Saudis and Trump: Gambling Bigly

“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.” –  Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, first Prime Minister of United Arab Emirates Try this simple mental exercise. Imagine a hypothetical Middle […]

The IEA Is Grossly Overestimating Shale Growth

This week, the IEA said that U.S. shale would dominate the oil and gas markets over the next decade, rising to “a level 50 percent higher than any other country has ever managed.” With a “remarkable ability to unlock new resources cost-effectively,” U.S. shale will add millions of barrels of new oil supply by 2025. […]

Can Russia Break Its Oil Dependence?

Despite improving oil prices, Russia’s economic growth is slowing, with GDP rise for the third quarter at 1.8 percent on an annual basis, versus 2.5 percent for the second quarter, Russia’s state statistical bureau, Rosstat, said earlier this week. Analysts say it’s the latest indication that Russia’s economy needs major reforms. Let’s state the obvious: […]

China Oil Demand to Peak in 2040

Oil demand from China’s transportation sector will peak in 2030 and flatten thereafter, mainly due to falling gasoline demand for passenger vehicles that become more efficient and increasingly electricity-driven, the International Energy Agency said in its latest World Energy Outlook report on Tuesday. The flattening of China’s oil demand growth reflects its fundamental change from […]

Abiogenic Petroleum: Peak Oil and “Fossil Fuels” – Debunked

Live on Tuesdays at 5pm Pacific time – UnSpun #094: Greg Quinones is a business consultant, writer, public speaker, trainer and teacher. He is Founder and Managing Executive Partner of ZEN Enhanced Oil Recovery (ZENEOR) a Texas based privately held limited liability company. ZENEOR specializes in “out-of-the-box” thinking in oil production and process. Through extensive […]

OPEC October Production Data

All data below is based on the latest OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report. All data is through October 2017 and is in thousand barrels per day. I have now included Equatorial Guneia although I only have data from January 2015 from OPEC’s secondary sources. The January 2015 E. Guneia data was extended back to January 2005. I […]

Dan Yergin on why Venezuela could cause a ‘big shock’ to the markets

If the global oil market suddenly loses Venezuela’s 2 million barrels of daily oil production, it would be “a big shock to the system,” according to Dan Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit. “It would certainly be a very tight market, because of course you already have production restraints by OPEC and non-OPEC,” Yergin told […]

The Saudi Coup Signals War And The New World Order Reset

For years now, I have been warning about the relationship of interdependency between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and how this relationship, if ended, would mean disaster for the petrodollar system and by extension the dollar’s world reserve status. In my recent articles ‘Lies And Distractions Surrounding The Diminishing Petrodollar’ and ‘The Economic End Game […]

Is U.S. Energy Independence In Sight?

The International Energy Agency made headlines Monday when it declared in its World Energy Outlook 2017 that the U.S. could be a net exporter of oil within a decade. The IEA also projected that the U.S. is set to become the world’s dominant oil and gas production leader for decades. Is that a realistic assessment? […]

Financial Carnage Continues To Gut Industry

As the Mainstream media reports about the next phase of the glorious U.S. Shale Oil Revolution, the financial carnage continues to gut the industry deep down inside the entrails of its horizontal laterals.  The stench of fracking fluid must be driving shale oil advocates utterly insane as they are no longer able to see financial wreckage […]

Oil seen as real prize of Iran’s Kurdish adventure

After helping Iraq stifle a Kurdish push for independence, Iran is now positioning itself to take control of oil exports from the region’s giant Kirkuk field, with the first deliveries expected within days, officials and trading sources said. FILE PHOTO: Flames emerge from flare stacks at the oil fields in Dibis area on the outskirts […]

The War That Would Transform Oil Markets

The oil pipeline resumed operations in a matter of hours, but the war of words is heating up. Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid Al-Khalifa said on Twitter that the “attempt to bomb the Saudi-Bahraini oil pipeline is a dangerous Iranian escalation that aims to scare citizens and hurt the global oil industry.” A spokesperson for Iran […]

America’s oil and gas output could soar 25% by 2025

At the same time, the renewable energy sources will become more important. Despite the cautious sentiment, traders said oil prices were unlikely to fall far, largely due to supply restrictions led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russian Federation, which have helped reduce excess stockpiles. Solar power will surge globally in the […]

Growth in Electric Vehicles Won’t Dent Oil Demand Much

Amid an anticipated increase in electric vehicles during the next 20 years, the world’s appetite for oil is still expected to wane just a bit, as demand for transportation including petrochemicals continues, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday. An estimated 50 million vehicles will be in operation by 2025 and 300 million by 2040, versus […]

Tracking the declines in ISIS oil production

Oil has been a key revenue source for ISIS, yet new data shows that production has steadily declined in areas under the group’s control. Historically, it has been difficult to get an accurate measure of ISIS’s oil production. Past estimates extrapolated from chance observations at a small number of production sites — typically wherever journalists […]

15,000 Scientists Issue a “Warning to Humanity”

More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries have issued a warning: Mankind must take immediate action to reverse the effects of climate change, deforestation and species extinction before it’s too late. The warning, issued by the Alliance of World Scientists and published in the journal Bioscience, comes on the 25th anniversary of a similar warning from the […]

What the Saudi Arrests Mean for the Kingdom’s Oil Policy

We may never fully know what lies behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s decision to arrest more than 200 Saudi citizens, including 11 princes and four government ministers, on corruption charges, just as tensions with Iran are escalating. What we do know is that his move simultaneously boosted the oil price and undermined the attractiveness of Aramco to […]

Kunstler: What Now?

It must be exciting to wake up on a gilded bed somewhere in Riyadh and realize that you are Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, mover and shaker of Middle East order. Actually, exciting just to have woken up at all. Perhaps Prince MBS checks to make sure that there aren’t seventy-two virgins in the […]

Is Peak Permian Only 3 Years Away?

The world’s hottest shale basin, the Permian, is leading the second U.S. wave of tight oil production growth and will continue to do so for years to come, all analysts say.    However, signs have started to emerge that the relentless intensification of drilling leads to diminishing returns, Simon Flowers, Chairman and Chief Analyst at […]

Iran-Iraq earthquake: Hundreds killed as border region hit

A 7.3-magnitude earthquake has shaken the northern border region between Iran and Iraq, killing at least 348 people and injuring thousands more. One Iranian aid agency said 70,000 people needed shelter after the quake, one of the largest this year. The majority of those who died were in Iran’s western Kermanshah province. Nearly 5,660 were […]

Global Majors Eyeing Mexico’s Deep Waters

As the price of oil rises, an international rush is on for Mexico’s untapped deep-water riches. The who’s who of the oil world — led by Exxon Mobil Corp and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world’s two biggest drillers by market value — are lining up to bid in the country’s Jan. 31 deep-water auction. And […]

6 Factors Will Hasten Or Defer Peak Oil Demand

  We haven’t reached peak oil consumption globally, also known as peak demand. We are likely to reach it globally by 2050, but it’s unlikely to occur before 2030 at the very earliest. There are six major factors which make defining exactly when it will occur very difficult. I haven’t seen any modelled analysis (including […]

What happens when the drilling is done?

A seismic shift It seems like we’ve been talking about “peak oil” for a long time, but the meaning has shifted radically in the last few years. Historically the phrase referred to the hypothetical point in time when the world’s oil production would hit its maximum. It became famous in the 1970s, when we feared […]

Energy market disruption is underway

An unprecedented wave of disruptions is facing energy and mining commodity markets. We have already seen environmental policy, socioeconomic changes and technological innovation kick off a major transition to low- or zero-carbon technologies. With the Paris Agreement targets set, governments are reinforcing their focus on meeting their greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals. This comes at […]

Radioactive Cloud Floating Over Europe Is Nothing to Worry About, Experts Say

Don’t mind the cloud of radioactive pollution floating over Europe – it’s harmless, the French nuclear safety institute IRSN said Thursday. Officials in Europe said they began detecting unusually high levels of ruthenium 106, a radioactive atom that does not occur naturally, near France in the last week of September. The IRSN immediately “mobilized all […]

Are Oil Markets Immune To US Shale?

Oil prices pulled back slightly following the release of the Baker Hughes rig count report, but geopolitical risk still remains, and with the assumption that OPEC will extend its production cut deal, oil bulls are very much alive and well. (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) […]

Saudi “Deep State” Prince Bandar Among Those Arrested In Purge

According to a new report by Middle East Eye, Prince Bandar bin Sultan – Saudi Arabia’s most famous arms dealer, longtime former ambassador to the US, and recent head of Saudi intelligence – was among those detained as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) so-called “corruption purge” that started with the initial arrests of up […]

Saudi Shocks Reawaken Global Oil Markets to Political Risk

For the first time in three years, the chief concern in the oil market isn’t too much supply. Just as production cuts by OPEC and its allies finally deplete a surplus that has weighed on oil prices since 2014, political crises have hit the organization’s three biggest members. First, an eruption in Iraq’s long-running feud […]

Bans on Internal Combustion Engines May Backfire

A number of countries have stated their intention to ban the internal combustion engine (ICE) and shift to all electric vehicles in the next couple of decades. These announcements are encouraging on the surface. Governments are in favor of taking serious measures to reduce petroleum dependence and meet environmental goals. But using strong-armed approaches by […]

Peak oil? Majors aren’t buying into the threat from renewables

Two decades ago, BP set out to transcend oil, adopting a sunburst logo to convey its plans to pour $8 billion over a decade into renewable technologies, even promising to power its gas stations with the sun. FILE PHOTO – A combination of file photos shows the logos of five of the largest publicly traded […]

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