Posted on 12/29/2017 7:25:39 AM PST by SunkenCiv
A Libyan military source said earlier that armed men had planted explosives at the pipeline...
Brent crude LCOc1, the international benchmark for oil prices, rose $1.51, or 2.31 percent, to $66.76 a barrel by 11:40 a.m. (1640 GMT.) Prices hit a session high of $66.83 a barrel, the highest since late May 2015...Brent has risen 17 percent while U.S. crude has rallied about 11 percent in 2017. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia and other non-members, have been withholding some output since Jan. 1 to get rid of a glut...
While the OPEC action has lent support to prices all year, the unplanned shutdown of the Forties pipeline on Dec. 11 pushed Brent to its 2-1/2 year high. Forties is the biggest of the five North Sea crude streams underpinning Brent, the benchmark for oil trading in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Still, rising production in the United States is offsetting some of the OPEC-led cuts. The U.S. rig count RIG-OL-USA-BHI, an early indicator of future output, held at 747 in the week to Dec. 22, according to the latest weekly report by Baker Hughes.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London and Henning Gloystein; Editing by John Stonestreet and Steve Orlofsky
Seeking Alpha:
The unpostable source (Bloomberg) notes that the Saudis expect oil revenue to rise 80 percent by 2023.
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/12/26/libya-pipeline-blast-drives-oil-price-up/
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/12/26/seaport-global-heres-why-theres-a-price-jump-in-oil.html
mostly unrelated sidebar:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/28/apple-and-amazon-in-saudi-arabia-talks-sources.html
Over here it would be the Greenies planting the explosives, to show how dangerous eeevil pipelines are.
Time to short.
All frackers are hedging the future price now.
https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/CO1:COM
Take the following article with a grain of salt https://dailyreckoning.com/oil-prices-soon-drop-50/ but the price will go south unless Russia(?) will instigate a war somewhere.
Saudi will be very lucky if they can place the Aramco IPO:
All this means Saudi Arabia needs the price of oil to not only stabilise but increase rapidly. Its reforms are not just a money making exercise but part of a wider attempt to revitalise the countrys stagnating economy. Proceeds from the IPO will go to the Public Investment Fund, an initiative started by the Saudi government in 1971 to support non-oil parts of the economy.
Saudi Arabia has denied it will wait until 2019 to hold the IPO and get Aramco listed. To justify its own $2 trillion valuation of Aramco, the Kingdom must hope for the price of oil to reach $100 dpb. Anything less and Saudi Arabia will simply not have enough reform to its desperate, state dependent economy.
Despite decades of strictly conservative religious government, Saudi Arabia is a young country. 75 per cent of its population is under the age of 35. If it gets the reforms right then it could continue to be massive regional and global power, even after the oil starts to run out.
http://www.cityam.com/277368/saudi-sell-off-puts-lot-stake
MbS has to arrest many more of his competing princes to get more money to stay in business.
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel”
https://www.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn/comments/3bai3x/my_grandfather_rode_a_camel_my_father_rode_a/
I remember fifty five years ago it was commie rebels blowing up Venezuelan pipe lines.
Thank You Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
Writing in Automobile mag years ago, P.J. O’Rourke noted that the OPEC states in the Middle East have a combined non-oil economic output that does not equal Finland’s.
I’d be surprised to learn that they haven’t already done so.
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