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Summary The Mosul Dam in Iraq could collapse at any time, causing massive flooding across the country. Iraq produces over four million barrels of oil per day, a number which will drop immediately when this event occurs. The destruction of oil production in Iraq will immediately decrease world supply, lifting oil prices.

The $9.2 billion investors paid to snap up new equity offerings from U.S. oil companies in 2016 proves those investors are indeed ready for more punishment. The amount is in line with the pace of such equity offerings in 2015 even as the mood in the oil markets has grown increasingly dour. In June of last year I wrote: New investors in U.S. oil company shares must believe they are catching the bottom and will have a very profitable ride up from here. This demonstrates that OPEC's work is not done and accounts in part for the decision to leave...

Oil prices should fall, possibly hard, in coming weeks. That is because fundamentals do not support the present price. Prices should fall to around $30 once the empty nature of an OPEC-plus-Russia production freeze is understood. A return to the grim reality of over-supply and the weakness of the world economy could push prices well into the $20s. A Production Freeze Will Not Reduce The Supply Surplus An OPEC-plus-Russia production cut would be a great step toward re-establishing oil-market balance. I believe that will happen later in 2016 but is not on the table today.

THE JACKI DAILY Show! Listen live at 2PM Eastern! Now playing also on station KWEL in Midland-Odessa! The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics.Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as...

Separating reality from ideology and political agendas is difficult, but essential, if we are to revitalize our economy and help the world’s poorest families take their rightful places among Earth’s prosperous people. Energy reality is certainly in our favor. But ideological forces are powerful and persistent.Right now, 82% of all US energy and 87% of world energy comes from oil, natural gas and coal. Less than 3% is non-hydroelectric renewable energy – and globally half of that is traditional biomass: wood, grass and animal dung that cause millions of respiratory infections and deaths every year. Thankfully, the transition to fossil...

Renewable energy advocates like to point out that the cost of renewable fuels, like solar power, have dropped substantially in the last few years. The cost of solar power for instance has fallen by more than two-thirds since 2009. Yet for all the excitement about renewable power, the reality is that the entire energy sector has essentially been in a state of deflation for the last decade. The notable drop in oil prices over the last two years aside, costs of producing oil both in the U.S. and in many parts of the world have fallen dramatically. The phase out...

Be Educated, not just entertained! Listen to The Jacki Daily Show! Jacki speaks with Robert Zubrin, author of Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism about the origins of the Green Party. @JackiDailyShow Jack Ekstrom of Vice President, Corporate and Government Relations Whiting Petroleum https://soundcloud.com/jacki-daily/the-dark-history-of-the-green-party-322016

It has been a wild ride this election cycle, but with Super Tuesday upon us, the likely Presidential Nominees could be all but a foregone conclusion by the end of the week. And that will mean big things for energy and financial markets. More on that in a moment though. With the withdrawal of Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, and the continued string of losses for Ted Cruz, the race seems to have narrowed on the Republican side to Donald Trump versus Marco Rubio. Rubio would likely eke out a victory even at this late stage were Cruz, Kasich, and...

World oil prices are controlled by the amount of crude oil stored at Cushing, Oklahoma. That’s because Cushing is the pricing point for WTI (West Texas Intermediate) oil prices, the most-traded oil futures contract in the world. Cushing Storage Rules World Oil Prices WTI and Brent oil prices have good negative correlation with the volume of crude oil stored at Cushing. Comparative inventory, the present volume of oil compared with the 5-year average, and oil-price volatility, the rate at which the price of oil moves up and down

For almost three months the U.S. has been able to legally export crude oil, but Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio is still campaigning on lifting the ban. Rubio told supporters he would lift the ban as president at a private fundraiser in Texas Friday, and his campaign website has an entire page devoted to the need to lift the ban. “I would also allow American oil producers to be able to export,” Rubio said, when asked what he would do about poor oil prices as president. “Right now we’re not allowed to export.” Congress lifted the ban in December...

Live at 2PM! Listen to The Jacki Daily Show! The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics. Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant...

Prices for mansions in Houston's swankiest neighborhood have tumbled in lock step with crude prices. The Houston Opera has offered free season tickets to patrons who lost their jobs in the oil bust. A fancy restaurant offers cut-price dinners. Twenty months into the worst oil price crash since the 1980s, well-heeled residents of the world's oil capital are among the hardest hit largely because tanking energy firm shares make up much of oil and gas executives' compensation. RECOMMENDED: The Migration Machine In River Oaks, a neighborhood of palatial mansions and lush gardens, the average sales price of a home has...

Whiting Petroleum announced earnings on February 24, with probably the most bullish and shocking news to come to the oil patch since the crash started in June 2014. It announced that it will not maintain any active rigs in the Bakken shale region in 2016 and also announced production cuts of 15-20 percent and a capital spending reduction of 80 percent. The significance of this is that, contrary to popular belief, the so called breakeven points are not anywhere close to $30 when you take into account cap ex. That should be obvious enough, but the media and many analysts...

They don’t hate ‘our freedoms.’ They hate that we’ve betrayed our ideals in their own countries — for oil.

OPEC recognizes role of shale. El-Badri largely admitted OPEC’s waning influence due to the rise of U.S. shale. "Shale oil in the United States, I don’t know how we are going to live together," he said in Houston on Feb. 22. “Any increase in price, shale will come immediately and cover any reduction.” The IEA’s report mostly backed up that sentiment. Although the Paris-based energy agency predicted shale would decline substantially in 2016 and 2017, the IEA also said that shale would bring back 1.3 mb/d of liquids production by the end of the decade. Low prices now, but high...

The world's oil powers remain deeply at odds. Iran's oil minister Bijan Zangeneh on Tuesday called the Saudi Arabia-led idea for countries to freeze production a "joke," according to Iranian state broadcaster Press TV. Iran's mocking of the oil freeze came at the same time as the top Saudi oil official was in the U.S. trumpeting the idea. The freeze is the beginning of a process," Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said during a highly-anticipated speech on Tuesday at the IHS CERAWeek oil conference in Houston. "Maybe not all of them, but most of the countries that count will freeze,"...

HOUSTON - This week, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi will for the first time face the victims of his decision to keep oil pumps flowing despite a global glut: U.S. shale oil producers struggling to survive the worst price crash in years. While soaring U.S. shale output brought on by the hydraulic fracturing revolution contributed to oversupply, many blame the 70-percent price collapse in the past 20 months primarily on Naimi, seen as the oil market’s most influential policymaker. During his keynote on Tuesday at the annual IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston, Naimi is addressing U.S. wildcatters and executives who...

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister spoke in Houston at the IHS CERAWeek conference, where he poured cold water on the prospect of a production cut. Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, one of the most important voices in the oil world, spoke at the conference on Tuesday. He first suggested that the production freeze being negotiated between several key OPEC members and Russia could be a building block. “Freeze is the beginning of a process, and that means if we can get all the major producers to agree not to add additional balance, then this high inventory we have now will probably...

The downward slide continued for Colorado's coal industry in 2015, highlighted by production at Routt County's Twentymile Mine, which was down 38 percent. Statewide, production in Colorado was down 18.5 percent, with 18.7 million tons, the lowest amount of coal mined in 23 years. ... Colorado Mining Association President Stuart Sanderson said the drop in production is a result of lower demand, but it was not caused by natural market forces. What we are seeing is the direct result of government regulations that are designed to drive coal out of the energy mix," Sanderson said. He called Colorado's 2010 Clean...

Geologists studying a region in the Mexican state of Veracruz have discovered evidence to explain the origin of the Wilcox Formation, one of Mexico's most productive oil plays, as well as support for the theory that water levels in the Gulf of Mexico dropped dramatically as it was separated from the rest of the world's oceans and Earth entered a period of extreme warming. The drop in water levels and the warming, known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), occurred around 55.8 million years ago. The Gulf refilled about 850,000 years later. Van Nieuwenhuise, director of professional geoscience programs at...