Oil World Turns Upside Down as U.S. Sells Oil in Middle East

• Cargo said to be condensate meant for Abu Dhabi’s splitters
• U.S. exported about 700,000 barrels to U.A.E.: Census Bureau

The United Arab Emirates, a model Persian Gulf petro-state where endless billions from crude exports feed a giant sovereign wealth fund, isn’t the most obvious customer for Texan oil.

Saudi Arabia’s Fake Surrender: Why The Oil Price War Is Still On

What do you do when everyone is bugging you to do something, but you don’t want to do it? The simple answer is that you make it look like you are doing something in order to get others off your back.

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We should keep all this in mind when evaluating the latest reports that OPEC has agreed to cuts. Bloomberg tells us right up front that OPEC has merely agreed to the “outline of a deal” that will be taken up at its November meeting.

Why OPEC Will Put The Brakes On At $60 Oil

Instead of continuing to wage an all-out war on the American shale oil industry, which revealed it would bring about its own demise, and therefore the suicide of its ruling class, Saudi Arabia has shifted gears from fighting to pacification.

 

OPEC says a price near $60 will avoid added shale production

Recently renewed talks of a production freeze among OPEC and some non-OPEC producers including Russia have helped to bolster the price of oil in recent weeks, but the organization may not try to raise oil prices beyond $60 per barrel for fear of a renewed glut.

Petro-dictators are in even more trouble than we thought a few days ago

On Oct. 9, we said the outlook for the world’s petrocrats looked bad. It just got worse: Saudi Arabia has been hoping that producers of American shale oil will be forced to begin cutting back given the plunge of oil prices, but the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today that prices can fall a good deal more.

What does that mean for geo-politics? Admittedly long-shot nuclear talks with Iran that resumed today in Vienna may stand a better chance of resulting in a deal. And Russian leader Vladimir Putin may be more conciliatory with Ukraine in gas-price discussions that begin next week.

An American Oil Find That Holds More Than All of OPEC

Following up from another story hitting out at American energy independence, the chatter continues to increase by a small amount. However, and per usual, the only obstacle holding this back are the politics of overblown environmental concerns and the red tape from them, a form of economic warfare. See also this, and this. Until the restrictive tape is removed, it’s likely to remain a pipe dream at best.

Drillers in Utah and Colorado are poking into a massive shale deposit trying to find a way to unlock oil reserves that are so vast they would swamp OPEC.

A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be “equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”

Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.