“If for some reason that oil weapon becomes a Saudi response, and they may get other friends to join them in responding with an oil effect, the whole world economy could be shaken by a shortage of oil.”
We all know oil prices are extremely volatile, and trying to predict them is a fool’s errand. But just how easily can they be impacted? Here’s look at the some of the craziest events that caused the price of oil to rise.
Over the last month, the following incidents have taken place in the Middle East:
Many American think all this violence started with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In fact, it’s been going on since the 7th century. The original argument began with the succession to Muhammad’s leadership when he died in 632 A.D. There were two claimants to his legacy. The first was the Umayyad Caliph, made up of the followers of Muhammad’s entourage in Medina and Baghdad. The second was Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad, who claimed to be his legitimate heir.
In 680, Caliph Muawiyah I of the Umayyad died and tried to pass his rule on to his son, Yazid, despite a written agreement with Hussein to honor his claim to the throne. Yazid demanded that Hussein acknowledge his rulership, and Hussein refused. Instead, he mounted an army and headed toward Baghdad, where Yazid was seated. During the march, however, Hussein’s supporters dwindled, and when he arrived at Karbala, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, he only had 75 followers left. There he was met by an army of 1,000 men sent forth from Baghdad by Yazid.
Hussein deliberated for a week before deciding once again to refuse Yazid’s leadership and join him in battle. By this time, Yazid’s army had swelled to 6,000. Hussein went to battle with about 75. Hussein’s army was slaughtered, and he was himself beheaded and his head sent to Baghdad. Hussein’s followers set up a rival caliphate in Medina, however, and the schism between the Sunni Umayyad Empire and the rival Shi’ites began and continues to this day.
The Shi’ia, who eventually established their dominion in Persia (Iran), still celebrate the holiday of Ashura, in which they flagellate themselves because they were not there to help Hussein at the Battle of Karbala. As one scholar has put it, the Shi’ia are “born martyrs.” Iran is the one country you can imagine starting a nuclear war, even if it meant nuclear suicide.
All this would be only of antiquarian interest if it were not that more than half the world’s oil comes from the Persian Gulf. And all that oil is continually riding on the chance that the two sides will not disrupt the flow of oil — or destroy whole oil fields — in their endless, ongoing battles. The stakes are only getting higher. Last week, ISIS rebels in the Sinai Peninsula claimed to have hit an Egyptian naval vessel with a guided missile offshore in the Mediterranean. How long will it be before rival factions are firing guided missiles at oil tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz?
It is impossible to choose sides in the Middle East. For instance, ever since the 9/11 attack, the United States has considered al-Qaeda to be its prime adversary in the world. Yet last week, Americans found themselves on the same side as al-Qaeda in backing Saudi Arabia’s efforts to expel the Shi’ite Houthi rebels from Yemen. Yet at the very same time, we were negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran that is widely perceived as supporting the Shi’ite faction in the Middle East, in defiance of Sunni Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have said they may seek a nuclear weapon themselves if Iran is able to secure one. Imagine a nuclear-armed Iran and Saudi Arabia facing each other across the Persian Gulf while our oil tankers try to escape into the Indian Ocean.
The only reasonable strategy here is to reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. We still import 20 percent of our oil from the Persian Gulf, with 13 percent coming from Saudi Arabia. This is down from over 30 percent a decade ago, but we can still go further. America’s amazing improvement in oil production has played a part, but we are still dependent on oil for 80 percent of our transport sector. Substituting other kinds of fuels to power our vehicles is the obvious answer.
The Middle East tinder box isn’t going to go away during our lifetime. The obvious solution is to disassociate ourselves as much as possible. Freeing ourselves from our dependence on oil for our transport sector is the first and foremost step forward.
The Washington Post has an interesting story about the impact of lower gas prices — meaning the overall price drop since June, taking into account the recent uptick — on consumers in Saudi Arabia. While the government might one day have to make a decision about lowering oil output, thus letting prices climb again, regular citizens aren’t noticing much difference. That’s because Saudis pay about 45 cents a gallon to fill up their vehicles, thanks to government subsidies.
In Saudi Arabia, the general response to the drop in global oil prices by half — from more than $100 a barrel six months ago to around $50 now — is a shrug. Remember all those $60 fill-ups at U.S. pumps when gas was running close to $4 a gallon over the past few years? While your wallet was getting hammered, Saudi Arabia’s was getting stuffed thick. The kingdom has more than $750 billion in cash reserves, which is more than enough to keep the lights on and stave off panic over oil markets.
Not only is the government not sweating the reduced price of oil, it’s continuing with an ambitious program of public works to benefit citizens.
the government could go seven or eight years without trimming back its plans, simply by using its massive reserves, which are equal to 100 percent of annual gross domestic product, to cover budget deficits. More likely … the government would monitor oil prices closely for about 18 months and rethink strategy if they did not rebound.
Saudi Arabia has prospered over the decades thanks, in part, to protection from the U.S., the world’s most prolific consumer of oil. According to this timeline on PBS’s “Frontline” program:
1940-45: Although Saudi Arabia officially maintained neutrality through most of the war, the U.S. began to court the kingdom as it realized the strategic importance of Saudi oil reserves. In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt made Saudi Arabia eligible for Lend-Lease assistance by declaring the defense of Saudi Arabia of vital interest to the U.S. In 1945, King Abdel Aziz and President Roosevelt cemented the tacit oil-for-security relationship when they met aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal.
The Atlantic’s Matt Schiavenza has some pointed commentary on the longtime U.S.-Saudi alliance, arguing that the United States needs the Middle East kingdom “more than ever.”
Following the death of King Abdullah last week at age 90, following a lung infection, President Obama cited his “enduring contribution to the search for peace” in the region. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was a “man of wisdom and vision.”
Schiavenza then lists the ways in which Saudi policy undermines the American praise, including the lack of rights of women, and the case of blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for defending atheism.
Schiavenza writes:
Contrary to President Obama’s statement, Saudi Arabia’s role in brokering Middle Eastern peace has, at best, been unhelpful. King Abdullah bitterly opposed Washington’s support of pro-democracy protesters in Egypt and urged President Obama to use force to preserve Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. Since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi assumed the country’s leadership in 2013, Riyadh has helped finance his brutal suppression of the country’s Muslim Brotherhood. Saudi Arabia has also resisted the rise of Shia movements in the region out of fear that Iran, their main rival, will gain influence. When Shia protesters threatened the Sunni dictatorship in neighboring Bahrain, Saudi Arabia dispatched its military to suppress the uprising. Riyadh’s support of Syrian rebels, too, has backfired: Islamic State fighters have benefited from Saudi money and weapons.
The reason the United States continues to “put up with” Saudi Arabia, the writer contends, is oil. And despite ramped-up production in the U.S. shale-oil fields, the U.S. will continue to need Saudi oil. Currently there’s a glut that might worsen, since Abdullah’s successor, his half-brother Salman bin Abdul Aziz, appears unlikely to reduce oil production to stem the drop in price. Right now the U.S. produces about 9 million barrels of oil a day, comparable with Saudi output.
But the kingdom, which is the leading oil-producer in OPEC (which controls 40 percent of the world’s oil supply), is “well-positioned to survive a sustained drop in the price of oil,” Schiavenza writes, adding:
Riyadh generally needs oil to trade at $80 a barrel in order to balance its budget. But with $750 billion stashed away in reserve, the kingdom faces little pressure to reduce supply and raise the price. In addition, Saudi Arabia and fellow OPEC members Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have proved reserves of 460 billion barrels. The United States, by contrast, has proved reserves of just 10 billion—and the U.S. Energy Information Agency forecasts that American shale oil production will plateau in 2020.
Saudi Arabia isn’t cutting production anytime soon, despite lobbying from some of the 12-nation cartel’s members to try to stem falling oil prices. In fact, the Saudis might actually boost output to gain new customers.
Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, said it’s not in OPEC’s interest to cut production quotas no matter how far prices fall:
After a weekend of comments from several Gulf OPEC members reiterating their intent not to intervene in oil markets, despite oil prices that have halved since June, Ali al-Naimi told the Middle East Economic Survey it was “not in the interest of OPEC producers to cut their production, whatever the price is” — his starkest comments yet.
Naimi also said the Saudis might boost output instead to grow their market share and that oil “may not” trade at $100 again. “The best thing for everybody is to let the most efficient producers produce,” he told a conference in Abu Dhabi at the weekend.
Olivier Jakob, an oil analyst at Petromatrix OIl in Switzerland, commented in an earlier version of the Reuters story:
“We are going down because you have some OPEC ministers who come every day making statements trying to drive the market down. … They come every day to convey the message that they are not doing anything to restrict supplies and that they basically want oil prices to move lower to reduce production in the U.S.”
Brent crude dropped $1.33, to $60.05.
John Hofmeister, a Fuel Freedom board advisor and the former president of Shell Oil Co., appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Nov. 23 to discuss the falling price of oil.
Watch a clip here:
Watch the entire “MTP” program here (Hofmeister comes on about the 35:20 mark), and read the transcript here.
Hofmeister, appearing along with author Daniel Yergin, was asked by host Chuck Todd whether lower-priced oil amounted to an extra sanction against Russia and Iran, which already are burdened by sanctions — Russia for its actions in Ukraine and Iran for its pursuit of a nuclear program.
Hofmeister replied:
It is. It’s an extra sanction because it reduces their economic clout. Well, we’ve seen what happened to the Russian ruble. Iran is not able to subsidize many of its programs.
CHUCK TODD:
They need to have oil to be at $100 or more a barrel for them to balance their budget.
JOHN HOFMEISTER:
Yeah, the estimates are Russia needs well over $100, Iran even more. And the consequence of that is the people of Russia, the people of Iran will suffer as a consequence of the low oil price. That’s why the panicked feeling within the OPEC meeting coming up on Thursday.
As we know, at that meeting, OPEC decided not to cut production quotas, effectively ensuring that oil prices would not stabilize in the near future.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, now believes that oil will settle at about $60, down from about $110 over the summer.
Hofmeister said that, despite the worldwide surplus of oil, the U.S. should keep pumping, in anticipation of demand coming back:
… the reality is, we will be short of oil in the world over the next several years as global growth exceeds oil production. So we need all the production we can have. We need all the infrastructure we can build to make sure the U.S. is taken care of.
Hofmeister, author of the book Why We Hate the Oil Companies, has much more to say about oil in the Fuel Freedom-produced documentary PUMP. The film is now available for pre-order on iTunes. Visit PumpTheMovie.com to watch a trailer and learn more.
While they might not make the Late Show with David Letterman, here are ten reasons why the fall in oil and gas prices, if it is sustained for a while, is, on balance, good for the U.S. and replacement fuels.
We haven’t reached fuel Nirvana. The differential between gasoline and corn-based E85 has lessened in most areas of the nation and now appears less than the 20-23 percent needed to get consumers to think about switching to alternative fuels like E85. But cheaper replacement fuels appear on the horizon (e.g., natural gas-based ethanol) and competition in the supply chain likely will reduce their prices. Significantly, in terms of alternative replacement fuels, oil and gas prices are likely to increase relatively soon, because of: continuing tensions in the Middle East, a change of heart on the part of the Saudis concerning maintaining low prices, the increased cost of drilling for tight oil and slow improvements in the U.S. economy resulting in increased demand. The recent decline in hybrid, plug-in and electric car sales in the U.S. follows historical patterns. Cheap gas or perceived cheap gas causes some Americans to switch to larger vehicles (e.g., SUVs) and, understandably, for some, to temporarily forget environmental objectives. But, paraphrasing and editing Gov. Schwarzenegger’s admonition or warning in one of his films, unfortunately high gas prices “will be back…” and early responders to the decline of gasoline prices may end up with hard-to-sell, older, gas-guzzling dinosaurs — unless, of course, they are flex-fuel vehicles.
I began what turned out to be a highly ranked leadership program for public officials at the University of Colorado in the early ’80s, as dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs. I did the same for private-sector folks when I moved to Irvine, Calif., to run a leadership program involving Israeli startup CEOs for the Merage Foundations. Despite the different profiles of participants, one of the compelling themes that seemed pervasive to both — for- profits in Israel and governments everywhere — was and remains building the capacity of leaders to give brief, focused oral presentations or elevator pitches (or, as one presenter once said, “how to seduce someone between the first and fifth floor”). A seduction lesson in oil economics in a thousand words or three minutes’ reading time!
Now that I got your attention! Sex always does it! During the last few days, I read some straightforward, short, informative articles on oil company and environmentalist group perceptions concerning the relationship between the price of oil per barrel and the cost of drilling. Their respective pieces could be converted into simple written or oral elevator pitches that provided strategic background information to the public and political leaders — information often not found in the news media — press, television, cable and social media — concerning oil company or environmentalist decision-making.
This is good news. Most of the academic and, until recently, media coverage of the decline of oil and gasoline prices generally focuses on the dollar or percentage drop in the price of oil and gasoline from a precise date … 3 months, 6 months, a year, many years ago, etc. And, at least by implication in many of its stories, writers assume decision-making is premised on uniform costs of drilling.
But recently, several brief articles in The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, OilPrice.com, etc., made it clear that the cost of drilling is not uniform. For example, there is a large variation internal to some countries depending on location and geography and an often larger variation between and among oil-producing nations. Oil hovers around $80 a barrel now, but the cost of drilling varies considerably. In Saudi Arabia, it is $30 per barrel or less on average; in the Arctic, $78; in Canada’s oil sands $74; and in the U.S, $62.
If you’re responsible for an oil company or oil nation budget, a positive cash flow and a profit, you are likely to be concerned by increasingly unfavorable opportunity cost concerning costs of drilling and returns per barrel. In light of current and possibly even lower prices, both companies and nations might begin to think about the following options: cutting back on production and waiting out the decline, pushing to expand oil exports by lowering costs in the hopes of getting a better than domestic price and/or higher market share, lessening your investment in oil and moving toward a more balanced portfolio by producing alternative fuels. If you believe the present price decline is temporary, and that technology will improve drilling cost/price per barrel ratios, you might consider continuing to explore developing wells.
Up to now, the Saudis have acted somewhat counterintuitively. They have created dual prices. Overall, they have sustained relatively high levels of production. For America, they have lowered prices to hold onto or build market share and undercut prices related to U.S. oil shale. For Asia, they have increased prices, hoping that demand, primarily from China and India, and solid production levels in the Kingdom, will not result in a visible drop in market share.
However, the Saudis know that oil revenue has to meet budget needs, including social welfare requirements resulting in part from the Arab Spring. How long they can hold onto lower prices is, in part, an internal political and budget issue, since oil provides a disproportionate share of the country’s public revenue. But, unlike the U.S. and many other nations, where drilling for tight oil is expensive, the Saudis have favorable ratio between production costs and the price of oil. Again, remember the cost of production in the U.S., on average, is about 100 percent above what it is in Saudi Arabia and some other OPEC nations. Deserts may not provide a “wow” place for all Middle East residents or some tourists looking for a place to relax and admire diverse landscapes, but, at the present time, they provide a source of relatively cheap oil. Further, they permit OPEC and the Saudis to play a more important global role in setting prices of oil and its derivative gasoline than their population numbers and their nonoil resources would predict. Lowering prices and keeping production relatively high in the Middle East is probably good for the world’s consumers. But as environmentalists have noted , both could slow oil shale development in the U.S. and with it the slowdown of fracking. Both could also interest oil companies in development of alternative fuels.
Oil-rich nations in the Middle East and OPEC, which control production, will soon think about whether to lower production to sustain revenues. In the next few months, I suspect they will decide to risk losing market share and increase per barrel oil prices. U.S policy and programs should be recalibrated to end the nation’s and West’s often metabolic response to what the Saudis do or what OPEC does. Support for alternative replacement fuels is warranted and will reduce consumer costs over the long haul and help the environment. It will also decrease America’s dependence on Middle East oil and reduce the need to “think” war as a necessary option when developing America’s foreign policy concerning the Middle East.
