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As global oil markets shift their attention from U.S. shale oil production back to a resurgent Saudi Arabia and Russia and geopolitical concerns bearing down on oil prices, Citigroup said last Wednesday that the U.S. is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia next year as the world’s largest exporter of crude and oil products. The U.S. exported a record 8.3 million barrels per day (bpd) last week of crude oil and petroleum products, the government also said Wednesday. Top crude oil exporter Saudi Arabia’s, for its part, exported 9.3 million bpd in January, while Russia exported 7.4 million bpd, the bank...

As OPEC’s efforts to balance the oil market bear fruit, U.S. producers are reaping the benefits - and flooding Europe with a record amount of crude.

“I was not disputing the amazing revolution of shale . . .[but] in the overall global supply demand picture it’s not going to wreck the train,” al-Falih said, charging that the IEA is overstating the role of shale in a global market. “We should not be scared,” he added. “That’s the core job of the IEA, not to take it out of context.” Al-Falih has clearly become annoyed at all the pestering from reporters and market analysts about the prospect of U.S. shale spoiling OPEC’s plans this year. He put on a brave face and dismissed questions about OPEC losing market share as...

Comedian Chelsea Handler posted a tweet Wednesday night suggesting that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) is gay and being blackmailed into siding with President Donald Trump on immigration reform. In her typo-riddled tweet, Handler applied her vulgar comedy when suggesting that there was an inappropriate sexual video of Graham in a compromising situation with another male, and she told him "coming out" would be more honorable. "Holy, f*ck f*ck," Handler tweeted. "I just [sic] the video of trumps bipartisan "meeting" yesterday. Hey, Lindsey Graham what kind of dick sucking video do they have on you for you 2 be acting...

On Sunday 9th, 2017 Venezuela hit a hundred days of anti-dictatorial regime demonstrations. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have taken over main streets and roads demanding a new presidential election, a humanitarian solution to counter food and medical supply shortages, the release of political prisoners and the reinstitution of the National Assembly’s functions. Since the protests started, more than one hundred people have been killed, 3,500 arrested and thousands injured across the country. This critical economic, political and social situation does not seem to have an easy solution. In Venezuela, 96 percent of foreign currency earnings come from oil industry,...

Emily Ratajkowski says her breasts are holding her back from getting acting jobs. The actress — who first broke onto the scene as one of the topless models in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video — says she thinks it’s a form of gender discrimination. “There’s this thing that happens to me: ‘Oh, she’s too sexy.’ It’s like an anti-woman thing, that people don’t want to work with me because my boobs are too big,” Ratajkowski, 26, tells Harper’s Bazaar Australia for their August issue. “What’s wrong with boobs? They’re a beautiful feminine thing that needs to be celebrated. Like, who...

The Democrats prove once again that they are the true misogynists. Democrat Congressman, Cedric Richmond in Louisiana disrespected Kellyanne Conway by making a crude ‘joke’ about her looking ‘familiar’ on her knees in reference to the picture of her kneeling on the couch in the Oval Office.

I’ll take Trump with his rough edges and sharp elbows, warts and all, over any of the oh-so-refined thoroughly corrupt bought-and-paid-for globalists being shoved down our throats Recently much ado has been made of some crude comments that Donald Trump made some years back. Media mavens are all aflutter with outraged disgust. I do not know what convent these shocked sisters came from, but I have heard similar male braggadocio my entire adult life. Perhaps they need to get out more.

The glut of gasoline and other refined products has taken center stage for the oil markets, threatening to initiate a new bear market and push oil prices down below $40 per barrel for the first time in months. But while a surplus of refined products is weighing on crude prices, there could be another culprit that does not get as much publicity. Goldman Sachs says that a strong dollar deserves more blame for an oil price downturn, and further strengthening of the greenback looms as a much larger threat to prices than the gasoline glut. The U.S. Federal Reserve could...

Oil prices have been crushed over the past two years because of a glut of production. With supplies falling off, particularly in the U.S. shale patch, prices have begun to firm up. But another glut that has built up and has stubbornly refused to fall threatens another oil price downturn. In its July Oil Market Report, the International Energy Agency warned about shockingly high levels of refined products sitting in storage. Gasoline, diesel and heating oil are built up to such high levels in so many parts of the world, that a sharp rise in crude oil prices is unlikely...

Oil prices showed weakness on Monday once again after a brutal few days last week. But WTI and Brent moved up in early trading hours on Tuesday. Several news items overnight pushed oil up on Tuesday, including a falling U.S. dollar, a ruling from an international court on the South China Sea (more below), news that an ExxonMobil well was attacked in the Niger Delta (something which Exxon denies), and reports that some oil exports were delayed from Iraq because of a pipeline leak. The markets are awaiting crude inventory estimates from API later today, which could move prices.

There has been a lot of optimism returning to the energy markets of late as oil prices have climbed to the $50 a barrel region. Ironically, while a few years ago $50 a barrel would have been seen as an unthinkably low oil price, today it is regarded as much needed relief from prices that ran in the $25 a barrel region earlier this year. Yet with the climb in prices, analysts are now starting to forecast prices per barrel of as much as $80 in the next year. That view is not the mainstream though. Instead most analysts are...

U.S. crude oil exports rose to 591,000 barrels per day in April, up 83,000 barrels from March, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau on Friday. The total figures are the highest since at least 1920, Rigzone reports. A majority of the crude - 324,000 bpd of it - went to Canada, 90,000 more went to Curacao and 36,000 others went to the Bahamas. The figures come almost six months after the U.S. government lifted restrictions on crude exports.

It took the market over a day to appreciate the fallout from the devastating Canadian wildfire which has led to a state of emergency in Alberta, the evacuation of over 80,000 people in the oil sands gateway city of Fort McMurray, and the destruction of over 1,600 structures. According to insurance industry reports, losses from the fire are approaching $1 billion, and will likely set records for the country. The average cost of a single-family home in the community was recently around CAD$627,000 ($487,000), Aon said, citing data from the local real estate industry, and cited by CNBC. That would...

Oil prices surged to their highest levels in six months on Wednesday as the Fed left interest rates unchanged. WTI jumped by 2.8 percent to $45.29 per barrel and Brent climbed by 3.17 percent to $47.19 per barrel. Those are the highest prices so far in 2016 and the oil markets continue to bet on rising momentum for crude. The Federal Reserve added strength to oil when it announced its decision to leave interest rates unchanged, a move that caused the dollar to weaken and oil prices to rise. The Fed also softened its language regarding its concerns over the...

While everyone is talking about the failure of the Doha negotiations, Kuwait has more than made up for OPEC’s failure all on its own. Kuwait’s oil workers walked off the job this weekend, flexing their muscles over a pay dispute. The state-owned Kuwait Oil Company took to Twitter to report the damage done by the workers strike, announcing that oil production fell to 1.1 million barrels per day on Sunday, a catastrophic development considering it normally produces nearly 3 mb/d. Also, Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the state-owned refining company, said that its production of refined products dropped from 930,000 to 520,000...

Huge traffic jams of tankers have formed around the world with some 200 million barrels of oil either waiting to be loaded or delivered as ports struggle to cope with record volumes in perhaps the most visible sign of the global oil glut. Almost all of the over 660 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), the largest tankers in use to transport seaborne oil, are used to ship crude between the Middle East and Asia’s consumption hubs around India and the Far East. The map above shows all of these super tankers in operation on April 11. The icon on the...

Oil climbed after U.S. crude inventories unexpectedly dropped from the highest level in more than eight decades.

Oil prices should fall, possibly hard, in coming weeks. That is because fundamentals do not support the present price. Prices should fall to around $30 once the empty nature of an OPEC-plus-Russia production freeze is understood. A return to the grim reality of over-supply and the weakness of the world economy could push prices well into the $20s. A Production Freeze Will Not Reduce The Supply Surplus An OPEC-plus-Russia production cut would be a great step toward re-establishing oil-market balance. I believe that will happen later in 2016 but is not on the table today.

1) Trump has favorability ratings that make him unelectable: The American public is very familiar with Donald Trump and people hate his guts. Trump's current favorable/unfavorable rating is 34/58. Just as a point of comparison, the two biggest landslides in history were against Jimmy Carter (33/58) and Walter Mondale (34/40). Trump is so unpopular with the general electorate that we might as well be running Jared Fogle or Bill Cosby.2) Trump consistently loses to Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polls: Given that so many people know Trump and already dislike him, it's hard to understand why anyone thinks he'll win in...