Posted on 04/20/2018 8:01:07 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Trump blasts OPEC, says cartel is keeping oil prices 'artificially very high' and that 'will not be accepted'
"Looks like OPEC is at it again," Trump tweets. "Oil prices are artificially Very High! WTI oil prices hit a three-year high above $69 a barrel this week. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih responds that "Markets should determine price."
President Donald Trump blasted the oil-producing cartel OPEC on Twitter on Friday.
"Looks like OPEC is at it again," he wrote. "With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea, Oil prices are artificially Very High! No good and will not be accepted!"
Tweet
WTI oil prices hit a three-year high above $69 a barrel this week and were still trading above $68 on Friday. The international benchmark, Brent crude, was above $73 on Friday after also hitting its highest level since November 2014 this week.
The president is likely referring to OPEC's production level agreement with Russia and other producers put in place last year and set to expire at the end of 2018.
There have also been reports lately that Saudi Arabia, the key member of the cartel, wants oil at $80 to $100 a barrel in order to boost the eventual initial public offering of its state oil company, Saudi Aramco.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
about all I can say, and this is submitted in completely good faith and very prayerfully too, is that President Trump had better make sure his body guards are alert and watching over his safety very cafefully, if he is really going to bust up the OPEC cartel. He’s taking on a multi-trillion dollar monopoly with many very very dangerous and hostile people involved (like the Saudi dictatorship gang, SorozNazi, etc.)
but yes, Go for it, President Trump! MAGA! End OPEC!!
Its at least 40 years overdue, too....
SUPER! (if he can do it...)
“Looks like OPEC is at it again,” he wrote. “With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea, Oil prices are artificially Very High!”
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So nice to have a President who will say what everybody’s thinking.
But that cartel is fraying because Russia, the USA, and several OPEC members are not interested in toeing the OPEC “line.”
“...Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih responds that “Markets should determine price.”...”
A captive market does not set prices. They suffer from what the monopolists set as “prices”. Another pant-load from OPEC.
AGREED! And it will be even nicer if President Trump actually does break up the OPEC gang... end it...
)
Open up so US capped wells.
He’s gonna earn himself a lot of street cred by going after them.
Yup - lots of garbage to be taken out, both domestic and foreign.
I would venture a guess that the situation in Venezuela has a good deal to do with this.
Plenty of oil as Trump indicated and it isn’t just foreign countries slowing things down. Speculation baby!
Saudi Arabia pretty much can set world petroleum prices at any level they might wish, either by increasing or decreasing the amount they put on the market.
By comparison, the other easily manipulated determinants of world petroleum prices are relatively minor. They normally can be offset by Saudi counteractions.
Therefore, most discussions of the issue are basically wasted bandwidth.
That’s exactly right.
People don’t understand that at a certain price, usually cited as sixty bucks or so, the U.S. oil producers attain a certain stability.
If the price goes below, say, forty bucks, large swaths of the companies on the ground shut down.
We lose jobs, R & D, we are (to a degree) at the mercy of the countries whose oil is so cheap to get out of the ground.
It’s far better to have our rigs up and drilling than stacked-out in the weeds.
Drill baby Drill!
Were up to meeting 2/3rds of our needs from domestic production from about 1/3rd a decade ago. We need to get it still higher. Weve got plenty more sources to drill and frack.
Right now there is enough capped US wells to open. No drilling needed.
gas is $2.91/gal right now- I fully expect the price to be $3.50/gal by summer’s end
We are just now reaching a price at which the majority of US production is economic. If Trump succeeds in depressing prices using his bully pulpit (twitter), it is no different from OPEC artificially inflating them. It will also cost thousands of high-paying US jobs that are just now coming back on line.
Let the market decide where the price needs to be. Oil prices will be a function of market demand. OPEC has no control over this because there are plenty of alternative sources of oil. If oil demand is going up that means the economy is improving.
It always dismays me how otherwise conservative people are all for government intervention in the marketplace for energy, but nowhere else.
It was not that long ago that the Saudis were pushing the price of oil artificially low in order to reduce competition by companies in the US fracking, doing exploration, and even just extracting oil from existing wells.
It was not that long ago that the Saudis were pushing the price of oil artificially low in order to reduce competition by companies in the US fracking, doing exploration, and even just extracting oil from existing wells.
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