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Inflation is running hot. Economic data is running cold. Stocks and bonds are under pressure. The Fed is scrambling. In his podcast, Peter Schiff talked about the trajectory of the economy. He said we’re on the cusp of the most obvious crisis that virtually nobody saw coming. The Federal Reserve made this bed. Now we have to lie in it.

Stocks and bonds are off to a rough start in 2022 with the expectation of rate hikes on the horizon. In fact, many analysts now think that the Fed could raise interest rates five times in 2022. And some also think the first hike in March could be 50 basis points.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman called a .5% rate hike “shock and awe.”

Peter called this “ridiculous.”

It’s not shock and awe. When you’re talking about 7% inflation, a move from zero to 50 basis points is still recklessly low interest rates. And for a Fed that’s actually serious about fighting inflation, raising interest rates to 50 basis points is not nearly enough for the task at hand.”

Even so, a .5% rate hike could have a profound impact and pop the bubble economy.

Given the incredible amount of leverage that’s in the system, a 50 basis point rate hike can still do a lot of damage. And I think Bill Ackman is underestimating the extent of the damage. But not just the damage from the initial hike, but from all the subsequent hike, which aren’t going to do any good about slowing down this inflation freight train.”

Peter noted the price of oil hit has continued its upward trajectory this week. The price of oil is at a seven-year high with plenty of room to keep running up. In 2021, a lot of producers ate their rising costs…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Spikes To Fresh 7-Year High After Key Iraq-Turkey Pipeline Explosion

January 18, 2022

Oil Spikes To Fresh 7-Year High After Key Iraq-Turkey Pipeline Explosion

Despite dollar strength today (and more worrisome ZeroCOVID actions from China), oil prices continued to rise but news after-hours that an explosion knocked out a major pipeline sparked more upside.

Little is known about the cause, but the explosion at a pipeline connecting Northern Iraq and the port of Ceyhan in the Mediterranean has taken 450kb/d of supply offline in an already very tight crude oil market.

The pipelines have been halted before: Back in 2012 blasts blamed on saboteurs halted the link for several months.

The headlines sent oil prices spiking with WTI topping $86 for the first time since Oct 2014 (Brent neared $89)…

This news follows a ballistic missile attack over the weekend, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen targeted oil infrastructure in the UAE.

Pipeline operator Botas said the fire has been brought under control and cooling operations were under way.

Botas said the it would reopen once the “necessary measures” had been taken, but gave no indication of timing.

Analyst Reveals His Gold Prediction Secret: It’s All About Oil

December 29, 2021

Analyst Reveals His Gold Prediction Secret: It’s All About Oil

Analyst Reveals His Gold Prediction Secret: It Is All About Oil

This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving gold and the overall economy. Stories include: Gold to rise alongside oil, buying the platinum’s dip, and the tale of a unique 54-pound gold brick.

Gold should follow oil as the latter skyrockets in price

It’s well-known that when gold soars, silver invariably follows. This kind of close correlation could soon be established between gold and another commodity that has been soaring recently: oil. Many might not be familiar with the gold-to-oil ratio, which tracks how many barrels of oil are necessary to buy an ounce of gold.

Here’s the summary of this argument:

The gold to oil ratio is an important indicator of the global economy’s health. Because gold and crude oil are both denominated in US dollars, they are strongly linked. That is because as the US dollar rises, commodities priced in USD fall, and vice versa. As the dollar drops, commodities generally go up.

Since fuel prices play a huge rule in inflation calculations (the Consumer Price Index is about 1/3 energy prices), higher oil prices means more inflation. Inflation drives gold-buying, and additional demand drives gold prices higher. Further, Kitco contributor Rick Mills argues, spikes in oil prices stunt economic growth. And economic pessimism is usually very good for gold.

A little bit more about the gold to oil ratio… Its historical average is 16, but it has been on quite a ride as of late. It hit a high of 91 last April due to the shutdowns, and has since returned to a more reasonable 25. It’s still way off its average, and a proper return would have to come from either falling oil prices or rising gold prices.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pretty Please? US Trying To Persuade Russia To Lift Oil Output

November 25, 2021

Pretty Please? US Trying To Persuade Russia To Lift Oil Output

Interfax is reporting Thursday that the United States is urging Russia to raise oil output in order to lower global prices, following the Biden administration’s Tuesday announcement it plans release 50 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, amid predictions of $100 oil.

“The US has been putting pressure on OPEC and its partners in recent weeks to raise oil output, overtures which have been rebuffed,” Bloomberg reports based on statements from the Russian Foreign Ministry indicating the ongoing US attempt to persuade Moscow.

“OPEC meets next week, and officials will be mulling whether to continue easing its output curbs by 400k BPD per month, or perhaps pause given nations of consumers will be releasing a total of 70-80mln barrels ahead,” the report notes.

Perhaps the Kremlin would be more willing to play nice at a moment Washington comes calling, hat in hand, if it weren’t subject of US sanctions against Russian officials and constant allegations of political ‘interference’ in the West, with Putin widely cast in American media as this decade’s big bad geopolitical bogeyman.

At the end of October Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted that the OPEC+ cartel might put out more barrels than was previously announced, but also noted “Not all countries are able to significantly raise oil production.”

“Currently, the OPEC+ countries are increasing production volumes, even slightly more than they agreed to do, but not everyone can do it. Not all oil-producing countries are able to quickly increase oil production. This is a long-term process, a long cycle,” Putin said at the time in front of the Valdai discussion forum.

He then took his familiar swipe at the European and Western hysteria and obsession with “going green”…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

365 Days of Climate Awareness 88 – Peak Oil

November 25, 2021

365 Days of Climate Awareness 88 – Peak Oil

Too much demand causes oil prices to rise to an unsustainable level, leading to the oil market’s collapse.

This is another topic, like eutrophication, which is not specifically part of the global warming problem, but it is of direct importance to society and to our use of petroleum. Peak oil theory states that, since petroleum is a finite resource, while humanity is not in imminent danger of running out of recoverable oil, the remaining oil will be increasingly hard to obtain, requiring more time and resources, becoming a less efficient process which is increasingly not beneficial to the economy or humanity.

***

In 1956 Marion King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil, was commissioned to report on future oil recovery in the United States. After a statistical study of all available oil field data, Hubbert developed a bell-curve model for conventional crude oil production predicting a peak in the early 1970’s. In fact conventional oil—wells drilled on land, without the application of advanced recovery techniques—peaked slightly before Hubbert’s prediction, topping out at 9.5 million barrels per day (mmbd). Similarly detailed information is not available for oil fields in other countries—Saudi Arabia is not about to give out detailed information about production and reserves, which would compromise its geopolitical strength, for example—so similarly detailed predictions cannot be made for the planet as a whole.

Furthermore, unconventional oil production has increasingly come to dominate the market, with offshore and fracked wells leading to new peaks in production, notably in the United States (which currently leads the world in crude oil production at slightly over 10.5 mmbd). So what to make of a theory which was correct on its initial terms—predicting maximum onshore oil production in the United States—but avoided predictions for the markets which developed later, and have led to later, higher production?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Saudis, Russians Consider Pausing Oil Production Increases In Retaliation To Biden SPR Release

November 25, 2021

Saudis, Russians Consider Pausing Oil Production Increases In Retaliation To Biden SPR Release

When commenting on yesterday’s SPR release announcement by the Biden admin and several assorted hanger-on nations – which has backfired spectacularly sending the price of oil soaring now that the rumor can no longer be sold so the news has to be bought in line with every single SPR release in the past…

… we said that not only was the release far to smmal, but that in retaliation for the SPR release, “OPEC could easily consider halting its production hikes to offset the detrimental SPR impact of lower oil prices on the needed recovery in global oil capex, likely justifying such action as prudent in the face of COVID demand risks.”

Well, fast forward just a few hours when moments ago the WSJ reported that the leaders of OPEC+ and the world’s two top oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia, are considering a pause to their recent efforts to provide the world with more crude, citing to people familiar with those discussions. The move, as expected, is in retaliation to Washington releasing tens of millions of barrels of oil in an effort to lower prices.

As a reminder, OPEC+ is meeting next week to review the long-term deal they reached earlier this year to boost their collective oil output – the deal involves boosting output by 400,000 barrels a day each month through next year, until the group hits its pre-pandemic pumping level and follows a sharp cut in output in 2020 as demand evaporated amid Covid-19 lockdowns.

However, it now appears that OPEC+ may change its mind and not raise output at all; and while Biden is quick to note that oil prices have hovered near multiyear highs, OPEC and other forecasting agencies have struggled to predict demand amid the on-again-off-again nature of Covid-19 restrictions…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The End Of Venezuela’s Oil Era

November 20, 2021

The End Of Venezuela’s Oil Era

Venezuela, once Latin America’s largest oil producer and a founding member of OPEC, has seen its economically vital oil industry collapse triggering one of the worst economic and humanitarian crises of the century. The pain is far from over for Venezuela’s people and the country’s failing economy. Before 1920, Venezuela was a poor agricultural country facing many of the developmental issues plaguing Latin America. The country’s journey to becoming a crude oil superpower, leading petroleum state, and founding OPEC member began in 1914 with the drilling of the Zumaque well in the Mene Grande field on the eastern shores of Lake Maracaibo. This was Venezuela’s first commercial oil well and it launched a monumental oil boom that transformed the country and by 1950 saw it become the world’s fourth wealthiest nation per capita. Venezuela was not only heralded as Latin America’s richest nation but also its most developed. By the 1970s, the country, which is now a socialist dictatorship, was lauded as Latin America’s most stable democracy at a time when most nations in the region were ruled by military dictatorships. By the 1980s, Venezuela’s democracy was unraveling because of a global recession and sharply weaker oil prices. These events weighed heavily on the economy, and government spending, causing the country to spiral into debt. By the late-1980s Caracas had turned to the International Monetary Fund for help. The IMF recommended market-oriented neoliberal economic reforms including savage budget cuts, primarily impacting social programs such as public health and education. When these reforms were implemented by Caracas, they triggered considerable civil unrest. The reforms also sparked runaway inflation which only worsened the suffering of every-day Venezuelans. Those events illustrated the substantial dependence of Venezuela’s economy on oil and the country’s vulnerability to weaker prices…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why U.S. Shale Won’t Go To War With OPEC+

November 10, 2021

Why U.S. Shale Won’t Go To War With OPEC+

OPEC+ will be very happy with where oil prices currently are and is unlikely to change its course anytime soon
The U.S. does have the ability to increase production, but U.S. shale does not have support from either the government or shareholders to boost production significantly
The two bearish variables that could drag prices down in the near term are a strong dollar and the continuation of inventory builds

For years, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s economy has suffered from low oil prices. Since 2014 when it increased supplies to try and break American shale producers, Saudi Arabia has had to struggle with a flooded market. Its cash reserves have been drawn down by hundreds of billions and it had to sell a small percentage of its prize asset, Saudi Aramco. At the same time, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan fell behind in its lofty goals of diversifying its economy. I discussed this at some length in a prior Oilprice article. Now with the price of Brent – the benchmark against which Saudi Arabia prices its production – finally back above the $80 mark, the Kingdom is beginning to refill its coffers. So it was no great surprise when the Saudis and the Russians, the two principal members of the OPEC+ cartel, roundly rejected a demand from President Biden to increase production to ease the world’s energy crisis.

Up to this point, there had been some lingering concern on the part of OPEC+ that too high a price would reinvigorate the shale industry that had finally come to heel in early 2020. Restraint on the part of shale drillers since then has encouraged them that a new “war” for market share won’t be the result…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Saudis Respond To Biden: Your Energy Crisis Isn’t Our Problem

November 5, 2021

Saudis Respond To Biden: Your Energy Crisis Isn’t Our Problem

US gas prices at the pump (national average) are at $3.421, having soared since President Biden was elected – much like they did when President Obama was elected – to some of the highest prices in history…

President Biden refuses to take any blame for this. Instead of realizing the climate-crisis-focused policies are impacting the fossil fuel supply chain before the replacements are ready to fill the void, he has blamed COVID and OPEC+ – driving America to be more dependent on foreign oil rather than increase production domestically.

“Oil is not the problem… The problem is the energy complex is going through havoc and hell.”

Of course, always wanting to signal their virtue and follow the narrative – and amid the farce that is COP26 – Democrats have decided that this is the right time to offer a bill that stops banks from financing fossil fuel plans.

Senators Edward Markey and Jeff Merkley introduced the bill which would would require the Federal Reserve to mandate that major banks stop the financing of projects that emit greenhouse gas emissions.

The legislation would prohibit financing of new or expanded fossil fuel projects by 2022 and prohibit the financing of all fossil fuel projects by 2030. It would also prohibit thermal coal financing by 2025.

Which, of course, will lead to less development, lower supply, and higher and higher prices…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BP: Oil Demand Has Already Topped 100 Million Bpd

November 2, 2021

BP: Oil Demand Has Already Topped 100 Million Bpd

BP: Global oil demand has already exceeded the threshold of 100 million barrels per day
Demand will continue to increase and reach pre-COVID levels at some point in 2022

Global oil demand has already exceeded the threshold of 100 million barrels per day (bpd) last seen before the pandemic, supermajor BP estimates.

Demand will continue to increase and reach pre-COVID levels at some point in 2022, BP’s chief financial officer Murray Auchincloss said on Tuesday at a conference call following the release of the Q3 results.

“Somewhere next year we will be above pre-Covid levels,” Auchincloss said on the call, as carried by Bloomberg.

“OPEC+ is doing a good job managing the balance, so we remain constructive on oil prices,” BP’s CFO added on the call about BP’s third-quarter results, which beat analyst estimates.

Brent Crude prices rose by 7 percent to average $74 per barrel in the third quarter and moved above $80 per barrel in recent weeks, Auchincloss said at the Q3 results presentation.

“This reflects the strong rebound in oil demand as the impact of COVID eases as well as the measured increases in OPEC+ supply. As a result, inventories have reduced back toward pre-pandemic levels. As we look ahead to the end of the year, we expect oil prices to be supported by continued inventory draw-down, with the potential for additional demand from gas to oil switching,” BP’s executive added.

BP’s view about global oil demand is generally in line with most analyst and industry estimates pointing to consumption returning to pre-pandemic levels as soon as this quarter or early next year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Prices Will Remain High For Years To Come

October 26, 2021

Oil Prices Will Remain High For Years To Come

A growing number of major investment banks are turning bullish on oil in the medium to long term.
A lack of investment is leading to supply deficits as demand rebounds to pre-COVID levels.
Rebounding consumption and tight supply could push oil prices even higher.

Six years after former BP chief executive Bob Dudley said that “the industry needs to prepare for lower for longer,” a growing number of major investment banks now expect “higher for longer” oil prices.

Rebounding global oil consumption amid tight supply—contrary to some forecasts last year that indicate demand may have peaked or was close to its peak—as well as years of underinvestment in new supply following the 2015 crash, have prompted Wall Street banks to raise significantly their projections for oil prices in the short and medium term.

Oil prices have hit multi-year highs in recent days, with WTI Crude at its highest since 2014 and Brent Crude at the highest level since October 2018.

Even after the latest rally, prices still have headroom to rise further, many major investment banks believe.

Goldman Sachs, for example, sees Brent hitting $90 per barrel at the end of this year, up from $80 expected earlier. The key driver of Goldman’s higher forecast is global oil demand recovery amid still a weaker supply response from non-OPEC+ oil producers.

The investment bank also sees sustained higher oil prices in the coming years.

Fundamentals warrant higher oil prices, and the bank’s forecast for the next several years is $85 a barrel, Damien Courvalin, Head of Energy Research & Senior Commodity Strategist at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC earlier this month.

Oil demand will set record highs next year and the year after that, and we need to see a ramp-up in investment, he said.

“We’re facing potential multi-year deficits and the risk of significantly higher prices,” Courvalin told CNBC.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Forget $100, Options Traders Now Betting On Oil Prices Hitting $200

October 24, 2021

Forget $100, Options Traders Now Betting On Oil Prices Hitting $200

$100 Oil is no longer an ‘outrageous’ bet in the call-options market
Some speculative traders are now betting on $200 oil in December 2022
For those betting on $100 oil, the leader of the OPEC+ alliance, Saudi Arabia, has a message: look beyond the end of this year; an oversupply is coming next year

As oil prices hit multi-year highs, some speculative traders are betting on the options market that oil could exceed $100 a barrel by the end of this year and even reach a record $200 per barrel by the end of 2022.

Call options give traders the right—but not the obligation—to buy assets at a certain price, the so-called strike price, by a certain date.

The amounts of call options at triple-digit strikes have soared in recent weeks, suggesting that more speculative traders are attracted by potential quick profits from options trades, which are relatively low-cost ways to speculate on the direction of an asset.

Some “wild” bets such as call options at a $100 per barrel WTI Crude strike by December 2021 or $200 per barrel Brent Crude by December 2022 have been placed in recent weeks, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing data from provider QuikStrike.

For example, at the end of September, call options at Brent at $200 a barrel for December 2022 traded 1,300 times in one day, amid a worsening energy crunch in Europe and Asia ahead of the winter heating season in the northern hemisphere.

In WTI, the number of outstanding call options with $100 per barrel strike price with different expiry dates has surged five times since early February 2021 to more than 141,000 contracts as of the middle of October, according to data from CME quoted by the Journal.

Other popular call options for WTI included strikes at $95 or $180, QuikStrike data reported by the Journal showed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil Demand Forecasts Turn Sour As Demand Keeps Growing

October 24, 2021

Peak Oil Demand Forecasts Turn Sour As Demand Keeps Growing

Predicting oil—or, apparently, gas—prices is a notoriously uncertain business
Over the longer term, predicting oil prices becomes even more challenging
But besides crazy bets on high oil prices in the near future, there are other signs that the demise of fossil fuels has been greatly exaggerated

In the mind of many a news consumer, oil is on its way out. So is coal. So is gas, although that one might stick around for a little longer. We are, after all, moving into a new era of clean energy, and while it will take us some time to get there, it’s our only option for a future. And fossil fuels have no place in that future.

The latest oil, gas, and coal price rally, therefore, must have come as a shock to that hypothetical news consumer. It turns out, this rally said, that news does not always reflect reality. Neither do oil and gas price forecasts. Remember when there was a gas glut, as recently as last year? Everyone said it would persist, keeping prices low. But it didn’t. The glut ended quite suddenly this year.

Predicting oil—or, apparently, gas—prices is a notoriously uncertain business. This, however, is not stopping hundreds if not thousands of people from doing it on a daily basis, with varying degrees of success. Right now, most forecasters seem to expect prices to continue rising because there are simply too many factors working to support them.

Over the longer term, predicting oil prices becomes even more challenging. Right now, it is especially challenging because few forecasters appear to have anticipated the current rally, and now a flurry of revisions are being made, according to a New York Times report…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil settles up 1.5%; hits multi-year highs on surging demand

October 12, 2021

Oil settles up 1.5%; hits multi-year highs on surging demand

Oil prices surge, adding to global energy crunch

BENGALURU, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Oil prices jumped on Monday to the highest levels in years, fuelled by rebounding global demand that has contributed to power and gas shortages in key economies like China.

Brent crude rose $1.26, or 1.5%, to settle at $83.65 a barrel. The session high was $84.60, its highest since October 2018.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained $1.17, or 1.5%, to settle at $80.52, after touching its highest since late 2014 at $82.18.

The pace of economic recovery from the pandemic has supercharged energy demand at a time when oil output has slowed due to cutbacks from producing nations during the pandemic, focus on dividends by oil companies and pressure on governments to transition to cleaner energy.

A U.S. administration official on Monday said the White House stands by its calls for oil-producing countries to “do more” and they are closely monitoring the cost of oil and gasoline. read more

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, together known as OPEC+, have held back from boosting supply even as prices have risen. In July, the group agreed to boost output by 400,000 bpd to restore the 5.8 million bpd in supply curbs left from its 2020 deal to cut production in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. read more

Pipelines run to Enbridge Inc.'s crude oil storage tanks at their tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford — Pipelines run to Enbridge Inc.’s crude oil storage tanks at their tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma, March 24, 2016. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

Power prices have surged to record highs in recent weeks, driven by widespread energy shortages in Asia, Europe and the United States. Soaring natural gas prices have encouraged power generators to switch to oil. read more

“Everything is very much focused on the lack of supply returning at a time when demand appears to be roaring back,” said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Prices Rebound As U.S. Walks Back Plan To Tap Strategic Petroleum Reserve

October 10, 2021

Oil Prices Rebound As U.S. Walks Back Plan To Tap Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The U.S. Department of Energy is walking back previous comments that it was considering a release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and a ban on crude oil exports
The DoE isn’t considering tapping the SPR “at this time”
Goldman Sachs: SPR release would have limited impact on crude prices

The U.S. Department of Energy is walking back previous comments that it was considering a release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and a ban on crude oil exports, Bloomberg’s Javier Blas reported on Twitter.

According to Blas, the DoE isn’t considering tapping the SPR “at this time”.

The news comes shortly after Goldman Sachs estimated that if the DoE released oil from the SPR, it would likely be limited to just 60 million barrels—posing a $3 downside risk to its year-end $90 barrel Brent forecast.

A White House press briefing took a similar no-SPR tone.

The Biden Administration will not make any predictions about releasing the SPR to alleviate high gasoline prices, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at the daily briefing on Wednesday.

Psaki instead focused on the climate crisis, commenting on the fact that the matter was so urgent that it could not wait any longer.

“I’m not going to make any prediction of that from here.”

The press secretary noted that the Administration took steps in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, including by authorizing exchanges from the SPR with oil and refining firms.

“We’ve also taken steps into — including engaging with members of OPEC,” Psaki said.

“But I’m not going to make any other predictions at this point in time. We’re continuously monitoring. We’ll look to take additional steps as needed,” she added.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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