The Oil And Gas Situation: Low Rig Count, Low Fracking Activity, Low M&A

Consolidation? What consolidation? – The highlights of the quarterly mergers and acquisitions tracking report from Enverus are out today, and they show that the predicted consolidation within the U.S. shale business is still failing to materialize. This is not really a surprising result given all of the volatility in the market seen during the second […]

Fracking pioneer Chesapeake files for bankruptcy protection

Chesapeake Energy, a shale drilling pioneer that helped to turn the United States into a global energy powerhouse, has filed for bankruptcy protection. The Oklahoma City-based company said Sunday that it was a necessary decision given its debt. Its debt load is currently nearing $9 billion. It has entered a plan with lenders to cut […]

3 Risks Threatening To Crash Stocks

Since the appearance of the bearish island reversal we noted two weeks ago, stocks have struggled and so far failed to regain the highs reached earlier in June. And another bearish island reversal happened on Tuesday. The resistance displayed by these reversals and the resulting choppiness of trading are exactly the sort of indicators we […]

What’s Next For Big Oil?

Something unthinkable is happening in Big Oil, and it’s not the demand slump or the spending cuts or the layoffs. With the exception of the demand slump, we’ve seen all this before–more than once, in fact.  No, what’s unthinkable is that Big Oil appears to be planning to stop being Big Oil. It’s not a […]

Beyond Petroleum: Is BP finally moving from rhetoric to reality?

Low oil prices may be here to stay — as the world recovers from coronavirus, there are signs across the world that the economic recovery might well be greener (via Getty Images) Kneeling in prayer for a sin he doesn’t regret, Shakespeare’s Claudius, Hamlet’s fratricidal uncle, ruefully admits: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain […]

Kurt Cobb: The financialization of the end of the world

For those who are fans of cartoons from The New Yorker magazine and consistent readers of this blog, you might be able to guess my two favorite cartoons. In the first one, a man in a coat and tie stands at a podium and tells his unseen audience the following: “And so, while the end-of-the-world […]

BP Anticipates the Fall of Oil with a 17.5 Billion Dollar Loss

BP is one of the largest oil companies in the world, and even they are seeing the renewable energy boom as an inevitability. As a result of the current market conditions, the company will be devaluing its assets by 17.5 billion dollars. In their statement, BP had this to say, “growing expectation that the aftermath […]

Our Wile E. Coyote Economy: Nothing But Financial Engineering

Ours is a Wile E. Coyote economy, and now we’re hanging in mid-air, realizing there is nothing solid beneath our feet. The story we’re told about how our “capitalist” economy works is outdated. The story goes like this: companies produce goods and services for a competitive marketplace and earn a profit from this production. These profits […]

A Retrospective Look at the Oil Price History

How did oil price change in recent centuries? Read about the major milestones in the history of oil, who are the main oil producers, and what defines its price. One of the most valuable assets on Earth, oil has a great impact on the global financial market. The price of oil depends on a large […]

Yale Economist Warns of Dollar Crash

Peter Schiff has been warning that that real crash will be a dollar crash. Now, some people in the mainstream are starting to sound that alarm as well. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, Peter was warning about the dollar’s demise. During an interview on RT last September, he warned that America’s “fiscal profligacy” was going […]

CEOs Bank Big Bonuses As Oil Companies Go Bankrupt

When public oil and gas companies are doing relatively well, many are happy to adopt a pay-for-performance model to reward CEOs and executives. However, the tables are quickly turned when things go to the dogs. When these companies go bankrupt, the misery is shared by employees who lose their jobs; retirees see their benefits and […]

BP to cut 10000 jobs worldwide amid virus pandemic

Oil and gas company BP announced Monday that it will slash its global workforce by 10,000 jobs as the COVID-19 pandemic slams the energy industry. Chief Executive Bernard Looney said that the cuts will affect office-based roles in BP’s global workforce of 70,000 people and come mostly this year. The changes are expected to significantly […]

The case for the suburbs

The topic of suburbanization has come to the forefront as COVID-19 spreads and the subsequent shutdown endures. As the virus lingers, we have seen big-city residents seeking shelter by migrating to less dense places in the suburbs. While most of these moves are a temporary response to the pandemic, population data suggests urban centers have […]

Oil Market Could See Long Term Contango

The oil market could stay in a state of contango for longer after supply and demand finally balance due to the vast amount of crude and products in storage, Reuters reported on Friday, citing analysts and investment banks. Contango is the state of the market in which prices for delivery at later dates are higher […]

Kunstler: When Giants Fall

It was only a few decades ago that Walmart entered the pantheon of American icons, joining motherhood, apple pie, and baseball on the highest tier of the alter. The people were entranced by this behemoth cornucopia of unbelievably cheap stuff packaged in gargantuan quantities. It was something like their participation trophy for the sheer luck […]

Industry hit by weak demand finally faces threat from electric cars

Oil companies may be facing uncertainty as the coronavirus pandemic triggers a collapse in demand for their products, but automakers are betting the crisis will help accelerate an electric future. With economies reeling from lockdowns to curb the virus, the sharpest plunge in oil prices in two decades has slashed the cost of filling up […]

Will Oil Demand Reach Pre-COVID Levels as Lockdown Measures Ease?

With the WTI June futures contract settlement date just around the corner, market participants are watching oil prices closely. However, hope remains that oil prices won’t go negative again this month, and moreover, that oil will still be able to rebound as lockdown measures ease. Earlier this week the Chief Executive of BP, one of […]

Saudi Aramco’s Stock Trades on a Different Planet

Don’t worry if you missed Saudi Aramco’s earnings call: There wasn’t one. Now the sticklers and bores among you might raise a hand and suggest that, what with the global pandemic, oil crash and assorted what-have-yous, it might be advisable for the biggest oil major in the world to spare an hour for an update. But honestly, […]

Oil Crash Busted Broker’s Computers and Inflicted Big Losses

Syed Shah usually buys and sells stocks and currencies through his Interactive Brokers account, but he couldn’t resist trying his hand at some oil trading on April 20, the day prices plunged below zero for the first time ever. The day trader, working from his house in a Toronto suburb, figured he couldn’t lose as […]

Can oil recover from coronavirus? An industry debate is underway.

When the pandemic is all over will society go back to driving cars and hopping on planes with nary a worry as it did just two short months ago? Or is the world more permanently changed, with the commute to work a thing of the past, public events radically scaled back and the confined spaces […]

“Biblical” Wave Of Bankruptcies Is About To Flood The US

One of the silver linings of the coronacrisis to date is that despite the unprecedented collapse in the broader economy and the 30 or so million unemployed, the pace of bankruptcy filings has been relatively steady compared to the pre-covid levels, as the following Goldman chart shows. Unfortunately the relative calm is not meant to […]

Millions of farm animals culled as US food supply chain chokes up

Covid-related slaughterhouse shutdowns in the US are leading to fears of meat shortages and price rises, while farmers are being forced to consider “depopulating” their animals. More than 20 slaughterhouses have been forced to close, although some have subsequently reopened. On Tuesday President Trump issued an executive order to keep slaughterhouses open which would, he […]

How natural gas is withstanding the energy market collapse

Natural gas is withstanding the coronavirus-fueled economic crash in a way that its closely associated relative, oil, isn’t. Oil prices have reached record lows, with the U.S. benchmark oil price briefly dropping below zero last month after trading at around $60 per barrel at the start of 2020. The U.S. natural gas price, meanwhile, is […]

The Wave Of Shale Well Closures Has Finally Begun

U.S. shale oil producers have so far held up admirably, hanging on for dear life amidst the biggest oil demand collapse in history. American producers continued to pump at record highs in March, even after dozens of drillers laid out blueprints to limit production. But with U.S. storage about to hit tank tops in a matter of […]

Explaining Negative Oil Prices

The most simple explanation for negative oil prices is that midstream players are now paying buyers to take oil volumes away as the physical storage limit will be reached. That’s what Rystad Energy’s Oil Market Analyst Louise Dickson said in a statement sent to Rigzone, adding that “top dollar” was being paid. “Pricey shut-ins or […]

A Conversation with Ray Dalio

Bloomberg Editor-at-Large Erik Schatzker talks with famed American investor and Bridgewater Associates Founder, Ray Dalio. Together they discuss the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on markets, bonds, and longer-term implications he sees for inflation, trade, globalization, and fiscal policy.

Oil prices extend slide one day after U.S. crude drops below zero

A collapse in the price of oil continued to disrupt world markets as investors on Tuesday braced for another deep dive in U.S. stocks. Global benchmark Brent crude fell nearly 17 percent, one day after the U.S. benchmark fell below zero for the first time in history. Brent crude was trading at $21.35 a barrel […]

Here Is The Full Explanation Behind Today’s Unprecedented Negative Oil Price

Courtesy of IHSMarkit’s energy vice president Roger Diwan How did you end up with negative oil prices today?  This happens when a physical futures contract find no buyers close to or at expiry. Let me explain what that means: A physical contract such as the NYMEX WTI has a delivery point at Cushing, OK, & […]

The Real Reason Oil Futures Plunged On Monday Isn’t What You Think

KHANTY-MANSI AUTONOMOUS AREA – YUGRA, RUSSIA APRIL 5, 2020: A Surgutneftegas worker near a pumpjack … [+] Alexei Andronov/TASS Ouch! On the face of it, things look bad for the oil market. That’s an easy conclusion to make from the epic dive crude oil futures prices took on Monday. But the bigger story is far […]

Texas Oil at $2 a Barrel Raises Specter of Negative Prices

Crude prices in America’s oil capital are getting dangerously close to zero. Buyers bidding for crude in Texas, the birthplace of the shale revolution, are offering as little as $2 a barrel for some oil streams, a precipitous markdown from a month ago. The slumping value of physical barrels is raising the possibility that Texas […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• World’s Biggest Oil Importer Is Running Out Of Storage
• Dakota Access Pipeline must be shut down, judge orders
• Kunstler: Bye Bye American Pie
• Saudis Raise Oil Pricing to US and Asia
• ‘The crisis is far from over.’ World economy faces an uphill climb

• Will US Shale Oil Production See A V-Shaped Recovery?
• On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare
• Why Oil Didn’t Save the Whales – and Why it Matters
• Kunstler: Beware of What You Wish For
• Fracking pioneer Chesapeake files for bankruptcy protection
• 3 Risks Threatening To Crash Stocks