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The horrific attacks in Paris prompted a swift response from French President Francois Hollande, as he dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Eastern Mediterranean a day after airstrikes hit the key city ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. The United States responded with airstrikes on Monday, November 16, targeting hundreds of trucks that the U.S. military believes are used for smuggling oil. The NYT reported that 116 trucks were destroyed in American airstrikes by A-10 planes and AC-130 gunships in eastern Syria. ISIS generates millions of dollars per day by smuggling oil from Syrian oil fields, a source of revenue that has...

The Paris tragedy clearly showed the world that the war on terror has gone global. If that had not already been made clear by terror bombings in Baghdad, Beirut, and the Russian airliner in recent weeks, it was hammered home by Paris. Israeli media (debka.com) reports that no western intelligence picked up any signs of the attack plan. The grim message to the world: It could happen anywhere. For any that still needed to be convinced, the attack also revealed that the greatest threat to the west comes from radical Islam, not from Iran, Russia, or China. That fact was...

Oil prices are likely to stay below $80 per barrel for another five years, according to a closely watched energy report. The International Energy Agency released its 2015 World Energy Outlook (WEO), with predictions for energy markets out to 2040. Although there are no shortage of caveats, the IEA projects that oil prices will only rebound slowly and intermittently, and the supply overhang will slowly ease through the rest of the decade. In its “central” scenario, it sees oil prices rebalancing in 2020 at $80 per barrel, with increases in the years following. At issue, as always, is supply and...

What you see is what you get. Unless, of course, things change. And so it goes in the highly uncertain world of trying to figure out what drilling and spending is going to be for next year in what appears to be an extended period of low oil prices. On November 3, the Petroleum Services Association of Canada held its annual Canadian drilling activity forecast session, an important event for oilfield service (OFS) companies trying to figure out how to plan and budget for the upcoming year. This year PSAC was again joined by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers...

Crude oil prices don't care what's #trending. Just as negativity lingers, volatility breeds more volatility. Wild periods repeat and feed upon themselves. In the global marketplace, dramatic swings in Asia can spread to the West with ferocity. For a company or personality looking for an edge on social media platforms like Twitter, capitalizing on that volatility makes good business sense. And with more data online and available in real-time, markets and traders may be more prone to react unevenly to that volatility, making what would otherwise be a spark a full-fledged blaze. For something like crude oil prices, long-term trends...

The worst could be over for oil prices, if the whims of a growing number of speculators are anything to go by. Hedge funds are taking their most bullish position on crude oil prices in two months. New data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission shows that net-long positions on crude oil increased by 14,821 contracts, reaching a two-month high of 147,678 positions. These swings in investor sentiment can move the price of crude. In recent weeks, we had seen an inordinately pessimistic view of crude oil, with short positions hitting their highest levels in years. Short betting pushed WTI...

Dr. Daniel Fine, associate director of the New Mexico Center for Energy Policy, discusses the impact of falling oil prices on the domestic energy industry.

The Saudis are on track to sacrifice ~$100 billion in crude export revenues in 2015, or 45 percent of 2014’s ~$219 billion in crude export revenues, in pursuit of market share, the measure of success Saudi Oil Minister Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi announced at the November 27, 2014 OPEC meeting. What do the Saudis plan as their encore in 2016? Will they continue pursuing market share over other goals (e.g., total revenue, economic diversification, OPEC conciliation), or will they alter course, and if so, is there a superior alternative? Publicly, Saudi officials appear unwavering in support of market share. The...

A lot of people, including several OPEC members, thought the oil slump would be easing by now. Instead, as oil prices languish near multi-year lows and experience unprecedented volatility, it’s now unclear how long it will take oil prices to recover. Indeed, OPEC now appears poised to wait out the period of low prices even if that takes months or even a couple of years. The fact of the matter is that despite the calls of Venezuela and Algeria, Saudi Arabia and other major OPEC members don’t seem too concerned about the current low prices. Venezuela in particular has been...

Oil prices have posted their strongest rally in years, jumping an astounding 27 percent in the last three trading days of August. While much of the recent price movement defies reason and is enormously magnified by speculative movements by traders to take and cover their bets on oil, still, there were a series of rumors, events, and fresh data that helped contribute to the spike. For example, on August 31, the oil markets woke up to the news that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his counterpart from Venezuela to discuss “possible mutual steps” to stabilize oil prices. The meeting...

The oil markets could be about to enter another round of soft prices. The OPEC decision on June 5 to leave its collective target unchanged was widely expected. As a result, oil prices barely flinched. But there are other reasons to think that oil prices could see a bit of a downturn in the coming weeks. First, OPEC revealed in its latest monthly oil report that it is still producing well above its stated 30 million barrel per day target. Saudi Arabia’s output inched up another 25,000 barrels per day in May from the month before in a further sign...

The oil price collapse is not over yet. It is more likely that the Brent price could fall back into the mid-$50 range than that it will continue to rise toward $70 per barrel. That is because oil prices have risen based on sentiment alone. The fundamentals of supply and demand indicate a dismal reality: oil prices will fall and may fall hard in the near term. Our present situation is like that of the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote. He routinely ran off of a cliff and as long as he didn’t look down, everything was fine. But as...

Could the rising levels of debt in the oil industry contribute to destabilization in the financial system? The collapse in oil prices has forced drillers to turn to debt markets to keep their operations going. According to the Wall Street Journal, there has been $86.8 billion in new debt issued so far in 2015, a 10 percent increase over last year. But that trend is not necessarily new. The oil industry has relied on debt for quite some time, but the dramatic fall in oil prices has put a bright spotlight on the practice. The Bank for International Settlements concluded...

The U.S. oil production decline has begun. It is not because of decreased rig count. It is because cash flow at current oil prices is too low to complete most wells being drilled. The implications are profound. Production will decline by several hundred thousand barrels per day before the effect of reduced rig count is fully seen. Unless oil prices rebound above $75 or $85 per barrel, the rig count won’t matter because there will not be enough money to complete more wells than are being completed today. Tight oil production in the Eagle Ford, Bakken and Permian basin plays...

When oil prices recover—and plenty of analysts think the climb back up will start soon—Canada’s western frontier of Saskatchewan and neighboring Alberta will ‘still have the edge’, according to a report from TD Economics. Depressed oil prices may have skewed the view from Canada’s oil-producing west, but this will be one of the better places to bet on the oil rebound. Saskatchewan remains the last highly accessible onshore North American oil frontier and it is home to part of the prolific Williston Basin. And as the industry gears up for the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference (WBPC) on 28 April, the...

While U.S. shale producers have slashed billions of dollars from capital budgets and taken more than 600 oil rigs offline since October, it may be several months before production actually falls as companies focus on their most efficient wells. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/business/022715-741288-us-oil-spending-down-but-production-slow-to-fall.htm#ixzz3TGVUN2zT Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

Conventional wisdom indicates slowing global economy and increased production are the root causes behind the precipitous drop in oil prices since mid-2014. ~~ snip ~~ Further signs of the impact of deflation, despite trillions of stimulus funds, include: 1.Negative interest rates on short-term securities and debt instruments. 2.The reduction of risk premiums in short and long-term debt financing for governments. 3.Increasing costs of healthcare for virtually every American, which adversely affects disposable income. 4.Declining real wages in the United States due to tax increases at the state and local levels. 5.Declines in labor force participation rates. 6.Lack of wage growth...

Sometimes it looks like the Canadian economy is unraveling like a giant surprise package right in the face of economists and the Bank of Canada. We’ve got big data revisions, shock bank rate cuts, a falling Canadian dollar. Through it all, nobody saw it coming. They didn’t see a thing. Statistics Canada’s labour force data are notoriously wonky and revision prone. Still, Wednesday’s revamp wiped out 50,000 jobs that economists had assumed had been created during 2014. In an economy with almost 20 million employed, the revisions are small, but they cast doubt on the state of the economy and...

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - The global economic outlook just got brighter after this week's big stimulus from the European Central Bank, leading policymakers from around the world said Saturday. In a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they said a perkier Europe, coupled with a prolonged period of low oil prices, could help shore up the global economy following a period of underperformance that has prompted many forecasters to reduce their growth forecasts. "Lower oil prices and the big decision by ECB could further improve world economic outlook," said Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.

Four things are now affecting the picture. Demand is low because of weak economic activity, increased efficiency, and a growing switch away from oil to other fuels. Second, turmoil in Iraq and Libya—two big oil producers with nearly 4m barrels a day combined—has not affected their output. The market is more sanguine about geopolitical risk. Thirdly, America has become the world’s largest oil producer. Though it does not export crude oil, it now imports much less, creating a lot of spare supply. Finally, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have decided not to sacrifice their own market share to restore...