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originally posted by: Vector99
China and the US are allies too. Who do you think buys all the Chinese crap? To be honest, China would most likely love to see Russia keep on the path they are, making China the #2 power in the world.
originally posted by: Vector99
It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if Russia keeps presence in Syria to prevent the Qatar pipeline that we start seeing "terrorist attacks" on Russian pipelines.
That is always going to be one of the possible hazards to a pipeline but I would think more so in the Middle East .I see Russia got the power back on in the Crimea and the bridge must be getting close to being finished .
It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if Russia keeps presence in Syria to prevent the Qatar pipeline that we start seeing "terrorist attacks" on Russian pipelines.
I had absolutely NO idea that Russia was going (or even could go) head to head with OPEC like this.
The Russians played a dangerous game by invading Crimea and starting a conflict with the Ukraine over natural gas and oil exports. Russia needs the price of oil to be $98 or higher in order to produce it at a profit, and its economy, along with the value of the ruble, have been hit hard as a result. Over $150 billion has been lost in GDP to the low price of oil, and many fear that Russia may yet again default.
knoema.com... lots of info at the link .
The oil price has fallen by more than 30% since Summer 2014. This affected everyone from producers to consumers. The visualization represents Oil Price Dynamics, Breakeven Oil Price which shows oil prices needed to meet general government expenditure and Marginal Cost of Oil Production which shows the change in total cost of producing one additional barrel of oil.
World oil price at $55-$60 / barrel exceeds the cost of Russian Arctic oil production, Europe and Brazil biofuels production, shale and tight oil production in US and Canada and offshore oil extraction in Brazil.
State budgets of oil-producing countries will suffer from oil price decrease if the market price falls below breakeven price. In Dec. 2014 world oil prices fell lower than necessary for almost all oil exporters in order to balance their government expenditures.
The data comes from IMF, Deutsche Bank, Citi Research and Reuters
originally posted by: JedemDasSeine
originally posted by: MrSpad
OPEC and Russia cut a deal a year ago to cut production but, Russia broke it.
Can you provide a source of this information?
originally posted by: MrSpad
Add to that Libya's faster than expected transition to peace.
What? "Transition to peace"? Thanks to the western intervention to the sovereign country, it turned from one of the richest state in Africa into the destroyed one.
qz.com...
The world isn’t going quite the way Saudi Arabia expected when it led OPEC to declare a pricing war against US shale drillers last year by flooding the market with crude oil. Far from being a quick kill, shale drillers have stubbornly held on, and OPEC has suffered along with them.
But, as its members return home today after their latest biannual meeting in Vienna, OPEC’s problem isn’t only that it was wrong-footed by oil prices, historically the most potent tool for punishing and pushing out unwanted competitors. It’s that seemingly all the traditional tools for determining strategy have failed this time.
And not only for OPEC—the usual divining rods have suddenly gone faulty for the entire energy industry, along with governments, analysts, scholars, and journalists. All wrongly anticipated how low prices would drop and for how long, along with the degree to which oil companies and petro-states would keep drilling despite it all.
“We’re not good at predicting prices and not good at predicting costs, and all this has geopolitical implications,” Jeff Colgan, a professor at Brown University, told Quartz
This tool (see the IMF’s version, right) simply divides a petro-state’s daily oil production by its national budget, and arrives at the oil price required to be in fiscal balance
originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: jaws1975
Russia will cut social welfare over the defense budget. What do you think the people of Russia will do when there is no food?
Tzar Nicholas the 2nd ???
originally posted by: Vector99
a reply to: jaws1975
Yes, but Russia is dangerously tempting a revolution if they try this. Saudi has the US behind them, so they will be fine as long as the oil keeps flowing to the US. The article points this little gem of a statement out
“The biggest danger is that the reserve fund will be exhausted by the end of 2016. They will then have to monetise the deficit or cut real spending by another 10pc. They can’t cut defence so that leaves social welfare,” he said.
Russia will cut social welfare over the defense budget. What do you think the people of Russia will do when there is no food?
originally posted by: Vector99
It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if Russia keeps presence in Syria to prevent the Qatar pipeline that we start seeing "terrorist attacks" on Russian pipelines.
"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes.
"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." US satellites picked up the explosion.
"While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy."
originally posted by: rickymouse
Most of the price of oil was caused by speculation. The oil companies sell the oil to the market where it is raised in price often three fold then sold back to the same companies refineries.