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The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

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Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#271
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that you're asking this question, USO ETF. The alternative is options trading which is a bit more complicated but, if you're interested, is really fun to learn about.

> USO Fund Description > USO holds near-month NYMEX futures contracts on WTI crude oil. https://www.etf.com/USO Without looking any deeper I don't think this is what OP is looking for. They want to bet that oil delivered a year from now is under-priced today, while buying this ETF is betting that oil delivered a month from now is under-priced today (and holding this ETF is repeatedly renewing that bet). It's a comple…

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Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#272
post #266
post #134

It's easy to say "we live in a Just-In-Time Economy", but it's things like this that really demonstrate the implications. The supply chain is set up to flow, so when demand drops or spikes up you get a flood or a shortage. If there's a flood, some companies will go out of business, leaving the survivors with a bigger slice of the pie. If there's a shortage, companies will respond, and some will over-react and build o…

That's mostly because politicians are stupid. This exact scenario has happened before, with masks (I think during SARS? there was an article on HN recently) - companies were ordered to produce more, then the crisis fizzled out and the orders were cancelled, making some companies almost go out of business. Instead, politicians should simply commit to buying said quantities of widgets, and then respect those commitment…

The US Gov does do this in the case of vaccines because they use 900,000 eggs a day to produce vaccines, that if there wasn't the Gov buying the vaccines, there wouldn't be any production or stock when it was needed. Good article on it: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/13/815307821/planet-money-why-th...

https://www.phe.gov/about/barda/Pages/default.aspx

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is about 8% of US production. Which accounts for close to half the states consumption. 197 vs 424 million barrels. Thought of mine is as the number of electric cars increases California's oil imports will drop eventually to near zero.

California could probably get a carbon tax passed. Especially if it's on the consumption side and not the production side, because the demand reduction would only be from California but the impact to producers would be spread across producers everywhere in the world and not hit the California producers especially hard. You could also just pay them off to shut up with some tax credits or something when it's a closer f…

California is going for a more direct route which using cap and trade funds to pay for buy backs and down payment support for electric vehicles. That's being handled through the California Air Resource Boards.

I tend to dislike consumer carbon taxes because I feel it tends to punish people for decisions they made previously. Like a old fart who bought the last car he's ever going to own in 2005. Which results in political blowback. See the yellow vests in France.

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#274

The upside is - damange to the environment aside - oil is a universal currency. Lowing the cost of energy is like printing money and mailing everyone a cheque; without the inflation. (It's also why oil is has been used as an economic weapon). Lowing the cost of energy impacts everyone. It's like being The Fed and lowing interest rates, but better since Joe & Jane Q Public benefit every time they pull up to the pump.…

Except, the benefit isn't realized if you can't or won't go anywhere.

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I have heard, when they enter a market, they pay the driver more than they're getting from the user. Plus marketing. You think Google let Uber put an advert on every Google Maps search for free? There's actually a whole article about it on crunchbase: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/understanding-uber-loses-mo...

That's not unit cost. Companies spend money on advertising when they're new because it pays dividends for decades. It's not inherently loss-making, it's just investment that hasn't returned its full yield yet.

It's an investment that the company can't afford to make at the moment. An existing, efficient, and self-sustaining player can be drowned out by a few VCs subsidizing costs and making it impossible to compete for a few years.

The American VC system is disgusting. It allows a few wealthy individuals to choose winners not because they are the best solution, but just because through nefarious tactics they are the last ones standing.

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing power is a better word that monopoly power in this case then, should have been more precise in wording. They arent price takers is the point. They have price making power and a downward sloping demand curve until 50 bucks a barrel

no, economists and policymakers agree with your usage of monopoly power. monopolies aren't simply a function of number of market participants. semantic digressions like these are non-sequiturs and should be ignored.

I agree, and I'm basically trying to appease the hn crowd with the semantics. I didn't think my statement was controversial or incorrect enough to be hit with that many downvotes (I am an econ major - trying to balance layperson definitions with hyper technical ones) but clearly that ended up not being the case.

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most definitions of perfect free markets include some element of perfect competition. The math essentially assumes there are an infinite number of saudis producing at $10 a barrel that compete with eachother down to marginal cost. Obviously these aren't realistic assumptions and pretty much everyone has some form of monopoly power, such as the saudis in your case which have monopoly power coming from lower cost of go…

Marginal cost isn't a useful term if you assume infinites. If you have infinite number producing at the same price you can just say "cost" instead of "marginal cost". Marginal cost is only a useful term if each product has a different cost.

Marginal cost is the amount it costs to produce additional unit of a good, cost overall would include fixed costs. Price is different from cost as well, since that's what people pay, not how much it costs (though in perfect competition price will equal marginal cost - but not the case in monopolies). These are nitpicky technical things but they do give you different answers when you do out the math.

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sorta but um no. If no profit includes a situation where everyone involved is paid at least enough that they are willing to do the work, then there is by definition motive to do the work. These economic models are simplistic to the point of stupidity. But motivation to do the work can be totally priced in to the equations as a cost of doing business. Profit beyond that is what must, in the models, end up at zer…

Everyone involved includes those who put forth the capital to start businesses. The profit goes to them eventually via the stock market. Individuals won't put up millions or billions to start large companies without a reason. "models" remove human motivations and will never be realistic. It's why Socialism and Communism are perfect on paper... but fail spectacularly in real life.

Not necessarily the stock market, but yes of course all models are wrong. Some are useful though, including these models. You can see that a pharma company with a government granted monopoly with patent power has high gross margins, while a more undifferentiated retail firm like walmart has far lower gross margins. That understanding can be drawn from using these models to understand how businesses will behave under a set of given assumptions (they want to maximize profit etc)

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pricing power is a better word that monopoly power in this case then, should have been more precise in wording. They arent price takers is the point. They have price making power and a downward sloping demand curve until 50 bucks a barrel

no, economists and policymakers agree with your usage of monopoly power. monopolies aren't simply a function of number of market participants. semantic digressions like these are non-sequiturs and should be ignored.

> economists and policymakers agree with your usage of monopoly power

Policymakers may; they'll agree with most definitions of a Bad Thing.

Economists have to be more careful. Saying Saudi Arabia has monopoly power in the oil market because it produces oil at a lower cost than other suppliers is crazy. What power they have to manipulate the market doesn't come from what they're already doing -- it comes from what they could do. They have a marginal cost of production which is below the current market price. The fact that their average cost of production is below the current market price is not relevant.

Consider a world where Arabia, Canada, Russia, and Venezuela all produce oil and sell it at the world price of $50 / barrel. In this world, Arabia's strategy is "pump all the oil we can sell at a profit". They have a marginal cost of production of $70 / barrel, above the market price, and an average cost of production of $20 / barrel, well below the market price. They're making money hand over fist.

No one considers them to have monopoly power here. What would it mean? How would they exercise it?

See e.g. The Concept of Monopoly and the Measurement of Monopoly Power ( https://sci-hub.tw/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007... ), which would define Arabia's monopoly power in the hypothetical I've described as, on a scale from 0 to 1, negative 0.4.

But again, profits are determined by average cost, not marginal cost. There is no reason to expect average cost to equal marginal cost.

Re: The global oil market is broken, drowning in crude nobody needs

#280
post #255
post #60

That's another piece of good news. Two countries with a particularly shitty track records are in a lose-lose situation.

Please don't post shallow flamebait like this to HN. It has noticeably degrading effects on discussion, and the last thing we need here are political or nationalistic flamewars. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22718650 .

At this point the YCombinator foundation should disclose what percentage of its funding comes from the mining lobby.

Twice in a day the dang chatbot has hijacked threads to support its fossil fuel agenda. Pro coal, pro oil.

And as I said yesterday, there is no intellectual curiosity in climate change denial. STOP EDITORIALISING. you are a degrading effect on the discussion.

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