Free Republic

Prices for the U.S. will go up by between 40 and 60 cents.,". Those for Europe, a relatively small market for Aramco, will be cut. OPEC+ opted on Thursday to proceed with a production increase for next month, even as new Covid-19 cases threaten to sap demand and with the alliance predicting the oil market will flip from a supply deficit to a surplus in early 2022. Brent crude is down 15% since late November to just below $70 a barrel, reducing this year’s gain to 35%. The fall is mainly due to the discovery of omicron and the prospect...

Court documents recently filed by the government further rock the credibility of Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller because they show that as FBI Director Mueller he worked to cover up the connection between a Florida Saudi family and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The documents reveal that Mueller was likely involved in publicly releasing deceptive official agency statements about a secret investigation of the Saudis, who lived in Sarasota, with ties to the hijackers. A Florida journalism nonprofit uncovered the existence of the secret FBI investigation that was also kept from Congress. Under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI tried to discredit the...

President Donald Trump is coming back to social media with his: "own platform" in two to three months. A platform that will: "completely redefine the game" Those words from Trump advisor Jason Miller... A top British official says that masks-muzzles and social distancing could last for several years... Protesters on the streets in Vienna, Austria today opposing the government and coronavirus lockdowns... In Israel a doctor on a vaccination committee resigning. Eran Dolev citing the lack of informed consent for pregnant women being vaccinated... The vaccine stats for the US today... Pepper balls unleashed by police on spring break crowds...

The raids on the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, targeted military camps, as well as Houthi rebel facilities near the city’s airport and in its suburbs, residents and rebel-run Al-Masirah TV said. A separate strike hit a rebel target in the port province of Hodeidah. The Iran-backed Houthis attacked a Saudi Aramco oil refinery in Riyadh on Friday with six bomb-laden drones. The assault caused a fire that was later controlled with no impact on oil supplies or derivatives, state-run media said. No casualties were reported.

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who released footage of their ballistic missiles targeted Saudi Arabia’s capital over the weekend, have warned Saudi Arabia against escalation in the western and northern frontlines of Yemen. They say they will strike at Saudi Arabia’s Aramco if Saudi Arabia or UAE “fighters or supporters” commit “aggression” in certain areas. Snip.... It appears the Safer reference is to an area that was once at the heart of the battle for Marib in 2015. Today the Houthis are marching on Marib again. The Biden administration has warned them against attacks on Riyadh and urged them...

The oil giant released a valuation target ranging from $1.6 trillion to $1.7 trillion. The figures fall short of the $2 trillion target Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been fixed on for more than two years. The difference in value illustrates the operational, geopolitical and governance risks that investors face betting on the offering, writes Ben Dummett. The IPO still has potential to be the world's biggest by surpassing the $25 billion Alibaba raised in 2014. But the stock listing is beginning to reveal a set of dueling interests for Saudi Arabia. Saudi leadership wants the stock offering...

Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions. The announcement by Hassan Rouhani comes as Iran faces crushing American sanctions after the U.S. pulled out of its nuclear deal with world powers last year. Rouhani made the announcement in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. He said the field was located in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, home to its crucial oil industry....

Saudi Arabia displayed remnants of what it described as Iranian drones and cruise missiles used in an attack on Saudi oil facilities as “undeniable” evidence of Iranian aggression. Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said a total of 25 drones and missiles were launched at two oil plants in last weekend’s strikes, including what he identified as Iranian Delta Wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and “Ya Ali” cruise missiles.

RIYADH — The Joint Forces Command of the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen said that preliminary investigations indicated that the weapons used in the attacks on two Saudi Aramco oil facilities are Iranian. The Coalition spokesperson Col. Turki Al-Maliki said that an investigation into Saturday's strikes, which had been claimed by the Iran-aligned Houthi group, was still going on to determine the launch location. The drones used in the attack were of the Ababil make, a low-technology drone, the spokesperson added.“The investigation is continuing and all indications are that weapons used in both attacks came from Iran,” Al-Maliki told...

Saudi Arabia’s disrupted oil production may last longer than originally thought, Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., told Bloomberg on Monday, with full resumption of oil production perhaps not returning for weeks—or even months. Saudi Arabia, too, is holding a more reserved position that initially thought, believing now that less than half the capacity at the Abqaiq processing plant can be restored quickly, according to Bloomberg sources that spoke on condition of anonymity. One of the longer lead-time items of the restoration are Abqaiq’s stabilization towers that separates out the dissolved gas from the crude oil—a distillation...

(Moderator, if I can't excerpt the BBC, please note) Drone attacks have set alight two major oil facilities run by the state-owned company Aramco in Saudi Arabia, state media say. Footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco's largest oil processing plant, while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield. The fires are now under control at both facilities, state media said. A spokesman for the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen said it had deployed 10 drones in the attacks. The military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, told al-Masirah TV, which is owned by the Houthi movement...

For years, investors have been nervous about Aramco’s role as a funding pool for various socio-economic projects in Saudi Arabia, the existential legal threat it faces from the U.S.’s ‘No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act’, and the ongoing questions over its future tax status. It was MBS who - facing sizeable Saudi budget deficits every year until 2023 at the earliest - first mooted the idea in 2016 that the floating of at least 5% of the Kingdom’s flagship hydrocarbons giant would give the whole company a valuation of US$2 trillion. Since then, he has been looking for a...

The long-wait is over. Today, reports surfaced that Saudi Arabia has long-ago called off its highly anticipated, $100-billion-dollar IPO, Reuters sources confirmed, with even plans to list the state-run oil company on its domestic bourse, Tadawul, being scrapped. Its merry band of advisors have also been dissolved. The listing, which was to be the largest IPO in history, was delayed numerous times, its peril-fraught journey likely doomed from the start, encountering barriers anywhere from finding a suitable listing venue to quantifying its sizable oil reserves, from suspect transparency to in-fighting between the Saudi government and Aramco.

Few in the odd coalition of Left and Right pushing for reauthorization of the 81-year-old Export-Import Bank have been louder than Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “It’s wrong that candidates for president, who really should know better, are jumping on this bandwagon,” she said at a May 22 campaign stop in New Hampshire. “It’s wrong, it’s embarrassing. . . . The idea that we would remove this relatively small but vital source of funding for our businesses to compete is absolutely backwards.” Clinton’s defense of Ex-Im may be motivated by more than mere concern for American businesses. Critics have argued...

Port Arthur, TX is home to the U.S. refining fleet’s crown jewel. With an atmospheric distillation capacity of 603 MBbl/cd, this complex coking refinery is the largest refinery in the U.S. As of May 1st, this marvel of a complex refinery is now 100 percent owned by Saudi Aramco. Saudi Aramco upped its 50 percent ownership in the Port Arthur refinery, which it previously held through the Motiva Enterprises JV with partner Royal Dutch Shell following the decision to disband the JV in early 2016. Along with the giant refinery, Saudi Aramco also acquired ownership of a number of distribution...

Yemeni Houthi armed forces today purportedly struck facilities of Saudi oil giant Aramco in the southwestern part of Saudi Arabia as well as the airport of Abha in the kingdom, Iranian Fars News reports. The attacks—the second such reported incident in a week--according to Iranian media reports citing Yemeni sources, came in retaliation for Saudi air strikes targeting civilians in Yemen. The attack that prompted the retaliatory move took place on Friday, when Saudi fighters, according to Iranian media, targeted residential areas in the district of Baqim, in the northwestern Sa’ada province. The attack resulted in 11 casualties and came...

Saudi Arabia revealed more details about its planned initial public offering of the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco. As part of Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vision to diversify the Saudi economy over the next decade and a half, the IPO of Aramco could raise cash while also making the company more transparent. The Telegraph reported that Saudi Aramco plans a three-way listing, with shares listed in London, New York, and Hong Kong. Also, Aramco hopes to convince some of the oil majors, including ExxonMobil, BP and China’s Sinopec, into taking “strategic stakes” in Aramco, “offering them long-term access...

HOUSTON: Saudi Arabia's national oil company wants to buy more US refining and chemical plants to expand its footprint in the world's largest energy market once the break-up of its joint venture with Royal Dutch Shell Plc is complete, sources said. Ending an often rocky nearly 20-year relationship, Shell and Saudi Aramco announced on Wednesday plans to break up Motiva Enterprises LLC after almost two decades, dividing its assets and leaving Aramco with one plant, the nation's largest crude oil refinery, in Port Arthur, Texas. Officials from Saudi Refining, the downstream arm of Aramco, told employees following the announcement that...

Royal Dutch Shell and Saudi Aramco appear to be getting a divorce, breaking up their joint venture in U.S.-based refining assets. The two companies joined together to create Motiva Enterprises LLC in 1998, a 50-50 joint venture that operated three refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. But Shell and Saudi Aramco have seen their interests head in different directions. "It is now time for the partners to pursue their independent downstream goals," said Abdulrahman Al-Wuhaib, a senior vice president of Saudi Aramco’s downstream unit. Reuters reported that the relationship started to fray after Motiva announced a $10 billion expansion of...

The chairman of Saudi Arabia's state oil giant said on Monday that plans for a possible initial public offering are not being driven by a need for cash amid a global slump in oil prices, but instead signal a desire for greater openness to outside investors. Speaking at an investment conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, Khalid al-Falih said the potential listing of the world's largest oil producer "is not for cash" but a "sign of the times" that the kingdom is open for business. "If we do it, the percentage will not be such that it's going to...