Topic: America Has Lost Its Oil Buffer (Read 352 times)

If that is correct they might be losing their patience as well
Biden is running here and there for oil supply - he also went to Saudi and and Saudis are so smart that they refused them as well.

I think price and convenience are the main factors that will influence the choice of where to get the oil. However, it's also important to know that there are downsides to relying too much on one supplier. More importantly, relying on only one country also poses political risks especially if the source of that crude oil becomes a negative thing for them. yes. all politics is complicated, there are many interests in it both visible and invisible.

Electric cars are a great deal of help to the world but we need to realize that aviation world is spending way too much that we do not have an alternative for right now and that's a big trouble. I mean there is no "electric plane" yet as far as I know, or maybe if there is any, then I haven't heard about it so it's not common like cars yet.

And they use jet fuel, and they spend a ton of them as well each flight, and there are thousands of flights at any given moment. All of this combined means that we can now travel a lot faster thanks to aviation, but we are also spending oil at a rate we can't replace and that's the biggest trouble we need to fix, cars are already getting there, so it will be fixed, let's focus on aviation next.

If it was up to me... I would speed up the manufacturing of electric cars and stop the manipulation and dependency on Oil. These Oil giants has been printing money for years and it is time for them to be disrupted by companies that offer "cleaner" energy.

I hope Elon Musk and some of the other pioneers in the electric car industry, can rescue us from these rich and greedy Oil magnates, because they have been controlling our expenses on fuel and gas for too long. 

Biden is the best manifestation of America, the shortest lived empire that is currently in its last stage of life. It puts on expensive pretty clothes but internally it is all decrepit. It may die today catastrophically or it could continue living on borrowed time for more years but the inevitable is approaching.

Biden is an old man who falls asleep, greets unseen interlocutors, and does many other things that a US president shouldn't do. Perhaps he has no chance for the next term, but all the failures in the country's politics can be blamed on him.

^ And so the reason why its been reported the Saudi's is siding with Russia and collaborate for Putin price hike. Can't say its not true but among the OPEC countries, Russia cut just a 4.70% of its oil production. A tiny percentage compared to the other OPEC members.


OPEC + decided to cut oil production up to 2% of global oil demand. With so much demand and less supply, we really can expect high prices soon.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/05/oil-opec-imposes-deep-production-cuts-in-a-bid-to-shore-up-prices.html

Except that Saudi's oil production has been dramatically decreased after Aramco was hit by the Yemenis resistance so they are not selling as much oil as before. On top of that ever since the failure of the American weapons they bought (like the Patriot system that proved to be completely useless in protecting Aramco or even US bases in Saudi Arabia from being bombed), they started buying weapons from the Chinese and Russians and also sell more oil to the Chinese instead of selling it to US...

It is, and they do get it cheaper, so much so that they literally take oil out of Saudi Arabia, give them money, but then Saudi Arabia turns back and buys weapons from American companies, making them a profit in the long run. So that oil may not be free, but comes in cheaper than you can imagine, under 40 dollars per barrel, not because that's what they pay, but because they sell something in return to cover the difference, so most of the money stays in their nation.

This is what they should be worried about, it is not something that should be upsetting Americans just yet, the reason why prices are high is the insane profits oil companies are making, not lack of oil.

Suffering and predictions of the "crash of the US / Dollar / US oil reserves" - I have been listening for 40 years, and before that my parents listened to 50 years
The United States is a country that has the most powerful economy, political influence in the world, a technological sector, and the dollar, which is the blood of the global financial system. And they also have the largest deposits of oil - albeit somewhat more difficult to extract (shale). The fact that the United States has now thrown its strategic reserves on the market is the way to solve the problem that has arisen after Russia unleashed a terrorist war in Ukraine. I am sure that very soon the United States will restore these reserves - at the expense of cheap oil from the country of terror Russia. Why cheap? Because the EU's rejection of Russian oil will lead to a further drop in oil prices, which has already passed the psychological border, and it will only get cheaper further. And the second option - if suddenly (the probability is not zero, and this option should also be considered) the price of oil rises - the United States will immediately resume mass production of shale oil, which has a certain profitability threshold, and with cheap "well" oil it is not competitive.

Don't the US get it's oil in the Middle East and don't they have their own oil wells in the country? I'm a little confused as to why their SPR is such a big deal? Can't they just get more so they can replenish the losses in their reserves?

You seem to have forgotten that one of the reasons why Trump was elected was that he promised to pull out of Afghanistan (and similar wars they were losing). Not to mention that Biden didn't remove armed forces from Afghanistan, they were kicked out. They had to even donate $100 billion worth of weapons and equipment to the cavemen known as Taliban to buy their safe passage while they were escaping.

US is one of the beneficiaries but not the biggest, and not just because of the energy sales but everything else that they are selling these days like the arms which they sell at a higher price (eg. the useless Patriot system went for 3-4 million, now it is sold for up to $12 million).

In the long run, it could be bad though. On top of the existing inflation and recession in US, if more countries distance themselves from US, like for example if Germany or the Balkans go to the Eastern bloc and significantly decrease their relations with the West, those benefits start looking like nothing.
Not to mention all the capital that exits US for the destination of other countries with cheap energy and labor like India for example. That could significantly increase unemployment and turn more cities/states into Detroit.

The United States is still the biggest beneficiary, as Europe has gradually begun to depend on the United States for energy (for the first time in a while, it was impossible to compete with Russian gas and oil from the Middle East at $50 to $70 prices).

So the current price and any price above $90 is profitable for America and costly for Europe, and the biggest loser is the citizens in both countries, as they will be forced to pay more, which would have been easily avoided with a little political consensus.

The problem is that at this point sanctions are against all of them not just some.
For example 2-3 decades ago it was just Iran under sanctions, so they could fill that gap in the market with others. But as time went on they kept sanctioning more countries; eventually the number of sanctioned countries became more than the countries that enforced those sanctions!

In a way, today it is US/EU that are under sanctions not the other way around.

The funniest part is that Iran alone could solve all the oil and gas problems that the West is facing. If Iranians decided to remove their sanctions on Europe, 100 million barrels of oil in the storages could be dumped on the European market right away crashing the price below $40 and the production could increase to about 4 million barrels per day ensuring price stays low.
It's not going to happen though since today sanctions against Iran is at an all time high (I believe more than 6000 at this point) while the foreign trade and government revenue is also at an ATH (in at least past 10 years).

So in this new world order, there are two sides. The West has to buy energy at high prices while the East already has a lot of energy and will sell it among themselves at lower prices (eg. China and India buying oil/gas at a big discount).

I live close to the oil fields, and I believe that the current producing countries, if they have the resources and political will, an additional production of 3-5 million barrels per day will not be a problem, and it is also possible, and politically cool, to add several million barrels if the problems are resolved in Libya, Venezuela and Iran.

I do not think that the current problem is with oil, because during long periods in the world there have been many wars and economic changes that made countries prohibit the sale and purchase of oil from other countries.

However, many countries have found other ways to buy and sell that oil, and the embargo process will eventually cause the price to rise Which opens a new market.

The biggest problem will be in gas prices, especially this year and next.

In short, the issue of the strategic stockpile will not affect prices, but rather political decisions.

1. Ukraine have just submitted an application to join NATO as soon as it can, thus the things with Russia are just going to escalate now.

2. India and China are being asked to talk with Russia since the energy crisis is real, most of the prices are rising tremendously

3. Russia is sending oil and gas workers to fight in Ukraine which is completely absurd

4. There is going to be a price cap on Russian oil as well, countries like afganistan are still signing deals with Russia

5. Saudi Arabia, India , china are kind of not all too unsupportive of Russia, add afganistan as well thus whatever they are thinking of doing, Banning the oil, whatever it's not going to have a longer lasting effect since most countries are going to buy it and they are willing to sell it at any price.

- Now the only way to win this war is by establishing an alternative, not fossil fuels! We know better than this, but things like " green energy " harnessing the power of wind energy, solar energy etc but the leaders are not waking up they are still in denial.

I think it's only a real win to the punters who are speculating on oil becoming more expensive - if someone has open positions on these, it should be fairly simple to see them out given that the oil price is currently undervalued (in the US - and any surprises that happen there usually affect the rest of the world).

What's the state of fossil fuels in the US? Have you guys seen much of an impact from the Russian , and Ukrainian war? I imagine you haven't seen as dramatic as I do believe you generate a lot of your fossil fuels, apart from maybe oil? As pointed out above by pooya87.

The UK for example, have significantly seen the effects. We're paying around 1.80-1.90 for one litre of diesel, while some states in the US are paying something like 4/5 dollars per GALLON. The difference being we heavily relied on imports which have been effected by the war. 

You can compare it to the empires of old. They basically took over land, stole from the local resources, until either they exhausted it at that time or were so big they couldn't handle internal conflict, since they were constantly at war they needed to tax the people or steal (what ever you prefer to call it) to be able to keep that war effort going.

Similarly, the USA has basically attacked several nations, and have basically stuck their nose in every single conflict in the world, and looked to make it a benefit for them, which if you look at tactically, in the short term was a good idea. However, as you rightly point out, they're now struggling because they've started to push a lot the countries that were previously friendly away from them.

I hate to say it, but I can't see anything, but war in the long term. America likes to get what they want, and they've shown multiple times they don't care at what expense that might be. I think part of their downfall now, and in the medium term is that people have become aware of how much damage they actually did by invading the middle east, and surrounding countries. So, the locals aren't actually that friendly towards American troops despite the position they might be in.

The record breaking profits are just a propaganda line that's regurgitated over and over again without any context. The profit margin on oil is the only number that would add any context to the "greed" narrative that's being disseminated by the anti-oil anti-capitalist advocacy groups. I don't know what that number is, and I doubt private corporations would be willing to divulge such analytics of their business to be picked apart by the climate radicals. Any profit is too much for these folks.

Oil production cut by millions of barrels due to unprovoked war, energy prices begin to sky rocket. Is this some sort of corporate conspiracy or the probable result of supply and demand?