Free Republic

Although data_opacity makes objective_analysis difficult, market observers reported in April that China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest oil_importer. This statistical inflection point needs context to understand global consumption trends. While oil bulls are anxious about China’s reduced crude growth appetite, fundamental shifts in Chinese currency and domestic consumption strategies point to long-term growth in Chinese hydrocarbon consumption generally. Keith Johnson wrote in Foreign Policy on May 11, 2015, “… China’s continued and, indeed, deepening reliance on volatile regions for the world for energy supplies, especially the Middle East, points to continued security vulnerabilities for Beijing for...

Te Saudi Arabian government delegation appreciate and fully support the decision of the Indonesian government to become an OPEC member again, because Indonesia is one of the founders of OPEC," Indonesian Energy Minister Sudirman Said said in the statement. Saudi Arabia is Indonesia's top crude supplier. Naimi will also push for Saudi state oil firm Saudi Aramco to invest in Indonesia's downstream sector, Said said.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia said it shot down a Scud missile fired by Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies early Saturday at a Saudi city that is home to a major air base, marking what could be a major escalation in the monthslong war. Two missiles launched from a Patriot missile battery shot down the Scud around 2:45 a.m. Saturday (2345 GMT, 7:45 p.m. EDT Friday) around the southwestern city of Khamis Mushait, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. The agency did not report any casualties in the attack. Khamis Mushait is home to the King Khalid...

n the first such attack of the 10-week-old conflict in Yemen, Shiite Muslim rebels early Saturday launched three Scud missiles toward a large Saudi air base, the insurgents reported. The Saudis acknowledged the firing of one missile, which they said was shot down. The episode came as the United Nations is struggling to bring the two sides together for talks that are envisioned to begin June 14. Both sides appear to be seeking to shore up their gains in advance of any negotiations. The Houthis’ Masirah television reported the missile firings, which Saudi Arabian reports said were aimed at the...

Abundant, reliable, affordable oil and natural gas empower people. They support job creation, mobility, modern agriculture, homes and hospitals, computers and communications, lights and refrigerators, life and study after sundown, indoor plumbing, safe drinking water, less disease and longer lives. Hydrocarbons make plastics, pharmaceuticals and synthetic clothing. They create fertilizers and pesticides, to improve crop yields, reduce food prices and improve nutrition. But Sierra Club, 350.org and other radicals want to keep America’s oil and natural gas bounties in the ground. They block leasing, drilling and fracking. They block pipelines that transport oil and gas to refineries, power plants, factories...

After years of unfounded hysteria from so-called environmentalists, the media and Hollywood that fracking causes drinking water contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency just issued a major blow to anti-fracking activists. A new report from the EPA, based on a study sanctioned by Congress, shows drinking water contamination only results if fracking wells aren't built or maintained properly, which is a rarity. "We did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States. Of the potential mechanisms identified in this report, we found specific instances where one or more of these mechanisms...

An unusual schism has opened up on California’s politically dominant left flank, where Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime favorite of the state’s environmentalists, has refused to give in to the climate change movement’s demand for a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing. His stance comes despite the growing clamor in the aftermath of fellow Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision in December to allow a similar statewide ban of the revolutionary oil and gas drilling technique in New York. Hollywood stars and environmental activists badly want California to be next. The irony, of course, is that there may be no greener governor...

In the early 2000s, ethanol was touted as the solution to a variety of ills plaguing our nation. As is currently the case, those who worshipped at the altar of ethanol placed their faith in a false idol. Early in the new millennium, oil prices began to rise and natural gas prices shot up. Doomsayers lacking an understanding of history and economics popped up, as they always do, to proclaim the end of cheap oil was nigh. “Peak oil” pundits ruled the airwaves and editorial pages. The United States had recently suffered the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,...

Wall Street's generous supply of funds to U.S. oil drillers helped create the American energy boom. Now that same access to easy money is keeping them going, despite oil prices that are languishing around $60 a barrel. The flow of money into oil has allowed U.S. companies to avoid liquidity problems and kept American crude production from falling sharply. Even though more than half of the rigs that were drilling new wells in September have been banished to storage yards, in mid-May nearly 9.6 million barrels of oil a day were pumped across the country, the highest level since 1970,...

Saudi Arabia’s unwillingness to follow its longstanding policy of propping up oil prices means North Carolina might have to wait for offshore energy exploration. That’s the assessment of Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy and project leader of a group developing New Mexico’s state energy policy. Fine described a Saudi-led oil “price war” during a presentation to the John Locke Foundation’s Shaftesbury Society. In the video clip below, Fine explained how falling oil prices tied to Saudi Arabia’s new policy affect North Carolina’s energy options.

"We have very little food and ammunition, and we can't withstand the suicide bombers, snipers and rockets....All of us are thinking of committing suicide - Iraqi Federal Police Officer. Against this cataclysmic backdrop of bombs falling in Sana’a and with ISIS literally at the gates of the major Iraqi city of Ramadi, many US energy and security experts were shocked to hear President Barack Obama ignore the danger in a recent keynote speech in which he pinpointed global warming as an equally big risk for Americans. “Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our...

A senior Iranian general said on Monday that the leadership of Saudi Arabia, a regional rival, was on the edge of collapse and would be toppled soon, “God willing.” Saudi-led bombardments on Yemen are “shameless and rude and an affront to all Islamic values,” the head of the 150,000-strong Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, said during a speech in Tehran.

Not that this has anything to do with Islam. “Islamic State’s Saudi branch calls for clearing Arabian Peninsula of Shi’ites,” Reuters, May 30, 2015: DUBAI, May 30 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s branch of militant group Islamic State has said it wants to clear the Arabian Peninsula of Shi’ite Muslims and urged young men in the kingdom to join its cause, the U.S.-based SITE monitoring centre has reported. Islamic State claimed two suicide bombings carried out on May 22 and May 29 on Shi’ite mosques in eastern Saudi Arabia, where the bulk of the Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ite minority lives. The attacks...

...carbonite-formations, and no region has as much oil and gas trapped in carbonate-formations as the Middle East. Carbonates are areas of sedimentary rock-Limestone, for instance—that contain many natural cracks inside them. Carbonite-formations are estimated to hold 60 percent of the world's oil and 40 percent of the world's gas reserves. In the Middle East, roughly 70 percent of oil and 90 percent of gas reserves are trapped in the carbonite, according to oil services giant Schlumberger.... ...Saudia Arabia is fifth in the world when it comes to recoverable gas reserves. Much of that is in carbonate-formation. What Saudia Arabia doesn't...

OPEC meets in Vienna on Friday, a meeting that will, according to the Wall Street Journal, be a mite testy. The last few years have been flush for the cartel, with oil prices well above their historical average. Now fracking is changing all that--and hammering open fissures in the cartel that been temporarily plugged with huge wads of petrodollars. On one side are members like Saudi Arabia, who you can think of as OPEC's central banker. Saudi Arabia sits on top of a vast reservoir of high quality oil that is cheap to pump and cheap to refine. It's not...

The Financial Times [subscription] is reporting that the US is poised to become the world’s largest producer of liquid petroleum (oil and natural gas liquids): US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency, the watchdog backed by rich countries. With US production continuing to boom, its output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s this month or next for the first time since 1991. [...] Rising oil and gas production has caused the US...

Crude oil prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, down more than 20 percent just since June, meaning price estimates by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) have been far too pessimistic. And these low prices — and the fear that they could go even lower — are making a number of oil industry people increasingly nervous, with some prediciting that the prices are getting so low that oil companies are going to stop new drilling and even cut back on production from already drilled wells. On October 7, the EIA estimated that prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude...

Saudi Arabia has noticed Canada’s booming oil and gas industry — and they don’t like what they see. You could even say they’re scared. That’s the panicky message in a 14-page memo written to Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry by Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, an influential member of the Saudi royal family. He desperately warns them that Saudi Arabia’s energy dominance is at risk, including from oil and gas developments in western democracies. And he mentions Canada by name. Al-Waleed isn’t just another pundit or oil-rich Arab sheikh. He’s an international tycoon who has built a vast empire of holdings, including...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fracking-is-turning-the-us-into-a-bigger-oil-producer-than-saudi-arabia-9185133.html

It is worthy paying close attention when a certain Saudi prince speaks his mind. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal is sometimes described as the most powerful Arab in the world, thanks to his enormous wealth, business acumen, and influence in the Saudi royal family, which runs the Kingdom as a family fiefdom. Western-educated, he has shown himself to be an effective power broker, owning a 7% stake in News Corporation and donating $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities, arousing suspicions of undue influence. The good prince let the world know what the real stakes are in the battle over...