Richard Ha writes:
The Middle East is on everyone’s mind: How will it affect oil prices? Will traders or oil companies just jack up the prices on every hint of bad news?
Robert Rapier explains what is going on in a way that we can all understand easily. This is the first part of a series that should be very interesting.
Here in Hawai‘i, let’s get busy working on solutions to our problems of food security and rising oil and gas prices.
From Energy Trends Insider:
The Oil Markets as a Thanksgiving Turkey
BY ROBERT RAPIER ON JUN 17, 2014 WITH 9 RESPONSES
This week BP (NYSE: BP) released their Statistical Review of World Energy 2014. This is always a big event for energy wonks, and as always I will break it down in a series of articles. My goal is always to flesh out important tidbits that were perhaps overlooked by the media. Here are some of the major findings from this year’s release that have been reported. In 2013:
- US oil production had the largest increase in the country’s history
- US oil demand grew at a faster pace last year than China’s, although China’s overall energy demand grew faster
- Asia increased solar output last year more than Europe for the first time ever
- Emerging economies accounted for 80% of energy consumption growth
- Global oil production rose to a new all-time high
In one of those overlooked tidbits I like to point out, while global oil production did indeed set a new record — rising in 2013 by 557,000 barrels per day (bpd) over 2012 — without the US increase of 1.1 million bpd, global production would have declined by 554,000 bpd. But I will take a deeper dive into that starting next week. Today I want to talk about Iraq.
Or, more precisely the impact the unfolding events in Iraq have had on the global oil markets, and more specifically how those oil markets actually work. I had an interesting discussion with someone last week, after a remark was made about oil companies using any excuse — like potential supply disruptions in Iraq — to immediately jack up oil prices.