Category: News & Announcement

After a brief respite following reports of central bank economic stimuli in the United States and the UK, crude oil slumped once again after on Wednesday, President Donald Trump instituted a 30-day travel ban on most European countries because of the coronavirus pandemic. At the time of writing Brent crude was trading down by more than 8 percent at $32.71 a barrel, with West Texas Intermediate at $30.27 a barrel, also down by more than 8 percent. In a televised address from the Oval Office, Trump said, “We will be…

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The world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia is going after Russia’s oil market share in Europe with deeply discounted Arab Light crude at up to three times the usual volumes, people with knowledge of European refiners’ operations told Bloomberg on Thursday. The Saudis, OPEC’s de facto leader and top producer, are aiming to grab market share from Russia in the oil price war it launched on Moscow to punish it for refusing to back deeper OPEC+ production cuts last week. And Europe is a key battleground in the new oil…

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The Council on Foreign Relations has canceled a roundtable called “Doing Business Under Coronavirus” scheduled for Friday in New York due to the spread of the infection itself. CFR has also canceled other in-person conferences that were scheduled from March 11 to April 3, including roundtables in New York and Washington and national events around the U.S. The CFR’s confabs are joining a long list of canceled or postponed gatherings, including the annual New York auto show. The Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association said Tuesday that the car show will…

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Climate change is not the only consequence of the burning of fossil fuels. A study published last week in the journal Cardiovascular Research estimated that in 2015, the deaths of more than 3.6 million people worldwide could have been avoided if air pollution from fossil fuels were reduced to zero. These numbers are staggering. They equate to about 10,000 deaths per day, every day, under the study’s mean estimates. Excess deaths from fossil fuel air pollution comprises about 40% of all air pollution deaths. The estimates in this new study are about twice…

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Oil prices crashed after Russia and Saudi Arabia announced that they will abandon OPEC production quotas and open the taps, and while drillers and oilfield service companies are feeling the pain, the world’s largest oil traders are eyeing huge profits. After all, volatility is a trader’s best friend. Oilprice.com’s Alex Kimani wrote back in January that the world’s 5 largest oil traders made a killing in 2019 by trading catalysts that created worldwide supply disruptions such as the contaminated crude at the Druzhba pipeline in Russia and the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s…

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