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A new week, a new month, a new sell-off. Crude prices are charging lower to start the week as a plethora of bearish indicators emerge to encourage crude lower. Hark, here are five things to consider in the oil market today.

Remember the Keystone XL Pipeline project? Remember what a cause célèbre it was for both the left and right? What the heck ever happened to it? Have you wondered that?Well, in short it was killed pretty much for good, or at least the foreseeable future – both here in the USSA and now in Canada. As you are no doubt aware, it was Obama who, with the left in the federal and various state legislatures – and with some help from Choo-choo Warren Buffet who owns most of the rail cars now hauling crude down south, vetoed the pipeline. And...

ExxonMobil reported on Friday earnings of US$1.7 billion for the second quarter, a 59-percent tumble on the year, amid sharply lower commodity prices and weaker refining margins. Earnings per share assuming dilution fell to US$0.41 from US$1.00 for the second quarter last year, missing Thomson Reuters’ analyst expectations of US$0.64 earnings per share. Upstream earnings plummeted by US$1.7 billion, to US$294 million in the second quarter of 2016, and the U.S. upstream segment posted a loss of US$514 million, swelled from a loss of US$47 million in the second quarter of 2015. Non-U.S. upstream earnings tumbled by US$1.3 billion, to...

Wholesale gasoline in California became the cheapest in the country this week, but that change has largely gone unseen at the pump, where consumers are still paying the highest prices in the continental United States to fill up their cars. Ample inventories along with relatively stable refinery operations and imports has driven down the spot value of gasoline in Los Angeles at the wholesale level by more than 60 cents since mid-June. However, that has not translated to similarly lower retail fuel prices for consumers because of peculiarities in California's market. The declines in the state's retail gasoline market over...

U.S. oil production peaked at over 9.6 million barrels per day in June, 2015: Based on Core Labs' prediction above, U.S. oil production will fall to under 8.3 million barrels per day before the end of this year and will continue fall to under 7.5 million barrels per day sometime in 2017 before it stabilizes. The only thing that will stop U.S. oil production from falling is a sharp increase in oil prices. In my opinion, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) must move firmly over $60/bbl before we will see the increase in capital expenditures necessary to stabilize U.S. oil production....

When oil analysts look at the markets to try to get a sense of where oil prices are heading, one of the great unknowns, at least in the U.S. shale industry, is the large volume of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs). As oil prices began collapsing two years ago, shale drillers increasingly decided to defer the completion of their drilled wells, hoping to wait out the downturn and bring production online at a later point when prices rebounded. But with oil prices suffering from a prolonged downturn, the DUCS began to mount, leaving a huge backlog of potential production that...

On Tuesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) formally announced the removal of the lesser prairie chicken from the endangered species protection list. They did not take this step voluntarily; FWS lost a court case last year which ordered the agency to remove the bird from the list. However, even as they complied with the court’s order, the FWS issued a threat that the agency’s land grab under the guise of conservation was not over. In the words of Director Dan Ashe, “Responding to this court ruling by removing the bird from the Federal List does not mean we are...

CLEVELAND -- It's tough to be a speaker at a political convention who has something substantive to say, because the sizzle always consumes the steak at these events. So it's not surprising that energy company executive Harold Hamm was overlooked amid Wednesday night's political sparks. But he delivered one of the better, or arguably one of the more important, lines of the night:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New Mexico and West Texas oil producers are gearing up for a national effort to draw all major U.S. oil basins into a grassroots movement to restrict crude imports from overseas. Leaders of the Panhandle Import Reduction Initiative, which launched in April in the Permian Basin, are seeking public meetings and rallies in other oil-producing zones to convert what’s now a regional initiative into a national movement, said Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy, who is working with local producers.

With the Republican National Convention set to wrap up on Thursday, and the Democratic National Convention getting ready to kick off in Philadelphia next week, one prominent oil executive is noting that the industry has fared better under Democrats than Republicans. Scott Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, says that he has noticed the trend during his 42 years in the business. That may sound strange considering the two parties’ diverse platforms when it comes to energy. The Republican party is touting deregulation and has said that it does not support the Paris Climate Accords. Going a few steps further,...

What killed the dinosaurs? It’s a question as old as – well the dinosaurs themselves, and one that everyone from school children to scientists have been asking for decades. Movies like Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time only heighten that sense of wonder and raise the stakes behind that question. Now according to a new scientific study, it seems that black gold may have been the source of the dinos’ demise. Japanese researchers at Tohuku University and the Meteorological Research Institute authored a recent study in the research journal Scientific Reports suggesting that a meteor impact 66 million years...

Just over a month ago, when we pointed out that that the gasoline curve was about to shift from contango into backwardation, we said that the gasoline tanker armada off the coast of Singapore was about to start offloading as it would soon become uneconomical to hold product in offshore storage. This meant one thing: China was about to unleash a wave of accelerated gasoline exports across the entire world. We pointed out the unprecedented surge in Chinese gasoline stocks... and added that as China continues to imports tremendous amounts of both crude and product, far greater than actual demand,...

Oil prices have been crushed over the past two years because of a glut of production. With supplies falling off, particularly in the U.S. shale patch, prices have begun to firm up. But another glut that has built up and has stubbornly refused to fall threatens another oil price downturn. In its July Oil Market Report, the International Energy Agency warned about shockingly high levels of refined products sitting in storage. Gasoline, diesel and heating oil are built up to such high levels in so many parts of the world, that a sharp rise in crude oil prices is unlikely...

Oil prices showed weakness on Monday once again after a brutal few days last week. But WTI and Brent moved up in early trading hours on Tuesday. Several news items overnight pushed oil up on Tuesday, including a falling U.S. dollar, a ruling from an international court on the South China Sea (more below), news that an ExxonMobil well was attacked in the Niger Delta (something which Exxon denies), and reports that some oil exports were delayed from Iraq because of a pipeline leak. The markets are awaiting crude inventory estimates from API later today, which could move prices.

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...

The troops were traveling to provide security at a refugee camp when their vehicle was hit, the Chinese Defense Ministry statement said. “The Chinese military is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the attack,” the statement said, adding condolences to the victims and their family members. The loss of the two Chinese peacekeepers in South Sudan come after Shen Liangliang, a U.N. peacekeeper stationed in Mali, was killed in an attack on a U.N. camp on May 31 that wounded five other Chinese troops. The three deaths, coming so close together, illustrate the increased risks faced by Chinese peacekeeping troops—particularly...

The troops were traveling to provide security at a refugee camp when their vehicle was hit, the Chinese Defense Ministry statement said. “The Chinese military is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the attack,” the statement said, adding condolences to the victims and their family members. The loss of the two Chinese peacekeepers in South Sudan come after Shen Liangliang, a U.N. peacekeeper stationed in Mali, was killed in an attack on a U.N. camp on May 31 that wounded five other Chinese troops. The three deaths, coming so close together, illustrate the increased risks faced by Chinese peacekeeping troops—particularly...

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.

As the Clinton-led State Department dragged its feet against Boko Haram, Clinton Foundation donors made millions from Nigerian oil fields The attacks on Jan. 20, 2012, began not so much as an explosion but as an earthquake. ....In coordinated bombings at 23 separate locations in the city of Kano, including police headquarters and military barracks, the group left one of Africa’s largest cities in disarray and panic. The January attacks killed more than 185 people—Africa’s worst terrorism since the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. ...Boko Haram often showed up better equipped than the Nigerian military...prominently...

Want to invest in the oil majors? Take a look at Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell, but steer clear of ExxonMobil, BP, and Total. That is the conclusion from a new analysis from Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., which identified Chevron and Shell as the best of the lot. The reason for choosing Chevron, for instance, is that the American oil major will have high-margin growth, largely due to the completion of several large-scale projects. The Gorgon LNG project is one example – with huge capex requirements behind it, Chevron will enjoy free-cash-flow turnaround. Tudor Pickering Holt also likes Chevron’s...