In a dynamic that shows just how far U.S. oil production has come in recent years, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday that in the last two months of 2018, the U.S. Gulf Coast exported more crude oil than it imported. Continue reading
PIRA Energy has predicted that U.S. crude oil exports will top 2 million barrels by 2020, reaching 2.25 million bpd. That’s more than what most OPEC members export, the FT notes, citing the research company’s figures. As of 2016, the U.S. average daily export rate was just 520,000 bpd, although in May, the average daily was 1.02 million barrels, after the 1-million-bpd mark was passed early in the year. Continue reading
From 2010 and today still very relevant:
In a remote corner of the globe, a port bristles with cranes, smokestacks, mammoth ships—and trouble for Europe.
In January, Russia made a world-changing move. It completed a new oil pipeline and port complex that sets Russia up to become a more powerful oil exporter than Saudi Arabia. The ramifications for Europe and Asia are profound: The shape of the global economy—and the global balance of power—will soon be altered forever.
December 28 was a big day of ceremony in Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pushed a button that transformed global oil dynamics. The button released thousands of barrels of Siberian crude into a waiting Russian supertanker and heralded the opening of Russia’s first modern Pacific-based oil export facilities.
No matter how much oil the United States produces over the next few years, it will never become the next Saudi Arabia in the global oil market, according to Fatih Birol, the new executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
What’s especially interesting about this forecast is that it directly contradicts what Birol said only three months ago, and he gave no explanation for his change of mind.
On Feb. 26, Birol told The Telegraph’s Middle East Congress in London that OPEC, particularly the Persian Gulf members, will prevail over all other producers for the foreseeable future, even though the revolution in extracting shale oil has been “excellent news” for American producers. Continue reading
China is set to overtake the United States as the world’s largest importer of oil this decade. While the expansion of China?’s economy has slowed from a breakneck 10% yearly rate to a still-formidable 7% per annum, the economic metamorphosis of the Middle Kingdom is having huge impacts on global energy markets.
The growing ranks of China’s middle class increasingly aspire to a lifestyle – and level of consumption – that approximates the patterns of their counterparts in the world’s richest countries. The death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has further highlighted China’s need for the lifeblood of a modern economy and the economic and geopolitical threats China’s dependence on imported energy hold for the leadership in Beijing. Continue reading
Much digital ink has been spilled about the oil and gas boom in the US, the result of ever improving fracking technologies, and whether or not it will lead to energy independence, or even turn the US into an oil exporter.
Now a “confidential” report by the German version of the CIA, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), seeped to the surface. It sketched out the boom’s geopolitical consequences. Biggest loser? China. Continue reading
Big changes are already underway in the global energy sector. And some of these changes are contrary to previous expectations. What we now realize, once again, is that capitalism works. Capitalism has always solved our most basic problems. Even now it is solving our energy problem.
Four years ago Russia was the rising powerhouse of global energy production. Marshall I. Goldman’s 2008 book on Russia was titled Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia. As Goldman explained, “Russia … finds itself in a newly assertive, even dominant, international position. Its emergence as a new super energy power overlaps with the weakening of the United States as we have squandered our … resources in Iraq.” But Russia’s energy sector has always been a state-manipulated behemoth with serious problems of its own. Continue reading
China is scouring the world for alternative oil supplies to replace a fall in its imports from Iran, as it seeks to negotiate lower prices from Tehran, and has been drawing heavily on Saudi Arabia.
Industry sources told Reuters that Beijing had bought the bulk of an increase in crude oil supplies from top oil exporter Saudi Arabia in the last few months.
The world’s second-largest oil consumer is also importing more cargoes from West Africa, Russia and Australia to replace reduced supplies from Iran.
China is the top buyer of Iranian oil, taking around 20 percent of its total exports, but since January it has cut purchases by around 285,000 barrels per day (bpd), or just over half of the total daily amount it imported in 2011.
Full article: Exclusive: China buys up Saudi, Russian oil to squeeze Iran (Reuters)
Saudi Arabia, which has more than $500bn in foreign assets, may demand a greater share of voting rights at the International Monetary Fund in exchange for providing the lender with more money.
Saudi Arabia’s reserve position at the Washington-based fund more than doubled to SR18.2bn ($4.9bn) last year from SR7.4bn in 2010, according to Saudi central bank data. In 2007, it had a SR2.7bn position with the IMF, the data showed. The cost to insure Saudi debt on Jan 31 was less than half the Middle East sovereign average, according to data provider CMA.
The IMF’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who visits the kingdom’s capital on Feb 4, has urged members states to contribute $500bn in new lending resources to avoid a 1930s-style global depression. Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf last week said that the world’s top oil exporter may be willing to raise its contribution to the fund.
“The Saudi government will be looking for a greater say in the disbursement and that is where the more difficult negotiations will take place,” Crispin B. Hawes, director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, said by telephone from London.
The IMF is pushing China, Brazil, Russia, India, Japan and oil-exporting nations to be the top contributors, according to a G-20 official, who spoke on condition of anonymity last month because the talks are private. The fund wants a deal struck at the Feb 25- 26 meeting of G-20 finance ministers and central bankers in Mexico City, the official said.
Full article: Saudi Arabia may seek IMF sway in exchange for riches (Arabian Business)
Global Geopolitics 