quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Hmmm, "please don't pump so much oil, please don't pump so much oil....."

Weren't these the douchebags that ramped up their own production a few years ago to force oil prices down in order to shut down US petroleum producers and US frackers in particular?

Hmmmm.

As well as the same douchebags that had us Paying $5 a gallon for gasoline for many years, not too long ago.

quote:

Originally posted by BBMW:
That was an attempt by the Saudis to punish the other producers and get them in line. It may have worked to some extent, except of course, with us.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
Hmmm, "please don't pump so much oil, please don't pump so much oil....."

Weren't these the douchebags that ramped up their own production a few years ago to force oil prices down in order to shut down US petroleum producers and US frackers in particular?

Hmmmm.

Make no mistake about it. They kicked many hard working AMERICAN FAMILIES square in the nuts. Sure big oil walked away leaner and more efficient, but a lot folks lost a lot. That's the story off working in the patch though. Jobs are starting to come back.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:
If US producers complied, it would be criminal anti-competitive behavior. The DoJ frowns on price rigging.

Only when its done without the government getting a cut and having a say.

Our own tatortodd is the man I want to hear input from on this topic...

Most of the original anti-trust / competition laws in the United States were due to the John D Rockefeller era oil trusts/companies. I'm required to take annual training on it, and the attorneys putting on the class are adamant that the fines are large and the personal implications are life altering. The most famous in recent times was actually made into a movie starring Matt Damon, and it was about lysine price fixing between Archer Daniels Midland, 2 Japanese companies, and 2 South Korean companies. The company paid over $150M in fines when combined across multiple countries, and several ADM execs got to spend some time in club fed.

Lysine is orders of magnitude smaller market that oil & gas, and I'd wager that if US oil companies were dumb enough (we're not) to act like OPEC then the fine wouldn't fit in the US Capitol rotunda if paid in $100 bills.

The 2nd largest oil field in the world was found not that long ago. (SECOND LARGEST in the world after the Saudi Ghawar field) Very recent. Texas.

God did bless Texas as it turned out. Permian Basin, right under where folks had been drilling for near a century and thought to be near played out. Nope, not played out at all it turns out.



http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...f-the-world-cm282232

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Originally posted by Opus Dei:

quote:

Originally posted by saigonsmuggler:
Read somewhere that between offshore and fracking, the US has more oil than the Saudis (though not all of it can be extracted at $40-60/bl) and also some rumor that the Saudis are pumping like 35-40% seawater these days.

I think Saudis' cost is really low though - like $10-17 a barrel?

Probably they are injecting salt water to lift the oil. This is pretty certain the field is in decline. Tatortodd could elaborate, if he sees this.

It's relatively easy to keep track of how much oil each of the OPEC companies produces as they don't trust each other, and there are only a handful of pipelines crossing international borders which means it's exported by barge/tanker/supertanker which is easy to spy upon.

The harder thing to do is to state definitively the proven and unproven reserves as OPEC countries are authoritarian dictatorships/monarchies/emirates. Everything you see on it is best case an estimate, but deceipt and misrepresentation cloud the issue.

Traditionally, the Saudis have long held the advantage in production costs per barrel oil equivalent (I've seen public reports of high 8s). In the US, non-shale oil has traditionally had a cost advantage over shale oil. Shale oil has traditionally had a cost advantage over the Canadian oil sands which has had a cost advantage over the heavy oil of the Vens (one reason their production cratered since nationalizing the oil companies) which has an advantage over the Brazilians' deepwater salt reserves (deepwater and highly corrosive is a costly combination).

I used the word traditionally above quite frequently for a reason. The downturn in oil 2.5 years ago has lead to a lot of innovations/efficiencies as people are a lot more cost sensitive at $35-50 oil than they were at $100+ oil. Lots of public reports on production costs per barrel narrowing the gap between Saudi Arabia and rest of world. I suspect some of it is snake oil marketing (e.g. one newspaper report said Texas shale oil is within $2 of Saudi Arabia).

Bigboreshooter is much more knowledgeable than I am on reservoirs and extracting oil from them. I don't get too worked up about hearing someone is water injecting (secondary recovery) as it both helps recovery and greatly reduces the probability of subsidence. It used to be that seeing someone C02 flooding a field (tertiary recover) that I knew the end was near, but the additional reservoir found beneath the Permian basin in West Texas has turned that barometer on its ear (i.e. they had C02 flooded much of the reservoir that has been produced since the 20s, but in the last 12 to 18 months discovered a deeper layer of oil).

Love this quote from Syriana

"Twenty years ago you had the highest Gross National Product in the world, now you're tied with Albania. Your second largest export is secondhand goods, closely followed by dates which you're losing five cents a pound on... You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other's heads off and that's where you'll be in another hundred years, so, yes, on behalf of my firm I accept your money."

And as a P.S., the first Gulf War where Kuwait was taken and Saudi Arabia was threatened by Iraq. Who did they come running to for help?

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
I still remember 1973. Screw them.

And 1978. Suck it Mohamud!

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Originally posted by SgtGold:

quote:

Originally posted by shovelhead:
I still remember 1973. Screw them.

And 1978. Suck it Mohamud!

And 1100-2017.

Sorry you wasted your money on palaces, cars, and gold plated things instead of investing and diversifying your economy.

Anyone who confuses global oil trade with free enterprise is a fool, as we Americans are when we fight wars to keep supply lines open.
OPEC's demise will get a big push when China begins to use hydraulic fracturing in earnest.
Russia just passed the Saudis as the leading crude producer, so I can see why Putin is first in line to receive the transfer of wealth from the U.S. that built all those glorious cities in the Mideast.

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Originally posted by downtownv:
I don't think President Trump will be bowing to these basturds any time soon!

This.

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Originally posted by jimb888:
The 2nd largest oil field in the world was found not that long ago. (SECOND LARGEST in the world after the Saudi Ghawar field) Very recent. Texas.

I sold at $80.