Why is oil below $50 right now?

[Big Empty]

This Could Explain One Of The Biggest Mysteries Of Cheap Oil

Here’s a simpler hypothesis (http://desmog.ca/2016/03/01/saudi-arabia-simply-sees-carbon-bubble-what-it): Maybe the Saudis aren’t cutting production in the face of low prices because huge portions of their oil reserves might eventually become worthless. That’s what James Rowe, an environmental studies professor at the University of Victoria, thinks (http://desmog.ca/2016/03/01/saudi-arabia-simply-sees-carbon-bubble-what-it).

If that happens, today’s oil prices won’t look low — not when there’s an overabundance of an asset that can’t be sold. But oil prices are the lowest they’ve been in 12 years, you say. How could they ever be considered high?

This explanation relies on two related ideas: a carbon bubble and stranded assets.

The carbon bubble refers to the fact that energy companies around the world are sitting on five times (http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2-1.pdf) more fossil fuels than can be burned, the research nonprofit Carbon Tracker estimates.

Those assets, worth about $2 trillion, are referred to as “stranded assets.”
So what does that mean for an oil company that controls a state? It might as well sell as much oil as possible while still can.

Saudis can’t sell oil for $100 a barrel, obviously, but Rowe said they “appear to be positioning themselves for the next best option: gobbling up as much of the earth’s remaining carbon budget for themselves before the bubble bursts. Isn’t it better to sell at a lower price than to receive nothing at all from vast unburnable reserves?”

By the time the world has moved on from oil, Rowe said, Saudi Arabia “will have sold what it could while its reserves were still burnable.”

And the country will have moved on as well. Its oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, has said Saudi Arabia will be a solar exporter (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/saudi-arabia-oil-minister-sees-day-when-nation-exports-gigawatts) by the middle of this century.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-arabia-cheap-oil-prices_us_56d868f4e4b0000de4039231

How's them apples for all you astute stock market players?

The Repugs, and all other corrupt conservatives planet-wide, defending their paymasters against renewables are propping up a dying horse.


I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut :) I made 2k today. disappointed I didn't wait a little while longer since the stock went up another 1.00 smh

[CosmicCowboy]

Hey Bookaki...what percentage of that stranded carbon is coal? 80%?

Solar is nice and definitely has it's place but it will never be as affordably transportable as fossil fuels.

[boutons_deux]

Hey Bookaki...what percentage of that stranded carbon is coal? 80%?

Solar is nice and definitely has it's place but it will never be as affordably transportable as fossil fuels.

coal? yeah, straned coalco face planting, investors fleeing.

energy delivery to solar and wind is FREE.

biggest problems for renewables:

1. BigCarbon, BigElectricity hiring Repugs to block, kill renewables.

2. new distribution nets crossing recalcitrant (shake-down) land owners

3. smarting up distribution networks to be bi-directionnel: from centralized power sources and from distributed power sources.

4. off-line energy storage for intermittent renewable sources, but energy research is advancing rapidly, in spite of VRWC/BigCarbon/Repugs efforts to block it.

It's all gonna happen, but You People and the whore politicians you elect are doing a great job of fucking everything up.

[CosmicCowboy]

Fuck you Bookaki...

I was the first one in here to invest in renewable energy for my home...

I can just accept that each energy source has it's place in modern society.

[boutons_deux]

Fuck you Bookaki...

I was the first one in here to invest in renewable energy for my home...

I can just accept that each energy source has it's place in modern society.

BigCarbon has fucked the planet, no longer has any justifiable place anywhere on the planet.

and you elect, support TX, Fed Repugs who block, kill renewables and renewable research.

[RandomGuy]

This Could Explain One Of The Biggest Mysteries Of Cheap Oil

Here’s a simpler hypothesis (http://desmog.ca/2016/03/01/saudi-arabia-simply-sees-carbon-bubble-what-it): Maybe the Saudis aren’t cutting production in the face of low prices because huge portions of their oil reserves might eventually become worthless. That’s what James Rowe, an environmental studies professor at the University of Victoria, thinks (http://desmog.ca/2016/03/01/saudi-arabia-simply-sees-carbon-bubble-what-it).

If that happens, today’s oil prices won’t look low — not when there’s an overabundance of an asset that can’t be sold. But oil prices are the lowest they’ve been in 12 years, you say. How could they ever be considered high?

This explanation relies on two related ideas: a carbon bubble and stranded assets.

The carbon bubble refers to the fact that energy companies around the world are sitting on five times (http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2-1.pdf) more fossil fuels than can be burned, the research nonprofit Carbon Tracker estimates.

Those assets, worth about $2 trillion, are referred to as “stranded assets.”
So what does that mean for an oil company that controls a state? It might as well sell as much oil as possible while still can.

Saudis can’t sell oil for $100 a barrel, obviously, but Rowe said they “appear to be positioning themselves for the next best option: gobbling up as much of the earth’s remaining carbon budget for themselves before the bubble bursts. Isn’t it better to sell at a lower price than to receive nothing at all from vast unburnable reserves?”

By the time the world has moved on from oil, Rowe said, Saudi Arabia “will have sold what it could while its reserves were still burnable.”

And the country will have moved on as well. Its oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, has said Saudi Arabia will be a solar exporter (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/saudi-arabia-oil-minister-sees-day-when-nation-exports-gigawatts) by the middle of this century.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/saudi-arabia-cheap-oil-prices_us_56d868f4e4b0000de4039231

How's them apples for all you astute stock market players?

The Repugs, and all other corrupt conservatives planet-wide, defending their paymasters against renewables are propping up a dying horse.




Two years later. oil still hovering around $50.

[RandomGuy]

Hey Bookaki...what percentage of that stranded carbon is coal? 80%?

Solar is nice and definitely has it's place but it will never be as affordably transportable as fossil fuels.

Shell is beginning to add fast charging electric to their stations in Europe.

most major car companies see the writing on the wall.

Solar is vastly more transportable, because you only have to transport it once. Imagine a small charging station on the backroads in Africa, powered by solar. You only have to get the panels out once, rather than build a huge transportation infrastructure.

[SpursforSix]

Two years later. oil still hovering around $50.

Two years ago, oil was around $40. Now it's around $60.

[RandomGuy]

Two years ago, oil was around $40. Now it's around $60.

Eyup. Hadn't checked the most recent spot. Hasn't had a contraction in price in a while. Looks due for one.

Looks like the ceiling is around $60.

[SpursforSix]

Eyup. Hadn't checked the most recent spot. Hasn't had a contraction in price in a while. Looks due for one.

Looks like the ceiling is around $60.

That seems premature to call $60 the ceiling this early. It may prove to be right but there's nothing to indicate that right now.

[RandomGuy]

That seems premature to call $60 the ceiling this early. It may prove to be right but there's nothing to indicate that right now.

I will bow to your undoubtedly superior expertise in this. :worthy:

My call was a total "gut" guess, based on a brief look at the last 5 year history.

[SpursforSix]

I will bow to your undoubtedly superior expertise in this. :worthy:

My call was a total "gut" guess, based on a brief look at the last 5 year history.

Not an expert.

I am however and expert on track, football, movies, dem blues, wrassling, and a bunch of other shit.

[RandomGuy]

Not an expert.

I am however and expert on track, football, movies, dem blues, wrassling, and a bunch of other shit.

Ah. I thought you were tracking WTI, based on some of the investment talk earlier in thread.

[SpursforSix]

Ah. I thought you were tracking WTI, based on some of the investment talk earlier in thread.

Well yeah. I can read a chart and reconcile with the fundamentals but I'm not an expert. I can provide my general thoughts.

But if you want expert level, ask me about track and field or dem blues.

There was a famous philosopher who said "in medias res". Which translates into trying to be an expert in things you know the most about.

That being said, I appreciate your bow down to me.

[RandomGuy]

Hey Bookaki...what percentage of that stranded carbon is coal? 80%?

Solar is nice and definitely has it's place but it will never be as affordably transportable as fossil fuels.

Renewable Energy Will Be Consistently Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels By 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/01/13/renewable-energy-cost-effective-fossil-fuels-2020

[RandomGuy]

Government Agency Warns Global Oil Industry Is on the Brink of a Meltdown

We are not running out of oil, but it's becoming uneconomical to exploit it—another reason we need to move to renewables as quickly as possible.

A government research report produced by Finland warns that the increasingly unsustainable economics of the oil industry could derail the global financial system within the next few years.

The new report is published by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), which operates under the government’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. GTK is currently the European Commission’s lead coordinator of the EU’s ProMine project, its flagship mineral resources database and modeling system.

The report was produced as an internal research exercise for the Finnish government, which until 2019 held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Signed off by GTK’s director of scientific research Dr Saku Vuori, the report is written by GTK senior scientist Dr Simon Michaux of the Ore Geology and Mineral Economics Unit. It conducts a comprehensive global assessment of scientific research into the state of the global oil industry with goal of determining how the risks of a global supply gap could impact mining and mineral production.

...

The report says we are not running out of oil—vast reserves exist—but says that it is becoming uneconomical to exploit it. The plateauing of crude oil production was “a decisive turning point for the industrial ecosystem,” with demand shortfall being made up from liquid fuels which are far more expensive and difficult to extract—namely, unconventional oil sources like crude oil from deep offshore sources, oil sands, and especially shale oil (also known as "tight oil," extracted by fracking).

...

The coming crash
‘Quantitative Easing’ or QE as it’s often known in shorthand, consists of massive programs of money creation through central banks purchasing government debt. But the report warns that the scale of QE could pave the way for another financial crash as oil markets become unstable, most likely within half a decade.

The role of QE in propping up the oil industry and wider global economy was not anticipated in traditional peak oil theory, which failed to predict the low oil prices endangering profitability. The report concludes that: “The era of cheap and abundant energy is long gone… Money supply and debt have grown faster than the real economy. Debt saturation and paralysis is now a very real risk, requiring a global scale reset.”

...

A global peak?
The report is heavily critical of conventional peak oil theory, which predicted that global oil production would peak and decline shortly after 2000 due to ‘below-ground’ geological depletion, leading to permanently spiralling oil prices. The approach is described as “too simplistic” for overlooking “the complex and dynamic interactions of a number of issues around the oil industry (most notably geopolitical actions and the effect on Quantitative Easing).”

But the report also dismisses the now fashionable rejection of the entire relevance of peak oil. Although there is “plenty of oil left,” it is “increasingly expensive to access”.

The current economic system cannot sustain oil prices above $100 a barrel and keep growing, while producers for most new fields cannot sustain profits at prices as low as $45 a barrel without more borrowing.

According to Dr. Michaux, the global economy is therefore caught between a rock and a hard place. “Oil prices will be held low for a time,” he explained. “The problem is all consumers at all scales in all sectors are saturated with debt. Costs are going up, while the ability to generate wealth is contracting.”

This means that although the oil industry can’t cope with the lower prices, the global economy can’t cope with high prices. “I now see peak oil as being defined by a contracting window between an oil price high enough to keep producers in business and a price low enough for consumers to access oil derived goods and services,” said Michaux.

As a result of this combination of geological challenges and above-ground market constraints, Michaux’s government study warns that a global peak in total oil production is either “imminent” over the next few years, or may already have happened, possibly in November 2018. But we will only be able to fully confirm the peak around five years after the fact.

More than half the world’s oil producing countries are now in decline, the report claims, with the bulk of new production concentrated among just six main producers. When looking specifically at crude oil operations, the report says, about 81 percent of the world’s oil fields are now in decline, with the rate of discoveries of new oil fields declining to record lows.

By 2040, this means the world would need to replace over four times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia, just to keep output consistently flat.


...

[cut out a lot of the article it is VERY long.-RG] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8848g5/government-agency-warns-global-oil-industry-is-on-the-brink-of-a-meltdown

[boutons_deux]

Brexit assholes just passed a law, no more carbon fuel vehicles sales after 2035

the shift to electric and hydrogen fuel could be massive, but the planet is unavoidably fucked anyway.

[boutons_deux]

$1.99 in n/e SA now