Saturday 1 July 2017

Not Looking Great for OPEC & Co

The complexities of the internal politics of OPEC leave me reeling, but they won't get any less fraught with this as the backdrop.



Yes, the great effort to sustain $55 looks to have failed comprehensively, and US shale production storms ahead anyway. 

$45 it is, then, which looks like serious trouble ahead, from Nigeria to Saudi to Moscow.  Economic migrants?  We ain't seen nothing yet.  One that saddens me is the hard times that have befallen Oman, my favourite Gulf state, a country I keep up-to-date with in an occasional way.   It's a benign little regime, and used to be able to afford all manner of nice civilities: but all that largesse had to come from somewhere.

Yes, casualties aplenty and worse to come, no doubt.  As noted before, perhaps $100 oil was the 'tax' we paid to keep everyone happy.

ND

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

That Peter Omani is a fine rugby player, sorry not to see him on today.

amcluesent said...

Also scuppered the SNP. Wee Eck was confident of $115 for 'oor oil'...

Raedwald said...

Not good news for the nascent UK fracking ventures - don't these need $60 oil to be viable? Not my area, but I'd feel a lot more comfortable if our fracking fields moved off the beach and established a start line, so to speak.

Thud said...

why would I want to pay a 'tax' to keep these people 'happy'?

Anonymous said...

What's a cleaning company from Damman got to do with the price of oil?

Electro-Kevin said...

We are even less able to talk about the migrant issue than we were before the Brexit vote.

How is it - which ever way we vote - the Leftist Borg's grip ends up tighter ?

The fact is this. A liberal minority has decided that the West is going to commit cultural suicide and that there needs to be a solution to the Third World and that the solution is to bring it here.

Oil pricing has little to do with it.

It's more to do with the fact that Sheiks and Oligarchs refuse to distribute the wealth and our own liberals think we should pay instead.

Anonymous said...

Remember when loyalty was the Tory secret weapon? When the Mail are running 'split' stories one has a problem.

Anonymous said...

If I were a middle east energy company I would be seriously thinking of fields of solar panels and a distribution system to Europe.

Anonymous said...

What say, ND? I had no idea Ireland was so dependent on UK power and gas lines. If the EU push a punitive Brexit, Ireland will be the first to suffer.

https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/After-Brexit-will-Ireland-be-next-to-exit-1.pdf

Nick Drew said...

they are indeedy & I think they know it

many moons ago, I wrote:

The settlement we reach - with Europe, and amongst the various parts of the UK - must be so good that the Irish (that is, the Southern Irish) should seriously start thinking about whether they want to join us

problem for that is, Ireland is so small it isn't too difficult for the EC to hose them down with €€€

Steven_L said...

The Irish were neutral when Hitler was running Europe, so don't hold your breath.

AndrewZ said...

"solar panels and a distribution system to Europe"

There would be huge losses in transmission over such a long distance and the cables would be very vulnerable to sabotage.

"it isn't too difficult for the EC to hose them down with €€€"

...which is an obvious incentive for the Irish to talk up the possibility of Irexit!