Free Republic

Let’s look beyond the hubris and hypocrisy for a moment. Nancy Pelosi has made her attempt to put the SalonGate behind her. She says it was a setup, “…and that’s all I’m going to say about that.” So while there is very little in this world more pathetic than the spectacle of an eighty-year-old woman fulminating like a cornered gangster in a 1930s B-movie, there is something else, something of greater interest that I have realized thanks to this episode. It has connected in my mind with two other political oxymorons from recent years. You see, Nancy has been saying...

For the auto business, "The pain is just beginning," according to Nomura analyst Masataka Kunugimoto and his team. "We now expect global auto demand to be down 3%," year on year, in 2019, he told clients recently. He is not alone. At bank after bank, analysts are coming round to the idea that the world may have passed "peak car," and that in the future humans will need fewer personal vehicles.

Democrats will introduce legislation to mandate zero-emissions vehicles make up all new car sales by 2040. The bill is co-sponsored by three Democrats running for president in 2020 who support the Green New Deal. The internal combustion engine has long been a target for environmentalists. Democrats will introduce legislation to completely phase out the use of gasoline-powered cars by mandating that only zero-emissions vehicles can be sold by 2040. “When I take a lungful of air in this moment, it has 30 percent more carbon in it than when I was born,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the bill’s main sponsor...

Albert Einstein once wrote that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Were he alive today, he would be repeating the line to anyone who would listen, especially the reporters on cable news channels such as CNBC. He might add that the world’s policymakers always approach oil market disruptions in the same way: predicting there will be no impact on prices. Einstein would then point out that the policymakers are consistently wrong. A hefty price boost has followed every disruption. The world has experienced nineteen oil market disruptions over the...

The world’s largest independent commodity trader, Vitol, expects global oil demand to peak after 15 years, essentially putting the ‘peak oil demand’ date somewhere in the mid-2030s like other key players in the oil industry. “We anticipate that oil demand will continue to grow for the next 15 years, even with a marked increase in the sales of electric vehicles, but that demand growth will begin to be impacted thereafter,” Vitol said in the outlook included in its 2018 trading volumes report.

China state oil company CNOOC on Tuesday announced a major new oil discovery at the Glengorm prospect in the U.K. sector of the North Sea.

The United States is expected to churn out far more oil in 2019 than what international analysts originally forecasted. The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based organization that helps coordinate energy policies for industrial countries, released its latest oil market report Friday, noting exceptional numbers for the U.S. fossil fuel industry. The agency reported U.S. oil production is expected to rise by 1.3 million barrels a day in 2019. While this number is lower than the record-smashing 2.1 million increase producers enjoyed in 2018, it’s more than double what the IEA initially expected to see in 2019. The forecast illustrates the...

PARIS - Vincent Picard describes himself as a “militant ecologist.” But when protesters took to the streets to express their rage over a planned increase in France’s fuel tax, Mr. Picard joined their ranks. He acknowledges that the tax might encourage the conservation considered critical for a healthy planet. But with the nearest train station 35 minutes away, he has to drive to work every day. “I am conscious that we have reached the end of fossil fuels and that we have to modify our habits,” said Mr. Picard, a 32-year-old pastry maker from northern France. But, he added, “You...

In an open letter to Saudi ministers posted via Twitter, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud expressed his “astonishment” at comments made by Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, who reportedly played down the impact of oil prices falling below $100 a barrel. Prices have since fallen below $88 a barrel, or a quarter since June. Prince Alwaleed, noting the kingdom’s 2014 budget was 90 per cent dependent on oil revenues, said belittling the impact of lower prices was a “catastrophe that cannot go unmentioned”.

MOSCOW — Deep into the worst conflict between Russia and the West since the Cold War, investors are fleeing, food prices are soaring and there are rumbles from Russia’s Westernized business elite that the nation needs to avoid repeating the economic mismanagement that broke apart the Soviet Union. Western sanctions have choked off financing to some of Russia’s economic juggernauts and denied crucial technology to the nation’s energy sector. But there is little evidence that the mounting economic pressures since the March annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula will soften Putin’s policies toward Ukraine and other nations in the former Soviet...

With oil barely holding on to the $80s, the Kremlin's current leadership faces the same problem they did in the (19)80s: budget revenue half-derived from oil exports, and their backwards, inefficient economy still doesn't produce anything that anybody outside of Mother Russia is willing to spend money on- except perhaps mediocre vodka... And when the self-deluded Russians start babbling about 'greatness' while bullying poor, semi-defenseless countries on the borders of their shabby empire, they tend to get a little caught-up in things... and put the pedal-to-the-medal until they are defeated -i.e. Afghanistan- or simply go-broke, i.e. 1991. Yes, compared...

While it is beyond a doubt that the primary catalyst for Europe's triple-dip recession has been the nearly two quarters and counting of escalating Russian sanctions that were supposed to solely harm Putin (because who could have possibly foreseen that plunging German exports to Russia would have a far greater impact on the export-driven German economy), the truth is that the Kremlin itself is starting to hurt, if not so much as a result of the European trade embargo but mostly due to crashing oil prices, which have been driven lower almost exclusively by Saudi Arabia as part of its...

A drop in global oil prices, driven in part by a boom in U.S. shale oil production, is threatening to hit the economies of energy-exporting Russia and Iran harder than Western economic sanctions have done.

The sudden slump in oil prices, which have fallen 15% in the past three months, has sent tremors through the capitals of the world’s great oil powers, many of whom could face testing budget crunches if the tendency persists. Higher output coupled with weaker demand from China and Europe has driven the price of crude down to $85 – its lowest for four years. The US also now produces 65% more oil than it did five years ago following the boom in shale production. The rise has contributed to the global glut of crude and allowed the US to import...

The collapse in oil prices is already a major cause of concern for countries heavily reliant on exports of the commodity. For some, it could be a matter of avoiding a severe recession. Here's why: For governments in oil-exporting countries to meet their spending commitments they need oil to remain above a certain price. With oil prices under $87 a barrel, countries that rely on high oil prices, including Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, may have a reason to be concerned. This chart shows the price per barrel that the six most exposed countries need to meet their national budgets....

Oil prices (along with prices of many other commodities) have fallen dramatically since last summer. Some observers are waiting to see if Saudi Arabia responds with significant cutbacks in production. I say, don’t hold your breath. When oil demand fell in the 1981-82 recession, the Saudis cut production by 6 million barrels a day in an effort to soften the decline in oil prices. They also cut production in response to lower demand in the 2001 recession and the most recent recession. On the other hand, the kingdom boosted production quickly beginning in August 1990 and January 2003 in anticipation...

Russia Derangement Syndrome: Syria Edition by David Archibald 6 August 2018 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So it has been with US involvement in Syria. To provide a context to that involvement, let’s start part way through the story with the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable vendor on December 17, 2011, driven to despair by harassment from petty officials. That spark set off the Arab Spring. A number of Arab regimes changed; some remained resilient. That wasn’t good enough for David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy, the then leaders of the UK and France respectively. Their armed...

4th Amendment Wear is a series of underclothes that have the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution printed on them with metallic ink that so that it will show up when worn through a TSA X-Ray machine. The clothes are designed as a silent protest against the new reality of being searched to the point where we’re basically naked. We don’t intend for this to be anything more than a thought-provoking way to fuel the debate about safety vs. civil liberties. If we sell a few items, great. But the main intention is to open more dialogue. It’s more...

The US Geological Survey said Tuesday that it assessed what could be the largest deposit of untapped oil ever discovered in America. An estimated average of 20 billion barrels of oil and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids are available for the taking in the Wolfcamp shale, which is in the Midland Basin portion of Texas' Permian Basin. Based on a West Texas Intermediate crude oil price of $45 per barrel, those deposits are worth about $900 billion. US oil exploration companies have flocked to the superrich Permian Basin in recent years and used shale-drilling technology to create an...

How online auctioneer EnergyNet helps bring liquidity, and recovery, to America’s busted oil patch. In the first 18 months of the oil bust, 70 companies have gone bankrupt, defaulting on $40 billion in debt. A trillion dollars of oil company equity has been wiped out. Layoffs top 200,000. With oil holding at around $45 a barrel, more liquidations are on the way. Already the old guys swear this bust is worse than in 1986, when oil dropped below $25 in today’s dollars. At least one thing is better now: Thanks to the magic of the Internet, it’s easier for cash-strapped...