Interesting to read about old Hamm in the midst of a divorce. One wonders what influence if any this has had on his decision to drop all oil hedges.Another bold bet on oil, from CLR's CEO:
fracking wells production is boom and crash aka after an initial huge production flow
Transport stocks will move, air tickets will be cheaper again, palm oil prices will plunge, consumers will have new spending power, the industrial stocks will rally with less energy costs, currencies of oil producing nations will plummet.
this is big...
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Bigger picture, maybe this is the kick that the western economies need to get going again...winners and losers all round i suppose...consumption is such a large part of western GDP, a low oil price = a pay rise that's not inflationary or coming out of the bosses pocket.
Looks like it shows the price per barrel (presumably in USD) required to balance their government's budget? That's my guess, since all those countries are substantially dependent on oil revenue to fund non-oil related things.Can you explain that chart, RY?
Looks like it shows the price per barrel (presumably in USD) required to balance their government's budget? That's my guess, since all those countries are substantially dependent on oil revenue to fund non-oil related things.
A point many miss is that in 2014 "big oil" is in fact government. The likes of Shell and ExxonMobil are small players these days in terms of upstream production. They produce some yes, but the likes of Saudi Aramco make the "big oil" companies look trivial in comparison. And even where the oil is produced by private companies, in some countries there's still a lot of government involvement particularly with where the profits go.
As for what's going on, I suspect that Russia has something to do with it. Pure speculation here, but an agreement between the US and the Saudi's and possibly other major producers to crash the price of oil, crippling Russia economically, seems plausible to me. When you look at Russia's economy, they're very much an "oil country" in terms of exports and to a significant extent government revenue too. Oil is more important to Russia than coal or iron ore is to Australia. Many would argue that the mid-1980's oil price crash had a lot to do with the unraveling of the USSR given the economic stress imposed. History repeats?
Really interested in this shift in energy costs. I don't think it is dire but the opposite, especially coming into winter in Europe. Interesting that Nat gas can sometimes trade inversely to oil, however I wonder if this shock can bring the two back to closer correlation....
One thing about oil is that it's the universal fuel. Apart from making steel and a few other things like that, what you can do with coal or gas can be done with oil in a technical sense. Eg in Australia we generate electricity from coal, gas and renewables (mostly hydro and wind) but if oil became cheap enough then we do have capacity to burn it in a few current power stations, and if it stayed down long enough then it's not difficult to convert most coal and gas plants to run on oil.
We're not at that point yet, the price of black coal is equivalent to oil at USD18 per barrel (roughly, depends on the quality of the coal etc).
For gas it's a bit more complex, since there's no real "single" global price for gas and gas prices themselves are in some circumstances (particularly LNG) set simply as a fixed % of the oil price. But looking at the EU, gas is currently equivalent to oil at about $57 per barrel. For the US it's equivalent to oil at $22.
If the oil price continues falling then the EU may end up using more oil and less gas in industrial facilities, power generation etc. The ability to switch in the short term does have definite limitations, but it's not zero. Now, if the EU starts using more oil and less gas, then they need to import less gas from a recently troublesome supplier - Russia.
The more I think about this one, the more I see politics being involved as a cause.
Oil cartel is going against Russia nothing else. You can only push a super power so far until it really hits you back.
Russia is not a superpower,
I would question that from a military perspective. If they were easy to bowl over the US would have done that.
Check out "zero hedge" for a week or two.
RY, what do you think $50 oil would do to the industrials in developed markets? What effect do you think it would have on emerging markets? Love to hear your view!
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