81–90 of 107 posts
Sure, there are reasons to do so, but they better be unassailable... like bootlegging equipment in 1933, or horse and buggies in 1908.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Oil-...
I think the big change in the market is fracking, some lifestyle change toward less driving and energy intensity, not so much alternatives yet. But it could happen.
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That's pretty interesting about the new technologies and how small businesses can still operate profitably in the current price range. Where did you read about this?
I work in the drilling data industry and have access to data as well as anecdotal observations. But there are lots of published articles e.g. [1], [2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/business/energy-environmen... [2] http://www.worldoil.com/news/2015/8/12/oil-at-30-is-no-probl...
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The break even price is estimated at current pumping rate vs gross profit; but Saudi Arabia can relatively easily increase their pumping rate. The cash cost for the Saudis per barrel is sub $5. So they can up their production rate to handle the difference; they are incentivised to do so if they truly believe that their reserves will become a stranded asset. In contrast after running and royalties cash costs in the US…
Solar, wind, and nuclear don't provide a threat to fuel used for transportation, which is a major percentage of how it's used.
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If I were to stereotype smokers I wouldn't call the a group of luxury item buyers. I know tobacco isn't a necessity but the anacedata point from me would be that poverty and tobacco use are closely correlated.
Luxury traditionally means "optional" in this context. People can generally live and work without tobacco. Industrialized countries currently require oil, although this is changing.
Aren't OPEC essentially trying to starve out the competition (shale, fracking, solar, wind, etc.)? They are basically flooding the market with cheap oil and thereby making all the alternatives economically unattractive? Western oil interests are probably right to spend on discovery then, since they'd believe OPEC can't pump forever and non-OPEC sources will be profitable in the future and will take years to develop.…
Whoever wrote this seems to be predicting the present while having no awareness of how the petroleum industry works. Yes, they've outlined what most majors are doing to different degrees in different areas. However, you're stupid not to keep your ability to operate when oil prices come back up. (Caveat: I'm an exploration geologist at a "western major", so I do have a somewhat slanted view.) First off, let's get some…
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/oil-prices-ceil...
Basically saying future pricing will stable at ~$50, anything higher will create opportunity for US Shale Oil companies, anything lower they will not be able to sustain their own economies.
( I actually said something similar / if not the same and got downvoted >Which got me to think, why aren't countries buying lots of cheap oil now and store them somewhere if they know prices will bounce back to $50+ in two years time? Or do setting up the infrastructure cost more then then $15 oil savings.
I don't know anything about oil, but it seems unrealistic to claim to be able to predict markets. Liquidating all your reserves at current price is unlikely to be seen as a wise move. (And wouldn't selling more oil than the US uses annually impact prices somehow?) If you magically had knowledge of the range of prices over 10+ years you could do all sorts of money making things. Edit: Looked into this a bit. Futures o…
The futures market by itself doesn't provide a magical way of predicting the price of oil in 2017. Roughly, since oil can be stored the best predictor we have for the price of oil in December 2017 is the current spot price, adjusted for borrowing costs and storage costs.
Let's say the current price is $40, and it costs $10 to store a barrel for 2 years. If the 2017 price were too high, say $100, you could make a profit by borrowing $50, buying a barrel and storing it, and selling a futures contract today; in 2017 you would collect $100, pay back $50 + interest, and would still make a profit.
So -- again roughly -- the futures price is as good a predictor as the current spot price. E.g. if we had an oracle that told us of a sudden shortage in 2017, that would cause an increase the futures price, but it would also immediately cause an increase in the current spot price.
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Solar, wind, and nuclear don't provide a threat to fuel used for transportation, which is a major percentage of how it's used.
Until battery tech gets within a decent percentage of a gas tank. Commercial batteries are currently worse than gas tanks, but catching up fast. If they get to 20% volume/weight/price of a gas tank I would predict a switch is going to happen very very fast. Currently commercial batteries are price limited (about the price of a gas tank + filling up the gas tank 400 times, which would keep a normal car moving for 5-10…