Lets have some accuracy:
the Saudis are having trouble unloading their 'sour' crude on the markets at a $25 discount to the Brent crude which is the crude commanding the $140 price tag and is the light, 'sweet' stuff? Literally, they have the stuff in ships waiting to go somewhere but there are no takers and they may have to discount it even more.
Reliance is opening a new refinery in India which can handle 500,000 bpd of that crude. And there are refinery projects underway in the Persian Gulf countries that will handle more.
Look........for the past six months, I have heard the same thing repeated.....the Saudis are having trouble unloading their sour crude. Below are comments from 6 months ago in the Financial Times. They are saying the exact same thing. Maybe this new Indian refinery will sop up the excess.....we'll have to wait and see...but right now, Saudi crude is sitting in tankers with no where to go.
And don't talk to me about accuracy.........no one knows for certain what is happening in the oil markets.......including you.
"Consider this statement, which although now six months old, was after a price increase in WTI from $70 in the late summer to $100 in early December, seems to support the Saudi claim that they don't see enough demand to warrant lifting more oil:
Each month the Saudi oil company, Aramco, announces a differential to WTI for firms buying Saudi crude for delivery to the United States in that month. For example, buyers lifting Arab Light Crude from Saudi Arabia this month will pay the WTI price that prevails 50 days from now less $11.65. (The delay allows for the oil’s transit time from Saudi Arabia to the United States.) Aramco adjusts this differential every month to reflect changes in market conditions.
As can be seen from Figure 3 (page 5), the differential set by Saudi Arabia for oil loaded in August was $2.15 per barrel. Five months later, the Saudis boosted the discount to $11.65. As every shopper knows, discounts do not deepen when supplies are tight. Rather, they increase when goods do not sell. Apparently, Saudi Arabia has been having trouble selling its oil."
nakedcapitalism.com
Now the ANWR which you all are so psyched up to despoil has the sour crap that we don't even use.
How could you possibly know what ANWR crude will be?
Huh? Its been reported repeatedly that ANWR oil is very sour. Would it not be reasonable to suspect they've done some drilling to determine the quality and quantity of the oil?
Prudhoe Bay produces intermediate sour crude. Perhaps you're generalizing from that. BTW Prudhoe Bay crude goes to west coast US refineries and Prudhoe Bay is now in decline. If ANWR crude is exactly like Prudhoe Bay (and no one knows) it will find a market there.
Another point, Prudhoe Bay has not been despoiled. The caribou and other wildlife is doing fine.
ANWR is pristine.....one of the few places left on the earth like it. Pristine means untouched by human hands. You bring in oil equipment and that changes everything no matter how diligent everyone is.
BTW you will find liberal propagandists spreading the meme that Alaskan oil goes or will go to Japan (thus we shouldn't care if drilling is allowed there). Here is the truth:
I will answer that above in another post....in the meantime, here are some myths about the ANWR:
"Turns out ANWR's a bit of a myth.
The first myth about ANWR is that we can solve today's oil problem by drilling there.
But the government says that, even under best-case scenarios, it would take 10 years to start production and the average net drop in price would be about 86 cents per barrel — 0.6 percent.
The second myth about ANWR is that drilling there would provide us with "energy independence."
But the government's most optimistic estimate is that peak ANWR production would be less than 1 percent of total world oil output — about 750,000 barrels per day in a country that consumes 19 million barrels per day.
In fact, the government admits that foreign-oil dependence would decrease only slightly, between the years 2022 and 2026, and would then return to pre-ANWR levels.
The third myth about ANWR is that drilling would produce a "supply effect" on gasoline prices. In that Economics 101 formulation, as oil supply increases, gasoline prices will drop.
But the government throws cold water on that myth, too, because "OPEC and other producers may cut output to offset the supply effect." In other words, OPEC won't sit still as we force price reductions — they'll match our production increases with production decreases to keep supply steady and prices high.
The fourth myth about ANWR is that we "know" there's an awful lot of oil just waiting to be pumped there.
But the government admits that "there is much uncertainty" about ANWR and "little direct knowledge" about the location of oil, how easily it can be recovered, the size of the fields and the quality of oil in them. What we "know" is little more than a guess, based upon some hypothetical, exploratory models.
The fifth myth about ANWR is that so-called "limited-footprint" technologies would minimize environmental harm.
But the government admits limited-footprint technology probably won't work and "full development of the 1002 area" would require infrastructure throughout the area.
And the government openly acknowledges the threat to what it calls "the most biologically productive part of the Arctic Refuge for wildlife," "the center of wildlife activity," and the only federal land that "protects, in an undisturbed condition, a complete spectrum of the arctic ecosystem in North America."
venturacountystar.com
And this is the fed document, commissioned by Ted Stevens, and from which the myths up above are pulled:
democrats.org |
