Geopolitics & Military

Oil, politics, talk and reality- Mar 21

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-Saudi Arabia Can Raise Output 25% If Needed, Naimi Says
-Tech Talk – Going Back to the First Look at Saudi Arabian Oil Production
-Saudi Arabia sends tankers to US with pledge to bring down oil price
-FACT CHECK: Does more US drilling ease gas pump pain? Math, history show that hasn’t happened
-Tapping Petroleum Reserve has gotten trickier
-US exempts Japan and EU nations from Iran oil sanctions

ODAC Newsletter – Mar 16

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Finally, a plausible explanation for the Obama-Cameron political orgy — ‘love-in’ doesn’t quite do it — in Washington this week. For Cameron the benefit of this floorshow was obvious — like Blair with Bush, revelling in the reflected glory of US power — but Obama’s motive remained a mystery. What could possibly justify gifting all that folderol and face time with the world’s most powerful man? Yesterday we got the answer: international cover for a politically motivated release from strategic petroleum reserves, that’s what.

America: modes of expansion

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America’s movement toward empire was anything but straightforward, not least because of the deep divisions among regional settlement patterns sketched out in last week’s post. Those divisions drove an equally profound split between competing modes of expansion — a split that finally exploded into America’s most costly war. Ironically, the mode that won proceeded to make itself obsolete by running headlong into the limits to growth, and thus set the stage for the push for overseas empire that dominated American history in the 20th century.

Understanding the new price of oil

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In the spring of 2011, when Libyan oil production — over 1 million barrels a day (mpd) — was suddenly taken offline, the world received its first real-time test of the global pricing system for oil since the crash lows of 2009. Oil prices, already at the $85 level for WTIC, bolted above $100, and eventually hit a high near $115 over the following two months. More importantly, however, is that — save for a brief eight week period in the autumn — oil prices have stubbornly remained over the $85 pre-Libya level ever since. Even as the debt crisis in Europe has flared.

A tough-oil world

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The principal cause of higher prices — a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry — cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.

We are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped. This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum — “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.

Tough-oil reserves will provide most of the world’s new oil in the years ahead. One thing is clear: even if they can replace easy oil in our lives, the cost of everything oil-related — whether at the gas pump, in oil-based products, in fertilizers, in just about every nook and cranny of our lives — is going to rise. Get used to it. If things proceed as presently planned, we will be in hock to big oil for decades to come.

Oil, Iran and the peak – March 8

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– Stop blaming oil speculators and start listening to them: A war with Iran would devastate the economy
– We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran
– Oil creeps toward top of Asia’s economic worry list
– 10th ASPO-International Conference in Vienna May 30 – June 1
– Ölreserven: Der “Doomsday” war gestern