THE U.S. SHALE OIL INDUSTRY: Swindling & Stealing Energy To Stay Alive

By the SRSrocco Report,

While the U.S. Shale Energy Industry continues to borrow money to produce uneconomical oil and gas, there is another important phenomenon that is not understood by the analyst community.  The critical factor overlooked by the media is the fact that the U.S. shale industry is swindling and stealing energy from other areas to stay alive.  Let me explain.

First, let"s take a look at some interesting graphs done by the Bloomberg Gadfly.  The first chart below shows how the U.S. shale industry continues to burn through investor cash regardless of $100 or $50 oil prices:

The chart above shows the negative free cash flow for 33 shale-weighted E&P companies.  Even at $100 oil prices in 2012 and 2013, these companies spent more money producing shale energy in the top four U.S. shale fields than they made from operations.  While costs to produce shale oil and gas came down in 2015 and 2016 (due to lower energy input prices), these companies still spent more money than they made.  As we can see, the Permian basin (in black) gets the first place award for losing the most money in the group.

Now, burning through investor money to produce low-quality, subpar oil is only part of the story.  The shale energy companies utilized another tactic to bring in additional funds from the POOR SLOBS in the retail investment community... it"s called equity issuance.  This next chart reveals the annual equity issuance by the U.S. E&P companies:

According to the information in the chart, the U.S. E&P companies will have raised over $100 billion between 2012 and 2017 by issuing new stock to investors.  If we add up the funds borrowed by the U.S. E&P companies (negative free cash flow), plus the stock issuance, we have the following chart:

Thus, the U.S. E&P companies tapped into an additional $212 billion worth of funding over the last six years to produce uneconomical shale oil and gas.  Now, this chart is an approximation based on the negative free cash flow (RED color) from the four top U.S. shale fields and the shale equity issuance (OLIVE color).  So, how much money would these U.S. E&P companies need to make to pay back these funds?

Good question.  If we assume that the U.S. shale oil companies will be able to produce another 10 billion barrels of oil, they would need to make $21 a barrel profit to pay back that $212 billion.  However, they haven"t made any profits in at least the past six years, so why would they make any profits in the next six years?

Okay, now that we understand that the U.S. shale industry has been burning through cash and issuing stock to continue an unprofitable business model, let"s take it a step further.  If we understand that the U.S. shale energy industry is not making enough money from producing the oil and gas, then it also means that it takes more energy to produce it then we are getting from it.  Sounds strange... but true.

We must remember, investors, furnishing U.S. shale energy companies with funds are another way of providing ENERGY.  These U.S. shale energy companies are taking that extra $212 billion (2012-2017) and burning the energy equivalent to produce their oil and gas.  For example, it takes a lot more water to frack oil and gas wells.  To transport the water, we either do it by truck or by pipeline.  While this extra water usage is a Dollar Cost to the shale energy industry, it is really an ENERGY COST.  Think about all the energy it took to either transport the water by truck, or the energy it took to make the pipelines, install them and the energy to pump the water.

Moreover, if we add up all of the additional costs to produce U.S. shale oil and gas, the majority of it comes from burning energy, in one form or another.  Again, investor funds translate to burning energy.  Thus, the U.S. shale industry needs more energy to produce the oil and gas than we get from it in the first place.

Unfortunately, investors don"t see it this way because they do not realize they will never receive their investment back.  It was spent and burned years ago to continue the Great U.S. Shale Energy Ponzi Scheme.

Let me put it in another way.  The U.S. and world economies are based on burning energy.  When we burn energy, we create economic activity and hopefully growth.  If the U.S. shale energy industry needed $212 billion more to produce the oil than they made from operations, then it means it burned more energy than it sent to the market.  Do you see that now??

So, the U.S. shale energy industry is STEALING & SWINDLING energy wherever it can to stay alive.  This is the perfect example of the Falling EROI (Energy Returned On Investment) forcing an industry to CANNABLIZE itself (and the public) to keep from going bankrupt.

Lastly, as time goes by the U.S. shale energy industry will behave like a BLACK HOLE, by sucking more and more energy in to produce even lower and lower quality oil and gas.  At some point, the shale energy industry will collapse upon itself leaving one hell of a mess behind.  While it"s hard to predict the timing of the event, it will likely occur within the next 2-5 years.

Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report. 

The "Unknown Unknowns" That Threaten U.S. Shale

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Three years after the oil price crash, the U.S. shale patch is on its second growth phase and is expected to continue to increase its production, at least through the next five years.

The global oil markets have become increasingly dependent on U.S. tight oil supply - and the oil industry is still coming to grips with this new reality, Simon Flowers, Chairman and Chief Analyst at Wood Mackenzie, wrote in a recent article.

Current projections put the Permian on the forefront of the United States’ ability to deliver increased tight oil supply to the global markets. However, forecasts for the shale patch are as dynamic as production and drilling rates are. And some ‘known unknowns’ have been surfacing such as higher gas-to-oil ratios in some wells, and the parent/child wells issue, Flowers says.

Wood Mackenzie said last month that signs had started to show that intensified drilling in the Permian doesn’t deliver commensurate volumes of oil. Although WoodMac thinks that such setbacks could just be growing pains and Permian drillers could indeed ‘change the laws of physics’, it had warned three months ago that drillers might soon start to test the region’s geological limits. If exploration and production companies can’t overcome the geological constraints with tech breakthroughs, Permian production could peak in 2021, putting more than 1.5 million bpd of future production in question and potentially significantly influencing oil prices, WoodMac said in September.

In his December article, WoodMac’s Flowers included this observation in the Permian’s ‘known unknowns’:

“Growth might also be constrained by shareholders demanding that independents rein back from volume-driven targets.”

Those ‘known unknowns’ serve as a warning: the oil market can’t be complacent and just assume that the Permian boom will deliver as expected, according to Flowers. The Wolfcamp may be the star of the Permian, WoodMac says, but “there are more than likely ‘unknown unknowns’ out there too. And if there are, there’s not another Permian ready to step in; and conventional options will take time to crank into action.”

The Eagle Ford and the Bakken combined represent nearly half of the current U.S. tight oil production, according to Wood Mackenzie, which is expressing new doubts that those two plays could offer long-term commercial drilling inventory as operators move out beyond the sweet spots. Therefore, the analysts downgraded the growth rates for both plays from the mid-2020s, but have significantly upgraded the Permian growth pace, especially for the Wolfcamp basin.

If the Permian turns out to have ‘unknown unknowns’ alongside the ‘known unknowns’, the U.S. shale patch may not deliver as expected.

Currently, WoodMac’s supply/demand balance forecasts show that the U.S. and OPEC will “do battle for contestable demand that will climb to over 5 million b/d by 2024.”

The analysts believe that U.S. shale will take the lion’s share of that demand—90 percent—as its production will double to 9.6 million bpd by 2024 from 4.9 million bpd in 2017, while OPEC will be left with meeting less than 1 million bpd of that additional demand.

Three years after the oil price crash, the most unexpected outcomes in the global oil market are the second wave of U.S. shale growth, OPEC’s “zealous adherence” to the cuts, and the resilience of some non-OPEC non-U.S. producers, WoodMac says.

While Mexico, China, and Africa as a whole have been “heavy casualties” of the lower-for-longer oil prices, Russia, Canada, and the North Sea have surprised on the positive side by adapting remarkably well to the low oil prices. Russia is the “poster child” of this resilience. Canada is also doing well with Duvernay liquids where breakevens are competitive with U.S. plays, and with better uptime from oil sands projects. The North Sea has also been a positive surprise, with the UK leading the way with aggressive cost cuts that have helped to raise oil production, WoodMac says.

Still, U.S. tight oil, especially the Permian, will be the main growth story over the medium term, but ‘unknown unknowns’ may be lurking out there and could restrain the pace of that growth.

Satellite Images Reveal Saudis May Be Lying How Much Oil They Have In Storage

A little over a year ago, specialized satellite imaging company Orbital Insight which uses its proprietary imaging and algorithms to track above-ground oil storage, confirmed something we had alleged earlier in the year: that China was vastly under-representing the amount of oil it had stored in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve (with significant implications for prices). As we said last September "according to Orbital Insight, China had not only misrepresented how much oil it has stored, it has done so at a massive scale, with the real number dwarfing even JPM own estimate: the real amount of Chinese oil in storage, according to Orbital, was a whopping 600 million barrels as of May" an amount nearly 3 times greater than the official, at the time, number of 234 million barrels.

The resultant doubt about China"s true purchasing capacity was one of the several factors that led to the subsequent swoon in oil prices which OPEC was unable to overcome until nearly a year later, when the market became increasingly confident that the OPEC strategy of eliminating excess inventory, was working and pushed the price of WTI and Brent to two year highs, above $57 and $63 respectively.

That confidence may not last, however, and the reason may be the same one as last year: Orbital Insights.

As the FT"s David Sheppard writes, "while the oil market’s attention has been gripped this week by the corruption purge in Saudi Arabia and its tensions with Iran, from miles above the earth’s crust one company is highlighting a different kind of intrigue."  He is, of course, referring to Orbital Insight, whose analysis of Saudi crude inventories in recent months has thrown up an "interesting anomaly."

One can call it an "anomaly", but a better explanation of what the company has done is to catch the Saudi kingdom in lying about its inventories. Here is the official narrative:

The kingdom, which has led Opec and Russia in co-ordinated output cuts since January, has for months been reporting to official agencies that its oil held in storage has been falling, which alongside lower production has been one factor that has helped propel Brent crude oil back above $60 a barrel.

There is just one problem: it"s a lie: "Orbital’s analysis of satellite imagery suggests that Saudi Arabia’s above-ground tanks — whose floating roofs allow them to see when oil inventories are rising or falling by measuring shadows cast across the top of the tanks — have seen no real change in the past 18 months."

This, Orbital says, is interesting because before early 2016, movements in above-ground storage closely tracked the trend in Saudi’s official numbers submitted to the Joint Organisations Data Initiative that are crucial for traders and analysts trying to get a grip of the near 100m barrel-a-day oil market.

In other words, the Saudis did not always lie about their inventory - it"s only recently that the nation decided to "pull a China" and misrepresent its true crude inventories... in fact, it only started as OPEC began aggressively jawboning the market to send the price of oil higher in the buildup to the Nov 2016 Vienna production cut agreement. In the process, OPEC"s most important member would do anything to give the fake impression there is more demand, and thus less oil in storage, than there really was.

How much? Here"s the FT"s punchline: "While Saudi Arabia has reported to Jodi that its oil stocks have declined by about 70m barrels since early 2016, the Orbital analysis suggests the above-ground tanks have actually seen inventories rise marginally over the same period."

If confirmed, Orbital"s startling allegation would imply that for much of the past two years, OPEC has been actively engaged in doing what it does best: cheating, not only the market, but also other cartel members, because if Saudi peers found out that Saudi Arabia was quietly warehousing tens of millions of barrels in excess oil to give the false impression of high demand, then everyone else would start doing it. Come to think of it, maybe they are...

Still, as the FT and Orbital point out, there are a few caveats.  For one, Saudi Arabia’s official storage numbers include oil held overseas, in key regional hubs. It also covers line-fill for pipelines and underground tanks that cannot be monitored by eyes in the sky.  These factors may account for why the numbers no longer seem to match up — though they do raise other questions. Orbital says that changes in inventory levels in above-ground domestic storage tanks are normally noticeable normally first as they are easiest to access. Saudi’s Jodi numbers and what Orbital can see through its algorithmic analysis of the satellite imagery had previously tracked each other closely.

“The floating tank data is the part that we think is most indicative of short-term changes in storage,” said James Crawford, chief executive of Orbital Insight. “The big question is why that no longer jives with the government data that shows a pretty big drop."

There may be another explanation and it has to do with keeping higher oil storage levels at home than abroad. As the FT explains, "the most intriguing suggestion for the shift is more strategic: Riyadh’s own concerns about rising tensions with its neighbours."

“[The] reason for no real deep stock draw in [the] kingdom will be mainly security related,” said Cyril Widdershoven, who runs the Verocy consultancy.

 

That suggests, he said, that Saudi Arabia is concerned enough about its deteriorating relationship with Iran, and to a lesser degree Qatar, to keep higher oil stocks at home in case of any disruption.

To be sure, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman saying this week that Iran’s support for Houthi fighters in Yemen, and the provision to them of missiles capable of striking deep into the kingdom, constitutes an act of war, "it is certainly an intriguing theory", one which Shepperd writes that "at times of heightened tension between two of Opec’s biggest producers it is one the market may start tracking closely."

And while there is no definitive explanation for the inventory discrepnacy observed by Orbital, what makes this mystery especially intriguing is how polar opposite the two most likely explanation are in terms of oil prices: either Saudi Arabia is covering up the lack of demand and warehousing excess oil, which will eventually send oil prices sliding, or if the "security-related" explanation is accurate, then Saudi Arabia is indeed preparing for war with Iran, which once the shooting begins will send the price of oil into the stratosphere.

WORLD’S LARGEST OIL COMPANIES: Deep Trouble As Profits Vaporize While Debts Skyrocket

By the SRSrocco Report,

The world"s largest oil companies are in serious trouble as their balance sheets deteriorate from higher costs, falling profits and skyrocketing debt.  The glory days of the highly profitable global oil companies have come to an end.  All that remains now is a mere shadow of the once mighty oil industry that will be forced to continue cannibalizing itself to produce the last bit of valuable oil.

I realize my extremely unfavorable opinion of the world"s oil industry runs counter to many mainstream energy analysts, however, their belief that business, as usual, will continue for decades, is entirely unfounded.  Why?  Because, they do not understand the ramifications of the Falling EROI - Energy Returned On Invested, and its impact on the global economy.

For example, Chevron was able to make considerable profits in 1997 when the oil price was $19 a barrel.  However, the company suffered a loss in 2016 when the price was more than double at $44 last year.  And, it"s even worse than that if we compare the company"s profit to total revenues.  Chevron enjoyed a $3.2 billion net income profit on revenues of $42 billion in 1997 versus a $497 million loss on total sales of $114 billion in 2016.  Even though Chevron"s revenues nearly tripled in twenty years, its profit was decimated by the falling EROI.

Unfortunately, energy analysts, who are clueless to the amount of destruction taking place in the U.S. and global oil industry by the falling EROI, continue to mislead a public that is totally unprepared for what is coming.  To provide a more realistic view of the disintegrating energy industry, I will provide data from seven of the largest oil companies in the world.

The World"s Major Oil Companies Debt Explode Since The 2008 Financial Crisis

To save the world from falling into total collapse during the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed and Central Banks embarked on the most massive money printing scheme in history.  One side-effect of the massive money printing (and the purchasing of assets) by the central banks, was that it pushed the price of oil to a record $100+ a barrel for more than three years.  While the large oil companies reported handsome profits due to the high oil price, many of them spent a great deal of capital to produce this oil.

For instance, the seven top global oil companies that I focused on made a combined $213 billion in cash from operations in 2013. However, they also forked out $230 billion in capital expenditures.  Thus, the net free cash flow from these major oil companies was a negative $17 billion... and that doesn"t include the $44 billion they paid in dividends to their shareholders in 2013.  Even though the price of oil was $109 in 2013; these seven oil companies added $45 billion to their long-term debt:

As we can see, the total amount of long-term debt in the group (Petrobras, Shell, BP, Total, Chevron, Exxon & Statoil) increased from $227 billion in 2012 to $272 billion in 2013.  Isn"t that ironic that the debt ($45 billion) rose nearly the same amount as the group"s dividend payouts ($44 billion)?  Of course, we can"t forget about the negative $17 billion in free cash flow in 2013, but here we see evidence that the top seven global oil companies were borrowing money even in 2013, at $109 a barrel oil, to pay their dividends.

Since the 2008 global economic and financial crisis, the top seven oil companies have seen their total combined debt explode four times, from $96 billion to $379 billion currently.  You would think with these energy companies enjoying a $100+ oil price for more than three years; they would be lowering their debt, not increasing it.  Regrettably, the cost for companies to replace reserves, produce oil and share profits with shareholders was more than the $110 oil price.

There lies the rub....

One of the disadvantages of skyrocketing debt is the rising amount of interest the company has to pay to service that debt.  If we look at the chart above, Brazil"s Petrobras is the clear winner in the group by adding the most debt.  Petrobras"s debt surged from $21 billion in 2008 to $109 billion last year.  As Petrobras added debt, it also had to pay out more to service that debt.  In just eight years, the annual interest amount Petrobras paid to service its debt increased from $793 million in 2008 to $6 billion last year.  Sadly, Petrobras"s rising interest payment has caused another nasty side-effect which cut dividend payouts to its shareholders to ZERO for the past two years.

Petrobras Annual Dividend Payments:

2008 = $4.7 billion

2009 = $7.7 billion

2010 = $5.4 billion

2011 = $6.4 billion

2012 = $3.3 billion

2013 = $2.6 billion

2014 = $3.9 billion

2015 = ZERO

2016 = ZERO

You see, this is a perfect example of how the Falling EROI guts an oil company from the inside out.  The sad irony of the situation at Petrobras is this:

If you are a shareholder, you"re screwed, and if you invested funds (in company bonds, etc.) to receive a higher interest payment, you"re also screwed because you will never get back your initial investment.  So, investors are screwed either way.  This is what happens during the final stage of collapsing oil industry.

Another negative consequence of the Falling EROI on these major oil companies" financial statements is the decline in profits as the cost to produce oil rises more than the economic price the market can afford.

Major Oil Companies" Profits Vaporize... Even At Higher Oil Prices

To be able to understand just how bad the financial situation has become at the world"s largest oil companies, we need to go back in time and compare the industry"s profitability versus the oil price.  To find a year when the oil price was about the same as it was in 2016, we have to return to 2004, when the average oil price was $38.26 versus $43.67 last year.  Yes, the oil price was lower in 2004 than in 2016, but I can assure you, these oil companies weren"t complaining.

In 2004, the combined net income of these seven oil companies was almost $100 billion..... $99.2 billion to be exact.  Every oil company in the group made a nice profit in 2004 on a $38 oil price.  However, last year, the net profits in the group plunged to only $10.5 billion, even at a higher $43 oil price:

Even with a $5 increase in the price of oil last year compared to 2004, these oil companies combined net income profit fell nearly 90%.  How about them apples.  Of the seven companies listed in the chart above, only four made profits last year, while three lost money.  Exxon and Total enjoyed the highest profits in the group, while Petrobras and Statoil suffered the largest losses:

Furthermore, the financial situation is in much worse shape because "net income" accounting does not factor in the companies" capital expenditures or dividend payouts.  Regardless, the world"s top oil companies" profitability has vaporized even at a higher oil price.

Now, another metric that provides us with more disturbing evidence of the Falling EROI in the oil industry is the collapse of  the "Return On Capital Employed."  Basically, the Return On Capital Employed is just dividing the company"s earnings (before taxes and interest) by its total assets minus current liabilities.  In 2004, the seven companies listed above posted between 20-40% Return On Capital Employed.  However, this fell precipitously over the next decade and are now registering in the low single digits:

In 2004, we can see that BP had the lowest Return On Capital Employed of 19.68% in the group, while Statoil had the highest at 46.20%.  If we throw out the highest and lowest figures, the average for the group was 29%.  Now, compare that to the average of 2.4% for the group in 2016, and that does not including BP and Chevron"s negative returns (shown in Dark Blue & Orange).

NOTE:  I failed to include the Statoil graph line (Magenta)  when I made the chart, but I added the figures afterward.  For Statoil to experience a Return On Capital Employed decline from 46.2% in 2004 to less than 1% in 2016, suggests something is seriously wrong.

We must remember, the high Return On Capital Employed by the group in 2004, was based on a $38 price of oil, while the low single-digit returns by the oil companies in 2016 were derived from a higher price of $43.  Unfortunately, the world"s largest oil companies are no longer able to enjoy high returns on a low oil price.  This is bad news because the market can"t afford a high oil price unless the Fed and Central Banks come back in with an even larger amount of QE (Quantitative Easing) money printing.

I have one more chart that shows just how bad the Falling EROI is destroying the world"s top oil companies.  In 2004, these seven oil companies enjoyed a combined net Free Cash Flow minus dividends of a positive $34 billion versus a negative $39.1 billion in 2016:

Let me explain these figures.  After these oil companies paid their capital expenditures and dividends to shareholders in 2004, they had a net $34 billion left over.  However, last year these companies were in the HOLE for $39.1 billion after paying capital expenditures and dividends.  Thus, many of them had to borrow money just to pay dividends.

To understand how big of a change has taken place at the oil companies since 2004, here are the figures below:

Top 7 Major Oil Companies Free Cash Flow Figures

2004 Cash From Operations = ............$139.6 billion

2004 Capital Expenditures = .................$67.7 billion

2004 Free Cash Flow = ...........................$71.9 billion

2004 Shareholder Dividends = ..............$37.9 billion

2004 Free Cash Flow - Dividends = $34 billion

2016 Cash From Operations = .................$118.5 billion

2016 Capital Expenditures = ....................$117.5 billion

2016 Free Cash Flow = ................................$1.0 billion

2016 Shareholder Dividends = ...................$40.1 billion

2016 Free Cash Flow - Dividends = -$39.1 billion

Here we can see that the top seven global oil companies made more in cash from operations in 2004 ($139.6 billion) compared to 2016 ($118.5 billion).   That extra $21 billion in operating cash in 2004 versus 2016 was realized even at a lower oil price.  However, what has really hurt the group"s Free Cash Flow, is the much higher capital expenditures of $117.5 billion in 2016 compared to the $67.7 billion in 2004.  You will notice that the net combined dividends didn"t increase that much in the two periods... only by $3 billion.

So, the lower cash from operations and the higher capital expenditures have taken a BIG HIT on the balance sheets of these oil companies.  This is precisely why the long-term debt is skyrocketing, especially over the past three years as the oil price fell below $100 in 2014.  To continue making their shareholders happy, many of these companies are borrowing money to pay dividends.  Unfortunately, going further into debt to pay shareholders is not a prudent long-term business model.

The world"s major oil companies will continue to struggle with the oil price in the $50 range.  While some analysts forecast that higher oil prices are on the horizon, I disagree.  Yes, it"s true that oil prices may spike higher for a while, but the trend will be lower as the U.S. and global economies start to contract.  As oil prices fall to $40 and below, oil companies will begin to cut capital expenditures even further.  Thus, the cycle of lower prices and the continued gutting of the global oil industry will move into high gear.

There is one option that might provide these oil companies with a buffer... and that is a new even larger Fed and Central Bank money printing scheme which would result in severe inflation and possibly hyperinflation.  But, that won"t be a long-term solution, instead just another lousy band-aid in a series of band-aids that have only postponed the inevitable.

The coming bankruptcy of the once mighty global oil industry will be the death-knell of the world economy.  Without oil, the global economy grinds to a halt.  Of course, this will not occur overnight.  It will take time.  However, the evidence shows that a considerable wound has already taken place in an industry that has provided the world with much-needed oil for more than a century.

Lastly, without trying to be a broken record, the peak and decline of global oil production will destroy the value of most STOCKS, BONDS and REAL ESTATE.  If you have placed most of your bests in one of these assets, you have my sympathies.

Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report.

The Death Of Petrodollars & The Coming Renaissance Of Macro Investing

Authored by John Curran via Barrons,

The petrodollar system is being undermined by exponential growth in technology and shifting geopolitics. What comes next is a paradigm shift...

In the summer of 1974, Treasury Secretary William Simon traveled to Saudi Arabia and secretly struck a momentous deal with the kingdom. The U.S. agreed to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia, provide weapons, and in essence guarantee the preservation of Saudi oil wells, the monarchy, and the sovereignty of the kingdom. In return, the kingdom agreed to invest the dollar proceeds of its oil sales in U.S. Treasuries, basically financing America’s future federal expenditures.

Soon, other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries followed suit, and the U.S. dollar became the standard by which oil was to be traded internationally. For Saudi Arabia, the deal made perfect sense, not only by protecting the regime but also by providing a safe, liquid market in which to invest its enormous oil-sale proceeds, known as petrodollars. The U.S. benefited, as well, by neutralizing oil as an economic weapon. The agreement enabled the U.S. to print dollars with little adverse effect on interest rates, thereby facilitating consistent U.S. economic growth over the subsequent decades.

An important consequence was that oil-importing nations would be required to hold large amounts of U.S. dollars in reserve in order to purchase oil, underpinning dollar demand. This essentially guaranteed a strong dollar and low U.S. interest rates for a generation.

[ZH: Still, the underlying concept of how Petrodollar recycling, or as some call it, petrocurrency mercantilism works, leaves some confusion. So in order to alleviate that, here courtesy of Cult State, is a quick and simple primer that should hopefully answer all questions. From CultState:

So what is petrocurrency mercantilism?

It’s when a national bank and an energy producer collude to generate artificial demand for a currency at the expense of the purchasing power of other currencies.

The flowchart below shows how it all works.

Given this backdrop, one can better understand many subsequent U.S. foreign-policy moves involving the Middle East and other oil-producing regions.

Recent developments in technology and geopolitics, however, have already ignited a process to bring an end to the financial system predicated on petrodollars, which will have a profound impact on global financial markets. The 40-year equilibrium of this system is being dismantled by the exponential growth of technology, which will have a bearish impact on both supply and demand of petroleum. Moreover, the system no longer is in the best interest of key participants in the global oil trade. These developments have begun to exert influence on financial markets and will only grow over time. The upheaval of the petrodollar recycling system will trigger a resurgence of volatility and new price trends, which will lead to a renaissance in macro investing.

Let’s examine these developments in more detail.

First, TECHNOLOGY is affecting the energy markets dramatically, and this impact is growing exponentially. The pattern-seeking human mind is built for an observable linear universe, but has cognitive difficulty recognizing and understanding the impact of exponential growth.

Paralleling Moore’s Law, the current growth rate of new technologies roughly doubles every two years. In the transportation sector, the global penetration rate of electric vehicles, or EVs, was 1% at the end of 2016 and is now probably about 1.5%. However, a doubling every two years of this level of usage should lead to an automobile market that primarily consists of EVs in approximately 12 years, reducing gasoline demand and international oil revenue to a degree that today would seem unfathomable to the linear-thinking mind. Yes, the world is changing—rapidly.

Alternative energy sources (solar power, wind, and such) also are well into their exponential growth curves, and are even ahead of EVs in this regard. Based on growth curves of other recent technologies, and due to similar growth rates in battery technology and pricing, it is likely that solar power will supplant petroleum in a vast portion of nontransportation sectors in about a decade. Albert Einstein is rumored to have described compound interest (another form of exponential growth) as the most powerful force in the universe. This is real change.

The growth of U.S. oil production due to new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has both reduced the U.S. need for foreign sources of oil and led to lower global oil prices. With the U.S. economy more self-reliant for its oil consumption, reduced purchases of foreign oil have led to a drop in the revenues of oil-producing nations and by extension, lower international demand for Treasuries and U.S. dollars.

ANOTHER MAJOR SECULAR CHANGE that is under way in the oil market comes from the geopolitical arena. China, now the world’s largest importer of oil, is no longer comfortable purchasing oil in a currency over which it has no control, and has taken the following steps that allow it to circumvent the use of the U.S. dollar:

• China has agreed with Russia to purchase Russian oil and natural gas in yuan.


• As an example of China’s newfound power to influence oil exporters, China has persuaded Angola (the world’s second-largest oil exporter to China) to accept the yuan as legal tender, evidence of efforts made by Beijing to speed up internationalization of the yuan. The incredible growth rates of the Chinese economy and its thirst for oil have endowed it with tremendous negotiating strength that has led, and will lead, other countries to cater to China’s needs at the expense of their historical client, the U.S.


• China is set to launch an oil exchange by the end of the year that is to be settled in yuan. Note that in conjunction with the existing Shanghai Gold Exchange, also denominated in yuan, any country will now be able to trade and hedge oil, circumventing U.S. dollar transactions, with the flexibility to take payment in yuan or gold, or exchange gold into any global currency.


• As China further forges relationships through its One Belt, One Road initiative, it will surely pull other exporters into its orbit to secure a reliable flow of supplies from multiple sources, while pressuring the terms of the trade to exclude the U.S. dollar.

The world’s second-largest oil exporter, Russia, is currently under sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union, and has made clear moves toward circumventing the dollar in oil and international trade. In addition to agreeing to sell oil and natural gas to China in exchange for yuan, Russia recently announced that all financial transactions conducted in Russian seaports will now be made in rubles, replacing dollars, according to Russian state news outlet RT. Clearly, there is a concerted effort from the East to reset the economic world order.

ALL OF THESE DEVELOPMENTS leave global financial markets vulnerable to a paradigm shift that has recently begun. In meetings with fund managers, asset allocators, and analysts, I have found a virtually universal view that macro investing—investing based on global macroeconomic and political, not security-specific trends—is dead, fueled by investor money exiting the space due to poor returns and historically high fees in relation to performance. This is what traders refer to as capitulation. It occurs when most market participants can’t take advantage of a promising opportunity due to losses, lack of dry powder, or a psychological inability to proceed because of recency bias.

A current generational low in volatility across a wide spectrum of asset classes is another indicator that the market doesn’t see a paradigm shift coming. This suggests that current volatility is expressing a full discounting of stale fundamental inputs and not adequately pricing in the potential of likely disruptive events.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE is now in the beginning stages of a shift toward “normalization,” which will lead to diminished support for the U.S. Treasury market. The Fed’s total assets stand at approximately $4.5 trillion, or five times what they were prior to the financial crisis of 2008-09. The goal of the Fed is to “unwind” this enormous balance sheet with minimal market disruption. This is a high-wire act a thousand feet in the air without a safety net or prior practice. Additionally, at some not-so-distant future date, the U.S. will need to finance enormous and growing entitlement programs, and our historical international sources for that financing will no longer be willing to support us in that endeavor.

The market participants with whom I met theoretically could have the ability to accept cognitively the points made in this article. But the accumulation of many small losses in a low-volatility and generally trendless market has robbed them of confidence and the psychological balance to embrace any new paradigm proactively. They are frozen with fear that the lower- return profile of recent years is permanent—ironic in an industry that is paid to capture price changes in a cyclical world.

One market legend with whom I spoke suggested he wouldn’t have had the success he enjoyed in his career had he begun in the past decade. Whether or not this might be true, it doesn’t mean that recent lower returns are to be extrapolated into the future, especially when these subpar returns occurred during the quantitative-easing era, a period that is an anomaly.

I have been fortunate to ride substantial bets on big trends, earning high risk-adjusted returns using time-tested techniques for exploiting these trends. Additionally, I have had the luxury of not participating actively full-time in macro investing during this difficult period. Both factors might give me perspective. I regard this as an extraordinarily opportune moment for those able to shed timeworn, archaic assumptions of market behavior and boldly return to the roots of macro investing.

The opportunity is reminiscent of the story told by Stanley Druckenmiller, who was promoted early in his investment career to head equity research at a time when his co-workers had vastly more experience than he did. His director of investments informed him that his promotion owed to the same reason they send 18-year-olds to war; they are too dumb to know not to charge. The “winners” under the paradigm now unfolding will be market participants able to disregard stale, anomalous concepts, and charge.

RELATEDLY, THERE IS a running debate as to whether trend-following is a dying strategy. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that short-term and mean-reversion trading is more in vogue in today’s markets (think quant funds and “prop” shops). Additionally, the popularity of passive investing signals an unwillingness to invest in “idea generation,” or alpha. These developments represent a full capitulation of trend following and macro trading.

Ironically, many market players who wrongly anticipated a turn in recent years to a more positive environment for macro and trend-following are throwing in the towel. The key difference is that now there is a clear catalyst to trigger the start of the pendulum swinging back to a fertile macro/trend-following trading environment.

As my mentor, Bruce Kovner [the founder of Caxton Associates] used to say, “Nobody rings a bell at key turning points.” The ability to properly anticipate change is predicated upon detached analysis of fundamental information, applying that information to imagine a plausible world different from today’s, understanding how new data points fit (or don’t fit) into that world, and adjusting accordingly. Ideally, this process leads to an “aha!” moment, and the idea crystallizes into a clear vision. The thesis proposed here is one such vision.

The Geopolitical Consequences Of U.S. Oil Exports

Authored by Kent Moors via OilPrice.com,

Two crucial things happened last week.

The first you may have noticed – oil prices moved back up briefly.

As for the second, most so-called “experts” seemed to have missed.

See, the environment we’re seeing in energy markets is very different from what we saw only a week ago, when oil prices were also rising.

Because last week also saw – for the first time in world history – a reigning Saudi Arabian monarch in Moscow for talks with Russia’s head of state.

Historically, Russia has been much closer to Iran – Saudi Arabia’s main regional enemy.

Now, King Salman and President Putin are expected to endorse the plan to extend the OPEC-Russia deal to cut oil production and boost prices beyond the current end date of March 2018.

But that’s not all they’re going to talk about…

Other, more far-ranging matters will also be on the agenda, including the war in Syria.

And the catalyst for this huge shift in global geopolitics is surprisingly simple.

It’s all about America’s record-breaking oil exports…

Russia and Saudi Arabia Need Each Other… for Now

Now, there’s no indication that Russia and Saudi Arabia are on the road to an alliance on anything beyond oil prices.

Even then, that accord remains only as long as it is in the subjective interest of the parties.

Nonetheless, it is disquieting to Washington that any such prospects may be on the horizon… or that U.S. oil exports may be introducing a range of foreign policy concerns.

From an energy perspective, the main issue at hand is the OPEC-Russian deal to cap oil production, which is now almost certain to continue further than the agreed-on end date of March next year.

And after some concerns had been raised over individual OPEC members exceeding the quotas the deal assigned them, evidence is now emerging that the restraint is holding.

As I’ve several times before here in Oil & Energy Investor, there’s no genuine alternative.

The major global sources of oil need to allow the worldwide market to rebalance.

That’s the only genuine basis for stability and a slow increase in prices.

Now, with some of Libya’s oil production coming back on line, it may seem like there’s less flexibility for some producers to increase their crude output and still “hide” within the overall figures set by the cap accord.

But that’s ignoring four major factors that could cut into oil supply, and send prices higher…

Massive problems are accelerating in Venezuela, Nigerian extraction levels remain under threat from domestic instability, non-OPEC producer Mexico faces a continuing shortfall, and even the news from Libya – that a major field is coming back online – belies the ongoing civil unrest there, and lack of forward production expectations.

The international balance between supply and demand will provide a rising price.

Yet that rise will remain a gradual one.

And this balance doesn’t actually mean that there will only be exactly as much oil available as is needed at any given time.

That kind of “just in time” availability, where crude is lined only to meet immediate demand, is a certain recipe for high volatility and huge spikes in price.

Even a minor problem could create chaos in the markets.

Rather, a stable balance presupposes a continuing surplus of excess market volume.

That not only cushions the pricing dynamics from wide swings in demand, but it also allows producers the luxury of being able to predict the price range.

Anybody in the business will tell you that this predictability is far more important to maintaining profit margins than are the occasional large jumps in price.

An operator’s financial survivability requires that futures sales be calculated into the estimate of the cost of producing the oil and selling it on.

These prices, called “wellhead prices,” are the real revenue a producer receives in the first arms-length transaction as oil comes out of the ground.

These prices are also well below the market price quoted throughout a trading day.

U.S. Oil Production is at Record Highs

But the primary caveat in all of this talk about an emerging balance remains U.S. production.

It’s once again increasing and now has a more immediate impact on global pricing levels than has been the case previously.

That’s because American exports have become a major factor in the global market.

For some time, oil prices have not been determined by what occurs in developed markets of North America and Western Europe.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent, the benchmark crude rates set in New York and London, may dictate daily trade. Yet the demand fueling the market is generated in developing areas worldwide.

Until recently, the U.S. only indirectly impacted upon the international determination of price.

In the past, the only effect came from how much the American market imported from elsewhere.

For over four decades, Congress banned the export of crude oil from the country on national security grounds.

Those restrictions resulted from the Arab oil embargo boycott of the U.S. during the 1973-74 Arab-Israeli War.

Today’s situation, where America has huge domestic extractable reserves of shale and tight oil, combined with significant improvements in production efficiency, has turned those security concerns obsolete.

There’s also the simple fact that no producing country in the world (with the possible exception of Iran, for political reasons) can afford not to sell to the U.S.

As a result, as part of a budget reconciliation two years ago, Congress lifted the ban on crude exports.

American refineries by that point were already leading the world in the export of processed oil products.

What followed was a quick move of American crude oil production back into the market…

Despite the Hurricanes, Oil Exports are Breaking Records

Exports had risen to a 1.1 million barrel a day level by the time Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast.

The hurricane slashed exports 60 percent. Refineries were also taken off line.

That combination should have pulverized crude oil prices, at least if you listened to the so-called “experts” on TV.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, what happened next was nothing short of astounding.

Exports swiftly returned. Record levels were reached in each of the last two weeks.

As of last Friday, the U.S. was exporting 1.98 million barrels a day. The rising level of American volume in the broader market now has an impact on global price and the saliency of the OPEC-Russian agreement limiting production.

Because remember, U.S. production is not a party to that agreement.

The rising spread between WTI and Brent has also served as an additional inducement to increasing U.S. exports. The more international Brent prices have been increasing quicker than America’s WTI.

The difference, calculated as a percentage of WTI (the more accurate way of doing this), has now averaged more than 10 percent for the past 30 consecutive daily sessions – something that has not happened in over six years. Related: OPEC Producers Unmoved By U.S. Shale Threat In Asia

The advantage to American producers is simple. Exporting oil that costs less to produce at home into markets were the oil price is higher is a direct route to improving bottom lines.

As long as this situation remains, there will be additional U.S. production coming, because it’s profitable to extract and export.

And the more U.S. oil is exported, the less immediate effect higher production here has on domestic prices.

But this is also resulting in changes to foreign expectations.

Some of these are having spillover effects in other quarters…

Including sending Saudi Arabia and Russia into each other’s arms…

At least for now.

China's Oil Demand Is Far Ahead Of Last Year's Pace

Authored by Robert Rapier via OilPrice.com,

OPEC recently released its Monthly Oil Market Report which covers the global oil supply and demand picture through July.

OPEC crude oil production decreased by 79,000 BPD in August to average 32.8 million BPD. This marks the first OPEC production decline since April and was primarily driven by sizable outages in Libya.

The cartel revised global oil demand growth for 2017 upward by 50,000 barrels per day (BPD) to 1.42 million BPD. The group reports strong growth from the OECD Americas, Europe, and China.

Global oil demand for 2018 is expected to grow by 1.35 million BPD, an upward revision of 70,000 BPD from the previous report. Growth next year is expected to be driven by OECD Europe and China.

China’s oil demand rose by 690,000 BPD in July, marking a 6 percent year-over-year (YOY) increase. China’s total oil demand reached 11.67 million BPD in July. Year-to-date data indicates an average growth of 550,000 BPD, more than double the 210,000 BPD growth recorded during the same period in 2016.

China’s gasoline demand was higher by around 0.10 million BPD YOY, driven by robust sports utility vehicle (SUV) sales, which were around 17 percent higher than one year ago.

China’s overall vehicle sales in July rose by 4 percent YOY, with total sales reaching 1.7 million units.

The numbers from China are interesting given the constant refrain of weakening Chinese demand. This seems to be wishful thinking based on China’s investments in clean technology.

China is the world’s top market for electric vehicles, and they recently announced that they have started “relevant research” and are working on a timetable for implementation of a ban on vehicles powered by fossil fuels.

That news followed previous announcements by France and the U.K. that they would ban the sale of vehicles powered by fossil fuels by 2040. These countries are making bets that electric vehicles (EVs) will be ready for near universal adoption when these bans go into effect. By making these bets, they are trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

China may indeed join the ranks of countries banning fossil fuel vehicles. This news helps drive the narrative that the age of oil is nearing its end, but China is a long way from reining in its oil consumption growth.

EVs may lag lofty expectations, in which case governments may have to revisit or delay these announced bans. And even if bans and mandates end up having the desired effect, it’s going to take time.

That’s certainly not a knock on EVs. This is not a zero-sum game because the number of drivers is growing. It is possible — and I would argue that it is highly likely — that we will see both explosive growth in EVs for the next decade, and growing oil demand.

This Is What $100 Buys You In Venezuela

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

The gunfire on the streets near my hotel started around 9pm last night.

The sound is unmistakable, especially at night on an otherwise quiet city street.

I had recently returned to the hotel after a few evening meetings. And coming back after dark it was as if they had rolled the sidewalks up — restaurants with no patrons, bars and clubs that were totally empty.

There was an incredibly striking woman I remember, standing in front of her restaurant playing hostess to absolutely nobody.

And with few people on the streets, it felt like some sort of zombie apocalypse.

Amazingly enough this country used to be THE wealthiest in the region. And not too long ago.

Throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Venezuela enjoyed robust growth. Low inflation. Substantial foreign investment. High wages. It was the envy of Latin America.

It was all based on one industry: oil. Venezuela has effectively been a one-trick pony for decades.

And when oil prices were strong, the government was swimming in cash. Even as recently as 2007, the Venezuelan government’s oil revenue was so high that they PAID OFF ALL FOREIGN DEBT.

Think about that: only ten years ago Venezuela had ZERO foreign debt.

But at the same time the government here had a long history of excessive spending. Social programs. Military. Fuel and electricity subsidies. Whatever it took to remain in power.

The government spent so much money that, even when oil prices exceeded $100 per barrel between 2011 and 2013, they STILL couldn’t break even.

Then oil prices collapsed. By early 2016, a barrel of oil was fetching less than $30.

Venezuela’s public finances were in shambles… so the government resorted to the same old tactics that nearly every bankrupt government has relied on throughout history.

For one, they started spending their foreign reserves– essentially burning through the public savings account.

Today Venezuela has its lowest level of foreign reserves in decades, less than $10 billion, compared to $42 billion in December 2008.

They’ve also sold off a huge portion of their gold reserves.

In late 2015 Venezuela held 373 metric tons of gold. Today that’s down to 188 metric tons, a nearly 50% drop in less than two years.

More importantly, though, the government has resorted to printing incomprehensible quantities of paper currency and vastly expanding the central bank balance sheet.

This chart is really amazing to see– the Venezuelan central bank’s balance sheet literally TRIPLED in a SINGLE MONTH between April and May of this year.

They keep printing more and more money, to the point that the currency has become totally worthless.

I remember coming here a few years ago when the black-market rate was around 8 bolivars per US dollar.

On my next trip, it took 100 bolivars to buy a dollar in the black market. And the rate kept dropping with each trip.

This time I exchanged dollars at around 27,000 per US dollar. Meanwhile the ‘official’ rate is a laughable 10:1. It’s a nearly 3000x difference.

So, depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela is either absurdly expensive or absurdly cheap.

A ride from the airport was about 80,000 bolivars. At official rates that’s EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS. For a taxi ride.

But at black market rates it’s less than three bucks. Quite a difference.

Last night I exchanged $100 and received this brick of cash in exchange.

Needless to say this monetary insanity makes life extremely difficult.

Anything imported is prohibitively expensive. And with the economy collapsing, domestic production is also grinding to a halt.

There’s very little economic activity. People are sitting in their homes trying to survive. Medicine is scarce. And even staples like food are running out… which is totally nuts.

Venezuela is a vast country with rich, fertile soil and abundant sources of water. There is absolutely no reason why there should be food shortages here.

Chalk up another victory for socialism and central planning.

In their desperation, people are turning to crime, prostitution… anything they have to do to make ends meet. I routinely see people picking through garbage cans eating scraps, anything they can find.

Incredibly there is still a hint of normalcy in the city, at least during the daytime.

People are out on the streets going about their lives… heading to work, taking their kids to school, playing sports, chatting with their friends.

I find it remarkable how well this place has held itself together. Venezuelans constantly display ingenuity and resilience in their ability to deal with such an epic crisis.

And the good news is that this will one day get better.

The government has nearly run out of money and is dangerously close to defaulting on its debts. At some point they’ll no longer be able to pay the armed thugs who keep the population in line.

It’s inevitable. Totalitarian governments almost invariably fall when they run out of resources to sustain themselves.

It may get worse before it gets better. But eventually this madness and oppression WILL come to an end, whether through war, revolution, peaceful means.

What I find so strange is how little optimism there is for Venezuela.

By comparison, investors are perennially excited about Cuba. People have been saying for decades that Cuba will be an investment paradise once the authoritarian regime comes to an end.

Sure, great. I’ve been to Cuba. I like it. And there will certainly be great opportunities there.

But few people apply this same logic to Venezuela. And I find that strange.

This place is huge. There is SO MUCH opportunity here. 30+ million people. Enormous reserves of natural resources. Plenty of coastline. Ports. Infrastructure. Manufacturing capacity. Strategic geography. Renewable energy.

Whether it’s next year or ten years from now, this country has the potential to some day become one of the most exciting places in the world. 

Do you have a Plan B?

You Can Only Choose One: Cheap Oil Or A Weak Dollar

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

When the price of oil rises to the point of pain, just remember the handy-dandy discount mechanism: a much stronger US dollar.

Glance at this chart of the trade-weighted U.S. dollar, and note the swing highs and lows in the price of oil per barrel around each peak and trough. You can look up historical inflation-adjusted prices of oil in USD on this handy chart: Crude Oil Prices - 70 Year Historical Chart (macrotrends.net)

The correlation isn"t perfect, of course. Oil was relatively cheap between 1986 and 2003, due to a relative abundance of supply as Saudi Arabia and new fields ramped up production, with two periods of extreme price action: a brief spike higher in 1990 preceding the First Gulf War, and a collapse to $17 in the 1998 Asian Contagion financial crisis.

Geopolitical crises, wars and supply shocks will move oil prices regardless of the value of the USD. That said, it"s clear that absent such shocks, there is a strong correlation between a stronger USD and lower oil prices (in USD of course) and a weaker dollar and higher oil prices.

The reason why is straightforward: if the dollar gains purchasing power against other currencies, it buys more oil for each dollar.

Conversely, when the USD weakens, its purchasing power declines and it takes more USD to buy an imported barrel of oil.

(Note that the price of domestically produced oil is largely set on the global marketplace. West Texas crude oil may be a few dollars less per barrel than Brent crude oil, but if the global price skyrockets, so does the price of US-produced crude.)

Since oil and gas are the essential resources of the industrial economy, the price paid by consumers and commercial users matter.

The one way the US can get an across-the-board global discount on oil is to push the purchasing power of the USD higher. That is an enormous benefit that few commentators ever mention. Instead, pundits talk about the benefits of a weaker dollar, which boil down to lower priced exports.

Which matters most to households and enterprises? A tiny blip higher in exports (a relatively modest slice of the U.S. economy) or lower energy prices at the pump?

If a recession were to pressure household budgets, the one sure way to lower household spending on oil/gasoline would be to strengthen the USD.

There are two basic mechanisms that strengthen the USD: raise interest rates, so global capital flows to USD-denominated debt to earn the higher yield, or a global financial crisis which causes global capital to seek the relative safe haven of the USD.

In a global crisis, liquidity and credit will dry up, and all those non-US debtors holding the $11 trillion in USD-denominated debt I mentioned on Friday will be scrambling for USD to service their debts. This will also increase demand for USD, pushing the USD higher.

The Federal Reserve insists that yields must remain near-zero or the economy will collapse. Americans paying 15% to 23% interest on their credit cards haven"t seen any benefit from near-zero rates, nor have student-loan debtors. The real beneficiaries of low yields are financiers, banks and corporations which borrow immense sums for next to nothing. (Try finding a credit card with a 1% or 2% interest rate.)

At some point, the price of oil might start mattering to households and businesses. Note that the discoveries of oil are now a thin slice of annual consumption. As the cheap oil is depleted, what"s left is the costlier-to-extract stuff.

Even more alarming, the global supply of oil might fall well below global demand, and stay there.

When the price of oil rises to the point of pain, just remember the handy-dandy discount mechanism: a much stronger US dollar.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

Is Another Oil Head-Fake Coming?

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The dramatic declines in the costs of oil production will be boosting supply at the very moment that demand is falling.

Over the past decade I"ve addressed what I call Head-Fakes in the cost of oil/fossil fuel: even though we know the cost of extracting and processing oil will rise over time as the easy-to-get oil is depleted, oil occasionally plummets to such low prices that we"re fooled into thinking it will remain cheap for a long time to come.

This drop in price is a head-fake, because over time the depletion of the cheap-to-extract oil will push global prices higher.

Why does this matter? Economists have noted for decades that spikes in energy costs tend to trigger recessions for the obvious reason: the more households and businesses spend on energy, the less they have to spend on goods and services.

When the price of oil drops, people buy larger, fuel-hungry vehicles because the operating costs are reasonable at the moment of purchase. The need to conserve declines across the board, setting up a high consumption level that establishes a high cost basis when oil returns to its "natural" price levels.

Correspondent Joel M. submitted an article that explains one reason why oil may plummet in price: oil companies are dramatically dropping the costs of production in order to remain profitable as oil has fallen from $100/barrel to $50/barrel. Ironically, this drive to lower costs to make oil profitable at $50/barrel or lower is sparking a production and investment boom that promises to boost production in the near-term.

Race to Bottom on Costs May Cause Oil to Choke on Own Supplies (via Joel M.).

Wael Sawan, the head of Shell’s deep-water business, said the company had been able to reduce the cost of its wells by 50 percent over two years. The biggest reason: Shell now uses just four standard well designs worldwide, compared with dozens previously, according to Sawan.

"We are going to see more material cost saving in the next couple of years," he said in an interview.

With costs down from shale to mega-projects, companies big and small are starting to green-light more investment. Shell for example just approved the Kaikas deepwater oil field in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the first to get a go-head from the company in more than two years. The project will make money at less than $40 a barrel after Shell reduced its projected costs by 50 percent.

Though the global stock market is in a euphoric uptrend at the moment, many observers see the inevitability of a global recession as China dials back its astonishing credit expansion/housing bubble. Having created $30 trillion in new credit, China"s financial authorities are trying to cool down that runaway credit expansion without choking the Chinese economy. Their modest tightening in 2014 deflated their housing bubble, and the trickle-down effects soon slowed the global economy to a crawl.

As many of us have noted, no structural problems have been solved over the past eight years globally; all we"ve done is create unprecedented sums of new money in the form of credit and sovereign borrowing to keep the bubbles inflated. At some point, diminishing returns on new debt will trigger a break in the ability of households, corporations and nations to service their rising debt loads, and a retrenchment/recession of some size will occur--even if central banks flood the financial sector with liquidity and lower interest rates.

They can"t force households and corporations to borrow more, though they will try.

Any significant reduction in global demand for oil will trigger a sharp, sustained decline in the price of oil. Price for commoditized goods and services is set on the margin; a 5% decline in demand doesn"t necessarily reduce price by 5%; if the drop in demand shifts the the global supply into chronic over-supply, it may trigger a price drop of 25% or more.

The dramatic declines in the costs of oil production will be boosting supply at the very moment that demand is falling. This imbalance will crush the price of oil, perhaps as low as $25/barrel. Some analysts are predicting sub-$20 oil.

Low prices will devastate profits and oil-exporting nation"s oil revenues, and perversely remove incentives to conserve energy. These two dynamics will then set up the next oil spike, as production will decline while demand will be boosted as economies use more "cheap oil."

The global economy will quickly adjust to low oil prices, and decisions will be made to raise consumption based on those low prices.

When oil inevitably spikes higher as supply is slashed and demand increases off the recessionary trough, everyone will be "surprised" that low prices didn"t last.

That"s the oil head-fake in a nutshell.

Rig Count Drops For 3rd Time In 6 Weeks As US Shale Heavyweights Boost Production

The pace of US oil rig count growth has slowed dramatically in the last six weeks as the lagged response to oil prices indicated. While US oil production continues to trend higher, in lagged response to the rise in rigs, it is also nearing its apex. However, four U.S. shale companies recently reported second-quarter production that beat targets and increased their respective full-year output growth guidance.

This is the 3rd weekly drop in the US oil rig count in the last six weeks...

Crude Production (in the Lower 48) topped 9mm last week for the first time since July 2015, and this week it rose once again to a new cycle high...but judging by the slowdown in rig count growth, production may be set to slow.

However, despite the slowdown in US oil rig count growth, OilPrice.com"s Tsvetana Paraskova notes that US shale heavyweights are set to boost production this year.

In a sign that the U.S. shale patch is boosting output that has been keeping a lid on oil prices, four U.S. shale companies reported second-quarter production that beat targets and increased their respective full-year output growth guidance.

EOG Resources reported on Tuesday Q2 total crude oil volumes rising 25 percent to 334,700 barrels of oil per day, setting a company oil production record. The company raised its full-year 2017 U.S. crude oil growth target to 20 percent from 18 percent and total company production growth target to seven percent from five percent, keeping capital spending plans intact.

“EOG can continue to grow at strong rates within cash flow,” Chairman and CEO Bill Thomas said.

Devon Energy beat its midpoint guidance with Q2 net production averaging 536,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day, and said that it was on track to achieve its full-year 2017 production targets. The company cut full-year capital outlook by US$100 million, citing “strong capital efficiencies” and saying it is keeping planned drilling activity for the year.

Diamondback Energy reported Q2 2017 production 25 percent higher than in Q1 2017, and raised full-year production guidance by 5 percent.

Newfield Exploration Company also beat its production targets and increased the mid-point of its full-year 2017 domestic production outlook.

Newfield Exploration now estimates that its year-over-year domestic production growth, adjusted for prior-year asset sales, will be around 8 percent.

“In the best parts of the basins, shale is here to stay,” Rob Thummel, managing director at Leawood, Kansas-based Tortoise Capital Advisors LLC, told Bloomberg, commenting on the shale drillers’ Q2 updates and guidance.

U.S. drillers expect to continue raising production this year, but some are adjusting spending to the expected cash flows in the current oil price environment, after prices failed to rise as much as analysts and investors had expected a few months ago.

“$50 a barrel is still a pretty critical number and that number is going to be even more critical as we move into next year,” Tortoise Capital Advisors’ Thummel told Bloomberg, noting that the lower oil prices could mean that companies would not hedge production as much as they would at higher prices to protect future output.

*  *  *

Furthermore, OPEC compliance with production cuts agreed last year fell to 86 percent in July, according to a Bloomberg survey published on Aug. 1. That’s the second consecutive monthly drop -- now at the lowest since January -- and is down from 105 percent in April and May.

OPEC output rose by 210,000 barrels to 32.87 million barrels a day in July, driven by Libya, which added 180,000 barrels a day.

The Major Wildcard That Could Send Oil To $120

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

The latest rally in oil prices ran up against a wall yet again, and the same fears about oversupply have not receded in the slightest. The expectation from most oil analysts is that there is very little room on the upside for oil prices and that we will have to wait until 2018 at the earliest before the market gets closer to “balance.”

But the one major wildcard for oil prices is geopolitics, which, however unlikely given the degree of supply overhang that still exists, could send prices up. But how high? The latest blockade of Qatar, which has mushroomed into a regional political crisis in the Middle East, would have caused a severe spike in oil prices in the past, even though Qatar is a relatively minor producer. However, the simmering standoff not only failed to register, but occurred at a time of falling oil prices.

If a crisis involving heavyweight oil producers was shrugged off by the market, it is hard to imagine some other event causing a sharp price spike, even if more barrels were on the line.

But that is exactly what some analysts are afraid of, warning that the markets are overlooking some potentially massive geopolitical problems looming just over the horizon.

"Venezuela"s 2 million barrels of oil a day could literally go any day. Mexico looks poor. Azerbaijan"s in trouble. China"s own production is collapsing rapidly," Neil Dwane, the chief investment officer of European equity at Allianz Global Investors, told CNBC last week.

"One only has to have one mistake and the only thing you"ll be talking about all morning is oil at $120."

Herman Wang of S&P Global Platts agreed with that sentiment, although he expects the price spike to be less severe.

"There are plausible scenarios where you could see, perhaps not $120 a barrel, but an elevated oil price, say $70 to $80 on some of these geopolitical and some of the supply concerns. Venezuela certainly is a mess right now," Wang told CNBC"s Squawk Box last week.

But there are a few reasons why some analysts would roll their eyes at the prospect of triple-digit oil prices in the near future. After all, oil inventories are still sky-high even if they are starting to come down; U.S. shale production has roared back, adding roughly 0.5 mb/d since late last year; and Libya and Nigeria have restored around 400,000 barrels per day of disrupted production. Not only that, but sharper gains are expected to be forthcoming from the U.S., Nigeria and Libya, while other long-term projects in Canada and Brazil are set to add production this year. 

However, not all of that is guaranteed. The U.S. shale rally recently hit some bumps in the road. More importantly, the geopolitical uncertainty in unstable countries such as Libya and Nigeria could quickly knock production offline once again. For example, Reuters reported that heavy clashes took place in Libya on July 9, underscoring the fact that the country’s recent calm is highly fragile.

Also, the peace in the Niger Delta is also starting to look rocky. Former militants, according to Reuters, are unhappy with government promises, and have threatened a return to violence.

"This peace is a graveyard peace," a local chief in the Niger Delta told Reuters. "Nobody can assure anybody that nothing will happen in the Delta." Nigeria is aiming for 2 mb/d of production in August, which would be the highest total in a year and a half, and almost double the low point from last year.

There is also the vaguer and more uncertain variable of the recent ascendance of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has brought a more hawkish approach to Saudi foreign policy. The escalation of confrontation against Qatar is one clear consequence of that. So is the war in Yemen. More conflicts could arise from a more belligerent Saudi government. “We contend that the region could be subject to more volatility and heightened risk,” as a result of Mohammed bin Salman taking over as crown prince, RBC wrote in a note last month.

But it is Venezuela that could be the mother of all black swan events. As Neil Dwane of Allianz Global Investors mentions, Venezuela has already seen the near total breakdown of society, and its oil production of 2 million barrels per day (mb/d) could unravel. It still seems unthinkable at this point, but becoming more likely by the day. Already, Venezuela’s oil production has eroded sharply, falling to 1.96 mb/d as of May 2017, down from 2.375 mb/d in 2015. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s refining industry is in shambles, forcing the country to increasingly import gasoline to avoid fuel shortages.

The street protests in the South American country just marked their 100^th day, and show no sign of slowing down.

The oil market is rather depressed and subdued at the moment, but could awaken at moment’s notice if large volumes of oil production are disrupted from some unforeseen event.

Is The Second Shale Boom Grinding To A Halt?

Authored by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

There are some early signs that the shale boom is once again coming to a halt, beaten back by another bear market.

The oil rig count declined by 2 last week, the first decline in six months. It is too early to tell whether or not this is a trend – it is one data point, after all – but if the surging rig count starts to flatten out or even decline a bit, it would provide a huge lift to the oil market.

It would also suggest that U.S. shale can’t continue to grow at such a rapid clip with oil prices below $45 per barrel. Shale is often likened as the new “swing producer,” that is, a source of supply that ramps up and down on short notice in order to balance the market. Reasonable people can debate that moniker, but if forthcoming data in the next few weeks shows that shale is slowing down, it would appear that prices in the mid-$40s are the threshold around which shale turns on and off.

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A second piece of data also adds some weight to the notion that U.S. shale could be struggling with oil prices in the $40s. The EIA reported that U.S oil production dipped by 100,000 bpd for the week ending on June 23, the largest weekly decline in over a year.

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More solid evidence comes from the retrospective monthly numbers, which are published with a several month delay but tend to be more accurate. The EIA just reported figures for April, which show U.S. oil production dipping to 9.083 mb/d, down from 9.107 mb/d in March. It was the first monthly decline in output in 2017.

Again, these are only a few data points, so they do not necessarily prove anything. But if they are the start of a trend – if rig counts flatten out and production starts to fall – it would be a significant development. The EIA has predicted that the U.S. will grow production from the roughly 9.3 million barrels per day (mb/d) currently up to 10 mb/d by next year. That could be a difficult target to meet if the rebound starts to fizzle.

Moreover, a slowdown and perhaps even a decline in production would also dispel the belief that shale can continue to grow at sub-$40 oil prices. A lot of shale companies have boasted about their lower breakeven prices, and some say they can even make money with oil below $30 per barrel. That may be true for individual companies, but not for the industry as a whole. Conventional wells deplete at a rate of around 5 percent annually, and shale wells decline at a much faster rate. Without heavy drilling activity, overall production will fall. We will need more data, but again, that threshold for growth could pivot around the $45 price level.

Of course, slowing production will induce higher prices, which in turn, could provide more breathing room for drillers.

In fact, only two weeks after oil officially entered bear market territory, the market is starting to regain a bit of confidence, which is no doubt influenced by the sudden slowdown in U.S. shale. Hedge funds and other money managers staked out the most bearish position on crude futures in nearly a year, but the most recent data showed that the buildup of short bets slowed to a trickle. The past week of oil price gains could reverse that rush towards a bearish positioning. “That slowdown was the prelude to what should be probably a pretty sizable net change in the position next week,” John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital, told Bloomberg. The liquidation of bullish bets could be “running out of steam,” he said.

That might mean that there is a little more room for oil on the upside. Sharp selloffs can slow things down, setting up the conditions for a tighter market. "Sentiment has turned and I think we should be going up (in price). I don"t think it"s going to last, but the momentum at the moment is with the bulls," PVM Oil Associates strategist Tamas Varga said in a Reuters interview.

Others are in agreement. "You are going to see crude oil inventories globally and domestically begin to decline month after month. That will support crude oil prices, boosting the entire sector," Rob Thummel, managing director for Tortoise Capital Advisors, told CNBC, adding that the “fundamentals are set up for a second-half comeback.”

It is also possible that the latest string of data pointing to a slowdown in the shale patch could be a one-off anomaly. If the rig count and weekly production figures resume their year-long climb, sentiment will quickly turn negative once again. David Leben, director of commodity derivatives at BNP Paribas, told the WSJ that the situation is not dramatically different from two weeks ago. “All the bearish things are kind of still in play,” he said.