Posted on 03/09/2020 8:40:09 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The big news over the weekend was not the coronavirus, contrary to what you might think from watching the news. The most consequential story of the weekend is the oil price war that has broken out between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Saudi Arabia has decided to increase its production and slash its price to punish Russia for not going along with OPEC quotas designed to prop up the price of oil, which has fallen by more than half over the last few months including today’s price collapse.
(Can’t help reminding that all the certified “smart people” like John Kerry and Al Gore were telling us 15 years ago that we had reached “peak oil,” and more specifically that Saudi Arabia had likely reached its production peak and would be unable to increase its production over 10 million barrels a day. Heh.)
On the surface this Saudi move will impose significant pain on Russia, which depends on high oil prices to prop up its economy, and will also increase pressure on Iran for the same reason. Likewise American consumers, and oil-consuming sectors like the airlines, can likely look forward to some lower prices
And while the story of the Saudi-Russia feud may be entirely true, keep in mind that a protracted period of low oil prices is going to devastate America’s oil production from fracking in Texas and elsewhere. A lot of the smaller and mid-sized independent producers who have been behind a lot of the increase in domestic oil production were already under a lot of pressure from falling oil prices.
If the price stays down around the $30 level it is near today, a lot of the highly leveraged firms will default on loans or head to bankruptcy. Production will start to fall in a few months.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
$1.97 Harrisonville, Mo yesterday.
Don’t know, they all look alike to me.....................
Do you think Italy has crashed their tourism for the forseeable future and quarantined most of Northern Italy to ‘get Trump’?
I just went out and did some bargain shopping on some calls (DIS, BAC, HAL, WFC). Will see what happens to see if I add more or go for others. I’m going for leaps anyways (15 Jan expiration dates). Giving myself plenty of time.
Kings Island Park is ~ 30 minutes from my front door - midway between Cincinnati & Dayton, OH.
From the surrounding area in the gif, it certainly looks like “The Beast” wooden coaster at Kings Island.
btw, isn’t saying “all coasters look alike” a racist comment? Asking for a friend...
:-)
Baltic Dry Index has improved over the past couple of weeks.
SK seems to have seen the backside of this (with quarantines imposed as soon as things started to get wonky).
Middle of this week might be a good time to bargain shop.
No, but I dont see the Italian Govt piling on blaming their leader for the hundreds of dead in Italy
Only if the roller-coaster is painted a dark color................
But how could this be? When it was selling at over $100 a bbl in 2012 and I stated it was being manipulated by traders, and was a $40-45 a bbl product, I was told I was an idiot and we were at peak oil....
Touché!
[SA did this back in the 90’s as well. The goal was to ride out the low prices knowing that WE and OUR production couldn’t.
Once a lot of our guys went out of business and the industry went TU, OPEC raised prices again.]
Saudi Arabia has several problems. One, the population is double what it was in the 90’s - 35m vs an average of 17.5m. Two, production costs in the 90’s were lower than today. Three, Saudi Arabian welfare state benefits, already generous in the 90’s, dwarfing the Scandinavian states, are even more generous today. There is no way the Saudi government can sustain serious price drops for any significant period of time. A 20% production increase that results in a 50% revenue drop will cause serious budget deficits in a country reliant on oil revenues. (Assuming $25 oil and a 20% volume increase to 12m barrels per day).
The Russians are even more vulnerable, given that their average cost is $20 per barrel compared to the Saudis’ $10. This means that at $25 per barrel, their profits from oil sales literally shrink 80% (from $25 to $5 per barrel).
Frackers are likely to be devastated, but the impact will be determined by how long the Saudis can take the pain, and how quickly Chapter 11 filings can put fracker assets in stronger hands, as debt holders are transformed into shareholders. Upon which a new round of debt is raised, based on fresh equity and assets that have been written down to a fraction of their former value.
http://theconversation.com/understanding-the-rollercoaster-ride-of-oil-prices-97848
[The marginal cost (the cost of producing an additional barrel of oil) is lowest in Saudi Arabia at US$8.98 per barrel; the highest in the U.K. at US$44.33. In Canada, it’s $26.24.
Saudi Arabia has the lowest oil production costs in the world thanks to three advantages: Abundant pools of oil close to the surface and the sea, public ownership and no taxes on production.
Because of that, it can make money in almost any oil price environment. This state of affairs is the prize that the United States has long coveted, and vied with other countries to claim.
The cost is also low in Iran and Iraq ($10), but higher than $19 in Russia and $23.33 in the U.S. There isn’t one generally acceptable estimate of these costs. More recent estimates put the cost of production per barrel to exceed $60 dollars in the United States.]
Italians SHOULD be blaming their leadership.
Protecting the tourism industry cost hundreds of lives.
And the tourism industry STILL got nuked.
Refresh my memory. It's how the ragheads shut down American oil production in the 70s and how the japs shut down American electronics in the 80s.
How is it illegal here in the states?
Boom and bust is the way of oil.
+1
"Punishing" Russia is just a convenient excuse. US fracking has hurt SA a lot and they are trying to kill it off.
I suspect a lot of the RAT opposition to fracking is tied to very dark Saudi money laundered through a few middlemen and contributed to liberal causes.
IF the US wants to remain energy independent, it must guarantee a price on domestically produced oil.
I recommend $50/bbl but there are industry experts that would know better.
Otherwise many of our frackers and fields will shut down for BK.
Yes, this is not a free market solution.
It’s a National Security imperative.
So you're going to force every American consumer to pay $20/bbl more in tariffs than the rest of the world. That difference goes to the producers whether you call it a transfer or not.
And in the process you kill all the energy jobs related to exports.
Not sure that's a good trade off.
Shale is essentially like a light bulb. Click on, Click off, Click on. So long as there is a remaining skill set to kick it off it comes back pretty easily and fast.
This war is driven by another struggle in the House of Sauid like the last one in 2014. The little whispered story is that four members of the House were arrested by the Saudi Secret Police this weekend after another attempted coup. One faction isn’t going to take second fiddle anymore and wants their perch back. A perch they probably can’t have. The world has plenty of oil to finish the hydrocarbon era whenever that comes. I’m betting that time comes with oil still left in the ground. They have one asset and when it is gone those who can take the money and run. The rest go back to living in tents.
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