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POPSThe Death Of OPEC September 11, 2008 “We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil." “Saudi Arabia will meet the market’s demand,” a senior OPEC delegate said. OPEC will still have lavish meetings and a nifty headquarters in Vienna, Austria, but the Saudis have made certain the the organization has lost its teeth. Even though the cartel argued that the sudden drop in crude as due to "over-supply", OPEC's most powerful member knows that the drop may only be temporary. The downward pressure on oil got a second hand. Brazil has confirmed another huge oil deposit to add to one it discovered off-shore earlier this year. The first field uncovered by Petrobras has the promise of being one of the largest in the world. That breadth of that deposit has now expanded.
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POPS Iran Says Oil Price Is Right At $100 A Barrel Pressure for a cut in oil output at next week's Opec meeting in Vienna stepped up today when Iran’s Opec governor said an oil price of $100 per barrel was “appropriate” Robert Laughlin, analyst at MF Global, said today that Opec had played a good hand in its actions — or lack of them — this year, when prices rose aggressively. "But will be alarmed at the downturn in demand and the deteriorating economic backdrop of the global economy." "Western leaders will be urging the cartel to remain unchanged in production strategy but I fear there is growing feeling in the ranks of price hawks that a cut in production is required and now," Mr Laughlin said Even the most moderate Opec member, Saudi Arabia, which has indicated that it would prefer output to be left unchanged, has been cutting the discount at which it sells Arab heavy, a poor-quality crude that it uses to calm the oil price, offering large quantities at big discounts.
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POPSDemocrats And Gasoline that they must have some gall to criticize creationism when they in fact subscribe to its economic equivalent. But as I wrote last week, I don't really think they are this ignorant. They're providing a rhetorical distraction to the fact that they want high gas prices, probably higher ones than we have right now. Meanwhile, in order to deflect and even harness consumer anger in the political arena, they can send out Chuck Schumer to put on this dog-and-pony show about the phantoms that are secretly directing the economy from behind closed doors. It's a smokescreen. As an energy consumer, you should be a lot more concerned about what Democrats are doing in the open Senate chamber. The gas crisis finally hit Capitol Hill with full fury this week, and Senate Democrats have launched a plan that sounds ambitious: Take on Wall Street speculators, OPEC, price gougers and Big Oil. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9967.html
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POPSYet Another Reason for Alternative Energy It amazes me when Bush talks about how committed he is to national security - with middle east countries being the biggest targets - but does nothing to reduce our reliance on oil. Bush continues to rely on countries he considers part of his "axis of evil" when he does nothing to further research into alternative domestic energy sources. His answer - let's try to drill for more oil here while maintaining a military presence in the middle east that's costing this country billions and ultimately trillions of dollars. No dumb ass, if you invested even a tiny portion of what you've spent on "securing" Iraq, on a domestic alternative energy policy, we wouldn't be in the economic trouble we're in today.
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POPSBig Oil Tax Thank goodness there are a few left in the Senate that have brains.
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POPSThe Oil Cartel Of Our Own Making the 85.9 billion barrels of crude offshore won't be tapped. The May BLM report explains why most onshore oil won't be tapped, either. Of the 279 million acres of federal land "with potential for oil or natural gas resources," 60 percent is off limits to leases as a matter of federal statute or administrative policy. Another 23 percent is open to leases with "restrictions." These include such things as "lands that can be leased but ground-disturbing oil and natural gas exploration and development activities are prohibited" and "lands that can be leased, but stipulations ... limit the time of the year when oil and gas exploration and drilling can take place to less than 3 months." While compliance with these laws may delay, modify or prohibit oil and gas activities, these laws represent the values and bounds Congress believes appropriate to manage Federal lands." You elected Congress. It paid you back with $4.00-per-gallon gas.
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POPSOPEC strangling American economy I can't really agree with this. Our Congress has done more to "strangle" us than any foreign agency. IF we allow this to continue, we will be the object of our enemies manipulation and blackmail. Like every other *serious* issue, Congress has sat on it's hands for several decades...promoting band aid solutions instead of acting responsibly to make us energy independent. Lay the blame where it belongs; at the Halls of Congress.
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POPSGoing After OPEC The real energy problem, in other words, isn't Big Oil; it's Big Government. As with so many other things, President Reagan got it right when, not even a week after taking office in 1981, he signed Executive Order 12287 decontrolling the price of oil and gas. He then ordered his secretary of energy to focus on encouraging U.S. companies to find and produce more. It worked like a charm, bringing oil prices down sharply and OPEC to its knees. By 1986, after a 74% drop in the price of oil, some even doubted OPEC could survive. Such would-be monopolies look invincible when demand rises and prices follow. But when supply increases, prices fall and members start cheating, they look pathetic. This pretty much describes the history of OPEC. Reagan's strategy of energy decontrol would work again today . But this time it's supplies, not prices, that need to be untethered.
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POPSPelosi To President Bush On Gas Prices
Your support is the more critical as your Administration has failed to persuade OPEC to increase their oil production, despite your influence with OPEC nations. The New Direction Congress is providing forward-looking leadership that will fuel America’s energy future, save Americans’ money, create good jobs, improve our national security, and preserve our planet for our children. This critical issue needs Presidential leadership and I urge you to please join us to address the skyrocketing price at the pump. best regards, NANCY PELOSI House GOP challenges Pelosi for gas price plan House Republican leaders on Tuesday challenged Nancy Pelosi to release a plan to lower gas prices that they say Democrats touted when they were in the minority. (Press release dated April 24, 2006, Pelosi said, “Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.....) http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/house-gop-challenges-pelosi-for-gas-price-plan-2008-04-22.html
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POPSOPEC's Fear Prices Will Drop By $30 A Barrel OPEC's biggest fear is that this is a bubble ($100+) and that prices will drop by $30 a barrel "The market continues to be well supplied," Rex Tillerson, the chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said at a conference in New York. "There has been no interruption of supplies." Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, said there was no need to increase supplies by "even one barrel of oil." But he stressed that Saudi Arabia, the world's top exporter, would keep oil markets well supplied. As a sign of how seriously it sees its role, Naimi told reporters that the kingdom was pumping 9.2 million barrels, "day in, day out," or roughly 300,000 barrels a day above its formal OPEC target. The oil cartel, which is next scheduled to meet in September, indicated it might call for an emergency meeting earlier depending on "market conditions."
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POPS The Widespread "Perception Of Market Tightness" Oil prices were trading higher in Asian hours on expectations OPEC will keep output levels unchanged. Last week, they recorded their biggest weekly fall ever on bets the cartel will up output by 500,000 bpd. OPEC has repeatedly said in official statements recently that oil prices are high because of the widespread perception of market tightness, and not because of a lack of supply. Although the cartel was last week expected to cave into political pressure from consuming countries and hike output anyway, these expectations are now fading fast in the run up to the meeting. Earlier today, the Nigerian Oil Minister Odein Ajumogobia told Thomson Financial news that the OPEC gathering has so far suggested there is no need to hike output.
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POPS"The MUTE Button Was Broken" (Sure!) So, some are anxious (Venezuela, Iran) to take a bit more of a hit on their dollar if it helps to eventually persuade the rest of OPEC to go to the EURO. I think we can look for a serious effort, in other arenas, to talk the dollar back up again
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POPS "Fear" Sending Speculators Rushing For Oil Futures Really? Crude futures fell on Monday $2.40 to $93.92 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Mr Naimi criticised what he called “pessimistic” views about the adequacy of future supplies, saying they were causing “fear” and sending funds and speculators rushing for crude oil futures.
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POPSWorld will face oil crunch ‘in five years’ Five years is no time. 2012 in fact. The IEA is a very conservative and mainstream body, not an advocate of peak oil theory. Even if the oil is in the ground, delays in extracting from increasingly challanging environment, political and financial challenges still mean shortages, long before the theoretical peak.
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