Free Republic

The U.S. will become a net exporter of oil if our production of oil increases again as much as it has since last December. It's increased TWO MILLION barrels per day, or over TWENTY PERCENT. What truly astounded me when I saw this week's data was that the price of oil has been crashing. That tends to depress production by making more expensive means of oil production less profitable. And well, I've never heard oil professionals put it in such terms, but not extracting oil is one way creating a reserve; you never want to sell a non-spoiling commodity at...

Colorado voters will decide the future of the oil and gas industry in their state on Tuesday, as they contemplate requiring greater distances between them and drilling operations. There are more than 150 voter initiatives on the ballot in 37 states on November 6, ranging from healthcare to marijuana legalization, from voting rules to criminal justice reform. There are also a series of votes that will affect the oil and gas industry. Voters in Washington State will decide on passing the nation’s first carbon tax, while California will weigh a repeal of a gasoline tax. But the vote in Colorado...

Just ahead of U.S. sanctions on Iran set to snap back on Monday targeting primarily the energy, shipbuilding, shipping, and banking sectors, Iran’s most prominent conservative cleric has announced that if oil exports are halted, Saudi tankers will be confiscated and Gulf countries attacked. Powerful Shia cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda is the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, considered Iran’s spiritual capital and among the holiest places in Shia Islam, and sits on the government’s “Assembly of Experts” but has no formal government role or decision-making ability. However, he’s a powerful leader and chief spiritual force behind Iran’s conservative faction who...

A high-stakes competition is emerging among energy exporters proposing multi-million-dollar crude terminals along the U.S. Gulf Coast to handle a gusher of shale oil coming from West Texas oilfields. On Monday, private equity firm Carlyle Group became the latest to place a bet, proposing with the Port of Corpus Christi what it said would be the first onshore U.S. export facility able to load the world’s largest crude tankers.

(AP) – The United States is pumping record amounts of oil, vaulting over Russia to become the world’s biggest producer of crude. The Energy Information Administration said Thursday that the U.S. produced more than 11.3 million barrels a day in August, a 4 percent increase over the old record set in July. Russia’s energy ministry estimates that country pumped 11.2 million barrels a day in August. OPEC reports Saudi Arabia pumped 10.4 million barrels a day It’s the first time since 1973 that the U.S. leads the world in oil production. in August including Texas, which accounts for about 40...

In what must seem like a nightmare scenario for Iran, not only is another U.S. president leveling sanctions against its economy, and particularly that economy’s lifeblood, its oil sector, but the current U.S. president has admittedly made it his mission to drive Tehran to its knees over what he sees as non-compliance over the 2015 nuclear accord between western powers and Tehran. As recently as the start of this month, the oil markets narrative was that perhaps President Donald Trump had pushed a bit too hard by reimposing sanctions against Iran. Oil markets, for their part, were jittery while both...

While it doesn’t get much play in the heat of the final days leading up to the midterms, U.S. energy policy is still in the news. Unfortunately, not all of the coverage is quite as honestly depicted as you might hope. We’re still riding a nearly unprecedented energy boom in the United States, but the New York Times found a way to cast a dark cloud over it this weekend. Eric Lipton et al. published a look at oil and gas drilling on federal lands in Wyoming designed to send chills down your spine just in time for Halloween. To...

The Trump administration approved a company’s plan Wednesday to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska, the first time oil would be produced from federal waters in the Arctic. The approval from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is conditional, and Hilcorp Energy Co. would still have to get other federal permits and abide by standards like restricting drilling seasons. “Working with Alaska Native stakeholders, the Department of Interior is following through on President Trump’s promise of American energy dominance,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. “American energy dominance is good for...

"For all the damage inflicted by sanctions, Kudrin says most of Russia’s troubles are self-inflicted, an “issue of domestic institutional, structural reforms.” Oil prices are having no impact on growth and demand,” Kudrin said. “Their effect on the economy is practically exhausted.” The wariness among investors, currency weakness and the VAT hike are all chipping away at the economy..." From his new perch atop a government agency that monitors the budget, one of the few people President Vladimir Putin has publicly called a friend has some blunt words about what’s in store for Russia’s economy. Alexei Kudrin, the head of...

As of today, recreational cannabis consumption is legal in Canada. While many Canadian citizens and companies will be celebrating the reform, not to mention preparing to capitalize on this green-golden opportunity, the Canadian oil and gas industry will be ringing in the new era with considerably less enthusiasm. Canadian oil companies and workers’ unions are busy scrambling to finalize a plan to maintain safe operating standards in an era of legal and easily attainable marijuana. In Canada’s oil sands, workers perform risky maneuvers and operate heavy equipment daily, making health and safety an especially critical issue. Legal weed poses a...

Investors are feeling the most pessimistic about the health of the global economy in a decade, according to a survey from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The gloom is spreading, with a growing number of data points that point to risks for the economy. Fund managers surveyed by BofAML said they are holding onto cash instead of risking it in a frothy market, and 85 percent of them said that the economic expansion is in its late cycle. 38 percent of them said that they expect growth to slow over the next year, the highest share since November 2008, which...

Saudi Arabia has not only called the end of Russia’s prominence as a global oil behemoth, but anticipates that Russia’s oil exports “will have declined heavily if not disappeared” within the next 19 years, Mohammed bin Salman said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. When asked whether Russia and Saudi Arabia had made a backroom deal to increase oil production, MbS was more tight-lipped, saying only that Saudi Arabia was “ready to supply any demand and any disappearing from Iran.” With Russia out of the game, Saudi Arabia would have plenty of oil demand to service, according to MbS. MbS...

Oil prices cooled off in recent days as fears of an acute shortage of supply stemming from sanctions on Iran started to subside. At least two companies in India have lined up oil shipments for November, the month that sanctions on Iran take effect. The 9 million barrels of oil secured for next month translate into nearly 300,000 bpd of supply. Meanwhile, other reports suggest that the U.S. is softening its zero tolerance approach to sanctions, and could issue waivers to some importers who make significant reductions but struggle to cut imports to zero. Taken together, the oil market is...

Russia and Saudi Arabia made a deal in September to increase their oil output, and informed the United States about their plan, Reuters reported Wednesday. The two nations wanted to boost production as United States sanctions on Iran are scheduled to return in November, spurring fear of worldwide price spikes. But they did not want their action to appear to have been caused by President Trump’s call for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia to produce more oil. “The Russians and the Saudis agreed to add barrels to the market quietly with a view not to look...

Drillers in the fastest-growing oil region in the United States face infrastructure issues beyond limited pipeline takeaway capacity or water and frac sand supply. Permian oil producers need a lot more electricity to power well production than they did just a few years ago. And the West Texas electricity grid—which wasn’t planned for so heavy a load—is straining to catch up with power demand. Thanks to rising oil prices, oil production in the Permian has been surging. While drillers have flocked again to the hottest U.S. shale play, electricity infrastructure and transmission grids in West Texas need years to expand...

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says the U.S. Navy can blockade Russia if needed to keep it from controlling energy supplies in the Middle East as it does in Europe. "The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open..." Zinke said on Friday at an industry event in Pittsburgh hosted by the Consumer Energy Alliance. He was there to explain why hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the shale energy boom has given the U.S. an edge over its rivals Russia and Iran, by making the U.S. less dependent on foreign sources of energy....

Rising oil prices are pushing up prices for fuels in Asia, and this is coming at a bad time; many Asian currencies are depreciating as economic growth falters. This is one of the major outtakes from this week’s S&P Global Platts Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference, and it should serve to rein in oil bulls’ enthusiasm in the near future. For now, all is great for those betting on still higher oil prices, experts attending the event told S&P Global Platts. “Good news for refiners is that India for one, oil demand won't subside [for the next few decades]," one of...

An oil price spike is starting to look increasingly possible, with a rerun of 2008 not entirely out of the question, according to a new report. The outages from Iran are worse than most analysts expected, and bottlenecks in the U.S. shale patch could prevent non-OPEC supply from plugging the gap. To top it off, new regulations from the International Maritime Organization set to take effect in 2020 could significantly tighten supplies. Put it all together, and “the likelihood of an oil spike and crash scenario akin to the one observed in 2008 has increased,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch...

MOSCOW -- Two have fled the country. Another is in jail, his oil empire in ruins. Russian President Vladimir Putin has largely succeeded in his campaign pledge to make oligarchs -- the powerful tycoons who emerged in the chaos of post-Soviet Russia -- disappear "as a class." Now, most of the country's super-rich are either packing up or hunkering down and trying to stay on the government's good side. Except Mikhail Fridman. Using bare-knuckles business tactics, the 41-year-old built an $8 billion empire spanning oil, telecoms, banking and retail. Now, he's picking a fight with Leonid Reiman, Russia's telecommunications minister...

As Guy wrote, fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe raked in more than $500,000 from leftist sympathizers this week after setting up a legal fund and blasting President Trump. As a reminder, McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and the DOJ Inspector General recommended he be terminated for a lack of candor. But it turns out, McCabe's pay day wasn't a result of a grassroots effort to defend him against false attacks. The GoFundMe page was set up by a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm connected to President Barack Obama. From Law...