What Would The End Of OPEC Mean?

 

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – the oil market institution that has exerted an unyielding power over the price of crude for nearly 60 years – is now in deep crisis. The latest OPEC meeting in Vienna offered new insights into the cartel’s raging civil war that is tearing it apart and threatens to ultimately make the cartel irrelevant.

In a two-year period since the group of 15 major oil producers formed an alliance with Russia, OPEC’s smaller members have been marginalized, their voices have been diminished and Saudi Arabia seems to prioritize its partnership with Moscow above all else. An unlikely partnership between Saudi Arabia and Russia is causing dissension within OPEC, with one of the oldest members announcing it would withdraw from the organization in January just days prior to the talks. With Russia tightening its grip over OPEC’s decisions and the United States officially reaching net oil exporting status in late November for the first time in decades, even if only briefly, the new world oil order is now dependent on three energy superpowers: Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States.

OPEC calls for ‘collective efforts’ to counter US oil boom

Crude oil storage tanks are seen from above at the Cushing oil hub, in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford/File Photo

 

On Thursday OPEC called for its members to pool ‘collective efforts’ to counter increasing U.S. Oil production

(WASHINGTON, DC) While decreased stocks and an improving global economy were supporting oil demand, “continued rebalancing in the oil market by year-end will require the collective efforts of all oil producers to increase market stability,” Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said.

Amid this announcement, oil prices rose on Thursday, with benchmark Brent crude trading comfortably above $50 a barrel after a fall in U.S. inventories and a bigger-than-expected cut in Saudi supplies to Asia helped tightened the market.

Iran Just Officially Ditched the Dollar in Major Blow to US: Here’s Why It Matters

It’s not oil that is America’s Achilles Heel, it’s the U.S. Dollar. It’s the global reserve currency and was given that status by trading the world’s lifeblood of economies: oil. Take away the Dollar in trading of oil and you can take down the entire house of cards, in this case the U.S. The last couple of times this move was made, Ghadafi and Saddam Hussein were killed.

People politicized and speculated it was over oil, but missed the mark. America has all the oil it could ever need in its own backyard but not always the support it needs to sustain its lifestyle via waning Dollar hegemony when nations are banding together.

 

 

(ANTIMEDIA) Following President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, the Iranian government announced it would stop using the U.S. dollar “as its currency of choice in its financial and foreign exchange reports,” the local Financial Tribune reported.

Iran governor Valiollah Seif’s central bank announced the decision in a television interview on January 29. The change will take effect on March 21, and it will impact all official financial and foreign exchange reports.

Iran Likely to Produce 600,000 Barrels of Oil Per Day Upon Sanctions Relief

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Iran will likely produce hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily by the end of next year once international sanctions on Tehran are fully lifted, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report on Thursday.

“Iran is also expected to increase production as sanctions are lifted,” the agency’s report read. “EIA estimates that Iran has the technical capability to increase crude oil production by about 600,000 b/d by the end of 2016.”

America’s Energy Edge: The Geopolitical Consequences of the Shale Revolution

Is America’s shale-based energy revolution having at least one expected effect? Yes, say Robert Blackwill and Meghan O’Sullivan. In the case of global energy production, it’s facilitating a gradual shift away from traditional suppliers in Eurasia and the Middle East.

Only five years ago, the world’s supply of oil appeared to be peaking, and as conventional gas production declined in the United States, it seemed that the country would become dependent on costly natural gas imports. But in the years since, those predictions have proved spectacularly wrong. Global energy production has begun to shift away from traditional suppliers in Eurasia and the Middle East, as producers tap unconventional gas and oil resources around the world, from the waters of Australia, Brazil, Africa, and the Mediterranean to the oil sands of Alberta. The greatest revolution, however, has taken place in the United States, where producers have taken advantage of two newly viable technologies to unlock resources once deemed commercially infeasible: horizontal drilling, which allows wells to penetrate bands of shale deep underground, and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which uses the injection of high-pressure fluid to release gas and oil from rock formations.

Exclusive: China buys up Saudi, Russian oil to squeeze Iran

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)