Well, isn't that just 'special'???? So for HOW MANY of the recent years has the OIL INDUSTRY jacked around the world with inflated oil prices? Or was it the speculators??? I admit, I was Psych major, not Economics, but we have a world that was struggling for over 5 years when we well could have used lower oil prices--with gas at $125 a barrel at its peak in spring 2012, holding at $100-$110 for next 2 YEARS. We and parts of the world are now pulling out of a recession, theoretically 'demand' should be up, or at least relatively 'flat', and oil drops from $80sh to $50sh and it can go down to $25 and we'll have no supply issues?? Really? Are they telling us that, SUDDENLY they have a glut, yet didn't have the capacity to 'provide' a glut in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 when the world was struggling?? Or is this just one big pissing contest among 'state' oil producers playing chicken with EACH OTHER?? (We know this board won't give OBAMA any credit for increased production and Democrats/Obama's demands for efficiencies of net usage over the past couple of decades. Who knew an "all of above" energy policy could actually be paying off??) Iran sees no OPEC shift toward a cut, says oil industry could withstand $25 crude BY MICHELLE MOGHTADER DUBAI Mon Jan 19, 2015 11:35am EST December 4, 2013. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader (Reuters) - Iran sees no sign of a shift within OPEC toward action to support oil prices, its oil minister said, adding its oil industry could ride out a further price slump to $25 a barrel. The comments are a further sign that despite lobbying by Iran and Venezuela, there is little chance of collective action by the 12-member OPEC to prop up prices - entrenching the reluctance of individual members to curb their own supplies. In remarks posted on the Iranian oil ministry's website SHANA, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh called for increased cooperation between members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. "Iran has no plan (to hold an emergency OPEC meeting) and is currently in consultations with other OPEC member states in a bid to prevent the sharp fall in the oil price, but these consultations have yet to bear fruit," he said. Oil has plunged by more than half since June 2014 to below $50 a barrel on Monday, pressured by a global glut and OPEC's refusal at its last meeting in November to cut its output. OPEC decided against a production cut despite misgivings from non-Gulf members such as Iran and Venezuela, after top producer Saudi Arabia argued the group needed to defend market share against U.S. shale oil and other competing sources. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/19/us-iran-oil-idUSKBN0KS1A120150119
Yep! But remember we are at, what $50 a barrel today? As for Iran's nuke program. At the risk of sounding SIMPLISTIC. How the hell as a NUKE POWER (who has it AND created it) do you tell country A, you can have it, country B, you can have it too. Country C, the guy on your border has it BUT YOU CAN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!! Yeah, right. Ever tell your kids, you can have this toy but your brother can't??
Let's be clear on this. OPEC has controlled the world market for years. If they want more profit, the cut back production. Now that the U.S. is becoming a major producer (and yes, no thanks to Obama because production on public land is down 9%...but up 61% on private lands that the oil companies lease from land owners) OPEC wants to play price war games. Their intent is to bankrupt U.S. oil companies by getting per barrel prices low enough the companies can't afford to operate. They have a slight advantage there in that their infrastructure is established and pumping the relatively easy to get oil while the U.S. uses costlier methods to extract it from oil sands and tars and fracking (which does get liquids too and not just natural gas). Their hope is they can make it with per barrel prices that low while it puts us out of business.
I get all of that but I don't think it is directed just at us?? I'd like to think these is directed, at perhaps Russia, but I don't know? Is it against US or some combination thereof?? OPEC and US oil producers sure as hell didn't seem to be enemies for the past 4 decades? Why now? PS OBAMA allowed, approved, didn't get in the way of NET INCREASED ENERGY PRODUCTION--not limited to approving off-shore explorations in my state, which I opposed--HIGHLY. Then a 'funny' thing happened--BP OIL FIRE! Screeching HALT--I have no idea where the permits are as of this writing. PSS (Looks like we are both a little right!).... from McClatchy papers... OPEC’s hold-the-line approach, allowing for an oil glut, amounts to a high-stakes game of chicken. Here are some answers to questions about the road ahead. Q: Why is OPEC’s move a game of chicken? A: Falling oil prices hurt unsavory oil-rich nations such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela, but they also hurt the U.S. oil industry, which has hit record daily production levels above 9 million barrels per day thanks to technological developments that allow oil trapped below shale deposits to be drilled. Rather than lower production to make oil supplies tighter and push up prices, OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, seems intent on a game of mutual harm. Saudi Arabia wants U.S. producers, who don’t belong to any cartel, to share the pain of any cuts. Q: Is this a temporary action by OPEC? A: That’s the $1 million question. Analysts for now expect prices to fall further. “It’s obvious that the market is convinced that OPEC is going to continue to flood the market with oil,” said Phil Flynn, a senior energy analyst with the Price Futures Group. “The market is going to be in for a long slog. U.S. shale (oil) producers are going to be able to withstand lower prices. . . . In the meantime, we’re just going to have to get used to lower prices.” Q: Why do analysts think prices will stay low next year? A: Absent any OPEC production cuts abroad or large-scale bankruptcies among U.S. oil producers, the world will continue to have more oil pumped out of the ground than there is demand for it. “This leaves the oil market with a prospective supply surplus of around 1 mbpd for 2014,” noted a report Friday by Gordon Gray, the global head of oil research for the global bank HSBC, and the bank’s senior global economist, Karen Ward. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/28/248453/after-opec-sends-oil-prices-plunging.html#storylink=cpy
If brother behaves badly. Instead of toys, let's use guns. Cops have em, DHS has em, and you can have them too... unless you behave badly... then you aren't allowed. But a mother(*)(*)(*)(*)ers gonna try.
Because we have ramped up production significantly. We have become a threat to their control of the market. Through our increased production, we also represent a potential loss in lowered imports should we decide to rely more on our own production. Theoretically, we could literally stop all OPEC imports right now....and they know that. They're playing chicken with us in attempt to hedge their bets. Russia has always been a producer, but by all accounts have remained relatively stagnant in their production, still OPEC isn't too worried about whether they hurt Russia, or Venezuela, etc. We are their target in this price war. Obama was emphatic against opening public lands to drilling, before and especially after the BP incident. Regardless, production from the U.S. has soared specifically because of private land leases, not because of stagnant production from public sources.
NO, that's an 'iffy' analogy but 'okay'--until the end. But the KID who doesn't get the toy (the gun) is gonna try and try and try and try! Until NO ONE has them, NO ONE will have leverage to tell another, NO you cannot have them. (I promise you if GEORGIA got a nuke, FLORIDA would want and get a nuke).
Oh snap... set it.. So... you agree that if you ban a weapon... the bad kids will always seek to have them? Interesting... Now... if everyone destroyed their nuclear weapons... what would we do when a bad actor developed one? Or... if nobody in the US had a gun... what would we do when a bad actor printed one? I think you see where we are going...
The main targets are Russia and Iran. The reason is that they both support Assad in Syria, and Saudi Arabia supports the opposition. They also both need to have oil at over $110 or so to keep their budgets and economies afloat. The effect on the U.S. drilling industry isn't going to shut down producing wells. What it will do is shut down new drilling operations until demand goes up. The worst collateral damage is to Venezuela's economy. The reason the U.S. isn't moaning and groaning about what the Saudi's and other Gulf States are doing, is because we view the damage being done to the economies of Russia, Iran and Venezuela to be good things at the present time.
The lower the prices. The higher the progressive will raise taxes on gas. Progressives hate lower fuel prices.
Yes, OPEC and Saudi Arabia in particular are trying to hit at American oil production, specifically targeting companies that operate in shale plays. They want to maintain the market share over petroleum they have enjoyed for decades, and keeping prices low is likely to do just that by forcing out the smaller companies who weren't prepared for a slump like this. Once prices go back up, I have a feeling shale activity will ramp back up, just not as quickly as we've seen in the last five years. Companies will want to strategically drill instead of wildly buying up leases and drilling as soon as they have the capital to do so. They will get smarter. The worlds demand for oil has slumped in the last couple years, but that won't last as emerging nations continue to enter the market and use up fossil fuels, especially India and China. The one good thing US shale has done is controlled wild fluctuations in the price of oil due to Middle Eastern conflicts. We could (and did) hit Libya and any other nation we wanted, but unlike before this won't cause a spike in prices as US shale has stabilized the market (albeit at an artificially high price). Just to be clear, the price of oil prior to the crash WAS artificially high. This had to be dealt with as well. - - - Updated - - - Who are these "progressives?" You realize most liberals, who are "progressive" to the conservative mindset collect paychecks and have bills to pay. And we want tax increases to target the upper class, not the middle and lower classes. Why would I want to add on another tax to the middle class when the upper class has been getting all the breaks and cuts?
Time for the voice of sanity to interject... This is a contrived strategy to punish Russia and Putin, and to bring him into some fold. Low oil prices helped to bring the USSR down. We remember that. We and Europe have sanctioned Russia, and even some of their leaders personally, but the Russian people bucked up, as say what you want, but the Russian people are a proud and independent people, and Putin has shot the west the middle finger. So. we with the help of the Saudis, who may not be our friends, but they have strong ties, business and personal, to some of our elites, like the Bush Family we went to work bottoming out oil prices, which is Russia's life blood, pays the gov't bills, in order to shove putiin's middle finger back in his eye. Relationships between America, and another nation who acts up, can get real dirty, really fast. And it has. When Russia invaded Georgia, coincidently, what happened to oil prices? Could they have dropped in price, giving us cheap gas at the pumps for awhile? Oh, yeah, that did happen 6 or 7 years ago. Imagine that!!! Oil dropped to implode the USSR. Russia goes into Georgia, and the price of oil drops. And Russia takes Crimea, and are supposedly giving support to the opposition in Ukraine, and lo and behold oil prices drop again. Since the oil market has never been a market that worked on supply and demand, they can charge anything that want. How anyone can think this has anything to do with an oil war, someone trying to dry up other oil production by dropping prices given what is happening between us and Russia just seems "out there". The question is, what have we promised the Saudis in return? That part of the world really is big on exchanging favors. It's the culture. I would imagine it will eventually involve our military somewhere in the middle east, once again. The War on Terror has got to go on, and on, and on... So, we are sticking to two of our enemies. Russia and Venezuela. We got us a twofer, but this is about Russia and Putin. What didn't we talk the Saudis into keeping oil prices low for longer than they did, after our crash? That would have helped somewhat in the recovery, perhaps sped it up, perhaps even added some more low wage job growth. So, Obama must have a "hard on" for Putin. Or, whoever it is who gives him his marching orders. This really is outright serious economic war against a sovereign nation, a larger and tougher military, and nukes. With a proud nation, who whipped Hitler's ass in ww2. Waging war on another nation like Russia is the height of human stupidity. Who in the hell do we think we are? An Empire? Well, I don't like empires. No one does around the world. The time for empires has passed. That's nothing more than ape behavior.
This man is whistling past the graveyard. Cost of production is only part of the equation. These oil-producing countries set their nation budgets assuming a level of oil prices, not their cost of production. For Iran this is $135/bbl, Russia $100/bbl, Saudi Arabia $95/bbl, Venezuela $120/bbl, and Kuwait $70/bbl. They can survive, but they must cut their national budgets drastically.
Iran's oil can come back on the market adding to oil glut... Oil slides to lowest since 2003 as Iran sanctions are lifted Sun Jan 17, 2016 - Oil prices hit their lowest since 2003 in early trading on Monday, as the market braced for a jump in Iranian exports after the lifting of sanctions against the country at the weekend. See also: Asian shares skid to 2011 levels as oil slump intensifies Sun Jan 17, 2016 - Asian shares slid to their lowest levels since late 2011 on Monday after weak U.S. economic data and massive falls in oil prices stoked further worries about a global economic downturn.
By last year .. 2015... the US was still producing 9 million bpd... which is double what the US was producing in 2008. The only reason that everybody began drilling was because the ppb was high.
The Saudis are solid at $75 a barrel.. Their target is Iran because Iran funds the al Houthis and discord in Bahrain... Iran wants to control all access to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
They always have, at least in the Age of Oil, As long as the world economy depends on the stuff, the western powers, particularly the United States will be key players in maintaining the uneasy Shia Sunni balance of power.
more oil, lower gas prices: right wingers attacked Mr Obama when the prices were high - if they have any principle at all they will thank him for the lower prices by the way, it is said terrorist fund their activities through oil revenue - if true, with the lower prices they will have less money to conduct their activities thus, still another reason to say Thank you Mr Obama!
Yeah.. Iran has been dogging Saudi Arabia since I was a little girl... and THAT'S been awhile. Seems to me that if Iran would tend to their own business they would be wildly successful and prosperous considering they sit squarely in the oil corridor. Religion makes people crazy.
