 1000 kbpd by mid 2020, which is probably the earliest ENI will be able to get their shallow water field on line if they fast track it.
thanks, GeorgeEnergy News x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 1:04 pmDallas Fed Energy Survey – December 28, 2017 – At what West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price would you expect the U.S. oil rig count to substantially increase?Frugal x Ignored says: 12/28/2017 at 11:11 pm
Above $60, chart on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSJdl-zX0AAUwD4.jpg
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/surveys/des/2017/1704.aspx#tab-questions$16B Mackenzie pipeline project cancelledGeorge Kaplan x Ignored says: 12/29/2017 at 6:50 amCALGARY -- Imperial Oil says its much-delayed $16.1-billion project to build a natural gas pipeline across the Northwest Territories from the coast of the Beaufort Sea to northern Alberta has finally been cancelled.
IRAQ FORMS PANEL TO OPERATE MAJNOON FIELDHeinrich Leopold x Ignored says: 12/29/2017 at 9:28 amOriginally the plan was to increase Majnoon to over 1 mmbpd. That has now been downgraded to 400 kbpd (from current 220). Shell and Petronas have pulled out and a "government panel" will oversee the development. I'd bet on continued decline rather than any increase, and potential for significant reservoir damage along the way.
Similarly for Nasirya oil field – intend is to increase from 90 kbpd to 200, using a local oil company that also sounds like it has a lot of government input.
To me none of this ever declining brownfield development with IOCs pulling out, and promises of more exploration "coming" is compatible with the claims for their discovered resources (developed or not), or any chance of a quick ramp up if oil prices start to inflate rapidly after 2018.
http://www.ogj.com/articles/2017/12/iraq-forms-panel-to-operate-majnoon-field.html
So far, the experiences about freeze off Shale wells are limited. Will glycol also work for Shale wells when there is much water involved? I think nobody knows yet how big the impact of the cold will be on Shale wells. However, it looks like shorts are getting hyper-nervous.Ian H x Ignored says: 12/29/2017 at 7:25 amOil and Gas Producers Find Frac Hits in Shale Wells a Major Challenge
In North America's most active shale fields, the drilling and hydraulic fracturing of new wells is directly placing older adjacent wells at risk of suffering a premature decline in oil and gas production.The underlying issue has been coined as a "frac hit." And though they have long been a known side effect of hydraulic fracturing, frac hits have never mattered or occurred as much as they have recently, according to several shale experts who say the main culprit is infill drilling.
"It is a very common occurrence -- almost to the point where it is a routinely expected part of the operations," said Bob Barree, an industry consultant and president of Colorado-based petroleum engineering firm Barree & Associates.
He added that frac hits are also an expensive problem that involve costly downtime to prepare for, remediation efforts after the fact, and lost productivity in the older wells on a pad site.
A frac hit is typically described as an interwell communication event where an offset well, often termed a parent well in this setting, is affected by the pumping of a hydraulic fracturing treatment in a new well, called the child well. As the name suggests, frac hits can be a violent affair as they are known to be strong enough to damage production tubing, casing, and even wellheads
https://www.spe.org/en/jpt/jpt-article-detail/?art=2819FWIW The first SPE paper referenced discusses mediating the negative nature of frac hits. It discusses the refrakking of a six well pad drilled in 2010 in the middle Bakken and three forks, North Fork Field, McKenzie. The six wells have a cumulative oil production to date of 3.6mmboe and 7.7bcf.
Since I am not in the field, much of the paper went over my head, I merely skimmed through it, however it appears that well communication was observed for horizontal and vertical spacing of 1000 feet.
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Mike says: 12/30/2017 at 7:06 amShallow; Hurricane Harvey disrupted some but not very much EF production. Most of the production drops were related to refinery closers along the GC that curtailed ALL producers in Texas. That storm had no affect whatsoever in Austin other than some rain and did not affect TRRC reporting. There were other electronic issues with TRRC reporting that are now back on the mend.Watcher says: 12/30/2017 at 9:39 amThe EIA like all government entities is a mess; some years back it got confused and with a snap of the finger stopped reporting on-lease production storage. Now now all of a sudden it is reporting gas liquids and anything else it can to make production appear higher than it is. Is there an intentional motivation in that? You decide. Harold already has. EIA 914 surveys are ESTIMATES too; people don't seem to get that. Otherwise this TRRC debate has reached absurd proportions; the EF is on its way down the toilet check Enno's latest post. The Permian is still growing but that rate of growth is going to slow; things out there are getting way gassier and way lighter. There is no place to put the stuff anymore.
I liked your comment about Floyd Wilson; he is a trip. Reminds me of Billy Bits at Shale R Us: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6351385280427196416/
I think "our" happy price for 2018 is going to hold. Happy New Year buddy !
Mike
"The main suspect for the increasing divergence is now the inclusion of NGLs into the EIA computation" Duh. Definitions are more or less always changed to meet agenda.Lightsout says: 12/30/2017 at 2:48 pmSame trick was pulled by Russia now report total liquids.Dennis Coyne says: 12/30/2017 at 5:56 pmThe EIA estimates for Aug to Oct are probably too high by 50 to 100 kb/d.Energy News says: 12/29/2017 at 1:18 pmMike is correct that the EIA makes estimates as does drilling info based on RRC data.
The average correction factor for the most recent two months of drilling info data (Aug and Sept) is 42 and 287 kb/d respectively based on past data sets from Aug 2015 Mar 2016 May 2016 Aug 2016 May 2017 Jul 2017 Aug 2017 Sept 2017 and Oct 2017 compared to the Dec 2017 data set from drilling info. In the chart below the Dec 2017 drilling info data set is "corrected" in this way (adding 42 kb/d to August and 287 kb/d to Sept.)
An alternative is to compare the 914 survey data to the drilling info estimate from May 2015 to July 2017 the average difference was 320 kb/d over that period. So I show the 914 survey plus 320 kb/d also in the chart below.
Through July 2017 we have pretty good estimates for Texas C+C after that it is difficult to say which estimate is correct. Note that the 914 survey has differed from the drilling info estimate by as little as 275 kb/d and as much as 365 kb/d from May 2015 to July 2017 so the 914 survey plus 320 kb/d might be off by +/-50 kb/d especially for Aug to Oct 2017 period.
The latest STEO forecast from just 2 weeks agoDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 6:46 pmEIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (December 12 2017 ) Domestic Production October 9.3 million b/day
For comparison EIA estimates US output was 9637 kb/d in Oct 2017 though perhaps the Texas estimate is high by about 80 kb/d so 9560 kb/d might be a better estimate unless the estimates for other states are too low.Energy News says: 12/29/2017 at 1:01 pmLooks like the STEO expected a 180 kb/d decrease in October and instead there was roughly a 160 kb/d increase. Perhaps the correct final data will be between 9300 and 9640 kb/d. The most recent month's estimate is often revised by 1% or more.
US crude oil exports at 1 731 kb/day in October a new record highKolbeinh says: 12/29/2017 at 1:17 pm
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_expc_a_EPC0_EEX_mbblpd_m.htmI don´t know what to say but it somehow does not make sense. Something is very fishy here. Makes me very confident about my bullish oil price predictions for 2018.Kolbeinh says: 12/29/2017 at 2:00 pmPolitics is a major part of oil markets and keeping Russia at bay is a goal for the administration I guess.Energy News says: 12/29/2017 at 3:43 pmAnd so is the target of 3% gdp growth for the president. But the profound backwardation in the futures market for Brent at the moment tells me that reality is storage withdrawal until shortage for oil.
Especially distillates is under scrutiny because of lack of Venezuela heavy oil and too much light oil from Texas. Conventional oil worldwide is suffering from underinvestment and OPEC policy is as expected to serve their own interests. The main problem is easy oil mid API range (too much exploitation).
Liquefied Petroleum Gases (ethane+propane+butane) October production: 3 499 kb/day +281 m/mHeinrich Leopold says: 12/30/2017 at 8:26 am
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_gp_dc_nus_mbblpd_m.htm
Energy NewsDennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:20 amYour posts meets exactly my point as Shale increases the supply of light distillates yet does little to cover the growing worldwide shortage of middle distillates.
As the US exports mostly cheap light distillates and imports expensive real crude oil the recent trade numbers confirm a swift deteriorating goods trade deficit and consequently a sharply falling US dollar as we have seen over the last few days. All what Shale is currently doing is to depress the price of light distillates yet it leaves the growing supply shortage of real oil unaffected.
Hi HeinrichLongtimber says: 12/29/2017 at 11:43 pmThe increased LPG is due to increased natural gas production especially "wetter" natural gas. The has less to do with LTO output and more to do with shale gas output.
It also has very little to do with condensate which is liquids that condense at the lease (it is called "lease condensate") at ambient temperature and pressure.
LPG is at either higher pressure or lower temperature than ambient conditions.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-29/crypto-qatar-these-are-best-worst-assets-2017Heinrich Leopold says: 12/30/2017 at 6:47 am
NG – Ugly.. A Trainwreck for 2017.
What Coke Nose Jim Crammer use to say? time to BACK UP THE TRUCK?As it is too early to assess the impact of the current cold on gas production the recent 40% Canadian rig count slump may serve as a harbinger for the US for next weeks . It is not only freeze offs but but also transport infrastructure and pipeline constraints.Dennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:22 amHi HeinrichJeff says: 12/30/2017 at 9:00 amCanadian rig count always drops over the Christmas to New Year's holiday this is not unexpected.
Haven´t seen it posted here yet. Euan Mearns who sometimes post here has a new blog post on "oil price scenario for 2018": http://euanmearns.com/oil-price-scenario-for-2018/ . I like figure 4 think that Ian Schindler has showed something similar for longer time periods (70/80´s).Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:03 pm
Euan lacks at least two factors but they are more or less impossible to forecast particularly: i) economic growth (demand) ii) how much of the OPEC cuts are voluntary. Also his calculation of natural decline is wrong he assumes all legacy production is in decline.Hi JeffWatcher says: 12/30/2017 at 9:52 amThanks. I think Euan has the price about right ($80/b at the end of 2018 for Brent) but I disagree with him on World oil output in 2018. I think World C+C output will increase at about 600 kb/d per year over the next few years until about 2020 and then will gradually slow down as LTO output and oil sands output will not increase rapidly enough to offset declining output elsewhere in the World by 2025 potentially there could be a short plateau until 2028 or a longer plateau from 2022 to 2029 the higher World output goes the more likely that any plateau will be very short. I agree with your assessment that Euan has overestimated the World decline rate at about 8% which for C+C would be about 6.5 Mb/d not all of World C+C oil fields are in decline some are on plateau and a few are increasing output (at the field level) though if one considers individual oil wells probably 99% of oil wells currently producing (weighted by daily output) are likely to be in decline.
Euan may be looking at things from that perspective which would mean (assuming my 98% guess is correct and that those wells decline at an average annual rate of 8%) we would need 6.4 Mb/d of newly completed wells just to offset the declining wells in order to remain on a plateau.
Euan believes the World will just be able to manage this I think higher oil prices will enable 7.1 Mb/d of oil completions Worldwide over the next year with a net increase in World C+C output.We will not really even know World C+C output for 2017 until March 2018 (I use EIA estimates) and 2018 output will be unknown until March 2019.
The most recent 12 months of World C+C output (average monthly output from Oct 2016 to Sept 2017) was 80 999 kb/d based on EIA data.
The latest numbers out of China say oil consumption growth this year 2017 will be double last year's. This year is pegged at 6.5% with a month to go. India numbers as of Oct say their 2017 growth rate will be about 8% as it was last year.Energy News says: 12/30/2017 at 12:16 pmChina's crude oil stockpiles the latest numbers: There is a big difference between China's official numbers and analysts calculated numbers (China says +90 kb/day vs IEA up to +1000 kb/day)Krisvis says: 12/30/2017 at 2:21 pmBEIJING Dec 29 (Reuters) – China had stored 37.73 million tonnes or 275 million barrels in nine bases by mid-2017 up from 33.25 million tonnes at the end of June the previous year according to the data from the National Energy Administration (NEA).
Adding 4.48 million tonnes of crude oil over the 12 months to June 2017 is equivalent to adding 89 600 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
Reuters (December 29 2017) https://www.reuters.com/article/china-crude-reserves/update-2-china-accelerates-stockpiling-of-state-oil-reserves-over-2016-17-idUSL4N1OT2HFChina's (commercial) crude inventories in November hit a seven-year low of 26.15 million tonnes Xinhua data showed.
Reuters (December 28 2017) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/oil-prices-stay-near-high-on-strong-u-s-refinery-runs-china-data-idUSKBN1EM04PYou'll remember this
LONDON October 12th 2017 (Reuters) – China has built its crude oil stockpiles at a record pace in 2017 and while its purchases could tail off towards the year-end inventories could hit the billion-barrel mark in six months the International Energy Agency said.
The agency estimates that over the first half of 2017 Chinese stockbuilding hit a record 1 million b/day.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/oil-iea-china/chinas-crude-oil-buying-spree-looks-set-to-continue-iea-idUKL8N1MN2GOAnybody knows what the definition of crude oil by Texas RRC is? The reason I ask the question is because the production increase up to API gravity 40 is only 70K/day out of 767 K/day from November 2016 to October 2017. PAA said in the conference call that Delaware basin is producing mostly oil with APII gravity higher than 45 and needs to be exported as our US refiners will not touch it.Heinrich Leopold says: 01/02/2018 at 1:56 pmKrisvisDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:19 pm
Thanks for posting your comment. This is exactly my point.Shale produces mostly condensates and light distillates which are an excellent feedstock for the chemical industry. However this concerns just 15% of the oil market. At the beginning of the Shale boom Shale light distillates could substitute a lot of conventional oil which was previously used in the chemical feedstock market. This brought down the oil price.
As Shale oil has now serious troubles to enter the transportation fuel market (due to a lack of middle distillates) the US is forced to sell cheap light distillates on export markets and import on the same time expensive real oil containing middle distillates at a high price. So US imports of real oil are on the rise again. This is why we are seeing a rising oil price and US oil trade deficit again. The dollar has already reacted by a steep slump over the last days.
When one looks at the price of oil with API 40-45 it trades at a premium to heavy oil. Oil above 45 or 50 API is typically classified as condensate.Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:22 pmAs George has commented repeatedly most of World output is getting heavier and is more expensive to refine. There are many customers around the World that need the lighter oil to blend with heavier crude. In fact much of the US condensate goes to Canada to blend with bitumen so it will flow through pipelines.
For net crude oil imports for the US see
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRNTUS2&f=M
Wrong chart in comment above sorry( link has updated chart)Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 2:30 pm
This chart is from EIA (chart above used the EIA data Jan 2015-Oct 2017).texas tea says: 12/30/2017 at 5:14 pmThe US has had net imports of crude oil since 1945 (based on monthly data).
On an annual basis the last year the US was a net exporter of crude oil was 1943. Net imports of crude peaked (annual data) in 2005 at over 10 Mb/d and fell to 6.9 Mb/d in 2015 and rose slightly in 2016 (by 0.36 Mb/d) to 7.26 Mb/d in the most recent 12 months net imports have fallen to 6.99 Mb/d.
"Whatever the case nothing creates job and opportunities the way oil and natural gas exploration does at this time"Boomer II says: 12/30/2017 at 5:57 pm
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/GOP-Tax-Bill-Is-A-Boon-For-Oil-And-Gas.htmlchoke on it boys the truth comes out making america great again not just a slogan anymore
Companies losing money don't pay income taxes anyway. A cut won't do them any good.Boomer II says: 12/30/2017 at 6:04 pm"Given President Donald Trump's obsession with reviving the dying industry it's almost surprising that the Republican tax bill doesn't contain any new breaks or incentives that explicitly help coal. 'Energy is actually the least of the beneficiaries in this bill and the simple reason is that energy already has so many carve-outs and exemptions in the tax code that a lot of U.S. based companies just pay hardly any income tax as it is ' said Pavel Molchanov an energy research analyst at the financial firm Raymond James. 'So there is virtually no effect on energy of any kind either positive or negative and that includes coal.'"Mike says: 12/30/2017 at 6:24 pmhttps://newrepublic.com/article/146388/tax-bills-gift-big-coal
Choke on this tee tee: because the shale oil industry can't keep its MasterCard(s) in its pants its overleveraged LTO oversupply is the direct cause of low volatile oil prices that has resulted in the loss of over 440 000 oil and gas jobs around the world since 2014. https://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/148548/More_Than_440000_Global_Oil_Gas_Jobs_Lost_During_Downturn . There are still an estimated 55 000 still out of work in America in EOR GOM and in stripper well production. Your beloved shale industry got nothing nada zip out of the new tax law except interest deduction limits which will hurt it not help it.Dennis Coyne says: 12/30/2017 at 8:30 pmHi MikeMike says: 12/30/2017 at 9:03 pmIf most of the LTO companies are losing money I don't think they pay federal taxes on losses so the reduction in tax deduction for interest paid would have no effect.
Am I missing something?
No but tee tee is. Its not easy you know getting thru.texas tea says: 12/31/2017 at 5:53 pmTake for instance the help the oil and gas industry is getting by opening ANWAR. Who is that going to help particularly since there is countless geological and depositional studies done that pretty much condemn the entire area? Or lets take the "roll back" of certain MMS/BSEE regulations regarding multi-string pressure and BOP testing in the GOM after the Macondo incident? That is stupid shit that dumb uninformed people buy into that has nothing to do with reality. Reality is those regulations were on the books and un-enforced. It cost BP what $80B to cut some corners? Nobody I repeat nobody is going to let that happen again. Whatever the current BS is about reducing regulations on the oil industry and helping American become great again by unleashing its hydrocarbon "might " on the rest of the world is laughable. Who is laughing all the way to the bank?
OPEC and Russia dat' who. They are watching America's energy policies get worse not better.
you can educate the ignorant but not the stupid who said that oh yea me. any one of my birddogs knows more about north slope geology than you mike. perhaps you can make a new years resolution try to be accurate at least once in 2019 gonna be hard for a "man" like you but give it a shotHuntingtonBeach says: 12/31/2017 at 7:59 pm"you can educate the ignorant but not the stupid who said that oh yea me. "shallow sand says: 12/30/2017 at 9:00 pmEnough said
I am wondering if EIA is including NGLs as I see OK production has ramped up quite a bit.Guym says: 12/31/2017 at 8:40 amA lot of OK liquids are 55+ API.
Read the post twitter link Dean posted above. Most interesting is a post by a CPA who was involved with the 914 reporting. He thinks it is double counting the M&A production. However within his post he describes that the 914 survey is actually done by a third party contractor. In his discussion with him they were using the higher of projected drilling info or operator report. To put it in my perspective I don't see the 914 having anything like the consistency of the RRC. IMG Crown Energy Services is the third party contractor. Look up their website. Not a lot of time spent on it for a heavy duty IT company so no warm fuzzies there. One could speculate that the primary income is from the EIA contract. EIA paints themselves into a corner with wild projections on Texas production. They call up the third party contractor and question the figures they think are too low. Contractor has to do something to keep the contract don't they?Dennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:30 am
Now nobody at EIA can get fired for cooking the books because they have plausible deniability.Hi GuymGuym says: 12/31/2017 at 11:30 amFrom May 2015 to July 2017 the 914 survey was pretty consistent (within 275 kb/d and 365 kb/d of drilling info estimate average 320 kb/d). Perhaps that has changed I would not put much weight on a Twitter comment by a CPA. We will see in a few months what the drilling info estimates are which are usually within 1% of the final output after 3 to 5 months. So by March or April we may know what Oct 2017 TX C+C output is.
As Mike says in Texas they are patient.
That CPA owns his own oil company who reports to the contractor. Do you?Dennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 4:15 pmNo. Has he been reporting NGL (in the US this would be natural gas plant liquids) to the contractor as C+C?Guym says: 12/31/2017 at 4:50 pmIn any case I agree with Mike patience is needed. Perhaps the 914 survey is now covering a much higher percentage of Texas C+C output relative to the May 2015 to July 2017 (27 month long) period.
Time will tell.
"Double counting M&A production" has nothing to do with NGLs. He was admonished by the contractor for under reporting production that was sold off. Instead of using his figures they used his old wells as listed in the drilling info estimate. Hence double reporting it. But what was more interesting is the contractor part. They can send out the survey but can determine whatever they want to include.Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 8:53 amHi GuymDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 8:48 amThe EIA contractor checks with operators when reported numbers are different than expected and sometimes they use the drilling info data instead if the numbers don't look right.
The numbers are revised over time as more data comes in. These are estimates nobody knows final output for many months (for the entire state of Texas or all of the US).
Hi GuymDennis Coyne says: 12/31/2017 at 10:34 amThe link below covers the 914 survey methodology. Yes mergers and acquisitions are a potential problem. The EIA does it's best to account for these to avoid double counting.
About 450 of the largest oil and gas companies that produce about 90% of US oil and gas output (of approximately 13 000 petroleum producers in the US) fill out the 914 survey.
https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/production/pdf/eia914methodology.pdf
Hi Shallow sandWatcher says: 12/31/2017 at 11:21 amNo not NGL only crude plus lease condensate. The EIA has never based C+C on API gravity just liquids produced in the oil field as far as I know.
A bit of recap for newcomers:George Kaplan says: 12/31/2017 at 11:40 amAPI gravity is a density measurement of oil. Measures how heavy it is compared to water. The higher the API number the lighter the oil.
Refineries do not create "middle distillates" out of nothing. They extract them from oil. "Middle distillates" are middle heavy liquids within oil. Diesel and Kerosene. Read truck/tractor fuel and jet fuel. Gasoline is a light distillate. Heavy distillates would be something like bunker fuel or asphalt.
This is all within the same liquid called "crude oil". Traditional labels are applied as regards the word "quality". High "quality" crude oil was light and "sweet". Sweet refers to having low content of materials that cause problems in refining. Like sulphur or vanadium. But tradition has run up against the new nature of crude oil. It has gotten too light. It often lacks middle distillates.
Here is a chart posted a year or so ago by Jeffrey Brown:
https://imgur.com/a/cqtvuI have examined assays of many different oil types from all over the world. Jet fuel boils about 160 degs C and the heaviest diesel boils up around 350 degs C. So "middle distillates" that are actual fuel for things that matter are in the assay between those temps.
https://www.statoil.com/en/what-we-do/crude-oil-and-condensate-assays.html
Scroll down to their .XLS spreadsheets for various blends that they have assay'ed. I would say it does not conform to the chart. BUT. There are some caveats scattered around. "Blend". Dumbbell liquid. This means if oil from one field doesn't have what you want in it you add oil from another field to it to get the constituent parts. Assay it and declare it looks good. BP has an assay website as do others like Capline from Marathon.
All this was to address the question above -- "what is the definition of oil". Study all that and you'll see that the definition is whatever the money agenda says it should be that moment.
Crude oil is only getting lighter in the US everywhere else it's getting heavier and the light LTO is likely to be in greater demand for blending. Refineries set up for heavier oil usually have crackers – either fluid crack crackers or hydrocrackers – which can convert heavier components to gasoline and diesel but can only go so far and blending lighter oil allows the throughput to be maximised. There is no current problem from the oil range of oils being produced.Energy News says: 12/31/2017 at 12:22 pmHOUSTON (Reuters) – Several oil pipeline companies this month agreed to move ahead on multi-billion-dollar projects that would link Texas shale fields to Gulf Coast export hubs offering new outlets for burgeoning output expected in 2018.texas tea says: 12/31/2017 at 6:09 pm
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-pipelines/pipeline-projects-move-ahead-to-tackle-rising-texas-shale-output-idUSKBN1EN1PDThat information must leave many readers here perplexed. You have pipeline companies refineries etc. building out the infrastructure to process and transport the oil but Mike tells us it's all hype not to be believed geez and even Dennis agrees with him what are we to believe? I bet they did not do their due diligence probably just read a few presentation and decided hey lets go spend a few billions of dollars for the hell of it Right Mike? I think I will follow the money on this one and not the want-to-be pretend only in cyber space oil men bloggersshallow sand says: 12/31/2017 at 8:33 pmTT.Mike says: 12/31/2017 at 9:33 pmAll I'm worried about is you shalies killing the oil price again. 2015-17 not good for anyone actually making $$ from the commodity of oil. (Corporate management gets theirs regardless of profits so I don't count them).
And if your response is "compete" I will know you are not for real on owning oil. Because I don't know how a non-op can make $$ on wells that do not payout. Shale CEO's can but non-ops can't IMO. So I don't know how you could be happy seeing Shale getting ready to kill the oil price again?
The only thing I can see killing $55-65 WTI at this point is overproduction of US shale. And it will hurt them too if they overproduce. The shareholders not the management. But it should absolutely destroy non-ops like you if we once again have $25 oil and $1.50 gas.
Corporate shale CEO's receive enormous salaries and compensation packages based on booking fake reserves. The profitability of their corporations or shareholder equity means little to them. Midstream companies that gather shale oil and shale gas are totally reliant on the shale oil industry to continue to be able to borrow more money. They are sheep in a flock. The entire thing from the top down is a façade using OPM. Nobody borrowing this money is personally on the hook; there are no personal loan guarantees nobody is going to be ruined when the entire thing collapses. The scheme is based on getting as much as you can as fast as you can and getting out unscathed.shallow sand says: 12/31/2017 at 11:20 pmWhy promote or cheerlead for an industry that is obviously grossly unprofitable and that is going to ultimately leave hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars of debt for our children to deal with? Because you don't care. You don't give a rat's ass. Because exactly like a corporate shale oil CEO royalty owners receiving income from shale wells free and clear of all costs don't care about debt about profitability about depleting our nations remaining hydrocarbon resources and conservation they just care about themselves.
The Peak Oil Barrel community can decide for itself who the "pretenders" actually are.
Mike.Mike says: 01/01/2018 at 7:38 amUnless I missed it I am still waiting for TT to explain how he finances the huge AFE's he must routinely get from $10+ million STACK and SCOOP wells.
Was doing some tax work earlier today and noted for June 2017 oil we got $40.71 per barrel. If 12/29/17 close holds we get $56.
$15.29 more on every barrel is huge for us as it is for everyone who operates wells Be it you XOM Harold Hamm Russia OPEC etc.
As I recall oil prices rebounded in late 2016 then shale went nuts and the price tanked. Their shares tanked too as I recall.
Say TT owns 10% of a shale monster well that cranks out 200K BO in year one. Say his NRI is 8%.
So he got billed $1 million for his part of the well. A $15 higher oil price nets him $240 000 more in year one before deducting severance tax.
So I assume TT would rather get an extra $240 000 in year one and have shale not go crazy talk and crazy drill again as opposed to being able to crow about political crap?
Mike do you know any non-op's on shale wells? How the heck do they finance them?
PS. I know you think it's cold down there in Texas but in my part of the Mid Continent it will be -5 F later tonight. 1 stinking degree F right now. Ouch!!
Happy New Year Shallow and to the rest of the POB community. We close our schools in Texas when it gets below 40 almost. We are expecting low 20's here each night for the next three nights and we are all standby in the field to deal with an array of frozen broken messes. This is not a good time of year to be in the oilfield. I don't know how you folks stand it up north.texas tea says: 01/01/2018 at 5:45 pmYou know quite well the story of tiny NPRI owners not wishing to be pooled in Bakken units and instead electing to assume WI ownership in well(s) then going non-consent in hopes of backing in after payout and becoming real oilmen. That was a disaster. Their expenses now exceed their income and they are on the hook for plugging and decommissioning costs they'd give that stuff away if they could. You have shown us all numerous of these type of WI's for sale on energy.net
In the beginning I knew numerous folks in the EF and PB who turned deals with small carried WI or reversionary back ins after payout. I also knew folks who farmed out shale rights and kept WI. They did so I believe thinking fiscal responsibility and profitability was the order of the day like it always has been in our industry but quickly found out that was not the case and were literally spent into the dirt within a year or so. They sold their WI to operators as fast as they could never to return. I am sure there are exceptions but not many. It is a big boys game now run by lenders with very onerous loan covenants. How does a 1/32nd or a 1/16th WI pay its share of 15) $10M wells that take 3 4 and 5 years to payout if ever? They don't. Not without borrowing money themselves.
If on the other hand one includes RI and ORRI in the well(s) with the NRI from your WI nd pay 1/16th of the costs for say. 0.10000 total interest then you can puff up like a rooster and say I own WI in shale oil wells and they all "make" money. The only people making money in this shale gig is royalty owners overriding royalty owners CEO's and lenders on interest income. That's just a fact.
Stay warm man.
For the life of me SS I am not sure what is so freaking confusing. I have said numerous times the world needs $70 oil. That is a price level that folks like you and most others can make enough money and produce free cash flow to fund new projects. Fact not fiction. BUT. I have also said I live and work in the real world where we actually do real work well by well section by section to find opportunities.shallow sand says: 01/01/2018 at 8:43 pm
Just to restate the facts we have conventional production in 5 states both working interest and royalty interest.(spread the risk) we do not borrow money everything we do is out of cash flow. On most of our wells we lease part of the minerals we acquired and drill a portion of the minerals we acquired. What you may not know is many operators in the better shale plays are actively buying royalty to increase their NRI but of course they are a bit late to the party. The wells we drill are at current prices very economical. freaking do the math. at $50 oil and $4.00 nat gas(btu adjusted) @2 % tax rate in the first 2 years and wells that will produce 400 000BO and 5BCFG. The gas alone pays for the wells and the oil is "free". We started thinking we might get 5-6 wells a section now that number is 15 wells per section.It is a much longer conversation most of which would be way over the heads of the readers of this blog the improvement in production numbers (new frac techniques) over the last 18 months we are seeing are out of this world. 30% at the low side at 100% at the high end increased in production with a 11 month comparison period. How this translates to ultimate EUR i am not prepared to say what I will say is that based on 35 years of experience it looks great.
A couple of takeaways. One there is a point to be made some maybe even most of the shale guys have played fast and loose with normal best practices with regard to finances. But because we have alcoholics we don't condemn the entire industry or impose prohibition which is the argument Mike like's to make.
This is a process what works and does not work will be sorted out by the market place as it should be MUCH will WORK that IS a fact. What the folks who are building pipelines and refineries and other midstream and downstream infrastructure sees is what we see their in the real world where we deal in facts and allocate our money accordingly.best wishes for 2018
TT. If you came into shale with a lot of rock solid conventional paid for in full I can see how you could come up with the money.Mike says: 01/01/2018 at 8:48 pmHowever I am then also sure that you just like us went from making a killing on low decline conventional and $90 oil to making much much less and in your case were using almost all cash to pay for new shale well AFE's.
Even if you have zero debt I assume you at least have an un drawn credit facility just in case a good big deal were to arise. And therefore I assume you were none too pleased when your borrowing base dropped by more than 2/3 from 2014 to 2015 and again another 20+% in 2016 due to shale over production crashing oil and NG prices.
If you are big enough to cash flow several shale AFE I assume you have net production of somewhere between 2 000-10 000 BOEPD?
So let us say 5 000 BOEPD. Again just hypothetical to show what shale did to a larger private independent owned by maybe 2-4 shareholders who got very rich 2005-14.
2014 say you could have cashed out for $500 million. 2016 likely cashed out for 1/3 to 1/4 of that. Quite a hit to the net worth.
Further in 2014 you maybe cleared $90+ million pre income taxes before CAPEX on that 5 000 BOEPD? 2016 that went to $18 million maybe and of course you are getting AFE and JIB on the shale that is draining that the near zero? So no shareholder dividends or distributions in 2015 and 2016 after getting big ones in prior years.
We are small and not in a shale area but we have been around the block Dad has been in since the Arab Embargo. Pretty much everyone had to fire someone in 2015-16 it's good if you didn't. Pretty much everyone had the rug pulled out from under them just like in 1986 and 1998.
Thing is I think even most of the shale guys aren't real happy about shale. They know shale overproduction will drag the price. Same bittersweet deal as farmers growing a bumper crop. Farmers made the most $$ during 2012-13 even though most places 2012 was terrible drought. US commodity producers never do good during periods of oversupply. Just the middle men do good then.
Again I'm just speculating on how you do things numbers etc. I may be all wrong. If I am I apologize.
I just know in 2015 and 2016 there were a ton of shale wells completed that won't payout. Maybe not as many in 2017 but they are still out there. Further they hurt cash flow especially when you cannot control the expense recognition time frames as a non-op.
I am so glad we did not own non-op where drilling was going on 2015-17 as it would have sucked away all our cash and then some plus sold our flush production at market lows.
I am happy to see you want $70 even higher than me. So I'll leave you alone now. Take care. I think maybe deep down you too hope US doesn't ram through 10 and then 11 million BOPD next year?
Your 2% production tax in Oklahoma is going back to 7% tee tee; you and Mr. Blackmon are definitely on the same 'mindless' page regarding the future of shale oil: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2017/12/31/the-oil-and-gas-situation-a-preview-of-2018/#7b9a4fe67613Boomer II says: 01/01/2018 at 9:30 pmYou are insulting to people here who actually understand the basic arithmetic of the oil business a little better than you give them credit for. There is very clear mounting evidence that things are not getting better in your industry they are actually getting worse. You on the other hand seem to struggle with reality. Five days ago gas was trading at $2.55 per MMBTU not $4 and after royalty deductions interest expenses etc. etc. 5 BCF will not come close to paying for a $10-11M well. I understand now that even after 35 years of whatever it is you do you can't insult me anymore than you have already tried. I would have to value your opinion first.
If you want to win friends and influence people here on POB it would be helpful if you were to give us your name your company's name where these awesome wells are so we can check production data and tax roles etc. That would give you credibility and strengthen your arguments. Otherwise you are just a cute name embarrassing as that is to my beloved Texas who likes to brag about how much money he makes in the shale oil business. We're interested in the big picture here not you personally.
I still get the feeling that this is a sales job. Why tout the industry doing so great if you don't need investors and lenders?Boomer II says: 01/01/2018 at 2:56 pmI found this. It is from 2016 and it is based on privately held companies. Oil and gas extraction companies was the least profitable industry.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 5:35 pmI just found the same article for 2017. Oil and gas still tops the list.
https://blogs-images.forbes.com/sageworks/files/2017/09/least-profitable-industries-ttm-07312017.png
@TTtexas tea says: 01/01/2018 at 6:01 pm
Cling to whatever makes you feel good dude. I guess when you're favorite industry produces a lot of product but can't make any profits doing so one has to find the silver lining wherever they can. Shale is a Ponzi scheme. It won't be long until the music stops and the investors lose their shirts.go f your self .what the hell are your credentials not better than most here. the totality of your experience in the "oil" business is probably limited to buying lubeSurvivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:01 pm
(for your bicycle chain)My credentials are irrelevant to the fact that shale oil is a profitless venture. If not for profit then what's it all about? Take a long hard suck on my ass fuck face. Fucking retard.texas tea says: 01/01/2018 at 7:19 pmwell there you go proof that many here are illiterate and ignorant. you resort to profanities when you have no facts. I bet your parents are proud of youSurvivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:33 pm
shale oil is a profitless venture. Deal with it fuck head.texas tea says: 01/01/2018 at 7:44 pmI have seen many folks in foreign countries tuck in the pant leg of their trouser in their socks so that it does not keep getting in the chain of their bicycle I bet you can tell us does that work for dresses too?Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:53 pmHere's one for the Texas teabagger aka the Lone Star State scrotum sucker.Lloyd says: 01/01/2018 at 11:28 pm
Im guessing it didn't go to business school.https://seekingalpha.com/article/4084591-new-darlings-wall-street-folly-oil-fracking-investing
Until you post a name and a company you can't complain about anyone else's credentials.Watcher says: 01/02/2018 at 12:39 pmWe know who Mike is. You are nameless likely lying and probably a charlatan.
And the emojis prove you are a moron.
Damn when did this start.Lloyd says: 01/02/2018 at 10:57 pmWhy is invasion of privacy a good thing? Think bitcoin.
Watcher I didn't say he had to identify himself I just pointed out that he was a hypocrite to demand other people's credentials without presenting his own.Dennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 9:01 amTo the Teabagger I say "Put up or shut up."
Though I do prefer "shut up".
-Lloyd
Hi Texas Teashallow sand says: 01/01/2018 at 3:00 amI agree with Mike that LTO producers are not profitable (as a group).
I have suggested that if oil prices remain under $65/b (WTI price) that US output may increase by about 600 kb/d (average annual C+C output) in 2018 compared to 2017. If oil prices are higher output may be higher if you tell me what that average oil price will be in 2018 I can make a better output estimate.
I also agree with Mike that I do not know what the future oil price will be.
Generally higher World output levels result in lower oil prices (as in 2015-2017) and generally lower oil prices result in lower profits for oil companies ceteris paribus.
Of course I complain about -5 F. Wow much worse in Bakken.SRSrocco says: 01/01/2018 at 10:35 amMajor respect for folks working outside always but especially in the Bakken tonight.
Take care up there. Seeing -32 F in Sidney MT and -25 F in Williston ND.
Shallowtexas tea says: 01/01/2018 at 6:03 pmThe oil price may improve in 2018. However it will likely go DOWN CONSIDERABLY first before it continues higher. According to the COT REPORT (Commitment Of Traders) there is a record Commercial Short Position against oil going back 23 years.
You will notice right before oil fell from $100 in 2014 there was also a high amount of Commercial Short Positions. Today that level is even higher.
steve
Hey Steve show us how your predictions on gold prices have done over the last 5 years ooops next to mike you almost look like a genius.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 7:56 pmhttps://www.marketslant.com/article/zombie-shale-oil-killing-itself-surviveDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 9:05 am
You're a living joke.
Let me know when shale turns a profit.Hi Shallow sandEnergy News says: 01/01/2018 at 3:24 amNot a lot of completion work occurs at those temperatures I would think.
Not much fun outside in this weather.
EIA Today In Energy: What are natural gas liquids and how are they used?Energy News says: 01/01/2018 at 4:38 am
Table on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSarQ0wUEAACODP.jpg
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=5930#World demand for oil products – JODI Data – As everyone knows January is the seasonal low for demand. Comparing demand in December to January of the next year shows an average drop of -2.2 million barrels per day.Longtimber says: 01/01/2018 at 2:54 pm
Chart on Twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DScZ25HX4AAdDwB.jpgRather Crude product sort out by molecular weight: WTI is refined to 6% Diesel while global crude average is 34% Diesel.Survivalist says: 01/01/2018 at 8:06 pm
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21732697-crude-oil-most-traded-commodity-world-what-it-made-and-where-does
http://infographics.economist.com/2017/xmas/20171223_XMC600_weblarge.pngOne more for the Texas TeabaggerWatcher says: 01/02/2018 at 12:43 pmGeorge don't want to scroll way up.George Kaplan says: 01/02/2018 at 2:32 pmDon't suppose you know if oil fields do blending prior to sending to assay? Doesn't seem too very conspiratorial. Someone could gin up a rationale and no one would complain provided the refiner gets the same blend as assayed.
Most are blends – i.e. a bunch of producers discharge into a pipeline and what comes out the end is the cargo – it varies a bit depending on the relative flows from each platform and they might have to blend further in the tank farm (e.g. Forties delivers Brent crude I think from 15 to 20 different platforms). I can only think of one time there might not be blending of some kind which is if an offshore platform with storage (e.g. FPSO) unloads as repeated cargoes which always go to one specific refinery (probably the platform operators – but even then there are usually more than one owner and they often take the cargos separately in proportion to their stake).George Kaplan says: 01/02/2018 at 3:20 pmhttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hassan_Harraz/publication/301842929_BENCHMARKS_OF_CRUDE_OILS/links/572a065b08aef7c7e2c4ede8/BENCHMARKS-OF-CRUDE-OILS.pdfWatcher says: 01/02/2018 at 6:26 pmThis is from 2015/2016 – but prices are still light/sweet -> expensive; heavy/sour -> cheap. The only thing that can mess that up is if there are transport bottlenecks which is why WTI is a bit cheaper than Brent (it wasn't before LTO came on line). Tapis is still the lightest and costliest although almost none of it is produced it is still a useful benchmark against which other oil can be rated. Although there are benchmark crudes I think every cargo is basically a negotiated price between the refinery and the producer (there can be penalties if it isn't quite the quality agreed on and it could even be rejected and I think there is an adjustment based on the latest benchmark prices as the contract price would have been negotiated well ahead of delivery). And that is about as much as I know about the trading business except there is a lot of money that can be made and lost on very small margins and variations.
source of interest my recall of Bakken and Eagle Ford assays of yrs ago and how with an increase in API degs reported in the new assays the middle distillate yield hasn't changed. Should not be -- well it's possible but should not be likely.Watcher says: 01/02/2018 at 1:16 pmhttps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-02/peak-mexicoEnergy News says: 01/02/2018 at 6:06 pmUS implied domestic demand monthly figures – seasonalDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 6:35 pm
(Finished Motor Gasoline + Finished Aviation Gasoline + Kerosene-Type Jet Fuel + Distillate Fuel Oil + Residual Fuel Oil + Lubricants + Asphalt) but no NGLs
From here: EIA – Finished Petroleum Products – Products Supplied: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_snd_d_nus_mbblpd_m_cur.htmThe January dip in demand table on Twitter
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSki1qFWsAAK6zX.jpg
Yearly averages & the year over year change. 2017 to Oct.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSko0eLXcAEyl8L.jpg
First chart from comment aboveDennis Coyne says: 01/02/2018 at 6:36 pm
Second chart in link from energy news. Thanks!Cats@Home says: 01/02/2018 at 8:04 pm
U.S. oil production booms to start 2018
Updated 8:39 AM; Posted 8:39 AM
By The Washington Posthttp://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2018/01/us_oil_production_booms_to_sta.html
U.S. crude oil production is flirting with record highs heading into the new year thanks to the technological nimbleness of shale oil drillers who have unleashed the crude bonanza.
The current abundance has erased memories of 1973 gas lines which raised pump prices dramatically traumatizing the United States and reordering its economy. In the decades since presidents and politicians have mouthed platitudes calling for U.S. energy independence.
President Jimmy Carter in a televised speech even compared the energy crisis of 1977 to "the moral equivalent of war."
"It's a total turnaround from where we were in the '70s " said Frank Verrastro senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Shale oil drills can now plunge deep into the earth pivot and tunnel sideways for miles hitting an oil pocket the size of a chair Verrastro said.
The United States is so awash in oil that petroleum-rich Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil and natural gas company is reportedly interested in investing in the fertile Texas Permian Basin shale oil region according to a report last month.
That is a far cry from the days when U.S. production was on what was thought to be an irreversible downward path.
"For years and years we thought we were running out of oil " Verrastro said. "It took $120 for a barrel of oil to make people experiment with technology and that has been unbelievably successful. We are the largest oil and gas producer in the world."
The resilience of U.S. oil producers has come as the price of crude rose above $60 per barrel on world markets. Many shale drillers can start and stop on a dime depending on the world oil price. The sweet spot for shale profit is in the neighborhood of $55 to $60 per barrel.
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Jan 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Chad , July 11, 2017 at 8:28 am GMT
I fully agree that attacking Iran would be yet another disaster but I don't understand why Saudi Arabia is portrayed as an 'enemy', the 'real' one, no less, in alt-media circles like this. I mean let's be honest with ourselves. KSA is the definition of a vassal state. Has been so since the state established established relations with the USA in the 1940s and the status was confirmed during the 1960s under King Faisal. Oil for security. Why pretend that they have any operational clearance from the US?Contrary to the popular view, Wahabism is necessary to keep the local population under control. Particularly the minority Shia population who live along the eastern coast, an area, which incidentally also has the all the oil reserves.
USA fully understands this. Which is why they not only tolerated Wahabism, but strongly promoted it during Afghan jihad. The operation was by and large very successful btw.
It was only during the '90s when religion became the new ideology for the resistance against the empire across the Muslim world. Zero surprise there because the preceding ideology, radical left wing politics was completely defeated. Iran became the first country in this pattern. The Iranian left was decimated by the Shah, another vassal. So the religious right became the new resistance.
And as far as the KSA is considered, Wahabi preachers aren't allowed to attack the USA anyway. If any individual preacher so much as makes a squeak, he will be bent over a barrel. There won't be any "coming down very hard on Saudi Arabia" because USA already owns that country.
So what's the answer? Well, props to Phillip as he understood – "it would also require some serious thinking in the White House about the extent to which America's armed interventions all over Asia and Africa have made many people hate us enough to strap on a suicide vest and have a go."
Bingo.
Replies:
Your analysis starts too late. The US supports Wahhabism and the House of Saud because the pro-Arabic/Islamic English Elites of 1910 and 1920 and 1935 supported Wahhabism and the House of Saud.
The British Empire 'made' the House of Saud,
Thinking it wise to use Wahhabism to control Shia Islam is like thinking it wise to use blacks to control the criminal tendencies of Mexicans.
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Dec 25, 2017 | russia-insider.com
"Russia and China ... have concluded that pumping the US military budget by buying US bonds ... is an unsustainable proposition ..." Pepe Escobar 12,072 198
The new 55-page "America First" National Security Strategy (NSS), drafted over the course of 2017, defines Russia and China as "revisionist" powers, "rivals," and for all practical purposes strategic competitors of the United States.
The NSS stops short of defining Russia and China as enemies, allowing for an "attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries." Still, Beijing qualified it as "reckless" and "irrational." The Kremlin noted its "imperialist character" and "disregard for a multipolar world." Iran, predictably, is described by the NSS as "the world's most significant state sponsor of terrorism."
Russia, China and Iran happen to be the three key movers and shakers in the ongoing geopolitical and geo-economic process of Eurasia integration.
The NSS can certainly be regarded as a response to what happened at the BRICS summit in Xiamen last September. Then, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted on "the BRIC countries' concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies," and stressed the need to "overcome the excessive domination of a limited number of reserve currencies."
That was a clear reference to the US dollar, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of total reserve currency around the world and remains the benchmark determining the price of energy and strategic raw materials.
And that brings us to the unnamed secret at the heart of the NSS; the Russia-China "threat" to the US dollar.
The CIPS/SWIFT face-off
The website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) recently announced the establishment of a yuan-ruble payment system, hinting that similar systems regarding other currencies participating in the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will also be in place in the near future.
Crucially, this is not about reducing currency risk; after all Russia and China have increasingly traded bilaterally in their own currencies since the 2014 US-imposed sanctions on Russia. This is about the implementation of a huge, new alternative reserve currency zone, bypassing the US dollar.
The decision follows the establishment by Beijing, in October 2015, of the China International Payments System (CIPS). CIPS has a cooperation agreement with the private, Belgium-based SWIFT international bank clearing system, through which virtually every global transaction must transit.
What matters, in this case, is that Beijing – as well as Moscow – clearly read the writing on the wall when, in 2012, Washington applied pressure on SWIFT; blocked international clearing for every Iranian bank; and froze $100 billion in Iranian assets overseas as well as Tehran's potential to export oil. In the event that Washington might decide to slap sanctions on China, bank clearing though CIPS works as a de facto sanctions-evading mechanism.
Last March, Russia's central bank opened its first office in Beijing. Moscow is launching its first $1 billion yuan-denominated government bond sale. Moscow has made it very clear it is committed to a long-term strategy to stop using the US dollar as their primary currency in global trade, moving alongside Beijing towards what could be dubbed a post-Bretton Woods exchange system.
Gold is essential in this strategy. Russia, China, India, Brazil & South Africa are all either large producers or consumers of gold – or both. Following what has been extensively discussed in their summits since the early 2010s, the BRICS countries are bound to focus on trading physical gold .
Markets such as COMEX actually trade derivatives on gold, and are backed by an insignificant amount of physical gold. Major BRICS gold producers – especially the Russia-China partnership – plan to be able to exercise extra influence in setting up global gold prices.
The ultimate politically charged dossier
Intractable questions referring to the US dollar as the top reserve currency have been discussed at the highest levels of JP Morgan for at least five years now. There cannot be a more politically charged dossier. The NSS duly sidestepped it.
The current state of play is still all about the petrodollar system; since last year, what used to be a key, "secret" informal deal between the US and the House of Saud, is firmly in the public domain .
Even warriors in the Hindu Kush may now be aware of how oil and virtually all commodities must be traded in US dollars, and how these petrodollars are recycled into US Treasuries. Through this mechanism, Washington has accumulated an astonishing $20 trillion in debt – and counting.
Vast populations all across MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) also learned what happened when Iraq's Saddam Hussein decided to sell oil in euros, or when Muammar Gaddafi planned to issue a pan-African gold dinar.
But now it's China who's entering the fray, following through on plans set up way back in 2012. And the name of the game is oil-futures trading priced in yuan, with the yuan fully convertible into gold on the Shanghai and Hong Kong foreign exchange markets.
The Shanghai Futures Exchange and its subsidiary, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) have already run four production environment tests for crude oil futures. Operations were supposed to start at the end of 2017, but even if they start sometime in early 2018, the fundamentals are clear: this triple win (oil/yuan/gold) completely bypasses the US dollar. The era of the petro-yuan is at hand.
Of course, there are questions on how Beijing will technically manage to set up a rival mark to Brent and WTI, or whether China's capital controls will influence it. Beijing has been quite discreet on the triple win; the petro-yuan was not even mentioned in National Development and Reform Commission documents following the 19th CCP Congress last October.
What's certain is that the BRICS countries supported the petro-yuan move at their summit in Xiamen, as diplomats confirmed to Asia Times . Venezuela is also on board. It's crucial to remember that Russia is number two and Venezuela is number seven among the world's Top Ten oil producers. Considering the pull of China's economy, they may soon be joined by other producers.
Yao Wei, chief China economist at Societe Generale in Paris, goes straight to the point, remarking how "this contract has the potential to greatly help China's push for yuan internationalization."
The hidden riches of "belt" and "road"
An extensive report by DBS in Singapore hits most of the right notes linking the internationalization of the yuan with the expansion of BRI.
In 2018, six major BRI projects will be on overdrive; the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, the China-Laos railway, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, the Hungary-Serbia railway, the Melaka Gateway project in Malaysia, and the upgrading of Gwadar port in Pakistan.
HSBC estimates that BRI as a whole will generate no less than an additional, game-changing $2.5 trillion worth of new trade a year.
It's important to keep in mind that the "belt" in BRI should be seen as a series of corridors connecting Eastern China with oil/gas-rich regions in Central Asia and the Middle East, while the "roads" soon to be plied by high-speed rail traverse regions filled with – what else - un-mined gold.
A key determinant of the future of the petro-yuan is what the House of Saud will do about it. Should Crown Prince – and inevitable future king – MBS opt to follow Russia's lead, to dub it as a paradigm shift would be the understatement of the century.
Yuan-denominated gold contracts will be traded not only in Shanghai and Hong Kong but also in Dubai. Saudi Arabia is also considering to issue so-called Panda bonds, after the Emirate of Sharjah is set to take the lead in the Middle East for Chinese interbank bonds.
Of course, the prelude to D-Day will be when the House of Saud officially announces it accepts yuan for at least part of its exports to China.
A follower of the Austrian school of economics correctly asserts that for oil-producing nations, higher oil price in US dollars is not as important as market share: "They are increasingly able to choose in which currencies they want to trade."
What's clear is that the House of Saud simply cannot alienate China as one of its top customers; it's Beijing who will dictate future terms. That may include extra pressure for Chinese participation in Aramco's IPO. In parallel, Washington would see Riyadh embracing the petro-yuan as the ultimate red line.
An independent European report points to what may be the Chinese trump card: "an authorization to issue treasury bills in yuan by Saudi Arabia," the creation of a Saudi investment fund, and the acquisition of a 5% share of Aramco.
Nations under US sanctions, such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, will be among the first to embrace the petro-yuan. Smaller producers such as Angola and Nigeria are already selling oil/gas to China in yuan.
And if you don't export oil but are part of BRI, such as Pakistan, the least you can do is replace the US dollar in bilateral trade, as Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal is currently evaluating.
A key feature of the geoeconomic heart of the world moving from the West towards Asia is that by the start of the next decade the petro-yuan and trade bypassing the US dollar will be certified facts on the ground across Eurasia.
The NSS for its part promises to preserve "peace through strength." As Washington currently deploys no less than 291,000 troops in 183 countries and has sent Special Ops to no less than 149 nations in 2017 alone, it's hard to argue the US is at "peace" – especially when the NSS seeks to channel even more resources to the industrial-military complex.
"Revisionist" Russia and China have committed an unpardonable sin; they have concluded that pumping the US military budget by buying US bonds that allow the US Treasury to finance a multi-trillion dollar deficit without raising interest rates is an unsustainable proposition for the Global South. Their "threat" – under the framework of BRICS as well as the SCO, which includes prospective members Iran and Turkey – is to increasingly settle bilateral and multilateral trade bypassing the US dollar.
It ain't over till the fat (golden) lady sings. When the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system – established by Kissinger in tandem with the House of Saud way back in 1974 – becomes a fact on the ground, all eyes will be focused on the NSS counterpunch.
John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 10:11 AM
Tommy Jensen John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:26 AMChina and Russia been dumping US bonds for a good while.
They just have to do it slowly, so they can get as much cash, to buy stolen discounted gold with from the British Anglo Zionist Empire, as possible without tanking the market.The Federal reserve, prints currency, "loans" it to USA corporation, at USURY rates, gives this currency to other "sovereign" puppet states such as Belgium, who then act like they are buying the bonds for themselves.
It is a scam. Those who trust the USA/British Empire, will wind up with worthless paper, while the Usury bankers, their bosses, China and Russia, will wind up with gold.
All you USA worshipers should understand something.
He who has the gold, makes the rules.
Guess the western sheep are going to be the bitc#s of China and Russia for the next century or so.Cliff Aleksandar Tomić , December 23, 2017 6:20 PMI believe America will win. Therefore I sold my gold and bought dollares. The bad guys always win.............LOL.
Mychal Arnold Tommy Jensen , December 24, 2017 4:49 AM" Treason doth never prosper
What be the reason?
For when it prosper,
None dare call it treason" -William ShakespereRichard Burton Mychal Arnold , December 24, 2017 11:11 AMHey Tim or whatever. Yep you always win huh? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Sudan, .ring any bells I could go on but you have been embarrassed enough with your msm drivel. Always the weak and defenseless you lily livered chicken's. You better avoid war with the two most powerful countries in the world. Can you guess? and neither are you pedos and babykillers. You make me sick and disgusted. Voted again the most threat to world peace. Ussa, ussa, ussa. Proud are ya all. The time is coming where you reap what you have sown and on that day I shall dance my happy dance that you feel what you and your evil countrymen have wrought in the world in the name of democracy and freedom hope it is on cable! You rotten to the core people!
zorbatheturk Richard Burton , December 25, 2017 2:11 AMHere here, the US Holocaust, countless millions killed all over the globe as the USA plunders, wars and props-up evil, despot regimes. Bin Laden, Taleban, just two of the US former best allies, how long can a 200 year old, degenerate country like the USA keep sponging-off/ using exploiting the worlds billions to enrich itself? USA... infested with drugs, crime, rust belts, slums, homeless, street bums VAST inequality.
Mychal Arnold Richard Burton , December 24, 2017 12:01 PMIt's still a million miles better than a craphole like RuSSia!
Le Ruse Tommy Jensen , December 25, 2017 2:32 AMYep! As Rome burns and eaten from within!
Peter Jennings John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:09 AMYes Tommy.. Good move !!
Buy US$ !! US$ is backed by US government !! Gold is not backed by anything !!wilmers13 John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 12:43 AMRemember the Belgium Bulge a few years back? the process must also work in reverse.
John C Carleton wilmers13 , December 24, 2017 8:39 AMYou cannot buy gold from the Empire, have you not read the book Gold Warriors.
Security is a propaganda term now, stands for war preparations.
Trauma2000 John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 1:11 PMThe Empire sells other peoples gold to China and Russia everyday, having stole and sold Americans gold long since.
Works like this.
The not Federal, and no Reserve(s) dollar, is worth about 1 cent, of a 1913, pre Usury criminal banker scam "dollar".
That 1 % is swiftly loosing it's value.
To keep the American people, from realizing, the USA, is using them for cattle, stealing their labor, through planned hyperinflation,:
Israhell/Washington crime cabal, dumps massive amounts of "paper gold and silver", on the market, each and every damn day the rigged market is open, in order to artificially keep the price of gold and silver way the hell below where it should be priced in federal reserve currency.
This hide s the true inflation rate of the not federal and no reserves private Usury Banker Currency, falsely identified as the "US Dollar".
Israhell/Washington DC, does not have the physical gold and silver to cover what they sell.
It is a criminal scam.
Those who buy this paper gold and silver, small guy, will never be given physical for the paper.
Small guy, traded green paper for white paper. Either will be worthless soon.
Sovereigns, can buy enough of it, to demand delivery of physical.
The day the British Anglo zionist Empire defaults delivering physical gold, to China and Russia, for the paper gold, is the day the curtain comes down on the illusion of the USA financial empire.
Washington DC knows this, China knows this, Russia knows this.
In order to buy time, Israhell/Washington DC, has stolen, sold at hugely discounted prices, to keep the dollar scam alive, just a while longer, all the gold they were supposably storing for safe keeping, of other sovereigns.
They have stolen privately held gold, which was stored in commercial banks and vaults for "safe keeping.
They stole the gold which went missing from the basement vaults in the world trade centers, before they set off the demolition charges.
Then they sold it.
They stole and sold Ukraines gold.
They stole and sold, Libya's gold.
They had intended to have already stole and sold Syria's gold.
They are fast running out of other peoples gold, to deliver to China and Russia at huge discounts, to prop up the scam, just a while longer.
The day there is no more stolen gold to deliver to China and Russia, the music stops, all the chairs are removed, this game of musical chars is over. Starving Americans will eat their pets, rats, and each other.
Thanks Israhell!
Thanks Washington DC/USA.John C Carleton Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 2:02 PMI want more information on this. Isabella said a similar thing. I want to know more... So the U$T's that are in actual fact worthless, Russia is using to buy gold at a huge discount to what should be the true market rate; and then Russia is storing this. I understand the storing thing. I'm a straight forward kind-of-a-guy. But its the U.$.T.'s to Physical Gold I can't get my head around.
Why is the U.$. honouring what is a knife-to-its-throat deal that is very soon going to result in the collapse of the U.$. dollar? And according to this forum fully 20% of Russia's reserves are still held in fiat U.$.T's..?
Why would Russia hold such a large percentage if its reserves in what will be worthless U.$.T.'s when it knows that the U.$. is going to try and scam Russia and default..?
I want to know more.
Bd-prince Pramanik Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 8:28 PMPicture a crime family.
Some branches are pure evil.
Some not so evil.
Some are very open about their evil.
Some are sneaky hypocrites who use the news media to white wash their crimes, and vilify their victims.BUT! And this is one huge BUT, they all know too much on each other to start talking too damn much.
Also, their criminal Empire, (shearing/raping/murdering the sheep for fun and profit) is all tied together. Common banks, common/interchangeable fiat currencies, Usury debt practices.
Take part of it down, the other part will suffer great losses, if not go down with them.
Russia, and China, has gotten tired of the British Anglo zionist Empire lording it over them and treating them like red headed step children.
Russia and China, have not seen the Light, are not operating for the sake of their people, but to keep themselves in power, by returning to the people, some of the wealth they stole from the people to begin with
British Anglo zionist pig fkers Empire, is too greedy to return any of the stolen loot.
The BAzE, have a let them eat grass like the animals they are elitist attitude.
China and Russia, are trying to position themselves to come out on top when the economic reset happens.
They both were FORCED, by Empire, to both buy and hold, huge stashes of both Federal reserve fiat currency, and bonds, to do business in the rest of the world.
The USA military is the enforcement arm for the BAzE.
USA military is corrupted, demoralized, veterans fked over royally, weapons do not work as their purpose, was to steal the labor of the American working man and women, not to produce weapons which worked as advertised.
Russia and China, will continue to buy gold, buy time, to get in a better position to give Uncle Sugar's pedophilic ass both middle fingers.
It is in their interest to do so.
The owners of the British Anglo zionist Empire, have their personal vaults filled with stolen gold.
The politicians you see, the Rothschild's even, are window dressing to hide the true owners, and to protect the true owners asses during slave revolts, by offering, kings, queens, politicians, bankers, heads to get chopped.
These owners have no loyalty to any other person, or country in the world. They see themselves as the chess players, humanity as the pieces, the earth as their personal chess board.
They do not give a FF about America, the American people, or the hand puppet political whore of DC/USA.
The hand puppet whores, are too stupid, and corrupt anyway, to understand whats coming, or to have the power, intelligence, or balls to stop it
There are all kinds of fun and wealth created, for deviant sick bastards, in creating, and tearing down empires.
Besides, all the death and destruction gets them sexually excited
Takes years of study, experience with, and intuition, to begin to understand their evil, and the way the world really works.
Whether someone started years back, educating themselves, preparing for whats coming, will determine if they will enter the kill zone as a sheep or not.
The only protection sheep have, is the hope, the jackals will rape and murder some other sheep, not them. That is why they will not stand up or speak up.
That is why they violently attack anyone wants to leave the herd mentality, everyone else forced to be in the same sheep state as them,
They are afraid the jackal will notice them individually.
Herd numbers and hiding in the herd, are the cowards only protectionMychal Arnold John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 12:41 PMyour answer is in your question!
John C Carleton Mychal Arnold , December 24, 2017 12:46 PMJohn I firmly believe they will get what is coming to them just a matter of time nothing endures forever. But mostly not in our life time, though!
Trauma2000 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 3:15 PMAny day now, any week, not very many months, can the scam go on.
In other words, Americans might want to bone up on delicious recipes for Rats, cats, and their neighbors.BobValdez Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 3:48 PMre: "China and Russia been dumping US bonds for a good while.
They just have to do it slowly, so they can get as much cash, to buy stolen discounted gold with from the British Anglo Zionist Empire, as possible without tanking the market."I have been reading this for a while. But I've yet to see it in practice. Rosneft is still accepting U.$. dollars for oil/gas transactions, the most recent of which I believe was the gas shipment from St Petersburg to Poland..? https://tomluongo.me/2017/1...
I need to read more on this subject.
Paw Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 9:48 PMRussia acceps dollars for oil, and uses them to buy physical gold. No need to hold useless dollars, just convert them to gold.
Richard Burton Paw , December 24, 2017 11:18 AMWhat you buy by petrodollars ?
Saudi .Arabia buys arms. But SA has got millions of unemployed people , because they studied Islamic religion , wahabist fanaticism ... Further SA employs millions of workers from other countries. And owns US assets in value over 1 trillion dollars. So what else to buy , where to spend their petrodollars? Only get billions dollars arms ,that are in couple years useless...Population hate the fully corrupt royal family in numbers approximately 40 thousands princess as they have to get about 500 thousands yearly salaries...For doing nothing , only to spend it everywhere...
Populations hate US presence in SA. Very much.Isabella Jones Trauma2000 , December 24, 2017 11:54 AMBut the Great Satan~USA adore such scum as the vile Crooked Saudi royal family, the snakehead USA ignore all their anti-democracy, anti- human rights their beheading, their evil ways, they worship money the US swine, its all they see and lap-up, plus they have Russia/ China /Iran to pick on and blame not their evil Saudi- swine arms buyers. View Hide
Mychal Arnold Isabella Jones , December 24, 2017 12:32 PMAt the moment, because the US is illegally holding gold prices down using uncovered shorts on paper gold, and at the same time has used sanctions to devalue the rouble, Russia is producing oil at reduced - rouble - rates, selling it on the international market for U$, [artificially inflated] and buying massive amounts of cheap gold with the huge profits she is making.
Russia is singing all the way to the bank right now. The US backed itself into a corner on this one it cannot get out from - short of waging war on Russia !!!Tony B. Isabella Jones , December 24, 2017 11:31 PM10% of GDP goes out where is the ussa 100 as are many others in the west. All western country have huge debts funny how that is or is it?
Isabella Jones Tony B. , December 25, 2017 5:41 AMWhy should anyone who is in love with gold be upset if someone is holding the price down? It should be a wonderful time to buy.
Russia is MINING gold, its own gold.John C Carleton Trauma2000 , December 23, 2017 3:41 PMIt is a great time to buy, if you have some spare cash to store, I agree. It's just a poor time if you need to realise your gold - you wont get the price for it you should. But indeed, it's a buyers market. Yes, Russia has a fair bit of gold "reserves" just sitting in the ground.
Nathan Dunning John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 4:36 PMThere is the face the beast lets you see, and the real face of the beast.
You do not think the beast is stupid enough to show it's real face to all the sheep?
Really?
The sheep who are given personal attention in private places, see the real face of the beast, because it sexually excites the beast for the chosen sheep to die bleating in terror.John C Carleton Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 9:44 AMYou're a tool for the left I bet you're American Liberal.
John C Carleton Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 9:49 AMYou are a sheep.
i Am a wolf.
You are lucky i lost my taste for mutton.
i prefer goat and jackal. View HideMychal Arnold Nathan Dunning , December 24, 2017 12:45 PMalexwest11 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:25 AMGuess you just got here you friggin troll. You know nothing you shill. Go back to the basement mom has brought you dinner and cookies n milk and let the grown men talk, now that is a good boy bye. Sorry John I have disappointed my Mom said be nice but idiots bother me. Say hi to your lovely Mom for me and God bless. Merry Christmas everyone! Got your back as always.
John C Carleton alexwest11 , December 23, 2017 12:18 PMJohn C Carleton • an hour ago China and Russia been dumping US bond
-------
no they don't! Russians reserves are about 100+ bln in USTand WHOLLY 20 % OF RUSSIAN assets in Russian banks are kept mostly $$$ and some euro
oncefiredbrass John C Carleton , December 24, 2017 2:44 AMGlad you are so confident in the currency, which has lost 99% of it's buying power since 1913, when the not Federal and no Reserve(s) was forced on the American people by the Usury Banker ancestors of the owners of the 'Fed", buying USA politicians.
Where did that 99% value go?
To the I%ters. You know, the pedophile elite.
They want it all, they are coming for the other 1% of the "dollar's" value.
They are coming for Social security, government pensions, private pensions, checking accounts, any thing with any value.Oh by the way, just cause you are ignorant of how things work, don't mean they don't work that way, just means you are ignorant.
Have a wonderful day now!
See mother, i was nice to the bad person who was trying to run interference for pedophile baby rapers.John C Carleton oncefiredbrass , December 24, 2017 8:22 AMGood to see someone else Awake! A good portion of the Sheep are still sleeping, they think the National Debt and Zero Interest Rates mean nothing (in the Eurozone Interest is Negative). The US Dollar is soon to be Toilet Paper! Our Military can only overthrow small countries that defy the PetroDollar system. Now with so many doing it, John Carleton is right, the National Debt and Retirements Accounts are basically equal. That is why Obutthead set the start of grabbing them by creating the MYRA, the Theory is the Sheep are to stupid to manage their own retirement accounts, so the Government would grab them and put them in a so called safe investment called "Treasury's". Unfortunately the SS Trust Fund has been raided and is broke, but they do have drawers full of Treasuries. Trump has to immediately open public lands for Mining & Drilling! A normalization of Interest Rates to 5-6% would consume Government Revenues just to pay Interest on the Debt!
Ron John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:11 PMWill work like this, they may already be doing it quietly.
Take private pensions.
They are already in trouble, having stocks, bonds, commercial real estate holdings.
All of these will become worthless, or close to it.
Anything with value, currency, decimal dollars, will be taken by the Washington thieves, and worthless US bonds which will probably never be redeemed, or redeemed for chump change, will be put in their place by Washington, as they "protect" the retirement accounts.
Old people will eat rats, each other, dog and cats, die without medical care and meds which they can not afford.
Some will eat their pistols.
Not going to be nice or orderly.alexwest11 John C Carleton , December 23, 2017 11:25 PMDude, your postings are good and has an element of humor, thanks.
John C Carleton alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 8:58 AMpedophile baby rapers.
------
people who associate everything w/ pedophile baby rapers.
USUALLY ARE pedophile baby rapers.!!!!!YES, $ lost about 97 %, but rest of even worse
russian ruble of 1913 - worthless
german mark -worthless
japanese yen - worthless
etc!Aurora alexwest11 , December 23, 2017 1:19 PMOpen mouth in ignorance, insert foot.
Don't worry about a foot in the other end, i will do that verbally with my Texas cowboy boot.Dispora Pedophiles increasingly Use Israel as 'haven,' activist charge.'
https://www.timesofisrael.c...'Advocacy group: Israel is a pedophiles paridise-Haaetz-Israel News'
https://www.haaretz.com/adv...'Nachlaot, where pedophiles roam free,--the Times of Israel
https://www.haaretz.com/adv...'Israel Found to be Safe For Pedophiles'
http://yournewswire.com/isr...'Jewish Pedophiles Increasingly use Israel as a haven, activist charge'
https://freespeechtwentyfir...'Power, Pedophilia and the US Government'
http://www.whale.to/c/power...'Frankland Coverup Sex Scandal,
(pedophile prostitution ring being run out of Reagan's White House)
http://www.johnccarleton.or...All pedo's, should be given a fair trial, and a fair hanging. A pedophile which was given a fair trial, and a fair hanging, never again, raped a child.
Amazing how that works.How you like them Texas cowboy boots?
alexwest11 Aurora , December 24, 2017 12:43 AMCorrect and very easy at any given moment to be converted in a GOLD.Just follow dynamic Russia and China buying GOLD on a world market and everything will be clear to you
AM Hants alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 7:25 AMdynamic Russia and China buying GOLD on a world market
-----btw . moron
Russia/ china don't buy gold on world market. they are 2 /3 gold producers in the world
WHAT IS YOU LEVEL OF FORMAL EDUCATION ??
it seems you are uneducated moron !
Aurora alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 1:19 PMMychal Arnold alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 12:50 PMWhile all eyes are on the oil price and the ruble to dollar rate, the Central Bank of Russia has quietly been buying huge volumes of gold over the past year. In January, 2016, the latest data available, the Russian Central Bank again bought 22 tons of gold, around $800 million at current exchange rates, that, amidst US and EU financial sanctions and low oil prices. It was the eleventh month in a row they bought large gold volumes. For 2015 Russia added a record 208 tons of gold to her reserves compared with 172 tons for 2014. Russia now has 1,437 tonnes of gold in reserve, the sixth largest of any nation according to the World Gold Council in London. Only USA, Germany, Italy, France and China central banks hold a larger tonnage of gold reserves.
Notably also, the Russian central bank has been selling its holdings of US Treasury debt to buy the gold, de facto de-dollarizing, a sensible move as the dollar is waging de facto currency war against the ruble. As of December, 2015, Russia held $92 billion in US Treasury Bonds down from $132 billion in January 2014.China bought another 17 tons of gold in January and will buy a total of another 215 tons this year, approximately equal to that of Russia. From August to January 2016 China added 101 tonnes of gold to its reserves. Annual purchases of more than 200 tons by the PBOC would exceed the entire gold holdings of all but about 20 countries, according to the World Gold Council. China's central bank reserves of gold have risen 57% since 2009 acording to data the PBOC revealed in July, 2015. Market watchers believe even that amount of gold in China's central bank vaults is being politically vastly understated so as not to cause alarm bells to ring too loud in Washington and London.Le Ruse Mychal Arnold , December 25, 2017 2:37 AMDude stop your only making yourself look stupid by opening your gob and proving or in this case writing. Merry Christmas or is it happy Hanukkah? Troll boy.
alexwest11 Aurora , December 23, 2017 11:29 PMMaybe Happy "Kwanza" whatever is that ??
Bd-prince Pramanik alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 8:51 PMany given moment to be converted in a GOLD.J
----------
???????? converted what ?in Russia, in gold ? you are not Russian, don't live, know nothing
----------
most Russians are stupid and uneducated in finance, savings do not existaverage Russian rather buy car , or flat than save money for something.
it is USSR mentality plagued by memory of deficits
Tony B. Bd-prince Pramanik , December 24, 2017 11:36 PMalexwest11 You are stupid ! a flat or house is real money you know ! They are uneducated in Rothschild finance! are you a russlanddeutsche! or jew from holy ukraine like poroschenko ?
Le Ruse Tony B. , December 25, 2017 2:39 AMRothschild finance can be described in a single word: THEFT.
The world's sole economic problem.AM Hants alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 7:38 AMHumm...
the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away ??oncefiredbrass alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 2:52 AMYou confuse me. If Russians are so stupid and uneducated in finance, then why is their President a Dr in Economics?
Why are they in control of their vast wealth of natural resources?
Why do they have virtually enough gold to back the ruble and decent currency reserves, that rise monthly?
Also, how come they have free healthcare and education, including university level, if they are so stupid and uneducated?
Why does the US require Russian engines to make it into space?
Like I said, you confuse me, as I assumed you were talking about another super-nation, that has seriously lost it's way.
PUTIN'S PHD THESIS ESSENTIAL READING FOR OFFICIALS
http://slavija.proboards.co...Russia National Debt: $194,545,062,334
Interest per Year $12,805,556,000
Interest per Second $406
Debt per Citizen $1,330
Debt as % of GDP 19.32%
GDP $1,007,000,000,000
Population 146,300,000Russia Foreign Exchange Reserves
View Hidealexwest11 oncefiredbrass , December 24, 2017 3:19 AMRussia is one of the largest Countries by land mass with a sparse population after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They run very low deficits and their National Debt is very low, they are one of the Countries that is best prepared for a major economic crash.
oncefiredbrass alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 3:27 AMoncefiredbrass alexwest11 • 28 minutes ago Russia
is one of the largest Countries by land mass with a sparse population
after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They run very low defic
--------
but facts say quite opposite!!!!!!!!during oil selloff of 2008*9 Russian ruble fall 50%, from 23 to 37 per$
during oil selloff of 2014*15 Russian ruble fall 250 %, from 33 to almost 90 per$
right now its about 60 per $ , still 100% devaluation from 2014
-------i don't remember $ fall against euro or yen during 2000 or/and 2008 crises in USA
more than 20 %
alexwest11 JIMI JAMES , December 24, 2017 6:23 AMThe fall of the Ruble was an attack or sanction by the Obama Regime over Ukraine. Why not trying to look up the Debt to GDP ratio for Russia and then the US and then ask yourself what economy is actually in a better position to withstand a Depression. Russia almost has enough Gold to back all their currency. How much gold would it take to back all the Treasuries and Dollars that the US has spread all over the world?
Mychal Arnold alexwest11 , December 24, 2017 12:59 PMbecause in the end only the strong will survive and russia just like china
-------
!!sure moron.avg salary in Russia about 500 $
avg pension 200 $that is why idiotic Russians twice in 20 century totally annihilated own country!!!!!! 1917 and 1991
-----
and for china!!!!!!! it just show how moronic you are
we will see how china is good in 100 or 200 years!!!cause history showed china always being overrun by someone else;
mongols, Manchurians, etclearn a history western moron!!!!!!!!
Why , December 23, 2017 9:42 AMHey let the grown men talk baby boy! You are spouting msm talking points you're trying to debate the choir about hymns. Your not going to make anyone here see the light because you have no truths behind or in front. Msm drivel. One simple question! Who took Berlin? In ww2 of course!
Craig A. Mouldey Why , December 23, 2017 10:51 AMI hope Russia will survive UKUSA's onslaught.
Me too. The U.S. has become the evil empire. The bully on the world stage stealing everyone's lunch money. I know it will devastate us in Canada, but I would still rather see the U.S. economy crumble if it would cripple their war machine, than to see this situation go on. Ron Paul was right: Instead of war, why not pursue peaceful trade? But the U.S. controllers want everyone else under their thumb as obedient serfs. It is evil. And as Smedley Butler so bluntly put it "War is a Racket"! He said this because he was sent to war with Guatemala on behalf of the United Fruit Company, aka Chiquita Brands International. This time, they are trying to steal the lunch money from those who can defend themselves. We aren't going to sit on our couch watching this war on TV, because we will watch it out our front windows.
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Dec 17, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com
Uh-Oh Canada! Tyler Durden Dec 17, 2017 3:15 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
Oil from Canada's oil sands is now selling at a $27-per-barrel discount relative to WTI, the sharpest difference in more than four years
Western Canada Select (WCS), a benchmark for oil from Alberta's oil sands, has plunged in December, falling to just $30 per barrel at the end of this past week. WCS typically trades at a discount to WTI, reflecting the differences in quality from lighter forms of oil, as well as the extra transportation costs to move oil hundreds of miles out of Alberta.
But a discount is usually something like $10 per barrel, not more than $25. A price deterioration of this magnitude has not been seen in years.
... ... ...
At the end of the day, the current $27-per-barrel discount is being acutely felt in Canada's oil industry. Kevin Birn, a director at IHS Energy in Calgary, told Bloomberg that a $25-per-barrel WCS discount translates into a loss of $20 million per day for Canada's oil producers.
Lore -> east of eden , Dec 17, 2017 6:27 PM
zebra77a -> Lore , Dec 17, 2017 7:28 PMTyler should consider doing his audience a really big favor by addressing critical market fundamentals, because it's clear that there is a lot of ignorance here, still.
There is a TEMPORARY surplus, yes, but production in domestic American formations is collapsing (no exaggeration, the entire sector is engaged in a conspiracy of silence), and the U.S. Government is about to lose its ability to pay by issuing endless mountains of debt (hence all the distractive war-mongering and pathological adventures overseas). A new civil war is coming.
America is NOT a desirable trading partner, going forward.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a clueless buffoon, pandering to the Victim Industry, Progressivists and other debased groups. Somebody in Ottawa needs to give him a good shake and remind him of his priorities regarding practical matters, starting with expansion of Canadian refining capacity and port access to international markets, which ought to be considered a matter of national security.
jaxville -> zebra77a , Dec 17, 2017 9:34 PMThe big dirty secret is Saudi Arabia, THERE oil bed's are collapsing and pumped into total failure, and there was some articles they were buying oil BACK from New York. We could be sitting on the largest price swing in history.
Question is - when is Israel going into Iran...?
Rock On Roger , Dec 17, 2017 3:30 PMGet a grip! Israel is never going into Iran. They will get the USA and other "allies" to do that for them.
zebra77a -> In.Sip.ient , Dec 17, 2017 7:35 PMWe've got the same problem with gas in Alberta. Lotsa new production and not enough export capacity. Friday Alberta spot price @$1.77 Canadian dollars per gigajoule. More or less $1.35/mcf.
shitshitshit , Dec 17, 2017 3:50 PMThe reality was the oilsands never had to be profitable, just attractive.
No not visually attractive, investment attractive for stock markets and pensions.. The oilsands was always created on the coffer of the public investment. The oilsands were built off of pension funds and excess money flows from the fiat expansion of the Central Banks. It never had anything to do with profitability grant you if Oil had stayed at $100 a barrel big oil would of built plants the size of California.
More oil now goes into making plastic than goes into driving. Price of oil is completely and utterly delinked from it's availability. When is it going back to $100 / barrel ask when Israel is invading Iran..
johnnycanuck -> shitshitshit , Dec 17, 2017 4:20 PMI don't understand why would they lose money selling their production instead of stopping the production until conditions are reunited to sell at a decent price. Sometimes you have to be willing to suffer a but to make things good again otherwise they might drag on forever.
The oil market is like a masochist market. People try to be three first ones to sell at any price instead of patiently waiting for the right moment.
zebra77a -> shitshitshit , Dec 17, 2017 7:46 PMBecause you can't just stop. It takes years and enormous amounts of money to put all the pieces needed in play.
It's not like a Vietnamese food truck start up
CHX13 , Dec 17, 2017 3:58 PM-40 for weeks up there. Boiler shuts off, pipes freeze up in hours. Water expansion will crack it all apart. They don't even want air touching the inside of the pipes to prevent oxidation. The fun one is the Texans they don't know they because they think they can run a Fort Mcmurray oilsand plant like the ones they run in Texas. The only thing keeping the plant running is a pipeline of money..
Heat Trace has put many electricians kids through a lot of colleges and universities..
Profitability is not a big concern, grandmas pension money is stuck into companies like Exxon oil, it's not going anywhere, they'll pump at a loss for 3-5 years potentially before they will shut it all down..
But they'll drop the wages and lay people off in hours... Fort McMurray' s biggest export is skilled tradesmen now not oil..
johnnycanuck , Dec 17, 2017 4:12 PMThe future of the canadian oil sands stand on a slippery slope... ;-)
That's what happens when CONswervatives sell out their country's ability to control it's resources and it's means to get them to market.
They sold out Canada's publicly owned railway, then they sold out one of the last remaining Crown Jewels, the Canadian Wheat Board which not only owned it's own rail cars, but successfully managed export shipments for decades via it's reliable and well managed access to ports
Said hoakey Free Market sales pitch is just another means of screwing a country and it's citizens out of it's wealth.
The Koch bros for example, have made out like bandits at the expense of Canadian citizens right to fair profits from it's oil reserves that the likes of Koch had nothing to do with it's expensive development stage. Perhaps more appropriate description of Koch Ind is, like a Bedouin Sheik vanishing in the night with their plunder.
Said CONswervatives even went so far as to screw up Canada's grain marketing system in favor of...drum roll please.. A US hedge fund and Saudi Arabia.
But then, when their political nemisises, the Liberal Party of Canada trades off with said CONswervatives, in our times, they do nothing except extol the virtues of Free Trade. Which, all bullshit aside, means they are on the same side and what few differences there once were, like where you can stick your thingy, and into whom, are fast disappearing.
I don't expect Murikans to understand the landscape of Canadian politics, as Canada isn't a major part of the centre of their consumer society oriented Universe.
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Dec 16, 2017 | www.unz.com
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) of Saudi Arabia is the undoubted Middle East man of the year, but his great impact stems more from his failures than his successes. He is accused of being Machiavellian in clearing his way to the throne by the elimination of opponents inside and outside the royal family. But, when it comes to Saudi Arabia's position in the world, his miscalculations remind one less of the cunning manoeuvres of Machiavelli and more of the pratfalls of Inspector Clouseau.
Again and again, the impulsive and mercurial young prince has embarked on ventures abroad that achieve the exact opposite of what he intended. When his father became king in early 2015, he gave support to a rebel offensive in Syria that achieved some success but provoked full-scale Russian military intervention, which in turn led to the victory of President Bashar al-Assad. At about the same time, MbS launched Saudi armed intervention, mostly through airstrikes, in the civil war in Yemen. The action was code-named Operation Decisive Storm, but two and a half years later the war is still going on, has killed 10,000 people and brought at least seven million Yemenis close to starvation.
The Crown Prince is focusing Saudi foreign policy on aggressive opposition to Iran and its regional allies, but the effect of his policies has been to increase Iranian influence. The feud with Qatar, in which Saudi Arabia and the UAE play the leading role, led to a blockade being imposed five months ago which is still going on. The offence of the Qataris was to have given support to al-Qaeda type movements – an accusation that was true enough but could be levelled equally at Saudi Arabia – and to having links with Iran. The net result of the anti-Qatari campaign has been to drive the small but fabulously wealthy state further into the Iranian embrace.
Saudi relations with other countries used to be cautious, conservative and aimed at preserving the status quo. But today its behaviour is zany, unpredictable and often counterproductive: witness the bizarre episode in November when the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was summoned to Riyadh, not allowed to depart and forced to resign his position. The objective of this ill-considered action on the part of Saudi Arabia was apparently to weaken Hezbollah and Iran in Lebanon, but has in practice empowered both of them.
What all these Saudi actions have in common is that they are based on a naïve presumption that "a best-case scenario" will inevitably be achieved. There is no "Plan B" and not much of a "Plan A": Saudi Arabia is simply plugging into conflicts and confrontations it has no idea how to bring to an end.
MbS and his advisers may imagine that it does not matter what Yemenis, Qataris or Lebanese think because President Donald Trump and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and chief Middle East adviser, are firmly in their corner. "I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing," tweeted Trump in early November after the round up and confinement of some 200 members of the Saudi elite. "Some of those they are harshly treating have been 'milking' their country for years!" Earlier he had tweeted support for the attempt to isolate Qatar as a supporter of "terrorism".
But Saudi Arabia is learning that support from the White House these days brings fewer advantages than in the past. The attention span of Donald Trump is notoriously short, and his preoccupation is with domestic US politics: his approval does not necessarily mean the approval of other parts of the US government. The State Department and the Pentagon may disapprove of the latest Trump tweet and seek to ignore or circumvent it. Despite his positive tweet, the US did not back the Saudi confrontation with Qatar or the attempt to get Mr Hariri to resign as prime minister of Lebanon.
For its part, the White House is finding out the limitations of Saudi power. MbS was not able to get the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to a US-sponsored peace plan that would have given Israel very much and the Palestinians very little. The idea of a Saudi-Israeli covert alliance against Iran may sound attractive to some Washington think tanks, but does not make much sense on the ground. The assumption that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the promise to move the US embassy there, would have no long-term effects on attitudes in the Middle East is beginning to look shaky.
It is Saudi Arabia – and not its rivals – that is becoming isolated. The political balance of power in the region changed to its disadvantage over the last two years. Some of this predates the elevation of MbS: by 2015 it was becoming clear that a combination of Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey was failing to carry out regime change in Damascus. This powerful grouping has fragmented, with Turkey and Qatar moving closer to the Russian-backed Iranian-led axis, which is the dominant power in the northern tier of the Middle East between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean.
If the US and Saudi Arabia wanted to do anything about this new alignment, they have left it too late. Other states in the Middle East are coming to recognise that there are winners and losers, and have no wish to be on the losing side. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a meeting this week in Istanbul of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, to which 57 Muslim states belong, to reject and condemn the US decision on Jerusalem, Saudi Arabia only sent a junior representative to this normally moribund organisation. But other state leaders like Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, King Abdullah of Jordan and the emirs of Kuwait and Qatar, among many others, were present. They recognised East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and demanded the US reverse its decision.
MbS is in the tradition of leaders all over the world who show Machiavellian skills in securing power within their own countries. But their success domestically gives them an exaggerated sense of their own capacity in dealing with foreign affairs, and this can have calamitous consequences. Saddam Hussein was very acute in seizing power in Iraq but ruined his country by starting two wars he could not win.
Mistakes made by powerful leaders are often explained by their own egomania and ignorance, supplemented by flattering but misleading advice from their senior lieutenants. The first steps in foreign intervention are often alluring because a leader can present himself as a national standard bearer, justifying his monopoly of power at home. Such a patriotic posture is a shortcut to popularity, but there is always a political bill to pay if confrontations and wars end in frustration and defeat. MbS has unwisely decided that Saudi Arabia should play a more active and aggressive role at the very moment that its real political and economic strength is ebbing. He is overplaying his hand and making too many enemies.
Svigor , December 16, 2017 at 6:24 am GMTThe only hope someone as cloistered as a Saudi crown prince can have of being an effective ruler is either by being an extraordinary person (very curious, love learning for its own sake, etc), or be at least moderately intelligent, and listen to consensus.Avery , December 16, 2017 at 6:28 am GMTFor its part, the White House is finding out the limitations of Saudi power. MbS was not able to get the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to a US-sponsored peace plan that would have given Israel very much and the Palestinians very little.
Lies and Jew-hatred. Everyone knows that despite their infamous sharpness in business dealings, the world's longest history of legalism, a completely self-centered and ethnocentric culture, and their longstanding abuse of the Palestinians, every single deal the Jews try to sign with the Palestinians heavily favors the Palestinians, and the only reason the Palestinians won't sign is because they're psychotic Jew-haters.
The idea of a Saudi-Israeli covert alliance against Iran may sound attractive to some Washington think tanks, but does not make much sense on the ground. The assumption that Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the promise to move the US embassy there, would have no long-term effects on attitudes in the Middle East is beginning to look shaky.
Hey, you skipped the part where you did anything to support the idea that a Zionist-Saudi alliance doesn't make sense.
K, let's all wait for Art Deco to come in and spew some Hasbara then tell us he's not a Zhid.
{Mohammed Bin Salman's Ill-Advised Ventures Have Weakened Saudi Arabia}Tammy , December 16, 2017 at 9:51 am GMTGREAT news. Hopefully the evil, cannibalistic terrorism spreading so-called 'kingdom' of desert nomads will continue on its path of self destruction, and disappear as a functioning state.
Once more a Saudi Firster was detained in KSA. This time the owner of Arab Bank, a Jordanian with dual Jordan and KSA citizenship. Saad Hariri a Lebanese was the first one who was dual Lebanon and KSA citizens and who lost his diplomatic immunity in KSA.Jake , December 16, 2017 at 12:31 pm GMTI wonder if the Israel Firster who are dual citizens are now sweating? Wonder, if Netanyahu is still an USA citizen? Happy days are coming back .
"Saudi relations with other countries used to be cautious, conservative and aimed at preserving the status quo. But today its behaviour is zany, unpredictable and often counterproductive:"cbrown , December 16, 2017 at 1:07 pm GMTSaudis allied with Israelis, backed by the wealth and might of the US? Guaranteed to bring out the worst in Saudis (which is bad enough at base) and Israelis and Americans.
Machiavellian skills really ? I'd see 6 months ahead if this was true. MBS just made a show that they are a de facto Mafia not a businessman to the whole world. I'd bet he just quashed a lot of efforts and money spent on raising the racing horses of the saud monarch and in turn destroyed some serious connection that were vital but aren't readily available to them. Just how potent money they thought it would be ? Sure all is businesses and it will work so long you can pay the right person. The problem is where to find the right person.Joe Hide , December 16, 2017 at 1:53 pm GMTCome on Cockburn, look at the Big Picture, not the little one. This the old fallacy of looking at the trees and not seeing the forest. What is happening in Saudi Arabia is a piece of the much bigger puzzle being put together over years, decades, and maybe generations.EliteCommInc. , December 16, 2017 at 2:25 pm GMTThe psychopaths at the top of the power pyramid have been engaged in this hidden global game for generations, it's always been part of their longterm strategy.
Very recently Highly intelligent, realistic, morally and ethically centered, and practically oriented individuals, have also formed secret powerful groups to arrive at beneficial goals for humanity. These truly Good Guys have learned that the criminal, murderous, lecherous, degenerate, deviate, psychopaths in positions of great power are irredeemable and should be eliminated where possible. What you see in Saudi Arabia is merely a tree, not the forest. Just the same, to the author, keep writing but research the subject much much more before you put pen to paper, as you do have apersuasive and talented style.
I am going to come to the defence here.DESERT FOX , December 16, 2017 at 2:39 pm GMT1. We have been screaming about the unintended consequences of Saudi giving to charities since 2004.
2. We removed the buffer of Iraq from Iranian ambitions (as unclear as it may be debated) creating issues not only for Saudi Arabia, but others in the region as well.
3. We are the ones who have been fomenting destabilization all throughout the region some of whom would have been allies of the Saudis in some common cause.
4. No one is escaping the negative consequences of our Iraq invasion.
5. We have been complaining about rogue and irresponsible wealthy Muslims ad naseum.
Now when someone steps up the plate to meet the challenges many caused by the US – our first complaint is not astute counsel but rather a series of articles highlighting failure. I would not contend that I support every choice. But I think we should at least take a wait and see perspective. He is operating in a region rife with intrigue and ambitions, not to mention -- Muslims bent on spreading Islam as one would expect a muslim to do. Frankly I am not sure how one governs in the arena of the middle east – especially now – it's a region in major shift.
I think there are more effective choices concerning Yemen and Qatar. But figuring out what the choices are is not going to be easy. And harder still perhaps is implementing them. As for backfire -- we are just not in a position to judge, at the moment. Anyone hoping that another major state collapses in that region is probably miscalculating the value of instability.
The Saudis are the U.S. and ISISRAELS puppet, they do what the Zionist neocons tell them to do, which is to be the Zionist agent provocateur in the Mideast.Anon , Disclaimer December 16, 2017 at 4:55 pm GMTThe Saudis have helped the U.S. and ISISRAEL create and finance ISIS aka AL CIADA and for this the Saudis can rot in hell, and by the way the reason for the attack on Yemen is that the Saudis oil reserves are diminishing and so the Saudis figured they would take Yemens oil.
The main creators of ISIS aka AL CIADA are the U.S. and ISISRAEL and BRITAIN ie the CIA and the MOSSAD and MI6.
The irony is that Saudis, before MbS and during his dominance, are making exactly the same suicidal blunders as the US. No enemy could have damaged the US and its positions in the world more than its Presidents and the Congress in the last 17 years. The same is true for KSA, with the same mistakes being made: undermining the financial system of the country, global over-reach that forces all opposition to unite, crazy military expenses, etc.Art , December 16, 2017 at 5:57 pm GMTSorry, but these people dressed in 14 century robes and garb, cannot be taken seriously. They look like play-people feigning a furious grandeur. Without their petrochemicals – they would be laughed at by everyone – including their own kind. They should not be respected because they are religious – they are old world tribalist thugs hiding behind a religion. They use and abuse their people – holding them back from modernity.Anon , Disclaimer December 16, 2017 at 6:17 pm GMTThink Peace -- Art
@Z-manneutral , December 16, 2017 at 6:31 pm GMTThing is, Saudi regime was rotten through and through before MbS, remains rotten under his rule, and will remain rotten when some other jerk kicks him out and establishes himself at the helm.
It does not matter how smart Saudi Arabia is with their foreign policy now, they became allies with Israel, that means Saudi Arabia can never claim to be a power working for the interests of Islam. MBS is a marked man, no matter how many purges he undertakes in his army, or even if he just hires Pakistani soldiers, if he has Muslims fighting in his army he will always be carrying the risk of being assassinated by somebody who has seen him cross the red line and become pro jewish.Svigor , December 16, 2017 at 6:51 pm GMTI don't really understand the constant hopes that the Saudi regime will fall. How is that any different from cheering Bush's disastrous regime change in Iraq? How will the fallout be any better in Arabia than it was in Iraq, Libya, etc?cbrown , December 16, 2017 at 7:43 pm GMT@Svigorneutral , December 16, 2017 at 8:14 pm GMTIt's not that there's a constant hope it's just they'd fall in the near future and fortunately it will balance the geopolitical power in the future. Their fallout aren't going to be as bad unless the people pulling their string persistent in keeping them in power.
@Svigorsomeone , December 17, 2017 at 12:14 am GMTIt will be better because it means Israel loses an ally, also with the Saudis gone Egypt will also be unable to keep their population in check. The fall of the Saudis means that Israel will be surrounded by regimes that oppose it...
Another Junior Gaddafi that is going to ruin his entire nation while intoxicated with NYT or other Western media coverage. He talks of corruption after spending 1.1 Billion dollars on a yacht and a painting.anon , Disclaimer December 17, 2017 at 12:33 am GMT
Netenyahu is much the same. He has weakened Israel immensely by playing the scary wolf.@neutralSouth Africa was never in danger from their hostile neighbors . They committed suicide. Egypt cannot control its own territory let alone start wars , ditto for Syria and Lebanon. Jordan is a client state of Israel and lacks a functioning army. ...
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Dec 16, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
likbez , , December 17, 7935 at 3:13 pm
My impression is that this a gap (could be intentional) between IEA statistics and predictions and the reality. This is propaganda agency after all, with the explicit agenda of keeping the oil price for Us consumers low. So typically that produce too "rosy" forecasts that later are quietly corrected. Their short-term forecasts are based on oil futures and as such has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. Which is quite disturbing.It is undeniable that shale boom which played such a beneficial role for the USA allowing to squeeze oil price (with generous help from KSA) for two and half years is dead.
Now is kept artificially alive by junk bonds and directs loans that will never be repaid. In other words, the USA now enjoys a period of "subprime oil. Unless there is a new technological breakthrough there will be an only minor improvement in efficiency of drilling and oil extraction in the next couple of years, but the lion share of those was already implemented, and on the current technological level we are close to the "peak efficiency" in drilling and services.
Those minor efficiencies will be negated by rising prices of service industries, which can't take the current pricing any longer and need to raise prices for their services.
Old "classic" land-based oil fields deteriorate to the tune of 5% per year, while deep sea deteriorate more and subprime wells much more. You can probably double the figure for each, although much depends on particular geology. Infill drilling accelerates depletion, allowing to maintain high production for sometimes so changes can be abrupt.
In any case each year you need somehow to find 5 MB/d of oil, finance new wells in those areas and infrastructure required. All Us shale production is around 6 MD/day. So you get the idea.
Moreover, with each year, "subprime wells" (multi-stage shale well) costs more and now are at a range of n 6-10 million depending on the number and the length of horizontals and number of fracking stages and other factors. Only few area (sweet spots) can recover this capital investment during the life of the shale well at current prices). More at around $80 and almost all around $100 per barrel. The later is also the price that KSA needs to remain solvent (rumored to be in low 90th).
The shale oil produced in the USA is really "subprime" because large part of it has lower energy content (by 20% or more) and different mix of various hydrocarbons that "classic" oil. Especially condensate from gas wells. Which optimally can be used only as diluter for heavy oil. EIA does not differentiate between different types oil and use wrong metric (volume instead of weight). May be intentionally.
So the future remains unpredictable but general trend for oil prices might be up with some spikes, not down. Although many people, including myself, thought so in early 2015 ;-)
Another factor is that world consumption continue to grow and will do so because population in large part of Asia and Africa is still growing and number of cars on the road increase each year requiring on average 1-1.4 MB/d additionally.
So it looks like the situation gradually deteriorate despite all efforts and related technological breakthrough which allow to extract more from the old wells and more efficiently extract shale oil.
The problem is that new large deposits are very hard to find now and several previously oil-exporting countries gradually became oil-importers. Mexico is one, which will be huge hit.
Obama administration screw the opportunity to move US consumers to hybrid cars so the situation in the USA deteriorates too despite rise of percentage of more economical vehicle in the personal car fleet each year. Rumors were that they pursue vendetta against Russia and that was primary consideration - to crash Russian economy and install a new "Yeltsin".
The USA generally is in better position then many other countries as the switch to natural gas and hybrid electric cars for personal transportation is still possible. It already happened in several European countries for selected types of cars, buses and trucks (taxi, in-city buses and "daily round trip or short trips trucks).
But there is no money for infrastructure anymore and for example many miles of US rail remain non-electrified. Burning diesel instead.
As maintenance was neglected for two and half year disruption of existing supply might became more frequent. also mid Eastern war is also a possibility with Trump saber-rattling against Iran. Recently the leak in undersea pipeline removed 0.5 MB/d from the market and caused a price spike to $65 for Brent (WTI remains cheaper and never crosses $60 this time).
Also with a young prince in charge and the revolution against "old guard" KSA became more and more unstable so the next "oil shock" might come from them. They also have problem of depletion which until now they compensated pitting more and more heavy high sulfur oil deposits online. At some point they will be exhausted too. They also pitch for war with Iran, but they would prefer somebody else to do heavy lifting.
The only one or countries still can significantly increase oil production now – Libya (were we have problem because of the civil war after US-sponsored Kaddafi removal and killing), and Iraq where there are still untapped areas that might contain some oil; nothing big, but still substantial in the range of 1 MB/d. Looks like Iran now exports all it could. Same is true for KSA and Russia. In this sense OPEN oil production cuts might an attempt to preserve impression that they are untapped reserved. I doubt that there are much and those cuts are just a reasonable insurance policy against quick depletion of existing wells as higher price gives some space for innovation.
There is also such thing as EBITRA which gradually deteriorates everywhere and can become negative for certain types of oil (for oil sands it depends on the price of natural gas and they are primary candidate if the price doubles or triples from the current level).
Jim Haygood , December 15, 2017 at 7:07 am
ChrisFromGeorgia , December 15, 2017 at 7:46 am' The surplus will be front-loaded – the first half of the year will see a glut of about 200,000 bpd. '
That don't square at all with WTI futures being backwardated from Feb 2018 ($57.08) to Dec 2022 ($49.79).
Me so bullish
nonsense factory , December 15, 2017 at 11:19 amBy continuing its' easy money policies well past any recession or growth scare, the Fed has created a monster. Most shale companies aren't profitable and are in fact losing money using any kind of GAAP. However, cheap financing allows them to survive and "drill baby drill." The unintended consequences may include destabilizing Saudi Arabia to the point of an economic and political collapse. One can always hope
Octopii , December 15, 2017 at 8:14 amEconomic collapse in Venezuela due to low oil prices – good! Economic collapse in Saudi Arabia due to low oil prices – bad! Solution – extend cheap financing to Saudi Arabia via Aramco IPO!
Meanwhile, China says it will be moving to all-electric cars and trucks to help solve its horrible urban air pollution problem. . . Meaning global demand has nowhere to go but down.
Why do I feel that this will not end well for the American hegemon? Particularly with Trump in office working overtime with boy genius Rick Perry to promote coal and sabotage renewable energy. . .
The 36″ North Sea Forties pipeline is currently shut down for repairs. Short and medium term prices will carry the effect of that supply loss. In the long term, unexpected developments are common. Considering how completely wrong so many oil analysts have been over the past ten years, including the IEA, there is not a lot of credibility in oil market predictions.
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Dec 16, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
joecostello , December 15, 2017 at 8:26 am
joecostello , December 15, 2017 at 9:23 am"OPEC production fell by 130,000 bpd in November, due to lower output in Saudi Arabia,"
There's no industry capability to put this figure as a fact. They still have people looking at tankers with binoculars figuring out how much the Sauds are putting out. Even better the WSJ printed in a story last week that the Sauds were putting out oil at $2.25 a barrel!
Anyway, all oil numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, always. Shale is meeting with increasing geological limits, going to cost even more to produce, this in an industry that's never made a profit, even at $100 and is some $280 billion in debt, which I guess its good debt doesn't mean anything.
And the band played on
this is good piece on Asia refiners having trouble with US shale as US refiners have previously.
Condensate is not the oil, "black gold, Texas tea" of old and fact is that type of oil basically peaked a decade ago in low 70s mbd. Shale fields have always produced a lot of condensate and are now producing more and increasing amounts of just gas.
Anyway "oil glut" has always been at best a nebulous term for many reasons, but then we here in the US just think, as Mr. Obama proudly stated in his last State of the Union, "$2 a gallon gas ain't bad either."
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Dec 09, 2017 | www.jpost.com
Simultaneously, it has managed to develop fairly profitable, albeit at times tense relationships with other major or rising world powers. Those include Russia, China and Turkey. At the same time it is engaging a large number of European countries, South Korea, India, and others in assorted trade agreements. Iran has managed to place itself front and center – not only as a bad actor bent on colonization of the "Shi'a Crescent" and possibly beyond – it has also gained increasing political and economic legitimacy among its former adversaries.
Iran has even managed to get the United States under the Trump administration to wage limited war against ISIS, first in Iraq and Syria and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan, despite conflicts and occasional confrontations between US forces and the terrorist group's own militias. While Iran's various financial deals are to some extent being tracked, what remains noteworthy is the issue of energy control in the region, a factor that fuels the numerous conflicts, or at least finances them.
... ... ...
The US has miscalculated by believing other countries are incapable of pursuing independent interests without its involvement, or by thinking such nations cannot use energy markets effectively to marginalize any state that is not already in an active leadership position. The US should take stock of the way the energy assets are being played by various states. It should either separate the authoritarian regimes which only grow stronger with the greater access and interconnections such valuable assets provide, or by outplaying those states at their own game.
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Dec 08, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Just the day before the administration leaked to the WSJ about the art deal, President Trump had publicly scolded MbS about the situation in Yemen:
President Trump called on Saudi Arabia to lift its crushing blockade against its war-torn neighbor Yemen on Wednesday, hours after defying the kingdom and saying the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel .In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump said he had directed members of his administration to reach out to the Saudi leadership "to request that they completely allow food, fuel, water, and medicine to reach the Yemeni people who desperately need it."
Today Secretary of State Tillerson again pushed that line :
Speaking in Paris on Friday, Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, called on Saudi Arabia to be "measured" in its military operations in Yemen.
...
Tillerson urged Saudi restraint."With respect to Saudi Arabia's engagement with Qatar, how they're handling the Yemen war that they're engaged in, the Lebanon situation, we would encourage them to be a bit more measured and a bit more thoughtful in those actions to, I think, fully consider the consequences," he said.
He once again demanded a "complete end" to the Saudi-led blockade of Yemen so that humanitarian aid and commercial supplies could be delivered.
Embarrassing MbS about the art buy and publicly(!) scolding hm for the situation in Yemen, for which the U.S. is just as much responsible as the Saudis, is quite an assault. What has MbS done - or not done - to deserve such a punishment?
Trump has just declared that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Did the administration expect the applause of the Saudis for its breaking of international law with regards to Jerusalem? Does it lash out to the Saudis to get their agreement?
If so the miscalculation is clearly on the U.S. side. It is impossible for the Saudis to concede the Haram al-Sharif, the mosque on the so called temple mount, to the Zionists. The Saudi King would no longer be the "custodian of the two holy mosques" in Mecca and Medina but the "seller of the third holy mosque" of Islam in Jerusalem. The people would kill him and his whole family.
If the issue of this public hustle it is not Jerusalem, what else might it be that the Trump administration wants and the Saudis can not, or are not willing to concede?
A few hours ago the Saudi King fired his ankle biting Foreign Minster Adel al-Jubair. A relative of the king, Khaled bin Salman, will take the job. Is this related to the spat with Trump?
arbetet , Dec 8, 2017 3:02:14 PM | 1
This came up:Madderhatter67 , Dec 8, 2017 3:14:21 PM | 2Breaking: Saudi FM allegedly sacked by regimeThe Saudi Foreign Minister, 'Adel Al-Jubeir, has been allegedly sacked by the Kingdom's regime, several prominent political activists reported this evening.
According to the claims, Jubeir was fired and replaced by a close confidant of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.
The confidant that is allegedly replacing Jubeir is none other than Prince Khaled bin Salman, the Crown Prince's brother.
The Saudi regime has yet to confirm or deny these rumors.
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/breaking-saudi-fm-allegedly-sacked-regime/
It was Jerusalem. They were not willing to sacrifice Jerusalem.Quentin , Dec 8, 2017 3:20:29 PM | 3Where does MbS's interpretation of Salvator Mundi come from. The Saudi's have something with crystal orbs, like the one Trump so fondly stroked in Riyadh after giving a masterful interpretation of the sword dance.BX , Dec 8, 2017 3:20:30 PM | 4Yes. It is puzzling what is going on between MbS and the Trump administration. I was sure MbS, the reformer, secretly okayed the Jerusalem move. His negative statement might be just theater, I figured. But I am not so sure anymore. Yes, MbS wants a peace deal (any deal with "peace" written on it) between Palestinians and Israelis. But both he and Trump/Kushner are novices in politics and diplomacy (and that ain't the same as getting a deal for a new tower) and absolutely underestimated the effort. Totally.Don Wiscacho , Dec 8, 2017 3:38:33 PM | 5Word is that Kushner made Trump delay delivering his campaign promise because he needed more time for his peace plan (and that would be 6 months???). This is the level they are at. And now, they placed an obvious obstacle in the path go their peace plan - out of folly. Complete folly. Because Trump wanted to deliver. I believe they are already backtracking as good as they can. But the damage is done. I think Palestinians were just waiting for a good opportunity/reason to get rid of the US in the process and found it now. Also, the single state solution is being talked about.
The source for the WSJ need not be the Trump administration in the narrow sense but some stray intelligence official ("U.S. intelligence reports") wanting to throw a wrench because that story is absolutely damaging. Absolutely, because it is embarrassing and I don't think MbS enjoys that. Note, the story began to become known around the time it became obvious Trump would not sign the waiver and reached its epitome (WSJ) just after that. Trump set himself up for this.
My pet hypothesis is Trump's recognizing Jerusalem was the bone he was willing to throw the Israelis after his generals told him attacking Iran would be catastrophic for the US military and world economy. The Saudis, who are as rabid about bombing Iran as the Zionists, were pissed as they probably had been led to believe the attack was a matter of time. In order to remind them of their position and get them on board with the "peace" deal Tillerson has been hinting about, they've been turning the screws on MBS as a taste of what's to come if he puts up stink about the wonderful Kushner- concocted "plan".fx , Dec 8, 2017 3:42:39 PM | 6$450 mil... MbS's Egyptian torturer-in-chief must have just torn a few princely nails and whip a few feet for that, just a few days' worth of "anti-corruption" "campaigning".somebody , Dec 8, 2017 3:56:36 PM | 7Wait, wasn't the Saudi populace all behind MbS because he was going to spend the money on them? If there is no bread, let them non-royals eat paint.
About the picture - after the shake down of Saudi Arabia's rich princes MBS must have a lot of enemies. Some of these princes might have been close to the Trump administration.Bart Hansen , Dec 8, 2017 4:01:43 PM | 8That sacked FM - Is that the little fellow that Col Lang calls "The Chihuahua"?somebody , Dec 8, 2017 4:09:19 PM | 9Good Patrick Cockburn article on the mess .stonebird , Dec 8, 2017 4:54:47 PM | 10Gazan military groups are warming up to a rocket competition. I am sure the real stuff is not involved yet. What were they thinking? That people did not take the chance to unite on the only issue they all agree on?
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I agree, Saudi in all likelihood were not part of the Jerusalem declaration. Israeli sources spread a plan they said was agreed to by Saudi, trying to embarrass them.MbS is in it for himself, no one else. Leave him aside for the moment.psychohistorian , Dec 8, 2017 5:06:51 PM | 11However, Trump probably thought he had a marvellous peace plan for Palestine which he would show the world.... errr... tomorrow. This was supposed to have the backing of the Saudis and the Israelis and all the other ME "actors" would be lined up behind MbS.
ie. Saudis would provide the backing, which included the "Arab" states as per the recent gathering of them all (excluding Iran and Iraq). Abbas would be blackmailed to go along in order to keep his position (Moneywise), and the Palestinians as well - but by the withholding of funds. (New vote in Congress).
Leaks of the plan (unverified) suggest that the PA's would be held in walled-in isolated camps, with all contact subject to the harassement and nightly raids of the IDF, the land still open to theft by settlers (this has been "legalised" in Israel !) and so on. ie they get nothing except a tissue-paper "treaty" . They seem not to have even been consulted by Kushner and the Israelis. ie who possibly expected to be able to impose whatever Netanyahu and the Israeli Generals might allow.
BUT, when have either the US or Israel kept to an agreement - never. and the PA's and the rest of the ME know it.
Jerusalem: The reaction is deeper than expected. Not in the way of street, easily contained, violence, but by a gut reaction of the whole ME..The religious aspect seems to have been totally ignored by the US. Removing one of the major symbols of about 1.2 billion people - is not going to go down well.
Those countries with a large Palestinian refugee population, either fear them, or may be outnumbered if there are more arriving (Jordan), or will find that they now have a potential source of militants at their disposal.. (Syria?, Lebanon?). The Syrians and Lebanese have not let the Palestinians get more arms - yet, as they might have become targets themselves. But, there have been PA's in the Syrian counter-terrorist forces, even when Yarmouk camp was held by Daesh (or one of the others).
So I think that the "bit" players have got cold feet. They cannot go along with the eradication of the Palestinians or their confinement to concentrated internement camps such as Gaza, whose conditions are WORSE that prisons. Otherwise the whole "Rulers-People and the power-structures that keep them in place" would be in jeopardy.
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The Leonardo ? .... acquiring "class" by buying expensive "cultural" artifacts. You can buy a lot of "class" with $450.3 million.I think that answer to b's question has a lot to do with trying to incite war in the MEJef , Dec 8, 2017 5:17:11 PM | 12I think that SA does not want to be the global elite's proxy in a war with Iran....especially to start/incite the war.
It really is becoming a public spectacle and that plays into the desire of the masses to see such incompetence writ large.
I entreat everyone's spirits to keep these kooks away from the nukes.
Yo b or any of the commentariat - Any speculation as to the connection to the Russian Oilagarck....you know, follow the money?Scotch Bingeington , Dec 8, 2017 5:18:55 PM | 13Maybe that canvas Jesus is meant to be a hostage one day, potentially.terry tibbs , Dec 8, 2017 5:26:21 PM | 14a simple question who gets the 100s of millions? who is the seller? the fake painting is cover for a payoff or tribute yes no maybe friends of kushner own the painting maybe it is to help kushner and his 666 moloch tower block mortgage. the bank of gorge soros must need some fund back quick for a new hungary regime change operation.Kabobyak , Dec 8, 2017 5:27:13 PM | 15wahabbi is a tavistock british demented fiendish virus injected into islam for gang counter gang pseudogang hagel control
uae and the house of saud are donmeh jews
satanist hate jesus.
simply google talmud quotes about jesus and all will become clear.As to how the Jerusalem actions play out, the posting here (MOA) a couple of days ago was informative as to reasons and timing (including info about Sheldon Adelson's hundred million to Trump campaign). I do wonder...knowing that real or false-flag violence could ensue against Israeli or US targets, it could be a useful pretext for the US waging war in the ME against Hezbullah or anyone else we accuse. With our intelligence agencies providing the "evidence" and a compliant media to sell it, as usual a majority of Americans would support it.Daniel , Dec 8, 2017 5:37:14 PM | 16Great stuff, b et al. This Jerusalem declaration has me genuinely scared. Violence (real or false flag) could be the expected Reaction to this Problem, resulting in the long-planned Solution of finishing off MENA. If Russia is sincere in its alliance with Syria and Iran, and interest in a multi-polar world with self-determination for sovereign nations, this war could easily escalate to the End Timer's dreamt of Final Battle of Armageddon.Flatulus , Dec 8, 2017 6:09:23 PM | 17Most of the MSM coverage of Reactions I've seen name Muslim/Arab countries as opposing, and others as "concerned," even though almost all official state responses have denounced President Trump's® declaration. This "Clash of Civilizations" type narrative is not encouraging.
Terry Tibbs 14 - The family trust of Rybolovlev is the seller of the painting. Rybolovlev was also a buyer of Trump estate in Florida previously.psychohistorian , Dec 8, 2017 6:22:05 PM | 18@ Daniel ending with "This "Clash of Civilizations" type narrative is not encouraging." That is exactly what they want you to focus on as a narrative rather than the simple truth about the demise of private banking. On the previous thread about the Republican: Ryan deficit BS there was a commenter ex-SA with a John H. Hotson link that I want to see go viral because it simply explains the history of the Gordian Knot we face as a speciesterry tibbs , Dec 8, 2017 6:45:52 PM | 19The link to a 1996 article: Understanding Money by John H. Hotson. The take away quote
"Banking came into existence as a fraud. The fraud was legalized and we've been living with the consequences, both good and bad, ever since. Even so it is also a great invention-right up there with fire, the wheel, and the steam engine."
Clash of Civilizations is as vapid a meme as the common understanding of the Capitalism myth as that article so clearly states. Spread his word far and wide to wake up the zombies. It is time!
james , Dec 8, 2017 6:56:26 PM | 2017
something stinks in trumptoon. really small world what are the chances A. whenever Donald Trump has left the White House and ventured anywhere, Dmitry Rybolovlev (aka the "Russian King of Fertilizer") has tended to show up in the same city. The latter possibility has long been bolstered by the fact that Trump sold Rybolovlev a mansion a few years ago that neither of them lived in nor cared about, suggesting the sale was mere cover for shifting money from Russia to Trump.Deutsche Bank in Germany busted for laundering more than ten billion dollars out of Russia and into places like New York. This stood out because Deutsche has also loaned more than a billion dollars to Donald Trump, who just happens to be based out of New York.
thanks b.. fascinating.. i wait for the next shoe to drop.. it's coming... hopefully we get the back story on this sooner then later..jezabeel , Dec 8, 2017 7:02:46 PM | 21i would think the timing of Foreign Minster Adel al-Jubair being fired has something to do with all this.. he revealed something that he wasn't supposed to? i would also imagine those heavies still hanging at the saudi ritz carlton might be pulling some strings from behind the scenes? meanwhile mbz is doing a hell of a fine apprentice with mbs, lol..
nice pic in the post btw!! clown prince as savior of ksa, lol...
Belief in Jerusalem as the Jew capital is the same as belief in the intrinsic value of fiat currency, or the exceptionalism of the US. It's just mental illness. The Kingdom of God is within you, not in temples of stone and wood. We'd be better just cultivating our own personal relationship with our higher selves and leave the deluded to scrap it out over ash and sand. That said, if someone with a big nose came to my door and said my house was going to get knocked down because Shalom etc, that would be the day I would have to really figure out how to proceed without becoming the necessary victim in another's persecutor drama complex. I guess that's what Palestinians have to deal with every day. Horrible situation.terry tibbs , Dec 8, 2017 7:08:16 PM | 22I heard a story once that when the British were throwing the Aborigines of Australia off cliffs en masse in their Australian version of the Middle East story of dispossession and demonization, the Aborigines would look up calmly at the officers as they fell and in their own language say: "You have a problem, bro". Sometimes death is better than becoming a victim. And as a worshiper of Lord Shiva the Destroyer, I wish you all completely liberating and renewing deaths from yourselves.
probably nothing kosher burger. Russian Oligarch Rybolovlev Saved Trump Financially.elsi , Dec 8, 2017 7:20:02 PM | 23
https://new.euro-med.dk/20170314-russian-oligarch-rybolovlev-saved-trump-financially-courier-of-the-tsar-putin-to-president-trump.phpConfirmed: Rybolovlev's Jet & Yacht were in Dubrovnik the same time as Ivanka and Jared Kushner
But, has not The Donald declared that this media NYT, Bloomberg , etc...were all "fake news"? Then why is anybody going to trust them when publishing whatever?elsi , Dec 8, 2017 7:25:15 PM | 24
Sounds quite clumsy, or simply, demential ( as every move of this administration ) to try to leak something through those media you have widely discredited during all your election campaign and beyond....I, by a norm, do not trust any move coming from Trump could be for any good. This is, simply, "smoke and mirrors" and an intent of whitewashing a bit the already deplorable image of this admnistration in front of the world wide reaction in rejection of his bold and clumsy declaration of Jerusalem as capital of the Zionist regime.
The same for the clearly hypocritical call for to alleviate the suffering of the Yemeni people, just another intent of whitewashing when they are main puppet-masters in that war torn country, as it happens with every conflict in the world.What it is beyond me is that the Russians, are always amongst those who swallow this theater plays....I wonder why....
In front of the demential way this administration makes fun of every event, people, country... in the world, in spite of the suffering they could inflict on them, I concur with Terry in that this just could be some esotheric issue more proper of unoccupied people with too much money to waste. Most probably something involving "Damian" Kushner, his 666,Madison Avenue penthouse and an occult message from The Messiah in the reverse of the canvas of that Jesus paint with a codified message on the results of the coming final battle of Armaggedon amongst the forces of evil and those of good, when Russia will be santified as the real Promised Land and The Saker will be ( finally! ) crowned as the saint he always claimed to be along with Saint Nicolas Romanov, and they will all eat sardinas together with the Trumps, the Kushners and the Netanyahus in Mar a Lago or in the super-yatch of Abramovich during the summer, but in winter they will go together to Sochi´s Putin dacha, since they love to meet super-intelligent, well educated, cool people....well, the elite of everything...
The surviving Arabs and the rest of us, plebeian ignorant clumsy sinners not so white as them, ( what they call "the sheeple", vaya )we will continue working from sunrise to sunset for crumbs, but, who cares? We will continue having good times with our peers and loved ones and laughing as usual with the little things of real life...Do not despair....
This is the real Christmas spirit of The Donald, alias Orange Agent Dotard : https://www.rebelion.org/imagenes/p_08_12_2017.jpgelsi , Dec 8, 2017 7:44:26 PM | 25The poster above was drawn by Basque artist Josetxo EzcurraPeter AU 1 , Dec 8, 2017 7:46:42 PM | 26Western media called Putin unpredictable, but that was because he could see moves that others didn't see. Erdogan looked unpredictable and irrational while moving from the hedgemon to the multi-polar world. Trump? Like Erdogan, trying to move US to the multi polar world? Too many moves he makes puts sand in the hedgemon's gears.elsi , Dec 8, 2017 8:15:30 PM | 27For you to see that all this is not but theater, look what worries them most, meanwhile, in The Vatican: Pope Francis supports the idea of changing a phrase in the Lord's Prayer
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Dec 04, 2017 | www.unz.com
From Patrick Armstrong's article (a good one, by the way):@ErebusA Russian threat is good for business: there's poor money in a threat made of IEDs, bomb vests and small arms. Big profits require big threats.Actually, I'd say the Russian threat is necessary to keep the Europeans too frightened to protest while the U.S. steals wealth from them. After all, when the U.S. imports goods and "pays" for them with printed money, it is basically stealing those goods. The U.S. is draining a lot of wealth from Europe (like $150 billion a year), so something must be done to keep them docile. Russia's perfect for that.Well, exogenous events aside, "decline and fall" is necessarily a process. A series of steps and plateaus is typical. A major step occurred in 2007/8, when the money failed. The bankers, in a frankly heroic display of coordination, propped up the $$$ and the West got a decade long plateau. Things are going wobbly again, financially speaking and I suspect the next step function to occur rather soon. Stays of execution have been exhausted, so it'll be interesting how the West handles it, and how the RoW reacts."(Failed) West and a multipolar Rest". The latter is what I think will actually happen in the near and medium term.
I think we already have it, except I don't think West has failed yet. Or it has in a way, the process of failing goes on, but the consequences have not been felt much in the West yet.
Europeans have been invited to join the Eurasian Project, to create a continental market from "Lisbon to Vladivostok". Latent dreams of Hegemony hold at least some of their elites back. The USA has also been invited, but its dreams remain much more virile. That is, until Trump who's backers seem to read the writing on the wall better than the Straussians.I don't see any other power than the West (=US) aspiring to 'manage the world'....The fact is that the rise of the West to global dominance is due to a historical anomaly. It was fuelled (literally) by the discovery and harnessing of the chemical energy embedded in coal (late 18thC) and then oil (late 19thC). The first doubled the population, and as first movers gave the West a running start. The second turned on the afterburners, and population grew >3.5 fold. Again the West led the way. To fuel that ahistorical step-function growth curve, control of resources on a global scale became its civilizational imperative.
The other 'powers' have very modest, regional aspirations... US seems to be obsessed with it.That growth curve has plateaued, and the rest of the world has caught/is catching up developmentally. The resources the West needs aren't going to be available to it in the way they were 100 years ago. Them days is over, for everybody really, but especially for the West because it has depleted its own hi-ROI resources, and both of its means of control (IMF$ System & U$M) of what's left of everybody else's are failing simultaneously. So its plateau will not be flat, or not flat for long between increasingly violent steps.
The West rode an ahistorical rogue wave of development to a point just short of Global Hegemony. That wave broke, and is now rolling back out into the world leaving the West just short of its civilizational resource requirements. No way to get back on a broken wave. In any case, China now holds the $$$ hammer, and Russia holds the military hammer, and they've now got the surfboard. Both of them, led by historically aware elites, know that Hegemony doesn't work, so will focus on keeping their neck of the woods as stable & prosperous as possible while hell blazes elsewhere.
IMHO, what's really going on is that the West's problems are simply symptomatic of what "decline and fall", if not "collapse" looks like from within a failing system. A long time ago I read the diary of a Roman nobleman who in the most matter-of-fact style wrote of exactly the same things Westerners complain about today. How this, that or the other thing no longer works the way it did. For all of his 60+ years, every day was infinitesimally worse than the day before, until finally he decides to pack up his Roman households and move to his estates in Spain. It took 170(iirc) more years of continuous decline until Alaric finally arrived at the Gates of Rome. If wholly due to internal causes, collapse is almost always a slow motion train wreck.
What is really going on is that West has over-reached and can barely handle its own problems.
...Actually, it's just stupid. Cold Warrior or not, the view betrays a deep and abiding ignorance of both history and a large part of what drove the West's hegemonic successes. That both militate against anyone else ever even trying such a thing on a global scale can't be seen if you look at historical developments and the rest of the world through 10' of 1" pipe.
'there would be a vacuum' and 'Russians would move in'. This is obvious nonsense and only elderly paranoid Cold Warrior types believe it (peterAUS?).
The idea that Russia wants/needs the Baltics is even more laughable than that it wants/needs the Ukraine or Poland. None of these tarbabies have anything to offer but trouble. Noisome flies on an elephant, it is only if they make themselves more troublesome as outsiders than they would be as vassals would Russia move.
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Dec 03, 2017 | peakoilbarrel.com
11/29/2017 Notice: Please limit your comments below to the subject matter of this post only. There is a petroleum post above this one for all petroleum and natural gas posts and a non-petroleum post below this one for comments on all other matters.
First, let us define carrying capacity and overshoot. And none has done that better than Paul Chefurka .
Carrying Capacity : Carrying capacity is a well-known ecological term that has an obvious and fairly intuitive meaning: "the maximum population size of a species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment". Unfortunately, that definition becomes more nebulous the closer you look at it – especially when we start talking about the planetary carrying capacity for humans. Ecologists claim that our numbers have already surpassed the carrying capacity of the planet, while others (notably economists and politicians ) claim we are nowhere near it yet!
Overshoot : When a population surpasses its carrying capacity it enters a condition known as overshoot. Because carrying capacity is defined as the maximum population that an environment can maintain indefinitely, overshoot must by definition be temporary. Populations always decline to (or below) the carrying capacity. How long they stay in overshoot depends on how many stored resources there are to support their inflated numbers. Resources may be food, but they may also be any resource that helps maintain their numbers. For humans one of the primary resources is energy, whether it is tapped as flows (sunlight, wind, biomass) or stocks (coal, oil, gas, uranium etc.). A species usually enters overshoot when it taps a particularly rich but exhaustible stock of a resource. Like oil, for instance
When we talk about carrying capacity we need to define exactly who or what we are carrying. Are we talking about humans, all animals or what? Well, let's just talk about terrestrial vertebrate biomass.
Okay, Vaclav Smil and Paul Chefurka (and the estimates of most earth biologists) are correct, the long-term carrying capacity of terrestrial vertebrate biomass is a little over 200,000,000 tons. But how do we know that amount is correct? Easily, because that is what it was for millions of years before the advent of agriculture and other things brought about by modern day Homo sapiens.
Plant and animal species all struggle to survive. In doing so they have evolved to fill every available niche on earth. If a plant can grow in an area, any area, it will do so. If an animal can find a habitat in any area on earth, it will do so. At least since the mid-Triassic, about 225 million years ago, plants and animals have occupied every available niche on earth. If any animal overshot its habitat, dieoff would soon correct that situation. So for many millions of years, the terrestrial vertebrate biomass remained at about two hundred million tons, give or take. I say that because climate change, sea levels rising and falling, continental drift would cause the long-term carrying capacity to wax or wane. Also, the estimate is just that, an estimate. It could be slightly higher or lower. But the long-term carrying capacity of the earth always remained at one hundred percent of what it was possible to carry.
Then about 10,000 years ago man invented agriculture. At first, this only enabled a slight increase in population. Soon only plants that produced the most grain, fruit or tuber per plant, or per area of ground, was selected for replanting. Genetic engineering goes back thousands of years.
Then they discovered fertilizer. Animal and human waste could greatly increase plant production. Animals were domesticated and the plow was invented. More food per area of ground could be produced. Then chemical fertilizers were invented and the population floodgates were opened. At first phosphates from bird guano dramatically increased agricultural production but around the middle of the last century nitrate fertilizers from the Haber Bosch process enabled the green revolution and enabled the population to expand three fold.
It's mostly cows, then humans, then pigs then chickens then Interesting that the biomass of chickens is ovwe three times that of all the wild animals combined. If this chart does not shock you then you are totally unable to be shocked by anything concerning the earth's biosphere.
The world population is still expanding at an alarming rate. By 1989 the population was expanding by about 88 million people per year. Then by the year 2000 population growth had slowed to about 77 million per year. Then the slowdown stopped and started to increase again. it stands at about 79 million per year according to the US Census Bureau.
Now they are saying it will start to slow. But that slowdown has not yet started. True, the fertility rate has been dropping but that has been offset by the increase in population. The fertility rate is dropping but on more and more people.
Notice the U.S. Census Bureau starts the slowdown at almost the exact date this chart was drawn, August 2017. If they had drawn this chart in 1995, then no doubt they would have started their prediction of constant decline in 1995.
But I have no doubt that the population will start to decline. It must, it must because we are destroying the ability of the planet to feed all its people.
Paul Chefurka created the above graph in May 2011. I think he was a little off. He has the world population hitting almost 8 billion then starting to drop around 2030.
I am more inclined to agree with the U.S. Census Bureau who thinks the world population will hit 9.4 billion around 2050. Then I believe the population will start to fall. The rate of population decline and how far it will fall is hard to predict. That will depend on many things but primarily on if and when globalization collapses. The collapse of globalization will bring about civil strife, border wars, and famine around the world.
I want to call your attention to the green, wild animal, portion of the second graph at the top of this post. Notice the wild animal portion of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass, by 1900, had dropped to about 20% of its historical value. Then by 2000, it had dropped to half that amount. Then by 2050, we expect that 2000 value to be cut in half again.
By 2100, it will very likely all be gone. Well, almost all gone. There will still be plenty of rats and mice and perhaps a few other small vertebrates will still survive, but all the large megafauna, except humans, will be gone. Gone forever or at least for the next million years or so. It will take that long for new megafauna to evolve after the human population has been greatly reduced to a billion or even a few million people.
But the far distant future is of little concern to us now. The sad fact of the matter is your descendants will live in a world completely free of wild megafauna. There is no way to avoid that fact now, it is already too late to stop the destruction.
WHY?
Yes, why? Why are we destroying the earth's ecosystem? Why are we driving most all wild animals into extinction? Why have we dramatically overpopulated the planet with human beings? Why did all this happen? However, when you ask why, you are implying that all this had a cause, that someone or some group of people are to blame for this damn mess we have gotten ourselves into.
Was it the early farmers who invented agriculture. Or was it the early industrialists like James Watt or Thomas Edison? Or was it Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, are they the villains that got us into such a damn mess? No, it was none of these people. It was no one person or no group of people. It was not even any revolution like the industrial revolution, the medical revolution or the green revolution. There is no one to blame and there is nothing to blame.
Agriculture enabled the very small early population to expand. The industrial revolution and later the green revolution enabled more people to be fed. The medical revolution enabled more babies to survive and people to live much longer. Our population has exploded simply because it could. We have always lived to the limit of our existence and we always will. It was just human nature pure and simple.
Now many will say that we are now controlling our population, that we have learned how to limit our fertility rate. Well, yes and no. Reference the below chart and table that were produced by the Population Reference Bureau in 2012.
In the developed world, where most of the world's energy is consumed, we almost have zero population growth. But in the less developed world, the population is still growing.
Here is the perfect example of what is happening, what is still happening , in much of the world. Notice the difference in the infant mortality rate and the annual infant deaths. Most of the world's people are still living at the very limit of their existence.
<sarc>But not to worry. The death rate is rising, babies are dying, the population will soon start to fall in the undeveloped world. </sarc>
Note: The Paul Chefurka graphs in this post were created, primarily, with data from the research of Vaclav Smil and is published in this 24 page PDF file: Harvesting the Biosphere: The Human Impact . The file includes over 2 pages of notes and 4 pages of references where Smil sources and documents every stat he quotes. Below are a table and some text from the paper.
The zoomass of wild vertebrates is now vanishingly small compared to the biomass of domestic animals. In 1900 there were some 1.6 billion large domesticated animals, including about 450 million head of cattle and water buffalo (HYDE 2011); a century later the count of large domestic animals had surpassed 4.3 billion, including 1.65 billion head of cattle and water buffalo and 900 million pigs (FAO 2011). Calculations using these head counts and average body weights (they have increased everywhere since 1900, but the differences between larger body masses in North America and Europe and lower weights elsewhere persist) yield estimates of at least 35 Mt C of domesticated zoomass in 1900 (more than three times the total of all wild land mammals) and at least 120 Mt C in the year 2000, a 3.5-fold increase in 100 years (and 25 times the total of wild mammalian zoomass). And cattle zoomass alone is now at least 250 times greater than the zoomass of all surviving African elephants, which in turn is less than 2 percent of the zoomass of Africa's nearly 300 million bovines (Table 2).
Please comment below but only on the subject matter of this post.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Megafauna Extinction , Overpopulation , Overshoot , Peak Oil , Population Explosion , Species Extinction . Bookmark the permalink . 295 Responses to Carrying Capacity, Overshoot and Species Extinction
George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 8:23 am
Great summary. Mainly so I don't have to think about all the depressing aspects: do you not think if humans disappeared but even a few of our larger domesticated animals survived that evolution could go bonkers and we'd have new familes and species springing up all over in far less than a million years. After all homo sapiens are only a few hundred thousand years, and dogs (admittedly still technically wolves) only a few thousand. It would depend a bit whether we left much of the planet that was actually habitable of course – i.e. there'd need to be plenty of evolution pressure, but not too much. I guess your point would be we'd get new species but not the mega fauna, but I think there's evidence that isolated small islands can lead to either pygmy species or giants depending on the exact environment.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 9:28 amGeorge, I would have to start by saying that humans are not going to disappear. Other than extinction via natural disaster, like a giant meteorite hitting the earth, species are driven into extinction. That is they are outcompeted for territory and resources. Humans are the drivers of extinction, no species will drive us into extinction. We occupy every habitable niche on earth and will likely continue to do so even after our numbers have been dramatically reduced.The Cunning Linguist says: 11/29/2017 at 10:18 amIf we have a collapse of globalization, and I believe that is inevitable and will happen within the next one hundred years, then the human population will be devastated by civil strife, border wars, and famine. Seven to nine billion hungry people will be a disaster for all other animal life, domestic as well as wild. So I do not believe there will be enough domestic animal life to kick-start evolution of new wild species of megafauna. As I have said before, we will eat the songbirds out of the trees. So there sure as hell will not be any cows left.
Okay, so perhaps it will not take a million years for other large megafauna to evolve. Perhaps it will only be in the hundreds of thousands of years.
So, after we eat the songbirds from the trees, what the hell will we eat then?Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 10:44 amIs it not possible that the human species will drive itself to extinction because we are so successful at destroying the natural environment which we depend upon for our survival?
After industrial civilization collapses, the great human die-off will rapidly reduce human numbers by more than 90%. Life for the remaining humans will be extraordinarily hard. If the overall stress level is high enough, it will be very difficult for humans to raise enough offspring to reproductive age to maintain the species over time. Biologists call this pre-extinction phase die out. Once a species numbers fall below replacement level, they go extinct.
And what the hell do you mean: "If we have a collapse of globalization, and I believe that is inevitable and will happen within the next one hundred years "? Within the next 100 years? You are dreaming! We are in the early stages of apocalypse right now! Rapid die-off will begin within the next few years. 100 years from now, there will be no one alive who will remember it.
Cunning said; "After industrial civilization collapses, the great human die-off will rapidly reduce human numbers by more than 90%." ..Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 10:59 am..while what is left of nature will rapidly move into the niches vacated by species humans have wiped out. If (big if, maybe) there are remaining reproductively viable human populations, they will exploit those recovering niches at rates which will be far below the astounding rates of exploitation during the industrial age. Where humans have abandoned their schemes of destroying the natural world for their own purposes, nature, in some form, recovers quite quickly.
On the other hand, if global warming goes off the scale (ala Guy McPherson, et al), all bets are off. Everything larger than a shrew will be toast.
Once a species numbers fall below replacement level, they go extinct.The Cunning Linguist says: 11/29/2017 at 12:01 pmThe replacement level for animals in the wild and the replacement level for domestic animals are two different things entirely. For animals in the wild, the replacement level may be several hundred to several thousand. Animals in the wild have to find each other in order to reproduce. For domestic animals, the replacement level is two.
In this regard, we Homo sapiens are far more like domestic animals than wild animals. An example would be the Polynesians who migrated to distant islands in sailing outrigger canoes. Their numbers, in those canoes, likely numbered only a dozen or so. Yet huge numbers eventually sprang from tiny numbers.
Yes, stress during periods of great strife and famine will be great. Stress will likely take a great toll. But there will always be survivors. Everyone is not equally affected by stress. Some can overcome, some cannot. It is a little like a plague or disease. There are always some who are immune or otherwise escape the problem.
As for rapid die-off coming within a few years, yes that may happen but I doubt it. Humans societies are far more resilient than you might expect. For instance, look at Somalia, or Venezuela. Somalia, a failed state, has been in turmoil for decades yet no massive die-off has occurred. Venezuela is in a state of almost total anarchy, yet no massive die-off as of yet.
I believe the die-off will start within the next hundred years. Next week is within the next hundred years. But I doubt it will happen by then, or even within the next few years or so. In my opinion, it will take several decades for things to really fall apart.
Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 12:27 pmYou said:
"But I doubt it will happen by then, or even within the next few years or so. In my opinion, it will take several decades for things to really fall apart."What about Limits to Growth? That study forecast that real problems would begin in the first or second decade of the 21st century, in other words, now. Why is Limits to Growth wrong? How do we avoid sudden, catastrophic collapse once world economic growth comes to an end?
What about the fragile, debt ridden financial/credit/monetary system? Have you read the Korowicz paper? How will industrial civilization gradually unwind over many decades when the world economy freezes very suddenly and food stops arriving at the grocery stores? That should lead to a very rapid die-off as every city suddenly becomes uninhabitable.
What about Limits to Growth? That study forecast that real problems would begin in the first or second decade of the 21st century, in other words, now. Why is Limits to Growth wrong?Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 12:37 pmHey, I have a copy of Limits to Growth right here in my hand. On what page do they predict catastrophic collapse before 2050. Help me out here but I just can't seem to find it.
As to real problems, hell yes, we are having real problems right now. We have been having real problems in Venezuela and a lot of other places. But there is a tremendous difference between real problems and catastrophic collapse.
And what about all the other terrible things you are say are happening right now. Hell yes, they are happening and they are terrible. But they have not yet led to catastrophic collapse. But it is very likely they will lead to collapse in three or four decades from now.
The LTG graphs appear to show economic and industrial peaks @2025-2030, if not sooner, dropping off quickly.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 12:59 pmGhung, what page is this on?Ghung says: 11/29/2017 at 1:17 pmIt's actually from a Guardian article, taken from Bardi's "The Limits to Growth Revisited". I don't know what page the original graph was on, but I have a copy of the original 1972 graph which shows the same curves, without the more recent data curves.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:17 pmGuardian article "Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse" :
Ron – that graph is from the Graham Turner LtG update: http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdfRon Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 1:32 pmShit? Is this real? I had no idea that we might be this close to collapse.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:43 pmNevertheless, I just can't believe we are that close. I think it will be at least 20 to 30 years from now.
It depends on what you call collapse. The UK and USA are both following the curve such that life expectancy is starting to decline. I think industrial productivity might be going the same way in UK, and definitely our health and old age care systems (which is one of the measures he uses for "services") are in decline (though the government always finds a way to massage the numbers so far). One of the authors of LtG has said that once one of the main curves is definitely through an extrema then the models probably don't work any more – which I took to mean possible accelerating chaos, but might mean something else.Hightrekker says: 11/29/2017 at 7:37 pmShit? Is this real? I had no idea that we might be this close to collapse.Alice Friedemann says: 11/29/2017 at 8:02 pmYep -- -
Population overshoot, ecocide, environmental destruction, deforestation, ocean acidification, mass loss of pollinators–
I could go on --It doesn't take a weather man to tell which way the wind blows.
This a unique, one-time only collapse because we never relied on fossil fuels in the past, and we certainly won't in the future. If you look at energyskeptic/3) Fast Crash, you'll see the many reasons I think collapse will unfold quickly. Turchin, who has looked at the patterns of collapse in civilizations going back to Mesopotamia, says it takes about 20 years on average. That is in line with Hook's estimate of a 6% exponential decline, which is the rate at which the 500 giant oil fields decline on average after peaking (something like 270 of them last I checked), all others (offshore, shale, smaller, and so on) decline much faster, hence Hooks estimate of an exponential increase of .0015 a year as non-giants increasingly contribute to what's left of production (giants are now 60% of world oil production). If Hook (2009) is right, that means we'll be down to 10% of what we produce after global peak production in 16 years. At that point, even if governments are rationing oil wisely to grow and distribute food, you're reaching the breaking point. Oil makes all other resources possible, so although many resources reaching their limits, the decline of oil will be the true beginning of the end. No more pumping water from the Ogallala 1,000 feet down, going 10,000 miles on factory farm fishing boats, and so on. Oil is masking how incredibly far we are over overshoot. Above all, 99% of the supply chain transport – trucks, rail, ships – depends on oil. 80% of communities in the U.S. depend entirely on oil, by far the least efficient mode of transportation of the three. Well, it is too big a topic to cover in a comment. I have a lot more to say in my book "When Trucks Stop Running".OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:14 amOh, and when I heard Dennis Meadows speak at the 2006 Pisa Italy ASPO conference, he said that if anything Limits to growth was head of schedule, with collapse starting as early as 2020. We'll see, too many factors. Also in the past, nations avoided collapse way past their carrying capacity by trading or conquering other nations, like the Roman Empire, which had to import food from Carthage and Egypt, no way to grow enough food in Italy.
Hook, M., Hirsch, R., Aleklett, K. June 2009. Giant oil field decline rates and their influence on world oil production. Energy Policy 37(6): 2262-2272
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:225443/FULLTEXT01.pdfHi Alice,Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:22 pmI'm hoping to see more comments from you in the future, and not just in this one thread, lol.
It's very common for experts in any given field to presume there are none in other fields that are capable of solving the problems they see as civilization killers.
There are no guarantees of success, but success is possible when it comes to finding and implementing solutions to problems such as the eventual depletion of oil.
Once the shit starts hitting the fan pretty hard and fast in terms of declining oil supplies, both good and bad things will happen on a scale that will take the breath away.
The bad will unquestionably include economic collapse across large swathes of some and maybe most societies.
The good will come in the form of action on the part of awakened LEVIATHAN, the nation state. Those of us who cannot see that once LEVIATHAN stirs and focuses on such problems as we FORCED to deal with soon have little understanding of history , human nature, and technology.
Now WHETHER , or NOT, Leviathan, Uncle Sam, John BULL, the Russian BEAR, et al, can do enough to keep the wheels on and turning, instead of falling off, is an open question.
I believe they can, depending on how far gone things are once they begin to come to grips with the various troubles that will threaten their existence.
People CAN AND DO come together, and work together, sometimes. Consider the case of the USA. We were mostly all isolationists the day before Pearl Harbor, but within a couple of days after, we were all ready to to go flat out to murder our enemies on the grand scale, and DID.
Neither I nor anybody else can prove either way whether we WILL work together well enough to prevent outright collapse meaning we die hard deaths by the tens of millions even here in a country such as the USA.
There's no question that we CAN work together, once we realize we must. Whether we get started soon enough is probably going to determine just how bad things will get in economic terms.
But between what scientists and engineers can do for us, by way of providing us with better tools, and what we can collectively do for ourselves by way of collective action, there's a real possibility that some countries will pull thru ok, no longer sleek and lazy and fat and wasteful, but at least still functional, and with most of their populations still alive and leading a reasonably dignified life style.
I will have more to say about what Leviathan awakened, scared and enraged can do later on, way down thread someplace within the next few days, by relating some historical examples.
I too feel that one day the trucks will stop running. It will be a very interesting transition to observe. I imagine it will have a progression that goes something like this:George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 12:57 pm
-trucks running will increase in cost as will the things that they are running about with inside them.
– trucks will run to less and less places.
-trucks will run to less and less places less frequently.
-trucks will run only very rarely and only for high priority reasons.
-trucks will stop running altogether.As this process takes place I imagine there will be measures taken to fill some of the void, where and when it is possible to do so.
Ron – do you think humans will still be around in a million years or even a hundred thousand? If they are I think it will only be because they have made themselves irrelevant to the environment (i.e. small in numbers and having found a way to live sustainably) and other species will be evolving without too much human involvement.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 1:59 pmYes, George, I think humans will be around in a million years. Not nearly as many as are around today however. If I had to guess, and I do have to guess, then I would guess around 10 to 15 million humans would be around a million years from now. That would be one person alive then for every 500 alive today.George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 2:26 pmOf course, all fossil fuel would be gone and everyone would live off the land.
But if you doubt human survival, then just what do you think will wipe everyone out? What will bring the human population to zero?
That sounds as good a guess as any. Part of my point was that they could only survive if they were not intrusive, and therefore would not be an impediment to evolution of other mega fauna. I think average species life time is estimated at around 1 to 2 million years, homo is a family rather than a species so the sapiens could go and something else come along, like we took out the Neanderthals. On the other hand if the bottlenecks get small enough in different locations we could just be whittled away by different causes.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 2:52 pmI think average species life time is estimated at around 1 to 2 million years,George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 2:59 pmThe point is George, Homo sapiens is not an average species. If we were an average species we would still be competing with other species for food and territory, losing some of those battles and winning others. But our numbers would be kept in check by our success and failure of that struggle, just like every other average species.
Our dominance has overwhelmed all other species. Like a plague, we are killing them all off. There is nothing average about us as a species.
Ok, but our numbers were kept in check and we were competing like that for almost all of our history, until the Holocene interglacial came along and we decided agriculture was a good idea, or maybe we had a go before and it never took in a less stable climate. But before that there is evidence of some pretty tight bottlenecks when we were almost gone either locally (e.g. in India) or globally. And things like the Roman empire collapse suggest we can forget any kind of technological advantages in a couple of generations.Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 3:11 pmYou lost me. I don't understand your point.George Kaplan says: 11/30/2017 at 11:23 amBut since our brains to a degree where we could create stone tools and use fire, our population has been on a slow increase, bottlenecks notwithstanding.
What has made us not average is our brains, our mental ability. That is the one thing that has given us a huge advantage over all other species.
We are smart enough to wrestle all the world from every other species that stood in our way. If another species had something that we wanted, including even their flesh, we got it. We are smart enough to dominate the world, but not smart enough to see that we are destroying it.
My point is that unless we find a niche in which we can exist sustainably despite our intelligence and ability to get whatever we want and dominate the world, then we won't survive very long, and may not even then.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 12:31 pmHi Ron,Des Carne says: 11/30/2017 at 1:02 pmI think some (you for example) are smart enough to see that we are destroying our World.
It may not be a majority view, though I think the numbers are increasing.
I would agree that we so far have not demonstrated that we are smart enough to change what we are doing (reduce the rate that we destroy the planet as rapidly as possible to zero (or negative, by which I mean restore the planet closer to a natural or sustainable state).
This may never be accomplished, but we cam move in that direction while reducing our numbers and our impact.
What it is about our brains that makes us not average is our capacity to deny reality. The mind over reality transition (Varki &Brower) is arguably what gave "sapiens" the advantage, successful but apparently impossible risk taking, to do away with neanderthalensis. In small scale hunter bands surrounded by magafaunal predators, denial of reality is a decided advantage, but in mass societies with the capacity to produce mass belief in non-realityy, it is the disadvantage that could do us in. Although not experimentally demonstrable, the idea that this mind over reality transition was an evolutionary event in the hominid genus 100-200 thousand years ago is a plausible explanation for sapiens' dramatic cortical development and the development or consolidation of female sexual selection, not present in our forebears or current great apes.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:26 amIn a future world scratching a living as we did for most of our history as hunter-gatherer bands, but from a depleted world absent of any predators, we might evolve the ability to believe reality, without sacrificing cortical development. The first inhabitants of my country (Australia) managed to get by fot 60,000 years by killing off the megafauna. They were helped by climate change which dessicated the continent, but hung in there making it an extremely attractive aquisition by my ancestors when they came along.
Hi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/30/2017 at 7:38 amIn broad terms, I agree with what you are saying here.
"Our dominance has overwhelmed all other species. Like a plague, we are killing them all off. There is nothing average about us as a species."
But we aren't doing any better than rats or fire ants, lol.
You're dead on about humanity not being an average species. We will be around at least until some other species capable of wiping us out evolves, and it's unlikely that we will ALLOW such a species to exist, unless it's a microbe and we can't wipe it out.
If chimps were to evolve just a little further along the lines of using tools and being able to communicate and work together, and started attacking humans, numerous humans armed only with primitive weapons such as fire and bows and arrows would kill every last chimp, and they wouldn't lose any time in doing so.
This brings up an interesting question. We know chimps use stone tools as hammers to break nuts, etc, , and that they fight ORGANIZED fights to the death sometimes.
Is there any evidence they are using stones as weapons . YET?
No, chimps do not use stones as weapons but they do use sticks to flail another chimp with.Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:27 pmChimps will not evolve much further if any. Their numbers are dropping like a rock. They will all be gone in 20 or 30 years.
I once heard an interesting story about chimps. Might have been in one of Pinker's books, I can't recall.Dennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 12:46 pmIf you hang a bunch of bananas from the ceiling that a chimp cannot reach and you leave an A-frame ladder laying on the ground the chimp will set the ladder upright and get the bananas.
If you do the same thing with 2 chimps and a ladder so heavy that one chimp alone cannot set it upright, but 2 chimps working together could set it upright, they'll never get on the same page, so to speak, and cooperate in setting up the ladder. They will both try individually and fail. The bananas will never be reached.Hi Ron,Fred Magyar says: 11/29/2017 at 3:47 pmThe charts in your post suggest about 1 billion might work, I would say 500 million would be my guess, not sure where you come up with 10 to 15 million.
Note that 500 million is roughly the World population in 1550 CE.
Just a different guess as I think a sustainable society could be reached by 2300 at these lower population levels, though perhaps fertility levels will remain below replacement over the long term so population will continually decline eventually some optimum will be determined and fewer than two children will not be encouraged.
Humans, that is Homo Sapiens per se, maybe not. Don't forget Cro-Magnons probably caused the extinction of Homo Neandertalis in about 40,000 years or so ago. Some other future species of the Genus Homo, very likely will be around for another million or so years. This is what I think they might look like. Maybe they will be called Homo technoligicus implantabilis, feel free to call them whatever you want. In any case resistance will be futile and you will be assimilated.robert wilson says: 12/01/2017 at 12:23 am
Cheers!
.
http://www.eindtijdinbeeld.nl/EiB-Bibliotheek/Boeken/The_Next_Million_Years__how_to_kill_off_excess_population___1953_.pdfNathanael says: 11/29/2017 at 4:18 pmFirst of all, Ron, a species which destroys its own food supply or its own habitat *does* go extinct. They're currently referred to as "superpredators" -- it's happened repeatedly throughout history.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 5:15 pmSecond, regarding population growth, my primary charity for 20 years has promoted sex ed, access to contraceptions, and education of women worldwide. We know how to halt and reverse population growth in the "underdeveloped world". It's not difficult except for the religious groups which oppose contraception and oppose women's liberation.
Often the same religious groups who promote burning of fossil fuels. And deforestation.
Basically, whether humans survive depends on whether we defeat those groups, IMO.
Countries like Cuba which are very underdeveloped but essentially *lack* those religious groups (thank you Godless Communism!) they're doing OK on population stabilization.
Hi Nathaneal,OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:46 amThere are countries that are religious such as Iran that have seen rapid demographic transition (15 years for TFR to go from over 5 to under 2). Also non-communist nations such as South Korea saw rapid transitions.
I agree education and gender equality as well as access to modern contraception are helpful.
Electrification will also help.
Thank you Dennis,Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 5:41 pmReligion has it's points, as Twain used to put it, both good and bad. Preachers and priests have a way of figuring out what is in their own best interests, short term, medium term, and long term.
There are some religions or cultures, which are not necessarily one and the same thing , that do encourage or more or less actually force women to bear lots of children.
I come from a culture that is very often ridiculed here in this forum, which doesn't bother me at all personally. It's ridiculed on such a broad scale that it's hard to find a public forum peopled with technically well educated people where ridicule isn't the NORM.
As religion goes, my own personal extended family is about as religious as they come in the USA. My nieces and nephews and third cousins, the children of my FIRST cousins, are having kids at less than the necessary 2.1 rate needed to maintain our blood lines, lol. My informal seat of the pants estimate is that the extended family birth rate is down to somewhere around one point five.
It's well known that the birth rate in some countries that are supposedly Catholic has fallen like a rock over the last couple of decades.
And while I can't prove it, it's my firm opinion that once the priesthood in any country comes to understand that it's own long term interests are best served by encouraging small families, small families WILL BE ENCOURAGED. That may not happen for another generation or so, and it may not happen at all in some countries, if there is no top down control of the culture and religion.
Priests and preachers don't exist to serve GOD, or any combinations of gods, etc. They exist because they have found a way to provide a secure and relatively easy way of living largely off the work of their followers.
This is not to say their followers don't get back as much or more as they contribute. Every society has to have leaders, and priests and preachers can be and have often been very effective leaders. Some of them are effective leaders today.
First of all, Ron, a species which destroys its own food supply or its own habitat *does* go extinct. They're currently referred to as "superpredators" -- it's happened repeatedly throughout history.Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:31 pmReally, I have never heard of that. The only superpredator I ever heard of are human beings. But if you can give an example of a species destroying its own food supply and habitat, please enlighten me.
Humans on Easter island is the only thing that comes to my mind when thinking of such an example. I'm no expert on Easter island, however I understand people there did not go extinct, and that there was a small group living there when the island was found by Europeans. Again, not terribly well informed about that particular bit of history.Kathy C says: 12/02/2017 at 5:20 amWhen things begin to collapse the grid infrastructure will collapse. Coal factories in China and elsewhere will shut down and dimming will end. James Hansen estimated that warming may be held back by 50% by dimming, so we can expect warming to shoot up. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130329_FaustianBargain.pdfSurvivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:34 pmWhen the grid collapses the nuclear power plants will no longer be able to be cooled. We know what happens then. This article addresses that happening from solar flares or emp attack but of course the failure of the grid from civilization collapse would do the same thing http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/7301-400-chernobyls-solar-flares-electromagnetic-pulses-and-nuclear-armageddon
With collapses of civilization their will be no remediation of forest fires. Chemical and Nuclear Dumps will burn as well as the nuclear power plants that have gone Fukushima.
A very underappreciated study is that of decaying leaves around Chernobyl While horses and other wildlife might now roam around Chernobyl the implications of leaves not decaying is enormous. "However, there are even more fundamental issues going on in the environment. According to a new study published in Oecologia, decomposers -- organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay -- have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem."
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/To just state that humans wouldn't disappear is nothing more than an assertion, as is stating that they would certainly disappear. However what faces humans is much more daunting than just the chaos of civilization collapse. Those who survive everything else will have a hard time reproducing with all that radiation around https://chernobylguide.com/chernobyl_mutations/
Of course long before civilization collapses the countries of the world may well play out the scenario that Richard Heinberg describes – Last Man Standing. Sound like politics today?
I suspect someone will bulldoze the nuclear power plants into the ocean before they let them melt down on land. Just a WAG.Fred Magyar says: 11/29/2017 at 9:13 amI posted this as a reply to a comment by GF a few threads back.Tom Welsh says: 11/29/2017 at 9:38 amI highly recommend the following three ASU Origins Project debates and panel discussions to get a good feel for the big picture. It might take up a good four hours or so of your time. This isn't something suitable for sound bites. It involves a lot of in depth cross disciplinary knowledge.
https://origins.asu.edu/events/great-debate-transcending-our-origins-violence-humanity-and-future
Great Debate: Transcending Our Origins – Violence, Humanity, and the Futurehttps://origins.asu.edu/events/great-debate-extinctions-tragedy-opportunity
Great Debate: Extinctions – Tragedy to Opportunityhttps://origins.asu.edu/events/conversation-inconvenient-truths-love-extinctions
Conversation: Inconvenient Truths – From Love to ExtinctionsMaybe we are all royally fucked already but I also recommend E.O. Wilson's book 'Half Earth'.
Cheers!
"Why did all this happen? However, when you ask why, you are implying that all this had a cause, that someone or some group of people are to blame for this damn mess we have gotten ourselves into".Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 10:34 amI would like to suggest, respectfully, that this wording is the wrong way around. The essence of the problem is that no one has been in charge, no one has taken responsibility – and that is hardly changing at all.
The world is teeming with governments, corporations, NGOs, and "leaders" of all kinds. But what are all those leaders, and their estimable organizations, really trying to do? Some are aiming to earn as much money as possible. Others are trying amass as much power as possible. Most of their programmes have a lot to do with gaining more money and power – which become interchangeable at a certain point (as can be seen from a study of the US Congress, for example).
An intelligent alien visitor to our planet would reasonably conclude that, although individual humans are intelligent to various degrees, the human species as a whole is profoundly unintelligent. It has ample means of diagnosing what has happened, is happening, and will happen. Yet, because it has never developed any organ comparable to the individual's conscious brain, it does nothing about the obvious threats it faces.
Tom, I think my wording was correct, you just did not quote all of my explanation. You wrote:Joe Clarkson says: 11/29/2017 at 1:20 pmThe essence of the problem is that no one has been in charge, no one has taken responsibility
No one can take responsibility because no one is in charge of the human race. And as far as being "profoundly unintelligent", I think that is an unfair charge. Having a blind spot in our DNA does not imply that we are unintelligent. The human race has never been faced with such a dilemma before. Our brains evolved to its present state during our hunter-gatherer days. We are molded by evolution to do everything possible to survive and reproduce. There is nothing in our DNA that tells us to protect the biosphere because the lives of our grandchildren depend upon it. So we don't.
What is happening is just human nature. That's all.
What is happening is just human nature.Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 5:10 pmEvolution has resulted in all species, including humans, having a biotic potential that is greater than the carrying capacity of the niches in which they live. Populations are limited by resource limits and predation, not by self restraint or mutual agreement.
It would have been very unusual, perhaps unique in evolutionary history, for humans to have deliberately limited our population, even though it might have been theoretically possible due to our 'intelligent' ability to foresee our probable future. Despite Malthus, Limits to Growth and many other warnings, no realistic attempt has been made to remain below carrying capacity.
As you note, a massive die-off is inevitable, the only real question is when. Like The Cunning Linguist, I personally think it will be whenever people lose confidence in the global monetary system, as in Korowicz's "Trade Off: Financial system supply-chain cross contagion – a study in global systemic collapse". Once money stops flowing so does the food supply.
Hi Joe,Joe Clarkson says: 11/29/2017 at 9:29 pmWhat would cause this rejection of the monetary system? I don't follow the argument. Everyone decides at once that money is no longer a reasonable medium of exchange. Didn't happen during any financial crisis so far, people couldn't access their money at Banks after the 1929 crash, but this was less of a problem in OECD nations during the GFC.
The ETP nonsense is just that, anyone who knows their thermodynamics knows that theory is full of holes.
Didn't happen during any financial crisis so farDennis Coyne says: 11/30/2017 at 12:07 pmNo, but we did come close in 2008. All sorts of debt instruments including commercial paper, CDOs (the root of the problem), many derivatives and letters of credit all froze up. Without prompt dramatic action by the central banks and the US Treasury, the financial system could have collapsed. Nobody knew who was solvent or insolvent, so the central banks had to backstop every financial institution. All this over some mortgage securities based on the US housing market.
Now imagine that growth has turned to continuous worldwide economic recession, the inevitable fate of the global market economy in the face of energy and resource depletion ( it will happen despite the stupidity of the Hill's Group). Unemployment increases year after year and tax revenues continuously fall. Every kind of debt instrument, from sovereign debt to mortgages, to municipal and corporate bonds is more and more likely never to be repaid. Defaults are increasing with greater and greater frequency. The equities of every company become suspect as more and more companies go under.
Sooner or later, a critical mass of people are going to realize that most debts can never be repaid and are therefore worthless as assets. Since almost all money is created from debt, almost all money becomes worthless.
The only thing that makes money work is confidence in its value. When confidence in money (debt repayment) fails, the monetary system fails and without a monetary system, the global market fails.
Billions of lives are dependent on that market functioning smoothly every day. When it fails to function, people will die. I fully expect to lose every financial asset I own at some point, that's why I am preparing to live without money. Unfortunately, most people in the developed world can't do that, though they should be trying to do so with utmost urgency.
I admit that if there were a concerted international effort to declare a debt jubilee and start all over with a new world currency, some form of monetary system might continue after the present one collapses, but I really doubt that creditor countries and debtor countries are going to cooperate with the rapidity and solidarity needed to manage such a transition.
And even though all the productive assets in the world would still continue to exist after a financial collapse, without a market to mediate their interconnected function, everything would grind to a halt. I don't see an international command economy taking over either. That would be harder than creating a whole new monetary system.
The global market economy is very complicated and very fragile. I certainly wouldn't trust my family's life to something that could collapse virtually overnight and neither should you.
Hi Joe,Joe Clarkson says: 11/30/2017 at 6:32 pmThere are a lot of if's in your scenario, any of which if broken makes the conclusion invalid.
I suppose it is possible that all of those things could happen, just as it is possible that a large asteroid will strike the planet.
I choose not to concern myself with very low probability events.
Pretty sure neither of us will convince the other. If you are convinced buy some good farm land and maybe gold, guns, lead, and gun powder.
Probably even better, find a nice community somewhere.
Note that as long as governments are willing to intervene in the economy when necessary, the system is much more resilient than you believe.
The biggest risk to the Global financial system would be free market fundamentalism where government intervention is never invoked.
I cannot imagine a continuous world wide economic recession, this is a fundamental flaw in your argument.
This assumes what you are trying to prove.
I cannot imagine a continuous world wide economic recession, this is a fundamental flaw in your argument.Dennis Coyne says: 12/02/2017 at 1:14 pmWell, I can't imagine how the global market economy and industrial civilization are going to have a steady state economy forever at present levels of production and affluence. Overshoot means eventual retrenchment and die-off.
Up-thread you estimated the carrying capacity of the earth at around 500 million people. You obviously expect to gracefully reach that level (in 2300!) through birth control while still maintaining current standards of living.
I expect that we will reach that population, or fewer, due to complications from resource-depletion-caused economic failure (famine, war, pandemic). There simply isn't enough energy available to make the transition you desire without also destroying the climate, even if there were the political will to do so, which there isn't.
I suggest looking at the history of the last 100 years to decide which future is more probable. Humanity has had the ability to create a high technology, steady-state civilization with sustainable population levels for over a century, but has failed to do so. There is still no evidence that we are serious about making the attempt now. I wonder why you can believe that such a thing will happen at a time when the resources to make it happen will be declining rapidly. Continuous world-wide recession is a certainty and unless you are very old, you will live to see it.
And as far as your suggestions for prepping go, my family has already got it's lifeboat ready in a rural tropical community. I've got the productive land, the community and the guns. I don't expect to rely on gold at all. To my mind, the best durable trade items are ammo, fishing equipment and livestock.
If raising my own food and living without money is necessary, I can do it. If your eco-modernist utopia magically appears, I won't be disappointed, or regret one iota of the 'unnecessary' preparations I will have made, but I prefer to err on the side of prudence.
Hi Joe,OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 7:51 amI don't expect to live forever and as I said don't plan ahead for scenarios I believe have a very low probability of occurring. As fossil fuel resources become scarce they will become more expensive and we will use them more carefully (or efficiently). There has been no need to do so for the past 100 years as they have been relatively cheap and abundant. There will be enough energy from Wind, solar, hydro, and perhaps nuclear to make the transition, as fossil fuel becomes expensive these will be produced as they will become cheaper alternatives. Much of freight traffic can be moved to rail, which can be electrified, moving goods from rail to factory or store can be done on overhead wires on main roads with EV used for the last few miles.
Also keep in mind that fossil fuels by nature are quite inefficient in producing electricity with about 60% of the energy wasted, for heating systems compared to heat pumps there is also higher energy use. The transition to non-fossil fuels will result in about one third the energy use for the same exergy (or work and useful heat) provided.
I make no assumptions about living standards being maintained, perhaps the transition will be very difficult and living standards in the OECD will decrease while living standards in less developed nations increase. Note that declining population will reduce resource pressure and realization of resource limits (as will be clear from fossil fuel scarcity) by the majority of citizens may lead to changes in social behavior.
Also note that we have only been aware of the climate problem for about 38 years (using Charney report in 1979 as the starting point).
If fossil fuels are very limited (say 1200 Pg C emissions from 1800-2100) then climate change might be less of a problem, but this will still be adequate for a transition to non-fossil fuels. Even 1000 Pg of total carbon emissions from all anthropogenic sources (including fossil fuel, cement and land use change) may be adequate for an energy transition, though it will need to begin in earnest in the next 5 to 10 years, the sooner we begin the easier it will be to accomplish.
"What is happening is just human nature. That's all."alimbiquated says: 12/01/2017 at 6:07 pmEXACTLY.
I posted a long rant down thread trying to get this across to people who somehow think we are DEFECTIVE because we don't collectively behave more rationally, hoping to get it across in terms that are intelligible to those of us who have HEARD of evolution, but never actually studied it for more than an hour or two at the most.
Nonsense, this is just Libertarian propaganda, which is actually a fake religion invented by real estate investors in the fifties in a political catfight to avoid rent control legislation. It has now widen to some kind of pseudo-Darwinistic hocus pocus, but it ignores the obvious fact that we became the world's dominant species be collaboration and long term thinking.Hickory says: 12/02/2017 at 12:02 amWe're doomed if we don't get along with each other, and lots of propaganda is pushing you to believe we never have or could, and never can or will. But that doesn't make it true.
aren't all religions fake (fabrications)?Survivalist says: 12/02/2017 at 8:42 pmThat's a pretty narrow view of libertarianism.Phil Stevens says: 12/02/2017 at 2:56 pm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
What you say is perhaps relevant to contemporary versions of libertarianism in USA, however it goes back a bit further than the 50's.
It's worth noting there are left wing libertarian models also.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianismI'd like to question the assertion that no one is in charge of the human race. In "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" (Yale, 2017), James C. Scott demonstrates fairly convincingly that humans actively avoided adopting grain-based agriculture because the labor:reward tradeoff was far less satisfactory than what could be obtained through hunting and gathering. The accumulation of surplus, and presumably the insurance a surplus would provide against yearly fluctuations in food supply, in other words, was an insufficient motivation for humans to give up hunting and gathering. As Scott documents quite clearly, this refusal to adopt agriculture as the basis of the human economy persisted for more than 5,000 years in Mesopotamia, and much longer elsewhere.Ron Patterson says: 12/02/2017 at 5:00 pmSo what caused the shift? Alas, Scott fails to explore this in any detail. (Just one of the many weaknesses of the book, which nevertheless manages to make its central argument very well.)
I will speculate that what caused the change was the coming-together of a sufficiently large number (five? a dozen? who knows?) of individuals who lacked the ability to feel remorse, shame, or compassion, and who were motivated purely by a desire to enrich and empower themselves. Modern psychology calls these types psychopaths. I suggest that it was these individuals who, likely with help from others with the related disorder of sadism (see recent research on "the dark tetrad"), were first able to subjugate (Scott uses the very apposite term "domesticate") human communities and force them to labor on the land to produce a surplus, which of course then could be appropriated by the psychopaths and their henchmen.
I am not aware of anyone else who has advanced the notion that civilization was founded by psychopaths and sadists. But recent psychological research (popularized in books such as Babiak and Hare, "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work") suggest that psychopaths are four times more commonly represented in upper management than in the population as a whole, so it seems plausible to me, at least, that the project of civilization and its attendant destruction of the ecosphere has been, from its inception, forced upon humanity by a small minority.
Phil, thanks for a great post. I have no doubt that psychopaths have had a great influence on civilization. Many great leaders were no doubt psychopaths. Hitler and Stalin come to mind. However, not all of them were psychopaths. Rosevelt, Washington, Jefferson, and many other U.S. presidents were not psychopaths. Neither was Churchill or Gandhi.Phil Stevens says: 12/03/2017 at 4:56 pmHowever, your original sentence was: I'd like to question the assertion that no one is in charge of the human race. So I kept reading, waiting for you to tell us just who was in charge of the human race. Of course you did not do that.
Fair enough, Ron.Fred Magyar says: 11/29/2017 at 12:24 pmMy short answer to your question would be to ask "Cui bono?" Doubtless not everyone who reaps the most benefit from the biocidal trajectory of late capitalism is dominated by one or more of the traits of the Dark Tetrad, of course. Some of us might even be able to argue plausibly that we were unaware of the consequences of our actions. But even though late capitalist society is sufficiently robust that it continues to work out its internal logic without a lot of direct guidance by the dark few, I doubt it would last long without their presence among the wealthy and powerful classes. If their interventions on behalf of the killing machine could be eliminated, my guess is that dismantling the machine would be a much easier project.
Ultimately, it's the ones in positions of power who manifest the traits of the Dark Tetrad whose interventions are critical to maintaining the status quo. If anyone can be said to rule the earth, it's them.
An intelligent alien visitor to our planet would reasonably conclude that, although individual humans are intelligent to various degrees, the human species as a whole is profoundly unintelligent. It has ample means of diagnosing what has happened, is happening, and will happen. Yet, because it has never developed any organ comparable to the individual's conscious brain, it does nothing about the obvious threats it faces.OFM says: 11/30/2017 at 8:04 amThat is my view as well! Though some like E.O. Wilson argue that we have evolved into an eusocial species and can at least in theory function as a hive or termite mound. Where the collective intelligence emerges and even though the individual ants or bees are stupid the anthill is an entity unto itself is smart and knows how to defend itself. See also Douglas Hofstader and Daniel Dennett's book, 'The Mind's I', Chapter 11 titled Prelude Ant Fugue.
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-11-prelude-ant-fugue.htmlAlso check out Curtis Marean's talk at the end of Inconvenient Truths – From Love to Extinctions from the link I provided above from the ASU origins debates. He specifically makes that analogy about aliens, in his talk.
Marean is a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the associate director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. He is interested in the relation between climate and environmental change and human evolution, both for its significance as a force driving past human evolution, and as a challenge to be faced in the near future. Curtis has focused his career on developing field and laboratory teams and methods that tap the synergy between the disciplines to bring new insights to old scientific problems. He has spent over 20 years doing fieldwork in Africa, and conducting laboratory work on the field-collected materials, with the goal of illuminating the final stages of human evolution – how modern humans became modern.
" Yet, because it has never developed any organ comparable to the individual's conscious brain, it does nothing about the obvious threats it faces."George Kaplan says: 11/29/2017 at 1:04 pmSuch an organ would be very costly, in terms of depriving humanity of the energy and resources devoted to it, depriving us of the use of these resources for other purposes.
Evolution doesn't create organs that will be useful in dealing with new circumstances, by plan, ahead of time, except by accident. It's just a "lucky accident" FOR US TODAY that our own ancestors evolved hands capable of grasping things such as branches .. which set the stage for us to be able later on to grasp a stone and use it as a hammer or weapon.
No planning is involved. NONE. Various deists who accept the reality of evolution but still believe in higher powers disagree of course.
I can't prove they are wrong. I don't believe anybody else can. All we can do is demonstrate that they have no evidence that such higher powers exist.
An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, lol.
I doubt if "intelligent" aliens are any different than we are – and therefore probably have a very short life expectancy should they ever get to an industrial age – evolution can only work from one generation to the next and is therefore incompatible with longer term planning for species longevity.Steve says: 11/29/2017 at 2:25 pm"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only." – Sir Fred HoyleRon Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 3:19 pmThanks for posting this Hoyle quote Steve. I have read it before, many times. And the truth of it is so obvious. All the things that have enabled this wonderful abundant life will soon be gone. Then what?Dennis Coyne says: 11/29/2017 at 5:02 pmHi Ron,Ron Patterson says: 11/29/2017 at 5:58 pmWe recycle what we can, we use less of scarce resources as prices rise and we try to find substitutes for resources as they become scarce. Also population will fall as TFR falls (with a time lag due to population momentum) putting less pressure on resources.
None of this will be easy, and perhaps not possible, hard to predict the future.
Dennis, Hoyle here, is talking about long-term. Recycle or not, we will run out of all fossil fuels and eventually all metals. However, recyclig will help, in the short term anyway.No, we cannot really predict the future. All we can do is look at what is happening right now and say: "If this continues ." And Dennis, it will continue. Human nature may be changed by evolution. But that will take many generations and tremendous evolutionary pressure. So right now, human nature being what it is, we can predict that collapse is just down the road. Just how far down the road i
