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After the API shocked markets by reporting a massive 9.3-million-barrel increase in U.S. inventories yesterday, the EIA added insult to injury, saying inventories instead went up by 14.4 million barrels in the week to October 28, reaching 482.6 million barrels. The silver lining is that the total is within the upper limit for the time of year, according to the EIA data. We suspect the markets won’t find much in the way of this silver. Last week, the authority reported a meager 600,000-barrel decline in crude oil stocks, which despite its meagre size, managed to sway the market, pushing up...

Investors may not realize it, but the Walking Dead is not the only zombie show running right now. The oil markets are at least as scary and have zombies that are much harder to kill than AMC’s popular program. While about 100 oil companies have gone bankrupt in 2015 and 2016, almost none of those companies have actually “died”. Instead, most of the firms are still pumping oil just as rapidly as before. That, in turn, has significant implications for investors in the market.

Fewer and fewer oil exploration and production companies are declaring bankruptcy. But more oilfield service companies are. So far this month, only one North American E&P firm filed for Chapter 11 protection, according to data released on Tuesday by the Dallas law firm Haynes & Boone. That’s down from two in September, three in August and four in July. But it’s been an especially tough few months for service companies. As crude prices began crashing in 2014, drillers started idling rigs. That led to fewer jobs for the companies that make their money helping producers pump oil and gas. Moreover,...

A typically low seasonal demand in Europe will lead to Iran exporting 1.89 million bpd of crude oil next month, the lowest level since July, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a source with knowledge of Iran’s tanker schedule. As a rule of thumb, Iranian crude oil exports usually hit low levels around the months of October and November due to the peak in refinery maintenance in Europe and Asia. This year around, however, the November exports to Asia will rise from October due to higher Chinese demand. This year, Iran has been rapidly bumping up oil production and exports after...

Despite indications that the Houston hemorrhage of oil and gas jobs has slowed down, the two-year old wave of advances in drilling and extraction technologies—pioneered by now-jobless engineers—will prevent rehiring from commencing any time soon. Last week—and for the first time in over a year—oilfield services company Halliburton reported a quarterly profit. The profit was small in size, but refreshingly hopeful for Houston’s long-ailing oil and gas job market. Months of job cuts and asset sales later, the company announced a slim $6 million profit and a stable global workforce at 50,000 employees. A full ten percent of the 3,500...

Mexico and Canada have been waging a silent battle for market share in the U.S. crude oil refining market. Since 2006, crude oil exports from Canada and Mexico to the U.S.’ largest refining complex in the U.S. Gulf Coast (Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts 3 or “PADD 3” or “Gulf Coast”) has changed dramatically. A Crude History: Canada vs. Mexico Historically, Canada and Mexico have both brought significant oil supplies to refiners in the U.S. In 2006, Mexico and Canada were both exporting 1.7 million barrels per day of oil to the U.S.; however, Mexican and Canadian crude oil market...

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said at a conference this year in North Dakota that he'd end U.S. oil imports from OPEC if elected in November.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, accused unnamed OPEC members of using oil as a weapon to the benefit of the U.S. The accusations were leveled via Twitter, following Khamenei’s meeting with Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro over the weekend. In a series of tweets, Khamenei started by saying that the “drop in oil prices is a coercive measure against countries independent of the US,” then went on to remind his audience of the 1973 oil embargo from several Middle Eastern states that led to accusations from the West about “the political use of oil”, adding that “Today, same countries along...

CARLSBAD — Oil experts say America is under attack by Saudi Arabia and OPEC, but instead of bombs, the OPEC oil cartel is dropping millions of barrels of oil on the U.S. economy in a clear effort to undermine the nation’s oil producers and kill any chance of American energy independence. The first to feel the flood of foreign oil into the U.S. are the independent oil producers, whose stripper wells in Texas alone account for 20 percent of the nation’s oil and gas production, said Judy Stark, executive vice president of the The Panhandle Producers & Royalty Owners Association.

Big bold Drudge lines [*h*] ... CIA PLANS CYBER STRIKE ON RUSSIA 'DEFCON WARNING UPGRADE' MOSCOW READY FOR WAR Obama wants to not only wag-the-dog, but who knows? A cyber-war could disrupt internet communications -- time to blind Trump supporters. And it all boils down to their bribe money to take out the Syrian government. Obama and Hillary want you to think that Bashar Assad is the very devil. In many ways he is. Worst of all is his defense of Christians and Jews so far as the Establishment thinks. ISIS is cool -- they enslave Christians and Jews for...

Climate change activists shut off cross-border oil pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington on Tuesday. The activists broke in to unguarded valve stations and shut off the flow of oil before being arrested. Reuters reports: All they had to do was twist shut giant valves on five cross-border pipelines that together can send 2.8 million barrels a day of crude to the United States from Canada – equal to about 15 percent of daily U.S. consumption. The pipelines have valve stations every 20 miles, many of them in remote locations and protected by nothing more than a locked...

Moscow — Leaders of Turkey and Russia signed a long-delayed deal Monday to build the TurkStream gas pipeline under the Black Sea to deliver Russian gas to Europe's doorstep within three years. The rapid warming trend in Russo-Turkish relations holds deep implications for Syria's immediate crisis, which dominated the talks and the subsequent headlines, but the fallout from that pipeline deal is a potentially crushing blow to struggling pro-Western Ukraine and may be rearranging strategic realities around the region for many years to come. Analysts say that if TurkStream goes ahead it will enable Moscow to cut its former main...

On September 11th, Libyan National Army (LNA) forces under General Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive on the oil facilities in Ras Lanuf, al-Sidr, Az-Zuwaytinah, and Berga in the Gulf of Sirte. Until that moment, the sites had been under the jurisdiction of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG), guided by Ibrahim Jadran. In Ras Lanuf and al-Sidr PFG officers surrendered without fighting and all the terminals have ended up under Haftar’s control. The vast majority of the operation was reportedly conducted by Sudanese and Chadian mercenaries. The Tobruk government, led by Abdullah al-Thani, expressed its full support of Haftar’s operation and...

U.S. crude oil storage is filling up with unaccounted-for oil. There is a lot more oil in storage than the amount that can be accounted for by domestic production and imports. That’s a big problem since oil prices move up or down based on the U.S. crude oil storage report. Oil stocks in inventory represent surplus supply. Increasing or decreasing inventory levels generally push prices lower or higher because they indicate trends toward longer term over-supply or under-supply.

A new report has government officials considering setting 10 million acres of across six states in the American west off limits to mining and development to protect the chicken-like Greater Sage Grouse, which is not an endangered species. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report found that much of the Sage Grouse’s habitat sits on top of extremely valuable deposits of minerals including gold, copper, lithium, silver, uranium and many others. The USGS report means that the government’s most restrictive grouse protection plan could kill even more than 31,000 jobs and lead to more than $5.6 billion in reduced annual economic...

Ever since the 1973 oil embargo, U.S. energy policy has sought to replace petroleum-based transportation fuels with alternatives. One prominent option is using biofuels, such as ethanol, in place of gasoline and biodiesel instead of ordinary diesel. Transportation generates one-fourth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, so addressing this sector's impact is crucial for climate protection. Many scientists view biofuels as inherently carbon-neutral: They assume the carbon dioxide (CO2) plants absorb from the air as they grow completely offsets, or "neutralizes," the CO2 emitted when fuels made from plants burn. Many years of computer modeling based on this assumption, including work...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A Texas petroleum drilling company announced Tuesday it has made a large-scale oil . . .

The world is waiting on the newest release of information by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, who has announced that over the next ten days, he will release a whole new spate of information covering a wide range of topics, including oil. In addition to information about oil, Assange has promised that the latest series of unveilings will include the goods on the elections in the United States, arms, tech Giant Google, and mass surveillance. Assange made the announcement Tuesday to a press gathering in Berlin, from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, stating: “We hope to be publishing every week for...

Islamic State militants will no longer control any oil in Iraq after being ousted by government forces last week from an area near Kirkuk. The ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim have been driven out of Shirqat by co-ordinated Iraqi force. DT "Take the Oil” Iraqi forces have yet to recapture the Najma oil-field, near Qayyara, but its producing wells are no longer accessible to IS government offensive and (US) air strikes. The reality is that it is extremely difficult to extract and smuggle oil while our forces are advancing towards Mosul...," oil ministry spokesman Asim Jihad.

The Detroit News recently reported that low oil prices have resulted in a decreased number of new oil and natural gas wells around Michigan. As a result of the slowing markets and dropping prices, the industry is seeing losses mount and is laying off hundreds of thousands of employees across the country. The article notes that Michigan is setting record lows in the number of drilling permits, with accompanying job losses. In fact, Energy Information Administration (EIA) numbers indicate that oil production in the state actually reached a 25-year low in 2015. This revelation isn’t terribly surprising, as the hardships...