Free Republic

Not that this has anything to do with Islam. “Islamic State’s Saudi branch calls for clearing Arabian Peninsula of Shi’ites,” Reuters, May 30, 2015: DUBAI, May 30 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s branch of militant group Islamic State has said it wants to clear the Arabian Peninsula of Shi’ite Muslims and urged young men in the kingdom to join its cause, the U.S.-based SITE monitoring centre has reported. Islamic State claimed two suicide bombings carried out on May 22 and May 29 on Shi’ite mosques in eastern Saudi Arabia, where the bulk of the Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ite minority lives. The attacks...

...carbonite-formations, and no region has as much oil and gas trapped in carbonate-formations as the Middle East. Carbonates are areas of sedimentary rock-Limestone, for instance—that contain many natural cracks inside them. Carbonite-formations are estimated to hold 60 percent of the world's oil and 40 percent of the world's gas reserves. In the Middle East, roughly 70 percent of oil and 90 percent of gas reserves are trapped in the carbonite, according to oil services giant Schlumberger.... ...Saudia Arabia is fifth in the world when it comes to recoverable gas reserves. Much of that is in carbonate-formation. What Saudia Arabia doesn't...

The Financial Times [subscription] is reporting that the US is poised to become the world’s largest producer of liquid petroleum (oil and natural gas liquids): US production of oil and related liquids such as ethane and propane was neck-and-neck with Saudi Arabia in June and again in August at about 11.5m barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency, the watchdog backed by rich countries. With US production continuing to boom, its output is set to exceed Saudi Arabia’s this month or next for the first time since 1991. [...] Rising oil and gas production has caused the US...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fracking-is-turning-the-us-into-a-bigger-oil-producer-than-saudi-arabia-9185133.html

It is worthy paying close attention when a certain Saudi prince speaks his mind. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal is sometimes described as the most powerful Arab in the world, thanks to his enormous wealth, business acumen, and influence in the Saudi royal family, which runs the Kingdom as a family fiefdom. Western-educated, he has shown himself to be an effective power broker, owning a 7% stake in News Corporation and donating $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities, arousing suspicions of undue influence. The good prince let the world know what the real stakes are in the battle over...

A Saudi prince has warned that his oil-reliant nation is under threat because of fracking technology being developed elsewhere around the world.Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said the Gulf Arab kingdom needed to reduce its reliance on crude oil and diversify its revenues. His warning comes as rising shale energy supplies in the United States cut global demand for Saudi oil. In an open letter to his country's oil minister Ali al Naimi and other government heads, published on Sunday via his Twitter account, Prince Alwaleed said demand for oil from Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) member states...

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has warned shale oil and gas development poses a threat to the kingdom's economy, the Wall Street Journal's Summer Said reports. In an open letter to Saudi oil minister Ali al Naimi [in Arabic], Alwaleed also warns the kingdom must diversify its revenue streams in the face of flagging oil demand. A source translated the key portion of the note: With all due respect to your Highness’ viewpoint about shale gas and that it poses no danger on Saudi economy at ‘the present time’, I was hoping that your Highness would also shed light...

... While the U.S. does not export crude oil, its increased production has curbed imports, resulting in excess supply. Although the fracking boom has helped to increase supply and steal market share from the Middle East, it is the Saudi response to the increased production from North American shale that has sent the price of oil tumbling. In September 2014, in the face of falling oil prices, Saudi Arabia chose to increase oil production by half a percent. Days later on Oct. 1, they discounted oil exports to leading Asian customers. These actions set off a rapid decline in international...

Russia is gradually turning its back on Syrian President Bashar Assad, evacuating some 100 expert advisers and their families from Syria and refusing to repair regime fighter jets, an Arab daily reported on Sunday. “Senior sources in the Gulf” told pro-opposition London-based daily a-Sharq al-Awsat that the change in Russia’s position toward the Assad regime stems from diplomatic pressure exerted by Arab Gulf states. It also comes as part of Moscow’s efforts to shake international sanctions imposed on it following a military confrontation with Ukraine, the sources said. Meanwhile, Syrian opposition sources told the newspaper that 100 of Russia’s top...

Israel’s defense minister on Wednesday warned that Iran, an ostensible partner in the US-led fight against the Islamic State, has nothing but ill intentions toward Iraq and has cynically perpetuated the conflict in order to ensure that the country remains a failed state. “He who did not allow stability in Iraq since 2003 is Iran,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said at the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies’ annual security conference. “From its perspective, a strong Iraq runs counter to its own interests. From its perspective Iraq needs to be weak, bleeding.” Ya’alon said that Tehran’s primary goal...

Seeing Saudi Arabia beat its head against the wall has been so fun that now Iraq’s petro-military apparatus has decided it, too, wishes to flood the world’s oil market with fresh supply and bring U.S. shale producers to their knees. To put this in terms Iraqis may grasp: Please do. Texans will meet you in the street with yellow roses. For all the that the Saudis have “won” because Brent has gained about $10 a barrel since January, it’s still as much as $20 cheaper than it was in November 2014 when the Saudi plan became clear. The U.S. production...

As the bloc’s 12 oil ministers meet in Vienna, the march of Isil jihadists in the Middle East is putting Iran and Saudi Arabia on a collision course with explosive consequences Thick black smoke rising from the Baiji oil refinery could be seen as a dirty smudge on the horizon as far away as Baghdad after fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) set fire to the enormous processing plant just over 100 miles north of the capital last week. The decision to torch the refinery, which once produced around a third of Iraq’s domestic fuel...

OPEC’s attempt to over-produce crude oil for export to crush prices and bankrupt the American shale-fracking oil boom has failed, according to a draft OPEC long-term strategy report seen by Reuters ahead of the cartel’s policy meeting in Vienna on June 1st. The report forecasts that crude supply from rival non-OPEC producers, led by the U.S., “will grow until at least 2017.” “Since June 2014, oil prices have experienced a significant reduction, reaching levels even lower than the crisis experienced in 2008, yet non-OPEC supply is still showing some growth,” the OPEC report said. Flat-to-down worldwide demand for oil means...

As it appears GDP will be seasonally adjusted again, I find myself wondering just one thing: why? Earlier GDP figures showed the US economy on the brink of recession for the first two quarters of this year. Now, with more fudging going on, who knows what it will show. The government appears to be following the Hollywood mantra: if you can bend perception enough, it will become reality. Look no further than the Federal Reserve, which continues to raise expectations of higher interest rates in the second half of this year, in hopes of inducing faster growth.

A scientist has raised questions about the latest detection of methane on Mars, suggesting that NASA’s rover could be responsible for the mysterious burp. Highly unlikely, but not impossible, says the Curiosity team.

<p>Judging by its critics, the energy industry – and specifically the oil and gas industry in North Dakota – isn’t female-friendly. Yet women who live and work in the oil patch say the energy industry isn’t just a safe place for women, but that there are plenty of opportunities for everybody.</p>

At a reception at the State Department that marked the U.S. taking over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council, Secretary of State John Kerry said that if Benjamin Franklin lived today and was nominated for office he would never be confirmed. […] “(T)here is, of course, a second connection between Franklin and this reception,” Kerry said. “And that is that he liked to have a really good time, folks. And he didn’t spare the booze, and while he was in Paris he led a life that clearly meant that had he lived today and been nominated, he would never have...

Storage withdrawals and falling rig count have been the main sources of hope that U.S. tight oil production will fall and that oil prices will rebound. That hope is fading as it is now clear that recent withdrawals from U.S. crude oil storage are because of price, not falling supply, and that the drop in rig count has stalled. Figure 1 below shows the relationship between U.S. crude oil storage inventory and WTI price. The thinking around recent withdrawals from storage is that this reflects depleting supply. The data, however, reflects that traders were storing crude oil during the price...

President Vladimir Putin signed a bill into law Saturday giving prosecutors the power to declare foreign and international organizations “undesirable” in Russia and shut them down. […] The law is part of a Kremlin campaign to stifle dissent that intensified after Putin began his third term in 2012. His return to the presidency had been accompanied by mass street protests that Putin accused the United States of fomenting. Russian suspicions of Western intentions have been further heightened because of tensions over Russia’s role in the conflict in Ukraine. The new Russian law allows prosecutors to declare an organization undesirable if...

From the first sudden, and quite dramatic, appearance of the fanatical Islamic group known as ISIS which was largely unheard of until a year ago, on the world's stage and which promptly replaced the worn out and tired al Qaeda as the world's terrorist bogeyman, we suggested that the "straight to beheading YouTube clip" purpose behind the Saudi Arabia-funded Islamic State was a simple one: use the Jihadists as the vehicle of choice to achieve a political goal: depose of Syria's president Assad, who for years has stood in the way of a critical Qatari natural gas pipeline, one which...