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Oil prices crashed early Thursday OPEC did not reveal a solid agreement in Vienna, at least not yet. After hours of meetings, OPEC cancelled its news conference, awaiting the Russian delegation set to arrive on Friday. The oil price crash offers the group a reminder that the market is banking on a sizable cut. OPEC met on Thursday and Russia’s oil minister Alexander Novak arrives on Friday, where he can essentially tell Saudi Arabia what to do. The rest of OPEC, save for the UAE and Kuwait, are either unable or unwilling to go along with production cuts.

Qatar will leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as of next month, its energy minister told media today, adding that the decision was part of a long-term strategy for growing its international presence on energy markets with a focus on gas. Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, but it has Australia breathing down its neck as well as emerging competition from the United States and other, smaller, producers. “Qatar has decided to withdraw its membership from OPEC effective January 2019 and this decision was communicated to OPEC this morning,” Saad al-Kaabi said, as quoted by...

Mexico’s state oil company Pemex said it produced an average 1.76 million bpd of crude in October, down 7 percent from October last year, Reuters reports, citing data released by the company. This is also one of the lowest monthly production rates since 1990 when records began. The decline was attributed to the natural depletion of mature fields, highlighting the urgent need for new production in the country. The outgoing government of Enrique Pena Nieto launched a sweeping reform in Mexico’s energy sector, one of its aims being to open up the local oil wealth to foreign operators in order...

Crude oil prices crashed yesterday, losing 7 percent in just one day, which was the biggest daily loss in three years and today continued down in early trading as headwinds overwhelmed any bullish factors. After a rather rocky start to Wednesday trading, oil prices managed to tick upward, with WTI trading at 2.32% by 10:14am EST. Brent had rallied 2.63% to trade at $67.19 at the time of writing, despite pressure by a vicious combination of demand outlook, oversupply concerns and a couple of other factors such as President Trump’s call on OPEC to keep production at current levels.

Canadian oil prices briefly plunged as low as $15 per barrel last week, after a U.S. federal judge blocked the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada’s oil industry has lurched from pipeline crisis to pipeline crisis, with projects blocked at every turn. Just a few months ago, the Trans Mountain expansion – a proposed pipeline to be built from Alberta to the Pacific Coast – also ran into trouble and is now ultimately in doubt. The inability to build new capacity capable of shipping higher levels of oil out of Alberta has crushed Western Canada Select (WCS), a price...

Rising oil prices are pushing up prices for fuels in Asia, and this is coming at a bad time; many Asian currencies are depreciating as economic growth falters. This is one of the major outtakes from this week’s S&P Global Platts Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference, and it should serve to rein in oil bulls’ enthusiasm in the near future. For now, all is great for those betting on still higher oil prices, experts attending the event told S&P Global Platts. “Good news for refiners is that India for one, oil demand won't subside [for the next few decades]," one of...

An oil price spike is starting to look increasingly possible, with a rerun of 2008 not entirely out of the question, according to a new report. The outages from Iran are worse than most analysts expected, and bottlenecks in the U.S. shale patch could prevent non-OPEC supply from plugging the gap. To top it off, new regulations from the International Maritime Organization set to take effect in 2020 could significantly tighten supplies. Put it all together, and “the likelihood of an oil spike and crash scenario akin to the one observed in 2008 has increased,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch...

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is becoming increasingly evident in the oil pricing policies of the two large Middle Eastern producers. The two countries are currently reigniting the market share and pricing war ahead of the returning U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil. Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, has been boosting oil production to offset supply disruptions elsewhere, including the anticipated loss of Iranian oil supply after U.S. sanctions on Tehran return in early November. The Saudis are also cutting their prices to the prized Asian market to lure more customers as they increase supply. Iran, OPEC’s third-largest producer,...

Crude oil prices could jump as high as US$250 a barrel if Iran goes through with its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. pressure on oil buyers to cut their Iranian purchases to zero, RT reports, quoting analysts. The most bullish among these analysts was Artem Avinov from online broker TeleTrade, who saw prices skyrocketing to US$250 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, disrupting about 17 million bpd in seaborne oil trade. Avinov, however, added that this course of events is very unlikely, suggesting Iran would instead opt for “a quick economic...

The U.S. Navy stands ready to ensure free navigation and the flow of commerce, the U.S. military’s Central Command said on Thursday, as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned they would block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz if necessary. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and some senior military commanders have threatened in recent days to disrupt oil shipments from the Gulf countries if Washington tries to cut Tehran’s exports.

U.S. President Trump has made a deal with some OPEC producers to keep prices high as they support the U.S. economy and boost federal taxes. This is what Iran’s Energy Minister Bijan Zanganeh said on state TV this week as quoted by Bloomberg, adding that Trump was engaging in “shenanigans” on the oil market. It’s not too hard to guess which the OPEC producers Zanganeh mentioned are. Saudi Arabia has been a strong opponent of the Iran nuclear deal and was now quick to offer to fill any gap that new U.S. sanctions would leave on international oil markets by...

Two senior Iranian government officials have said oil prices shouldn’t be too high, with the comments indicating the divide between Riyadh and Tehran on oil pries is deepening. First, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said over the weekend that Iran was all for a “reasonable” oil price, suggesting the current price level is unreasonable and the result of “manufactured tensions.” A reasonable oil price, on the other hand, would be positive for producers, encouraging them to continue pumping while at the same time reducing the risk of excessive market volatility, state news agency Shana reported. Then, Zanganeh’s deputy for international and...

Oil prices rallied in the first week of 2018, supported by increased geopolitical risk and severely cold weather in the eastern U.S., but the ‘perfect storm’ that pushed oil prices higher also raises the risk of a correction and of heightened herd mentality in trade, analysts reckon. Protests in Iran, possible new U.S. sanctions against Tehran, and Venezuela’s economic collapse could be the main geopolitical risks that could drive oil prices up early this year. Oil prices made their strongest start to a year in four years, with both Brent and WTI started trading in 2018 above $60 a barrel...

Most investors look at WTI and Brent prices at Bloomberg or CME Futures, and figure the oil price is in the public domain. You would be about 2 percent correct, because there are hundreds of different grades of oil, and hubs where it is bought and sold. And they all have different prices. Since the age of oil began until a few months ago, most real time oil prices were jealously guarded by marketers, who used it to their advantage in the daily multi-billion dollar physical oil trade. But I’m going to tell you the story of how Stafford and...

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) could lead to global peak oil demand as soon as 2023, which will result in oil prices crashing to $10, Chris Watling, CEO & chief market strategist at Longview Economics, told CNBC on Friday. Watling said he didn’t see oil crashing “in the next few weeks or months, or maybe even quarters, but I think the long-term outlook for oil—because of what’s happening in terms of electric vehicles” with 70 percent of oil used for transportation, is oil plummeting to $10 somewhere around 2023-2025. “We used to talk about peak oil in terms of...

Despite the oil industry being arguably the most vital and influential sector in the world, the average member of the public knows relatively little about its inner workings. Oil prices are possibly the most obvious example of this, with constant discussions over whether they will drop below $40 or if they are set to rise. What many investors are unaware of, however, is that there are over a thousand types of crude oil. This means that Western Canadian Select, currently trading at 37.27, is already below that much-hyped $40 mark, and while Brent oil prices fell nearly 50 cents on...

It wasn’t that long ago, 19 years to be precise, when the average oil price was $11.91 per barrel (WTI). Are world conditions such that we could see that price again? Everyone said that oil prices would never fall into the $20 range, but 14 months ago oil prices hit a 14-year low of $26.21 per barrel on February 11, 2016. Are we, or better yet, can we really be looking at the same world conditions that drove those 1998 oil prices down to record lows that almost equaled the 158-year average annual oil price of $11.22 per barrel (WTI)?...

While Saudi Arabia’s economy is currently suffering from an 18-month decline in oil prices and soaring unemployment rates, they are planning for a future in which they won’t have to worry about the price of oil at all. Speaking of the plans outlined in Vision 2030, Saudi finance minister Mohammed Al Jadaan told CNN, "We will not really care much whether the price is 40, 45, 50, 55 at that time because we have gone significantly out of our way to be independent of the oil price...We are planning to totally [end] that dependency that we have been living for...

OPEC and its cartel of friends must be sweating condensates in advance of their May 25th meeting. The oil price war, triggered almost three years ago, is far from over. Calling a truce with production cuts has been an ineffective strategy. In fact, it’s been a feeble strategy and nobody in the business should rely on its extension to be effective. Price wars are often triggered by the arrival of a new entrant into an entrenched market clique. American light tight oil began flowing into petroleum supply chains in 2010. By 2014, output from plays like the Bakken, Eagle Ford...

Oil prices dropped on Thursday to their lowest level since last November, with Brent breaking below $50, amid concerns of rising global supply and still high inventories. At 11:22am EDT, WTI Crude was trading down 2.82 percent at $46.47, while Brent was down 2.62 percent at $49.46 -- with both WTI and Brent having effectively wiped out all the price gains since OPEC announced on 30 November 2016 the output cut deal aimed at reducing oversupply and propping up prices. On Wednesday, a day after the American Petroleum Institute (API) injected a bit of optimism among traders by reporting a...