Free Republic

Citigroup is “especially bullish” on commodities in 2017, the bank says. “The oil market is treading water for now, but the oil price overshot to the downside earlier this year and this is clearly setting the stage for a bullish end to the decade,” Citi analysts, led by Ed Morse, wrote in a research note published on July 11. There is a quite a bit of volatility in commodity markets, especially for oil, but global demand continues to grow at a steady pace. Prices have crashed on oversupply, but with oil production going offline, particularly in the U.S., the markets...

Green activists are getting schooled in fossil fuel divestment. Despite left-environmentalists’ best efforts, New York University and the University of Cambridge just rejected pleas to stop investing in fossil fuels. The green push for institutions to scrap all oil, natural gas, and coal investments is several years old. Campaigners insist that starving fossil fuel producers of capital will leave mineral energy in the ground, save the climate, and thus rescue the earth. There isn’t enough space in this piece to dissect the exaggerated fears of global warming. Suffice it to say that climate science is revealing lower climate sensitivities to...

A conservative legal group is accusing state Democratic officials of conspiring to flout public records laws in order to keep secret details of a campaign to bring racketeering charges against climate policy dissenters. Democratic attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman are seeking to block efforts to obtain documents about their efforts by invoking an overbroad claim to secrecy in ongoing legal proceedings, according to the Energy and Environment (E&E) Legal Institute. “These activist AGs are trying to write themselves out from freedom of information laws their legislatures have written them into,” E&E senior legal fellow Chris Horner said...

Venezuela's falling crude output and self inflicted financial woes have left it decimated... State-run oil firm PDVSA has slashed oil export to Cuba by 40 percent from the first half of 2015.

Falling prices at the pump have given motorists reason to rejoice continuously over the last year and a half, but they’re not good news for everyone. At least, not for the people who are about fuel economy. The latest sales-weighted fuel economy ratings report by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute revealed that in June, the value of the indicator was 25.3 miles per gallon, down from 25.4 mpg in May. Now, that’s not a huge dip, as Road Show author Andrew Krok notes, but it follows a pattern of declining fuel economy that parallels the decline in gas...

The Majority staff for two House Committees have released a report which concludes the Obama administration broke the law and violated the Constitution by making billions in Obamacare cost-sharing payments without congressional authorization. There are two major payments set out under Obamacare. First, premium tax credits, often referred to as subsidies, offset the monthly cost of insurance. Second, cost-sharing reductions are payments made to insurance companies to offset high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. The Obamacare law included a permanent appropriation of money to pay for the premium subsidies but not for the cost-sharing payments.The report issued Thursday demonstrates that...

Liberals love to tout how great alternative energy is compared to fossil fuels. What the same environmentalists refuse to acknowledge is the costs that will be paid by the energy companies customers. While people such as Obama and Clinton continue to push for alternative energy by acting as if it’s a surefire way to lower energy costs, Germany has proven that a lie. The German government has officially declared it will cease building any new offshore wind turbines in an effort to lower energy costs for the European Union’s richest nation.

ISIS is now issuing its own currency referred to as the ‘Golden Dinar,’ with engravings bearing the words “Islamic State.” The coins, currently being released in limited quantity, are to primarily be used by traders in the oil industry in areas under Islamic State control, according to reports on jihadi online forums. Activists in Deir ez-Zor, Syria reported oil traders have been ordered to use the new Dinar when purchasing from ISIS-held oil fields. Reports from the Iraqi city of Mosul have indicated the Golden Dinar is being introduced to the currency market as part of a serious attempt to...

The consistent theme from my travels so far in Europe– the UK, Scandinavia, Lithuania– has been noticeably higher prices. Shockingly so, in some instances. London, where I spent a rather pleasant and rare sunny weekend with friends and colleagues, has gone from being ‘stupid’ pricey, to just plain absurd. Tube prices, taxi fares, food prices, restaurant bills, train fares… it all keeps going up. And to cap it all off, the British government’s VAT increases have ensured that absolutely everyone is paying a little bit more. Here in Lithuania, the buzz around town is the spiraling gasoline prices, which have...

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) were a major driver of the rally in oil markets over the past several months, as the outage of roughly 600,000 barrels per day helped push up crude oil prices. In June, a 30-day ceasefire between the NDA and the Nigerian government led to a few weeks of relative calm, and Nigeria’s oil minister said that the country was able to bring back a large chunk of the disrupted supply, bringing output up from 1.4 million barrels per day to 1.9 mb/d at the end of June, but still down from the 2.2 mb/d Nigeria...

Political platforms are not meant to be taken as anything other than aspirational documents. They make a brief appearance at party conventions and then sit on a shelf and collect dust for four years until the next presidential election comes along. One of the few things platforms do accomplish is they put on display the party’s collective id, laying bare the base instincts of its members. Essentially, for party supporters, the political platform acts as the road map on the way to immanentizing the eschaton: “Barring opposition, following this document will get us to heaven on Earth.” On June 25,...

ExxonMobil and British Petroleum have been facing off over the terms of the renewal of the “contract of the century” in Azerbaijan, according to sources that spoke to Reuters. BP currently operates the Azeri-Chigar-Guneshi fields in the middle of the Caspian Sea—a region that contributes a tenth of the firm’s global output. The British company has reportedly agreed with the Azeri government on the terms of a 30-year contract, but in an effort to expand its presence in the ACG region, Exxon has been pushing for a piece of the $100 billion pie.

In an early Wednesday attack, Niger Delta militants have blown up two Chevron oil wells in Warri, leading a shut down in the wells and promising further output drops for Nigeria. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have claimed responsibility for the attack via their Twitter feed, not that they “blew up Chevron oil well RMP 23 and 24 [at] 3:44 am this morning.” These are Chevron’s Bibi oil wells, run by Chevron Nigeria Limited. The militant group also noted that it had a “heavy presence of 100 gunboats, 4 warships and jet bombers,” and that the attack was meant “to...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran denied on Friday Nigerian allegations that it had trained militants arrested in Nigeria on charges of planning attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets there. Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said such allegations were "made up as the result of the ill will of the enemies of the two countries' good relations", Iranian state television reported. "Iran and Nigeria have friendly and close relations and despite the vast efforts of the two countries' enemies in recent years relations and cooperations have always improved," he said. Nigeria's secret service said on Thursday it had arrested Abdullahi Mustapha Berende...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

Iran said on Monday an arms shipment sent from an Iranian port and discovered in Lagos was heading to a West African country and the "misunderstanding" had since been cleared up with the Nigerian authorities. "A private company which had sold conventional defence weapons to another country in West Africa had transferred the shipment via Nigeria which raised some doubts with relevant officials," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

An illegal arms shipment including rockets and grenades discovered in Nigeria this week was loaded in Iran by an Iranian trader, the firm that operates the vessel that delivered it said on Friday. Security agents this week intercepted 13 containers declared as building materials and discharged from the CMA CGM Everest vessel at the country's busiest port of Apapa in Nigeria's economic hub of Lagos. "The shipment in question was booked as a 'shippers owned container' and supplied loaded and sealed by the shipper, an Iranian trader who does not appear on any 'forbidden persons' listing," said CMA CGM, which...

Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza. Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship. Nigerian media reports said the ship, which came from Iran, docked in Lagos port for a few hours only, unloaded 13 containers and sailed on.

Crude futures rose Monday after another attack on an oil platform in Nigeria and Iran warned that any sanctions imposed over the country's nuclear program could send oil prices even higher. Brent crude for February delivery gained 77 cents to $63.03 a barrel on London's ICE Futures exchange, ahead of the contract's expiration Monday. Trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange was closed for the Martin Luther King Day holiday. Royal Dutch Shell PLC said it had evacuated over 300 staffers and contractors from facilities in the Niger Delta. Heavily armed attackers damaged the Benisede oil platform in the Niger...