Current Oil Price

[clv101]

The retaliatory airstrikes are just the inevitable response from Israel. If they want their homes and families safe they should stop firing their rockets. Plenty of blame to go around.

Serious question vtsnowedin - why do the Palestinians keep firing their ineffective rockets when then seem to bring such deadly retaliations?

[biffvernon]

The retaliatory airstrikes are just the inevitable response from Israel. If they want their homes and families safe they should stop firing their rockets. Plenty of blame to go around.

Serious question vtsnowedin - why do the Palestinians keep firing their ineffective rockets when then seem to bring such deadly retaliations?

If I might suggest at least a partial answer, vt talks of 'their homes' but most Palestinians have been pushed out of their homes and driven into the tiny enclave of Gaza, the Israelis having occupied their homeland. UN Resolution 242 sought to at least partially redress that wrong but although the USA supported it in the Security Council they never supported it with practical action. That was my point in my previous post.

[vtsnowedin]

The retaliatory airstrikes are just the inevitable response from Israel. If they want their homes and families safe they should stop firing their rockets. Plenty of blame to go around.

Serious question vtsnowedin - why do the Palestinians keep firing their ineffective rockets when then seem to bring such deadly retaliations?

The rockets are in the hands of Hamas which are radical terrorists. They don't mind doing stupid things that endanger innocent bystanders as their bloody corpses being hauled out of the rubble make powerful shock video.

[kenneal - lagger]

Perhaps a referral of Hamas to the International Criminal court in the Hague for launching rockets from civilian areas and a similar one of Israel for using a sledgehammer to crack a nut in their response might stop both sides. Their mutual hatred of each other guarantees that there will be no logical reaction from most on either side though.

[biffvernon]

Hamas which are radical terrorists.

Or possibly they have become impatient with the rest of the world for not enforcing UN Resolution 242, agreed unanimously by all 16 member states of the Security Council including the USA and would quite like to live in their own land from which they have been forcibly and illegally removed.

[adam2]

"headline" oil price now under $100 which I find suprising. This is for West Texas Intermediate crude which is less relevant than in years gone by, though still widely quoted.

The arguably more represenative Brent crude has also fallen, but remains well above $100.

Are the markets expecting Ebola induced restrictions on air travel ?

[PS_RalphW]

Rising US production, falling Asian demand.

I'm wondering if China have finished filling their strategic reserve (for now)? At one point it was filling at something like 1 Mbpd or over 1% of global demand.

US keeps increasing shale oil production. The oil may be very light, and of little value in the domestic market, but it keeps the speculators at bay with ever rising levels of unsaleable oil in storage.

Cooler than normal US summer weather has eased demand for NG, maybe it has eased demand for other products too.

OECD demand keeps falling. partly this is improved energy efficiency, partly it is people consciously economising, but mostly it is mostly demand destruction in countries like Italy and Greece. In increasingly unequal societies, lost demand from the proletariat is not entirely replaced by the 1%.

[PS_RalphW]

Oil price down to $102.50 on declining Asian demand. I guess the Chinese strategic reserve is now full.

A big fall in price will trigger a cash flow crisis in US shale oil companies. They are deep into negative cash flow as it is, and the extreme decline rates in existing wells would push the US into secondary peak and the world into primary peak in a matter of months if drilling rates were to be cut by more than 25%.

(75% of new shale oil wells that come on line are needed to offset declines from existing shale wells. Production growth comes from the remaining 25% approx).

[emordnilap]

This is an entertaining read. Sorry it's over a month old, just getting through a backlog of articles.

I'll quote the FT first. The phrase "E&P" stands for upstream Exploration and Production, as opposed to downstream refining of crude oil into products.

"But E&P [companies] have lost their lustre. That is partly because they seem to have lost the knack of discovering oil."

Whoops!

So what's the deal with the dropping in barrel prices?

[vtsnowedin]

This is an entertaining read. Sorry it's over a month old, just getting through a backlog of articles.

I'll quote the FT first. The phrase "E&P" stands for upstream Exploration and Production, as opposed to downstream refining of crude oil into products.

"But E&P [companies] have lost their lustre. That is partly because they seem to have lost the knack of discovering oil."

Whoops!

So what's the deal with the dropping in barrel prices?

Apparently we "Are awash in oil"

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic
Petroleum Reserve) decreased by 4.5 million barrels from the previous
week. At 362.5 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are above
the upper limit of the average range for this time of year.

[emordnilap]

And in other news, it appears that Shell are finally selling out in Nigeria.

[biffvernon]

So it is: http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2014/08/28 ... il-fields/

Maybe Shell is selling all its stranded assets while there's still a market.

This is a good piece:

Shell is selling about $5 billion of oil assets in Nigeria, and among the properties is one of the most frequently robbed oil pipelines in the world.
That would be the 60-mile Nembe Creek Trunk Line, which, when it is not leaking like a sieve or shut down, can carry 150,000 barrels of oil a day to Bonny on the Nigerian coast for export on tankers.

http://qz.com/256791/shell-is-selling-o ... the-world/

[RenewableCandy]

The Ambrose of Doom weighs in:

Oil industry on borrowed time as switch to gas and solar accelerates

[PS_RalphW]

As recession once more gets its grip on the EU region, and China's oil demand is still down, I can see the world economy slipping into stagflation. Unpayable personal debt in the first world is crippling demand for non-essential goods, as reduced EROEI increases costs for food and essential goods. Cutting out non-essentials is leading to rising unemployment and falling demand for oil, so that the oil companies are cutting investment in new fields as costs rise ever higher for them. This leads to static or falling prices, and static or falling supply. The global economy can no longer sustain $100 oil, and the oil industry cannot make a profit on new drilling at less than $100 oil.

A lot of the remaining 'reserves' of oil will remain in the ground, because we will never be able to afford the cost of extracting them.

Of course the economists will blame recession for falling oil production, not the other way round.

[PS_RalphW]

Brent nosediving towards $100 this morning. Although with Sterling also falling, we are unlikely to see cheaper fuel immediately.

Talk of deflation in the Euro zone.

I think Scottish independence might be just the wakeup call that instills a little economic reality into this country. A bit like a woman I met once who said she woke up one morning with a hangover and wedding certificate.

I'm not sure which party would regret separation more. I've never understood the fashion for small countries to fragment in recent decades, it makes them too small and weak to stand up to the corporations.