Free Republic

Following the news that Trans Mountain Corporation will start filling the expanded pipeline in February, with first crude to be loaded from Vancouver in April, Canadian crude prices jumped to the narrowest discount to WTI since August 2023. U.S. refiners used to cheap Canadian crude will need to start budgeting more for the commodity from this spring. Canadian oil producers are preparing for the 890,000 bpd in takeaway capacity growth. ... U.S. refiners used to cheap Canadian oil might need to reach deeper into their pockets to keep buying it. The idea behind the Trans Mountain expansion was to turn...

SANDY — A Utah couple is being accused of money laundering and smuggling oil into the U.S. alongside Mexican cartels, after they were arrested during a multi-state raid by U.S. Marshals, according to court documents. James Lael Jensen and his wife, Kelly Anne Jensen, were booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on Wednesday. The couple and two of his sons are being federally indicted for allegedly conspiring to smuggle 2,881 shipments of oil from Mexico that they knew were illegal. The family is accused of moving at least $300 million from Mexico to the U.S. The couple was arrested...

Tanker tracking data suggests that the highest number of vessels in years is headed to the U.S. to pick up crude oil cargoes. The large fleet of supertankers bound for the United States highlights the increasingly growing role American crude plays on the global oil market. ... U.S. crude oil exports continue to reshape the global market as America is pumping record volumes of oil and shipping record volumes of it overseas while the OPEC+ group withholds supply to "stabilize the market." ... U.S. crude oil exports hit record highs in the first half of 2023, averaging 3.99 million bpd....

All the parts to generate electricity, and all the components needed to use electricity, are all made from the oil derivatives manufactured from raw crude oil. Over the last 200 years, after the discovery of crude oil, the world populated from 1 to 8 billion. Today, all the electricity generation options available, such as wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, hydro, coal, and natural gas, are all dependent on the products and components manufactured from crude oil to be able to generate electricity. Looking back, the history of the petroleum industry illustrated that crude oil was virtually useless, unless it could...

Biden’s administration is getting more and more desperate as the Midterms loom as the pace at which they are draining the nation’s so-called ‘strategic’ reserve of crude oil just went to ’11’. Last week saw almost 8.54 million barrels withdrawn from the SPR – the biggest weekly drain in history. ... This unprecedented collapse of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest since September 1984 has helped lower oil prices (from their record highs)… ... the price of gas at the pump is still up 76% since Biden was . ... But ‘average joe’ doesn’t care about ‘president joe’ actions...

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing the need for further releases of crude oil from the nation’s emergency stockpiles after the current program ends in October, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told Reuters on Thursday.

U.S. crude oil surged more than 8% in early trading on Sunday evening as the market continued to react to supply disruptions stemming from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the possibility of a ban on Russian oil and natural gas.West Texas Intermediate crude futures, the U.S. oil benchmark, traded 8% higher to above $125 a barrel, the highest since July 2008. At one point the price rose to $130.50 Sunday evening before retreating.The international benchmark, Brent crude, traded 9% higher to $128.60, also the highest price seen since 2008. Brent hit a high of $139.13 at one point overnight.“Oil...

Thoughts on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve… Americans have always been encouraged to be savers. This isn’t just a recent thing, from the do-it-yourself investment gurus of the late 20th century. It goes back to our very beginnings as a people: When Benjamin Franklin used various versions of the saying, “A penny saved is a penny earned” in Poor Richard’s Almanac in the mid-18th century, the concept was already a century old. One of our first political arguments as a nation under the Constitution was on the question of how best to incorporate and utilize banks; our Founding Fathers knew that...

Investing.com -- Crude oil prices hit $80 a barrel in the U.S. for the first time since 2014 on Friday, a day after the Energy Department played down reports that it was looking at selling barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. While crude prices generally set the trend for other fuels in the global market, the situation is currently reversed, as shortages of natural gas and coal – especially in Asian markets – create a rare opportunity for oil-powered electricity generators. Later Friday, Baker Hughes’ weekly rig count will show how far U.S. companies are reacting to the price...

Hurricane Ida’s disruption to the U.S. offshore energy production in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst in 16 years. It has already stressed domestic and global supply chains, further testing the Federal Reserve’s “transitory” inflation narrative. Gulf Coast hurricanes usually cause minor disruptions in offshore oil and gas production, but this time around, output from the region has been significantly reduced due to Ida’s 150 mph winds that damaged platforms and onshore support facilities. What this will mean is a long recovery for offshore energy production to return. Reuters notes 79% of the region’s offshore oil production remains offline....

According to a number of cognitive scientists, mankind uses its unique ability to reason primarily for justifying pre-held convictions, rather than for forming convictions. It is of critical importance for strategists to understand and acknowledge this human tendency, as it causes one to easily fall prey to a number of cognitive biases, which prevent one from seeing things how they really are, and more important for the strategist, how they are likely to become. One of the most famous cognitive biases is confirmation bias. As we prefer to be proven correct, we naturally incline towards information that confirms our views...

Pricewatch: There are several reasons for the apparent rip-off but the main one is tax about 8 hours ago A man called John contacted us to see if we could “challenge the consumer rip-off at the pumps”. Clearly annoyed, he pointed out that crude oil wholesale prices had declined dramatically in recent days as a result of the spread of coronavirus and a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The price of a barrel of oil had fallen over 30 per cent from $68 to $45 while the euro had strengthened versus the US dollar. “Yet the price of...

New York: Oil traders and analysts closely watching weekly US inventory figures have been scratching their heads in the last few weeks wondering one thing: Where are the missing barrels? US Energy Information Administration data Wednesday showed a crude supply adjustment factor — the difference between reported stockpiles and those implied by production, refinery demand, imports and exports — of more than 800,000 barrels a day. While that doesn’t seem like that much, it’s added up to more than 24 million barrels over the past four weeks, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in trading opportunities. The figure tends...

U.S. oil production is anticipated to break records in the next two years — and prices are primed to increase slightly, according to an energy study released Tuesday. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Tuesday that crude oil production is expected to rise to an average of 12.4 million barrels a day in 2019 and 13.2 million barrels per day in 2020. That’s up from January’s average of 12 million barrels a day and December’s 90,000 barrels a day. The expected increases will come from the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico, according to EIA. The U.S. last September...

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The cost of gas is up across the country, including in Maryland, and is inching toward the highest price in three years. Gas is going up about a penny every other day — 15 cents in the past month. “We’ll be paying the highest prices for this time of year since 2014,” said Christine Delise with AAA. Gas companies are changing over to a different summer blend. To do so, some refineries shut down, leading to the classic market principal of supply and demand. A tighter supply means they can demand more for your fuel. Demand is...

Battle Axe Road cuts smack through the heart of New Mexico’s side of the Delaware Basin, a previously marginal zone along the Texas border that is rapidly turning the state into a global player in the oil industry. Industry titans like ExxonMobil, Chevron USA, EOG Resources and Concho are pumping billions of dollars into this zone, which holds some of the most-productive oilfield geology in the nation, said long-time oilman and former county commissioner Gregg Fulfer during a three-hour drive through the area. It’s the latest and most promising boom to emerge on the New Mexico side of the Permian...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil production shattered a 47-year output record in November and retreated slightly in December, the U.S. Energy Department said on Wednesday, as oil production from shale continued to upend global supply patterns. Oil output rose to 10.057 million barrels per day (bpd) in November, a revision from earlier estimates, the EIA said. December production fell 108,000 bpd to 9.949 million bpd, it said. November’s figure exceeded the 10.044 million barrels produced daily in November 1970. Output has surged in the last several years due to the shale boom, pushing the United States past Saudi...

The United States could soon be pumping more oil than any country on earth.The International Energy Agency said Friday that "explosive" increases in U.S. oil output would push the country ahead of Saudi Arabia this year and put it in a position to challenge top producer Russia. "This year promises to be a record-setting one for the U.S.," the IEA said. "Relentless growth should see the U.S. hit historic highs." That could be enough, it said, for U.S. production to "rival" that of Russia, which has partnered with Saudi Arabia on efforts to keep oil prices high by throttling output...

France’s government has unveiled a law to ban all production and exploration of oil and natural gas by 2040 on the country’s mainland and overseas territories. The move is largely symbolic, however, as France’s oil and gas production represents just 1 percent of national consumption — the rest is imported. Current drilling permits will not be renewed, according to the bill formally presented in a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. France currently has 63 oil and gas drilling projects on its territory. The ban, which the government claims is a world first, is part of a larger plan to wean the country’s...

But it is Venezuela that could be the mother of all black swan events. As Neil Dwane of Allianz Global Investors mentions, Venezuela has already seen the near total breakdown of society, and its oil production of 2 million barrels per day (mb/d) could unravel. It still seems unthinkable at this point, but becoming more likely by the day. Already, Venezuela’s oil production has eroded sharply, falling to 1.96 mb/d as of May 2017, down from 2.375 mb/d in 2015. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s refining industry is in shambles, forcing the country to increasingly import gasoline to avoid fuel shortages. The street...