UAE Oil Min Says Oversupply May Last Months or Years

Reuters via Rig Zone ^ | January 07, 2015 | William Maclean

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

We should subsidize domestic production - 3Fingas

NO!!!

No more government subsidies of private industry. Not even for the ones that pays my wages.

If you want to harm private business, just ask the government to help them.

I don’t like the idea of a subsidy, but this would be a good time to consider a $5 tariff on Eastern Hemisphere oil. Just enough to make domestic production marginally more profitable. It would be worth it, IMHO, for the added stability it could lend to domestic oil production.

It would make a difference at $50 per barrel, less so at $100. But it doesn’t look like $100 per bbl is an imminent prospect anyway. And the more we keep our domestic production in business, the harder it will be in the future for the price to go stratospheric on us again.

Full disclosure, my ox is getting gored by the price drop. Which I’m happy to see at the pump, tho . . . for myself but also for you.

[thackney]

No still no.

We do not need nor want the government to select the winners and losers in private industry.

We need our refineries and petrochemical industries as well. To make their feedstock more expensive than other countries will also cost jobs and investment in the US.

Stop looking for government to manipulate markets for your desires. We can compete with the rest of the world on our own.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

When we have an important industry being jerked around by foreign powers, IMHO the minimum “interference” our government should impose would be to put a thumb on the scale in favor of local fuel production. Energy independence is within our grasp. But maybe we don’t really want it after all, and are willing to be hostage to hostiles?

Impose a modest tariff now, while the price of crude is in flux, and lower than we have been accustomed to. Then when the Saudis want to put the screws to our industry, they will have just a little more headwind. Put whatever revenue you get from the tariff into subsidizing domestic use, to answer your objection about damage to petroleum processors and users. That would be fine.

Whatever you do along those lines creates distortions, I fully get that. But the “system” we have now needs to be stabilized, in a way that favors security.

[thackney]

No government selection of winners and loser in private industry.

Why do you want to make our refineries and petrochemical industries less competitive with other nations?

Your suggestion will make it cheaper to shut down a refinery, lose the jobs, and just import gasoline rather than the whole barrel.

Quit looking to government to help private industry. We do just fine without their “help”. Take Reagan’s viewpoint in this.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I guess I am just not willing to take my foot off of the neck of OPEC if I don’t have to. If they embargoed us once, shame on them. If they embargo us again and we have even the slightest difficulty because of it, shame on us.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

OPEC is producing flat out right now, and “suffering” because they can’t gouge us for an above-free-competitive-market price and still sell oil. That is just as it should be. Right?

If they ever get control of the market again, and suddenly we wish we had the drilling/fracking infrastructure in place again that we have now, will you then agree that we “coulda woulda shoulda” prevented that viper from breeding again?

I will grant you that the genie is out of the bottle, and OPEC will always be threatened by the possible reemergence of the fracking boom, so OPEC is in trouble, and likely to stay that way for awhile.

But that last phrase could be made to read, “OPEC is dead, and there is a stake in its heart.”

And it couldn’t happen to nicer guys. </sarcasm>

Yeah, it would cost us something economically. But compared to a battle, let alone a war, it would be dirt cheap.

[thackney]

I’m not willing to request punishment from our own government just because OPEC isn’t punishing us today.

The most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’

- Ronald Reagan

[thackney]

OPEC is producing flat out right now,

False. Their production is basically unchanged for years. Saudi was producing more last year than today.

[Paladin2]

FYI:

http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-breakeven-oil-production-prices-2014-11

[thackney]

By the way, don’t believe that the numbers are so well defined. Those charts may represent an average value from a particular time frame, but breakeven prices in a play vary from company in the same field, and even within the same company and in the same play but in different locations.

If you start reading several reports, you will find the estimates for break even cost widely vary for the same fields. The information is not clear cut and easily available.