Saudi Arabia Partially Restores Oil Output

Oil has fallen from earlier highs after Saudi Aramco’s Abqiaq plant restored some production and is now processing just under half the output that was lost in Sunday’s drone attack. Bloomberg’s James Thornhill reports on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia.” (Source: Bloomberg)

The only solution to climate change is world socialism

Millions of students, youth and their supporters in more than 150 countries will take part this Friday in a worldwide Global Climate Strike demanding immediate and far-reaching actions to abate and reverse climate change. The internationally coordinated protests are being organized in response to the growing realization among young people that the governments of the world are incapable of taking any significant measures to halt global warming. Climate change has already had a devastating impact on large sections of the world’s population. Extreme weather events such as Hurricane Dorian cause billions of dollars in destruction and cost dozens and possibly thousands of lives. Recent reports warn that 821 million human beings are at risk of starvation as global warming makes agriculture increasingly untenable and that 3.2 billion men, women and children reside in areas that will become unlivable possibly in the ...

Saudi Arabia says Iran missiles, drones attacked oil sites

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called the attack on Saudi Arabia's oil installations an "act of war" against the kingdom by Iran, as the Saudis displayed missile and drone wreckage and cited other evidence they said shows the raid was "unquestionably sponsored by Iran." Iran, which has denied involvement in the attack, warned the U.S. it will retaliate immediately if it is targeted. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, said he is moving to increase financial sanctions on Tehran over the attack. He was noncommittal on whether he would order U.S. military retaliation. At a news conference, Saudi military spokesman Col. Turki al-Malki said the attack Saturday that did heavy damage to the heart of the Saudi oil industry was "launched from the north and was unquestionably sponsored by Iran." Yemen is south of Saudi Arabia, while Iran and Iraq lie to ...

Saudi Arabia Still Unsure of Launch Site for Oil Attacks

Saudi Arabia said attacks on its critical oil infrastructure were “unquestionably sponsored by Iran” but stopped short of saying the strikes were launched directly from or by the Islamic Republic, claims that could have propelled a drift toward war. With parts of drones and missiles recovered from the attack sites at Abqaiq and Khurais on display, Saudi Defense Ministry spokesman Turki al-Maliki on Wednesday showed maps aimed at proving the strikes originated from the north and could not have been launched by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who shortly after repeated their claims of responsibility. “Despite Iran’s effort to make it appear so,” the attack didn’t originate from Yemen, Maliki said. “Data analysis of the attack sites indicate weapons of Iranian origin.” Iran has denied it was involved in the worst attack in Saudi Arabia’s history and President Hassan Rouhani said earlier Wednesday that ...

The Concept of Peak Oil has Shifted

A particularly fascinating development in this current decade is that the concept of what ‘peak oil’ means has shifted, Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, OPEC Secretary General, said at the Fifth Iraq Energy Forum in Baghdad, Iraq, Trend reports. “At the beginning of the 2010s, reports of peak supply were almost omnipresent; however, we are about to conclude the decade when this purported ‘worry’ has shifted to concerns about ‘peak demand.’ Peak demand fears do not necessarily reflect market fundamentals or the overwhelming majority of long-term forecasts of most reporting agencies,” he said. Barkindo noted that in the long term, as OPEC’s flagship publication the World Oil Outlook has shown, world oil demand is set to grow considerably in the future. “Long-term oil demand is expected to rise to almost 112 mb/d by 2040. This will be primarily driven by developing countries: their expanding middle ...

We just learned how easy it is to upend the oil market — and we’re going to pay for it

The attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities have done more than knock out some 5 per cent of global crude supplies, they have provided a myriad of lessons for all involved. There is still a high level of uncertainty as to who, what and how exactly Saturday’s attacks were carried out on Saudi Aramco’s facilities, including the massive crude processing plant at Abqaiq. But what is certain is that 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of production has vanished and geopolitics is back driving the oil market. This renewed risk was reflected in early price moves on Monday in global benchmark Brent crude futures, which surged as much as 20 per cent in early Asian trade, reaching a peak of US$71.95 a barrel before easing back to around 13 per cent higher at US$68.22. In recent months the oil market has largely discounted geopolitical ...

Michael Klare: The Pompeo Doctrine

Donald Trump got the headlines as usual — but don’t be fooled. It wasn’t Trumpism in action this August, but what we should all now start referring to as the Pompeo Doctrine. Yes, I’m referring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and, when it comes to the Arctic region, he has a lot more than buying Greenland on his mind. In mid-August, as no one is likely to forget, President Trump surprised international observers by expressing an interest in purchasing Greenland, a semi-autonomous region of Denmark. Most commentators viewed the move as just another example of the president’s increasingly erratic behavior. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen termed the very notion of such a deal “absurd,” leading Trump, in an outburst of pique, to call her comments “nasty” and cancel a long-scheduled state visit to Copenhagen. A deeper look at that incident and related administration ...

Our Energy and Debt Predicament in 2019

Many people are concerned that we have an oil problem. Or they are concerned about recession and the need to lower interest rates. As I see the situation, we have a problem of a networked economy that is not functioning well. A big part of this problem is energy-related. Strange as it may seem, energy prices (including oil prices) are too low for producers. If debt levels were growing more rapidly, this low-price problem would go away. The “standard way” of encouraging more debt-based purchases is by lowering interest rates. But we are running out of room to do this now. We also seem to be running out of economic investments to make with debt. If expected returns on investment were greater, interest rates would be higher. Without economic investments, demand for commodities of all kinds, including energy products, tends to stay ...

China Warns Trump Not to Believe Warhawk “Conspiracy Theories” That Iran Was Behind Attack on Saudi Arabia

China has warned President Trump that he is being manipulated by warhawks into believing “conspiracy theories” that Tehran was behind the attack on Saudi oil facilities and that any “revenge attack” on Iran could cause the Middle East to “spiral out of control.” The warning was contained in an editorial posted by the Global Times, which is widely recognized as a Communist Party mouthpiece. A drone strike against two Saudi oil facilities by Houthi rebels on Saturday took out 5% of the world’s oil supply, but U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo immediately blamed Tehran for the attack. In the Global Times piece, Beijing asserts that there is no evidence Iran was responsible and that, “US military revenge against Iran will lead the Middle East to spiral out of control.” The article also blames the Trump administration for being the “least interested in easing ...

Debunking ‘Lower Oil Supply Will Raise Prices’

We often hear the statement, “When oil supply is lower, oil prices will rise because of scarcity.” Now, we are getting to see firsthand whether oil prices really do rise, as oil supplies become more scarce. Figure 1. Figure from the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report for August 2019 showing world and OPEC oil production by month. Figure 1 shows that world oil supply hit a peak in November 2018 and has declined since then, mostly because of a decline in OPEC’s production. So, total oil production seems to be down for about eight months, relative to the peak in November 2018. Despite this big cutback by OPEC in its oil production, prices have not responded as OPEC had hoped: Figure 2. Average monthly spot Brent Oil prices, based on EIA data. In fact, as I write this, Brent oil price is currently quoted as $60.48, ...

Kunstler: A View from the Brink

Welcome to the world where things don’t add up. For instance, some people did ...

Iraq denies its territory was used to launch attack on Saudi oil facilities

Iraq denied on Sunday that its territory had been used to carry out attacks ...

Attacks in Saudi Arabia Are a Test of How Much the World Still Needs Its Oil

How dependent is the world on Saudi Arabian oil? That's one of the many questions ...

Peak Oil Uncertainty: Crude’s Record-Setting Jump Roils Global Markets—and the Worst May Be Yet to Come

Crude oil prices soared and markets fell on Monday, and now there’s talk of ...