OPEC is a dead cartel walking

[crussmith2]

The old news - cost effective 50K hydrogen cars are on the market.
First production hydrogen fuel cell cars hit the market, from Hyundai | ExtremeTech
and
Toyota to start selling hydrogen fuel-cell car in 2015
Today: The fuel efficiency of hydrogen cell fueled cars just doubled. The middle east oil bloods can soon go eat sand!
Tests lead to doubling of fuel cell life

 

[waltky]

Russia & OPEC gonna be in cahoots together...

OPEC, Russia and the Emerging New World Order Emerging
16 Sept.`15 | By the day it’s becoming clearer that what I have recently been saying in my writings is coming to be. The OPEC oil-producing states of the Middle East, including Iran, through the skillful mediation of Russia, are carefully laying the foundations for a truly new world order. The first step in testing this will be if they collectively succeed in eliminating the threat to Syria of the Islamic State, and prepare the basis for serious, non-manipulated elections there.

For much of my adult life I have been fascinated by the enormous energy inside our Earth and how in fact the Earth moves as almost a living organism. Most fascinating I find is tectonic motion and their connection to earthquakes and volcanoes. Not the human destruction they sometimes cause but the sheer energy. Tectonic motion involves the huge plates that our Earth is divided into which are in constant micro-motion. At critical junctures which Earth science or geophysics has yet to be able to predict far ahead, the motion of those tectonic plates cause earthquakes and determine where earthquakes will occur.

In the political, more accurately geo-political sphere, we are now witnessing huge tectonic motion, and destructive it is not. It involves a new attractive force drawing the Middle East OPEC countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran and other Arab OPEC countries, into what will soon become obvious as a strategic partnership with the Russian Federation. It transcends the huge religious divides today between Sunni Wahhabism, Sufi, Shi’ism, Orthodox Christianity.

That tectonic motion will soon cause a political earthquake that well might save the planet from extinction by the endless wars the Pentagon and their string pullers on Wall Street and the military industrial complex and the loveless oligarchs who own them seem to have as their only strategy today.

Russia in OPEC?

 

[longknife]

Interesting article I didn't bother to link to talks about how certain investors/companies are taking their very cheap unrefined oil to small islands and other places to store until the price rises. Some store in barrels and others in small tankers. We will see what the future holds when they start doing this with the super tankers.

 

[g5000]

Russia & OPEC gonna be in cahoots together...

OPEC, Russia and the Emerging New World Order Emerging
16 Sept.`15 | By the day it’s becoming clearer that what I have recently been saying in my writings is coming to be. The OPEC oil-producing states of the Middle East, including Iran, through the skillful mediation of Russia, are carefully laying the foundations for a truly new world order. The first step in testing this will be if they collectively succeed in eliminating the threat to Syria of the Islamic State, and prepare the basis for serious, non-manipulated elections there.

That's hilarious considering the Russian economy is being hamstrung by OPEC right now. The author of that piece has things exactly wrong.

 

[g5000]

OPEC has not been a going cooperative for a very long time. Almost from the beginning, the member states have cheated and backstabbed each other.

 

[waltky]

Saudis fallin' on hard times...

$50 Oil Puts Saudi Budget Deficit Beyond Reach of Spending Cuts
Analysts warn against using reserves to maintain spending; Government yet to announce specific measures to cut costs

The slump in oil prices has spurred Saudi Arabia’s government to search for savings, contemplate project delays and sell bonds for the first time since 2007. It won’t be enough to prevent the kingdom’s biggest deficit in decades. “The revenue drop is so severe that it’s unrealistic to expect spending cuts to have any meaningful impact on the deficit in the near term,” said Simon Williams, HSBC’s chief economist for central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The longer oil prices stay weak, “the greater the pressure on the authorities,” he said in an e-mail.

Saudi Arabia is no longer building reserves

Though Saudi Arabia has reserves to cope, analysts said that using them to avoid further cost-cutting would put its credit rating at risk while delaying policies with a longer-term benefit, including the reduction of subsidies and the introduction of more taxes to diversify revenue beyond oil. Even after the measures already announced, Riyadh-based Samba Financial Group estimates state outlays will rise by 0.4 percent next year.

The International Monetary Fund predicts Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit to exceed 400 billion riyals ($107 billion) this year, with oil accounting for 81 percent of revenue compared with about 90 percent previously. It expects shortfalls above 10 percent of economic output for the next four years. “Saudi Arabia can afford its oil regime and the economic status-quo in the near-term,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Jean-Michel Saliba said in a report last month. “However, the domestic macro costs of its unchanged policy choices are likely to become more acute and apparent.”

Lacking Details

 

[frigidweirdo]

Funny thing is oil companies have a tendency of making sure oil is always needed.

 

[frigidweirdo]

Saudis fallin' on hard times...

$50 Oil Puts Saudi Budget Deficit Beyond Reach of Spending Cuts
Analysts warn against using reserves to maintain spending; Government yet to announce specific measures to cut costs

The slump in oil prices has spurred Saudi Arabia’s government to search for savings, contemplate project delays and sell bonds for the first time since 2007. It won’t be enough to prevent the kingdom’s biggest deficit in decades. “The revenue drop is so severe that it’s unrealistic to expect spending cuts to have any meaningful impact on the deficit in the near term,” said Simon Williams, HSBC’s chief economist for central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. The longer oil prices stay weak, “the greater the pressure on the authorities,” he said in an e-mail.

Saudi Arabia is no longer building reserves

Though Saudi Arabia has reserves to cope, analysts said that using them to avoid further cost-cutting would put its credit rating at risk while delaying policies with a longer-term benefit, including the reduction of subsidies and the introduction of more taxes to diversify revenue beyond oil. Even after the measures already announced, Riyadh-based Samba Financial Group estimates state outlays will rise by 0.4 percent next year.

The International Monetary Fund predicts Saudi Arabia’s budget deficit to exceed 400 billion riyals ($107 billion) this year, with oil accounting for 81 percent of revenue compared with about 90 percent previously. It expects shortfalls above 10 percent of economic output for the next four years. “Saudi Arabia can afford its oil regime and the economic status-quo in the near-term,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Jean-Michel Saliba said in a report last month. “However, the domestic macro costs of its unchanged policy choices are likely to become more acute and apparent.”

Lacking Details

If it becomes such a bad problem, they can just raise oil prices again.

 

[Bassman007]

The old news - cost effective 50K hydrogen cars are on the market.
First production hydrogen fuel cell cars hit the market, from Hyundai | ExtremeTech
and
Toyota to start selling hydrogen fuel-cell car in 2015
Today: The fuel efficiency of hydrogen cell fueled cars just doubled. The middle east oil bloods can soon go eat sand!
Tests lead to doubling of fuel cell life

No OPEC member can ever spend the money that it already has, do you know what would happen the the U.S. stock market if OPEC sold it's stock?

 

[waltky]

Aw Barney, ya forgot to put yer bullitt in yer gun `a-fore ya went after the terrorists...

US Planes Left ISIS Fuel Tankers Unharmed Because 'They Ran Out of Ammunition'
November 24, 2015 | The U.S. military conducted a second wave of attacks on (parked) ISIS oil tankers in Syria on Sunday, Nov. 22, but the attack fell short of its goal:

"The goal was to destroy every truck there. They ran out of ammunition before they were able to do that. But the desire was to destroy every single truck there," said Army Col. Steven Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coaltion fighting ISIS. At a news briefing on Tuesday, Warren played video of the ISIS fuel tankers being bombed or shot with machine gun fire from the air. Warren said all the trucks were targeted, but the video just shows "the good shots that you'd like." As was the case with an earlier U.S. strike on ISIS fuel tankers, the Americans dropped leaflets warning the truck drivers that an attack was coming, so the tankers were not moving. Warren called the airstrikes "another example of the type of accuracy that we're capable of here in the coalition."

A total of 283 fuel trucks were destroyed by American planes on Sunday: "A bomb would have been from an A-10, and then when you saw the guns, you know, the machine gun fire, that could either have been an A-10 or AC-130 Spectre Gunship." "It's not a movie where you kind of fly along and just strafe, and you know, the trucks blow up. No, it's -- they struck each truck, or groups of two or three trucks. It is a machine gun, so there is a certain area aspect to it, right? You know, the gunfire isn't laser guided...So it's individual strike a truck, or two or three trucks; move to the next batch, strike them; move, strike; move, strike. "So the goal was to destroy every truck there. They ran out of ammunition before they were able to do that. But the desire was to destroy every single truck there."

The United States and Russia are going after ISIS' oil industry, aiming to break the terrorists' biggest source of income.​

Combined with an earlier U.S. strike on ISIS fuel tankers, the U.S. military has now destroyed 399 of them, but Warren would not say how many are left: "I'm not going to tell you the total number of trucks out there...but we've still got a long way to go on trucks," he said. Warren also disputed Russia's recent claim that it had attacked and destroyed 500 ISIS fuel tankers in the "same general region" last week. "From what we saw, the battle damage assessment they issued seemed to be exaggerated. More than likely the Russian attacks did not produce the results that they claimed it produced." Warren said the U.S. estimates that Russia destroyed only around 100 tankers.

US Planes Left ISIS Fuel Tankers Unharmed Because 'They Ran Out of Ammunition'

See also:

Russia Claims to be Bombing ISIS Ruthlessly; Obama Says US Still Doesn’t Know if Russians Are Onboard
November 22, 2015 | – The United States still doesn’t know whether Russia can “make the strategic adjustment” necessary for it to join the coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), President Obama said on Sunday.

Speaking in Kuala Lumpur on the final day of a visit to South-East Asia, Obama said the focus of Russia’s air campaign in Syria has been “the moderate opposition” and its principal goal appears to have been “to fortify the position of the Assad regime.” “It will be helpful if Russia directs its focus on ISIL, and I do think that as a consequence of ISIL claiming responsibility for bringing down their plane [over the Sinai on Oct. 31], there is an increasing awareness on the part of President Putin that ISIL poses a greater threat to them than anything else in the region,” Obama said. “The question at this point is whether they can make the strategic adjustment that allows them to be effective partners with us and the other 65 countries who are already part of the counter-ISIL campaign,” he added. “And we don't know that yet.”

A Russian Tupolev Tu-160 “Blackjack” supersonic strategic bomber, escorted by an Su-30 fighter, carries out a very long-range cruise missile strike mission against purported ISIS targets in Syria on November 20, 2015. The Tu-160’s flight took more than 16 hours. The Su-30 took off from an airbase in Syria to escort the approaching bomber.​

That assessment came despite Russian military reports that – over just four days last week – it fired more than 100 air- and sea-launched missiles and dropped more than 1,400 tons of bombs, on more than 820 targets which Moscow claims are predominantly ISIS facilities. On Friday, military commanders reported to President Vladimir Putin on a four-day “retaliation” operation which he ordered after determining that the Sinai plane crash was caused by a terrorist bomb. ISIS claimed responsibility for the incident, which cost 224 lives. The hundreds of strikes from Tuesday to Friday included cruise missiles launched from ships in the Caspian Sea, and air-launched missiles fired from aircraft that flew from an airbase in the Caucasus more than five hours’ flying time from the targets.

A Tu-160 and its escort during Friday’s long-range cruise missile strike mission.​

In the most ambitious mission yet in the seven-week campaign, supersonic Tu-160 bombers took off from an airbase north of the Arctic Circle, circumnavigated Europe before flying eastward over the Mediterranean and launching cruise missiles, then returning to base over Iran and the Caspian Sea. The unprecedented (for Russia) strike mission, which required mid-air refueling, was some 16,000 kilometers long and took more than 16 hours. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin the main goal of the escalated strikes had been to “destroy ISIS military and oil-and-gas infrastructure facilities,” adding that 23 training bases, 19 arms and explosives production plants, 47 ammunition and supply warehouses were among targets destroyed. He claimed that cruise missile strikes against one facility in north-eastern Syria alone had “resulted in the elimination of over 600 militants.” Despite the claims by Moscow, Obama continues to voice doubt that Russia is really focusing its attacks on ISIS.

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