Free Republic

Saudi construction giant Binladin group has laid off tens of thousands of workers, leading to rare protests, as workers torch seven buses demanding compensation as low oil prices begin to bite in earnest. The numbers of layoffs range from 50,000 to 77,000, many of who say they were not paid for several months. Binladin group, which last year had all of its contracts frozen after a crane fell over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing 107, denied that it owed its workers any compensation. The company said the layoffs were a “routine” adjustment to a slowdown in construction activity in...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Oil drilling companies and royalty owners from the Texas Panhandle to New Mexico's stretch of the Permian Basin are embarking on a grass-roots campaign to limit foreign oil imports, salvaging what they say is a major sector of the U.S. economy. "American oil is competing against a cartel of government operators which has a stated initiative of driving an American industry out of business," said Tom Cambridge, one of the Panhandle producers leading the campaign. The grass-roots movement is pushing for the next president of the United States to issue a proclamation setting quotas for imports...

When the price of oil drops, so does the cost of gasoline. But while people are enjoying paying lower prices at gasoline pumps, plunges in oil prices can cause economic damage in Texas. And it can put American oil producers out of business when the price of foreign oil imports gets cheaper than the costs of extracting oil from the ground in the U.S.

Life isn’t much fun these days in the world’s socialist paradise. If you had to choose a country you didn’t want to live in, Venezuela would be near the top of the list. Corrupt, dysfunctional, bankrupt, crime-ridden, drug-infested, short of practically every basic commodity, it can’t keep the lights on, keep the government running or brew its own beer. Last weekend six army officers were arrested for stealing goats from a farm because they were hungry. Venezuela has become the basket case of the western hemisphere, a case study on how not to run a country and a living example...

Iran’s leaders voiced outrage this week — and even threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz — following a Republican congressman’s proposed legislation seeking a stronger response to Tehran’s recent provocative actions against the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, including the capture of ten Navy sailors in January. A senior Revolutionary Guard commander threatened to shut down the entrance to the Persian Gulf, where one-third of the world’s oil exports passes each day, after learning about Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes’ bill. The bill, coming in response to an incident earlier this year in which the Iranian National Guard...

ISIS militants on Thursday captured the main Shaer gas field in eastern Syria in the first gain for the ultra hardline fighters in the Palmyra desert area since they lost the ancient city in March, rebel sources and a monitor said. Amaq, a news agency affiliated to the militants, said they had taken over the gas field area and its facility where Syrian troops were stationed and killed at least 30 soldiers and gained large caches of heavy weapons including tanks and missiles.

It took the market over a day to appreciate the fallout from the devastating Canadian wildfire which has led to a state of emergency in Alberta, the evacuation of over 80,000 people in the oil sands gateway city of Fort McMurray, and the destruction of over 1,600 structures. According to insurance industry reports, losses from the fire are approaching $1 billion, and will likely set records for the country. The average cost of a single-family home in the community was recently around CAD$627,000 ($487,000), Aon said, citing data from the local real estate industry, and cited by CNBC. That would...

Pirate gangs in West Africa are switching to kidnapping sailors and demanding ransom rather than stealing oil cargoes as low oil prices have made crude harder to sell and less profitable, shipping officials said on Tuesday. Attacks in the Gulf of Guinea - a significant source of oil, cocoa and metals for world markets - have become less frequent partly due to improved patrolling but also to lower oil prices, according to an annual report from the U.S. foundation Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP), which is backed by the shipping industry. "They have had to move towards a faster model and...

<p>DALLAS (AP) -- Exxon Mobil produced its weakest quarter in more than 16 years as lower oil prices pushed its profit down by 63 percent.</p> <p>Revenue tumbled 28 percent, and the oil giant lost money in its vaunted exploration and production business despite a 2 percent increase in production. It made more money, however, in chemicals.</p>

ith the oil price crash now nearly two years in, there have been some obvious casualties. Dozens of oil related firms have declared bankruptcy, oil service firms have found rig counts collapsed, and thousands of jobs have been lost across the industry with many skilled employees reporting difficulty finding anything more than short-term contract work. Against this backdrop one might have expected a severe economic downturn in Texas, but instead the Lone Star State is holding up surprisingly well. Texas’ economy has long been thought of as being oil driven, but the reality is that the state’s situation is more...

Taxpayers in Mexico Brace for a New Round of Plunder __ How the mighty are fallen. Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil giant, once a goliath on the global energy scene, is now dependent on state aid to meet its day-to-day needs. Mexico’s Finance Ministry announced a series of measures aimed at loosening Pemex’s financial strains, giving the state-owned giant a decidedly short-term $4.2 billion liquidity boost. That includes a capital injection of $1.5 billion, as well as a credit facility for a further €2.7 billion to pay down pension costs this year. The company will also receive tax breaks that will...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected a whopping $500 billion loss in revenue for the Gulf nations in 2016, which is 30 percent more than the $390 billion lost in 2015. The massive shortfall has crippled the gulf economies, which are facing record budget deficits and seeking external funding to overcome it. Many experts believe that $100 per barrel oil prices are history, and we might not revisit those prices for more than a decade. It implies that the recent crisis will not end as quickly as the downturn in 2007-2009. The oil-dependent nations will have to figure out...

Three days ago, Pioneer surprised oil market watchers when it not only said that it has already produced more oil than it had initially forecast, but that once crude returns to $50, all systems are go. This is what it said in its Q1 press release: producing 222 thousand barrels oil equivalent per day (MBOEPD), of which 55% was oil; production grew by 7 MBOEPD, or 3%, compared to the fourth quarter of 2015, and was significantly above Pioneer’s first quarter production guidance range of 211 MBOEPD to 216 MBOEPD; oil production grew 10 thousand barrels oil per day during...

Islamic State earns millions of dollars a month running car dealerships and fish farms in Iraq, making up for lower oil income after its battlefield losses, Iraqi judicial authorities said on Thursday. Security experts once estimated the ultra-radical Islamist group's annual income at $2.9 billion, much of it coming from oil and gas installations in Iraq and Syria. The U.S.-led coalition has targeted Islamic State's financial infrastructure, using air strikes to reduce its ability to extract, refine and transport oil and so forcing fighters to reportedly take significant pay cuts. Yet the militants, who seized a third of Iraq's territory...

Oil prices surged to their highest levels in six months on Wednesday as the Fed left interest rates unchanged. WTI jumped by 2.8 percent to $45.29 per barrel and Brent climbed by 3.17 percent to $47.19 per barrel. Those are the highest prices so far in 2016 and the oil markets continue to bet on rising momentum for crude. The Federal Reserve added strength to oil when it announced its decision to leave interest rates unchanged, a move that caused the dollar to weaken and oil prices to rise. The Fed also softened its language regarding its concerns over the...

For many years one of the most lucrative jobs in the already lucrative field of engineering was as a petroleum engineer. While industrial, mechanical, and chemical engineering grads all commanded respectable salaries, usually ranging from $55,000 to $75,000, in recent years petroleum engineering salaries often top $100,000 or more. The days of that prosperity are ending or at least on hold for now though. Jobs for petroleum engineers are becoming increasingly scarce even for grads from traditionally good universities. Part of the problem is that as U.S. shale oil boomed, so did the number of petroleum engineering grads. There are...

A cargo of 650,000 barrels of crude left the Libyan port of Hariga yesterday, in the eastern part of the conflict-torn country, sparking what promises to be another phase in the conflict as the Islamic-leaning government in Tripoli vows to block the maneuver. This premature attempt at crude oil exports could have huge implications for international efforts to unite the country under the new Government of National Accord (GNA), which was formed with UN support, because eastern Libya is controlled by a government based in Tobruk, which has not yet recognized the GNA of Fayez Serraj.

“WE DON’T care about oil prices,” Muhammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince, recently told Bloomberg, a news agency: “$30 or $70, they are all the same to us.” Such comments by the man calling the shots in the world’s biggest oil power should be taken with a pinch of salt. Low oil prices cost the country billions, threaten its credit rating and are turning it from creditor to debtor: this week it set out to raise $10 billion from global banks. Yet the claim is not entirely hollow, either. Saudi Arabia is determined not to give any succour...

PERMIAN BASIN In the midst of a downturn in the oil industry, Chevron is set to invest billions. According to a report by the Hobbs News-Sun, Chevron is planning on bringing massive, billion-dollar oil and gas projects to West Texas and eastern New Mexico. Chevron CEO John Watson announced the company will put more of its budget in the Permian Basin while cutting costs elsewhere. During an annual analyst meeting Watson predicted by 2020 Chevron could pump 350,000 barrels a day in West Texas which is almost triple their current 125,000 barrels a day.

Hidden among the ballyhoo about a collaborative freeze in production growth, a less visible but far more effective dynamic has affected, and likely will affect, oil supply and price: military intervention. There have always been three routes out of the unsustainably low prices: natural decline/growth of supply/demand, collaboration constraints on supply, and military conflict. Since January, while the talk of a growth freeze had no effect whatsoever on actual supply, the natural decline/growth did reduce the overhang by a couple of hundred thousand barrels of oil per day. Meanwhile, two little-discussed and less-understood military interventions took a combined 900,000 bopd...