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Kunstler: Twenty-Three Geniuses

If there is a Pulitzer Booby Prize for stupidity, waste no time in awarding it to The New York Times ’ Monday feature, The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion . The former “newspaper of record” wants us to assume now that the sky’s the limit for human activity on the planet earth. Problemo cancelled. The article and accompanying video was actually prepared by a staff of 23 journalists. Give the Times another award for rounding up so many credentialed idiots for one job. Apart from just dumping on Stanford U. biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb (1968), this foolish “crisis report” strenuously overlooks virtually every blossoming fiasco around the world. This must be what comes of viewing the world through your cell phone. One main contention in the story is that the problem of feeding an exponentially growing population was already solved by the plant scientist Norman […]

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Oil Futures Rangebound Ahead of This Week’s OPEC Meeting

By Eric Yep Oil markets were lukewarm in Asian trade Tuesday as investors remained on the sidelines ahead of the all-important meeting of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries later this week. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in July traded at $60.20 a barrel at 0313 GMT, unchanged in the Globex electronic session. July Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.06 to $64.82 a barrel. The market consensus is largely that OPEC will not change its stance at its June 5 meeting and maintain an oil production ceiling of 30 million barrels a day, as producers like Saudi Arabia choose to their defend market share. The Saudi strategy of defending oil-market share over price is working, its oil minister Ali al-Naimi said on Monday as he arrived in Vienna for the OPEC meeting. Mr. Naimi, a key figure in […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil prices stabilize, firm demand counters oversupply

SINGAPORE Crude oil prices stabilized on Tuesday due to firm demand after dipping in early trade on expectations that OPEC would not cut output at its meeting this week. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets this Friday in Vienna to discuss its production strategy, with U.S. bank Citi saying the group was likely to maintain current production. Prices were supported as Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said overnight that demand would pick up and tighten the market in the second half of the year. "Comments from Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi were characteristically upbeat, acknowledging a current surplus in the market, but anticipating stronger second half demand and an eventual rebalancing of the market," Citi said in a note responding to his comments. Front-month Brent crude futures fell to a low of $64.71 per barrel on Tuesday, before edging back to $64.85 by 0345 GMT. […]

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Oil Edges Down in Mild Trading as Dollar Gains

Oil pumps in Bahrain. Oil prices started the week lower. Oil prices edged lower Monday as the dollar strengthened, and traders postponed betting on the market until the world’s oil cartel holds its semiannual meeting at the end of the week. Trading volumes in both the U.S. and global benchmark contracts were a fraction of their average levels. Light, sweet crude for July fell 10 cents, or 0.2%, to settle at $60.20 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and the global Brent crude contract declined 68 cents, or 1%, to end at $64.88 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange. In the absence of major fundamental news for the market, the day’s moves were largely driven by the dollar, which gained in reaction to positive U.S. economic data on construction spending and manufacturing activity, analysts said. Oil often moves inversely to the dollar, as a stronger greenback makes […]

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Natural Gas Inches Up as Production Data Tapers Off

By Christian Berthelsen Natural-gas futures inched up Monday as investors looked past bearish near-term demand indicators to focus on an apparent pullback from recent production levels. Natural gas for July delivery rose 0.7 cent, or 0.3%, to $2.649 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The slight gain ended a five-session losing streak. The U.S. Energy Information Administration and private data groups said pipeline data and other indicators suggest the industry is beginning to cut production. The EIA said in a monthly report that production fell in March for the second time this year, and research consultancy Gelber & Associates said gas flow data on pipelines has been showing declines. Still, analysts expect the EIA’s weekly inventory data to show a major increase when released Thursday. "Production is still near record highs," Gelber said in a note. "The sentiment continues to be bearish." Natural-gas prices […]

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Euro’s Growing Ties to Oil Only Encourage Bears Seeing Parity

If you want to know which way the euro’s headed, ask an oil trader. The euro-dollar rate is tracking crude prices more closely than at any time in the past two years. The European Central Bank gives more weight to the impact of energy prices on inflation than the Federal Reserve, so when oil started falling in the middle of last year it was one more reason for Europe to step up monetary stimulus to boost price growth. The result: the euro lost almost 25 percent of its value against its U.S. counterpart through mid-March, before rallying in line with oil. Given the growing correlation, analyst predictions that crude prices won’t rebound in the next several months are providing support for the view that the single currency will fall toward parity with the dollar. “Having seen how the bounce in oil prices coincided with the bounce in the euro […]

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Russia, Non-OPEC Producers Met with OPEC Last Month

VIENNA—Officials from Russia’s energy ministry last month met with other oil producing countries at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries headquarters in Vienna to discuss a global oil glut that has sent prices tumbling. The secret conversations ended on May 13 after two days of discussions and without the release of a public statement, people familiar with the matter said. The discussions underscore the distance between OPEC and Russia, the world’s largest oil producer, ahead of Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak’s unusual visit to Vienna for OPEC’s semiannual meeting. Though Mr. Novak is expected to meet with OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri and some OPEC ministers from outside the Persian Gulf on Wednesday, he has signaled Russia won’t do what some OPEC hard-liners want: namely cut its own production. “At the meetings, it is not planned to agree on production volumes,” Mr. Novak told the Interfax news […]

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Why $65 per barrel oil looks like a ceiling, not a floor

Tags: oil | oil prices | opec Additional reporting and writing by Kevin Allison. The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own. Big Oil is too confident about crude prices. After a 40 percent rally from January’s six-year low, the momentum has been on the upside. But the current prices – $65 a barrel for Brent and $60 for WTI – look more like a ceiling than a floor. That is not what many insiders seem to think. Some oil service companies expect mid-$70s Brent by the end of this year. Anglo-Dutch Shell assumed oil will rebound to $90 by 2018 in its $70 billion takeover of the UK’s BG Group. Some believe that the steep cut in capex costs will affect supply, including shale, and boost prices again. But such predictions may underestimate shale’s potential. Lower drilling and pumping costs, among other efficiencies, have […]

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U.N. climate deal in Paris may be graveyard for 2C goal

BONN/WASHINGTON The U.N.’s Paris climate conference, designed to reach a plan for curbing global warming, may instead become the graveyard for its defining goal: to stop temperatures rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Achieving the 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) target has been the driving force for climate negotiators and scientists, who say it is the limit beyond which the world will suffer ever worsening floods, droughts, storms and rising seas. But six months before world leaders convene in Paris, prospects are fading for a deal that would keep average temperatures below the ceiling. Greenhouse gas emissions have reached record highs in recent years. And proposed cuts in carbon emissions from 2020 and promises to deepen them in subsequent reviews – offered by governments wary of the economic cost of shifting from fossil fuels – are unlikely to be enough for the 2C goal. "Paris will be a […]

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OPEC officials say no need to raise oil output target

VIENNA OPEC officials dismissed comments from Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley on Monday that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries may raise its oil output target when the producer group meets this week. The cartel’s present production rate is around 31 million barrels per day (bpd), and the group forecasts the call on OPEC stocks to rise to 30.5 million bpd in the second half of the year, the bank said in a note ahead of OPEC’s June 5 talks. Both are higher than the group’s output target of 30 million bpd, which has remained unchanged for several years. One OPEC delegate, in Vienna for the group’s meeting, said there was no need to raise the target. "You see that OPEC is already producing higher (than 30 million bpd)," the delegate said. An official from an African OPEC country, asked about the possibility of raising the target, said: […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple