Free Republic

As oil prices have plummeted to levels never before seen, a rift has opened among the companies that extract crude. Some of them say state regulators should force producers to pump less in the hopes such regulation will raise prices. Others say no, just let the market do its job. While Texas, an oil-producing behemoth, is weighing the controversial idea of imposing limits, New Mexico, now an oil powerhouse in its own right, has largely stayed out of that debate. Depending where oil prices go and what other states decide to do, there may come a point when the state...

Fewer drivers on the road, means fewer and fewer people are filling up their tank. “With consumers are staying at home and the economy in troubled waters, I think that’s kind of the best summary. People are just not driving,” said GasBuddy Head Petroleum Analyst Patrick De Haan. At one point Friday morning, the Francis Creek Shell station was selling the cheapest gas in the country at just 75 cents a gallon. Experts say while you're saving now, you may have to pay for it later. “It’s exciting to see the gallon count go up as fast as the dollar...

April 23 (Reuters) - The largest oil producer in North Dakota has halted most of its production in the state, notifying some customers it would not supply crude at current pricing, according to people familiar with the matter. Continental Resources Inc, the company controlled by billionaire Harold Hamm, stopped all drilling and shut in most of its wells in the state’s Bakken shale field, said three people familiar with production in the state. North Dakota is the second-largest oil-producing state in the United States after Texas. Global oil prices have plunged this spring because of excess supplies and a lack...

Hackers are trying to infect organizations throughout the world with a popular strain of malware by sending emails that appear to be from an Egyptian oil company. In research published Tuesday, Romanian antivirus company BitDefender noted a surge in attempted phishing attacks that try to trick users into downloading malware by masquerading as Enppi, an oil company owned by the Egyptian government. The malware, known as Agent Tesla, is a spyware tool which enables hackers to monitor keystrokes, steal data about file downloads and collect username and password credentials from internet browsers, among other capabilities. The number of attacks spiked...

The collapse of the price of a barrel of oil this week was something to see. It was cheaper for producers to pay people to take it away than it was to store it themselves, as capacity had been reached. They were offering almost $40 per barrel to take the oil. Made me wish I had an Olympic sized swimming pool I could fill up for a rainy day. While people watched dumbfounded at how this could happen, people working in the energy industry were terrified - what would this mean for the jobs, millions of them? The answer isn’t...

The NYMEX price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell into negative territory on Monday, the lowest level ever recorded, and the only real question is why was anyone surprised by this turn of events? Think about it: As much as we like to talk about renewables and the Green New Deal and all the other pop-culture things, the global economy still runs by and large on oil and natural gas. Demand for oil is entirely dependent on economic growth. As the U.S., China and well over 150 other countries have gone about closing down vast swaths of their economies to...

President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. is "looking to" add as many as 75 million barrels of oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Trump spoke after an historic day in the oil [cl.1] markets, in which the May WTI crude contract closed at -$37.63 a barrel, a one-day drop of 306%. Trump said he was considering the move "based on the record low price of oil," and that the action would "top it out." Speaking at a White House press briefing, Trump said, "we'd get it for the right price."

Following other prominent left-wing lawmakers, Biden had quite the slip of the tongue recently when he told virtual CNN town hall audiences there’s an “opportunity” to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to “fundamentally change the science relating to global warming.” Biden seemed to suggest that the global pandemic presented the perfect opportunity for Democrats and progressives to expand the scope of federal economic and environmental policy. “It’s like the New Deal. Think of every great act, every great change that’s taken place. It’s come out of a crisis. … What we did, we expanded opportunity. And I think we have an...

... Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the volume of Saudi crude en route to the United States is seven times higher than the typical monthly intake of Saudi oil in 2019. The tankers were loaded before OPEC+ struck a new agreement to take 9.7 million bpd off the market in May and June when Saudi Arabia had embarked on an aggressive price war for market share after the previous OPEC+ deal collapsed in early March. ...

Fox morning news is reporting that Oil Prices have dropped to 11 dollars per barrel. What does this mean? Eliminate and/or reduce gas taxes and we may have .33 cents per gallon gas again.

Think I am going to be topping off my gas tank every time I go out. I saw a report the other day where there was a gas station in the Midwest that had 12 cents a gallon. Right now ever gas station is filled. The gas trucks are on hold ,and we even have ships that cannot deliver sitting off the coasts because there are no trucks and port is full. It's a good time to buy the dip. Nevertheless, this economy needs to be turned back on.

U.S. crude oil futures turned negative Monday for the first time in history as storage space was filling up, discouraging buyers as weak economic data from Germany and Japan cast doubt on when fuel consumption will recover. Physical demand for crude has dried up, creating a global supply glut as billions of people stay home to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. West Texas Intermediate crude for May delivery fell more than 100% to settle at negative $37.63 per barrel. Meanwhile, international benchmark, Brent crude, which has already rolled to the June contract, traded 8.9% lower at $25.58 per...

U.S. crude futures for May delivery, the near-term contract, sank to their lowest level on record ever Monday, falling below $10 a barrel as traders fretted over the capacity of storage facilities both in the U.S. and abroad. At last check, West Texas Intermediate crude fell 74% to $4.72 a barrel. Contacts for June delivery declined 23%. "In my view, the plunge in oil prices speaks to the decline of global growth as demand dries up," said Dan Russo, chief market strategist at Chaikin Analytics, a quantitative investment research firm based in Philadelphia. "This could be a concern for investors...

Having been involved in the negotiations, to put it mildly, the number that OPEC+ is looking to cut is 20 Million Barrels a day, not the 10 Million that is generally being reported. If anything near this happens, and the World gets back to business from the Covid 19 disaster, the Energy Industry will be strong again, far faster than currently anticipated. Thank you to all of those who worked with me on getting this very big business back on track, in particular Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Breaking News: Tornadoes left a path of death and destruction in Mississippi today..At least seven are reported dead.... An agreement among the OPEC+ nations to reduce oil production was reached this afternoon US time. Some 9.7 million barrels a day from OPEC+ countries will be combined with 2.7 million barrels a day in cuts coming from Brazil, Canada and the United States..... President Trump holding a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin..... A Turkish court this weekend accepting the indictment of 20 Saudi nationals in the killing of write Jamal Khashoggi.... The Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is denying Blue and...

OPEC, Russia and other oil-producing countries, collectively known as OPEC+, have reached a tentative deal to cut oil output by 9.7 million barrels a day due to the coronavirus pandemic. Talks between the countries had hit a last-minute hurdle last week when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador appeared reluctant to cut his country's production levels. But Mexico's energy secretary confirmed Sunday that a deal had been reached. President Trump confirmed Sunday that a deal had been reached. The countries’ delegations are set to hold an emergency meeting Sunday evening to finalize talks, Azerbaijan’s energy minister said, telling CNBC the...

I guess I'll start by noting that in China dealing with Covid-19 has meant things like health screenings where people are asked questions and their temperature is taken. Going to work in the "front lines" for me means going through such a screening. So life in the USA for many of us resembles going to work in Communist China. The media including the "conservative talk show hosts" like to talk a lot about Communist China or even Russia but I feel like they do that really to distract from how much like Russia and China like things are right here...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - An oil exploration firm has discovered a deposit of potentially 1.8 billion barrels in Alaska's North Slope region south of Prudhoe Bay, the company said. Pantheon Resources PLC said it located the deposit along the Dalton Highway and Trans-Alaska Pipeline System corridor, The Alaska Journal of Commerce reported Wednesday. The London-based company made an updated evaluation of an old exploration well and used information gleaned from recent nearby drilling, officials said. The prospect, called Talitha, could be the latest in a series of big North Slope oil discoveries over the past five years.

"The world is wondering what Americans are going to do with their freedom" Dozens of people visible in the crowd in Emmett, Idaho as Ammon Bundy spoke last night at a people's meeting to defend Constitutional Rights. The meeting called to confront Republican Governor Brad Little's economy crippling "stay at home" order to deal with the coronavirus situation... Meanwhile Vice-President Mike Pence is telling people to stay home for Easter..... The US is joining other nations in cutting its oil production to stabilize world oil prices and markets... The bottom line tonight appears to be that while there is something...

New Mexico’s oil and gas industry is teetering on a near-shutdown, slammed by plunging demand for oil and an unprecedented global market glut that’s slashed prices to 20-year lows. New drilling in the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico is screeching to a halt, and many producers are starting to shut in existing wells to await better times. That, in turn, foreshadows a double whammy on the state budget, as government revenue tumbles from plummeting oil prices and forthcoming production declines.