With Shale Oil Production Like This, Who Needs Trump?

Saudi oil isn't high grade anyway, it is average. It is sour and not light in comparison to Brent, WTI and Nigerian oil. Sovereign risk is an element that all global corporate entities must factor in. I would rather do business with Venezuela than Saudi Arabia. Angola, Russia and Ecuador have the same if not better oil than Saudi Arabia.

 

Oh, are you so sure of that?

And I am not qualified to determine the "most serious specific example". I can present you the most obviously noticeable: the drop of wages, that took place in 2014, after devaluation of ruble.
There is federal decree, setting minimal wage for 2013 at 5205 rubles per month. With average exchange rate of '31.848$' that means minimal wage was 163.4325546$
http://docs.cntd.ru/document/902383518
And there is decrees for the 2016, that sets minimal wage for first six months at 6204, then at 7500 rubles per month for second half of year. With average exchange rate of '67.0349$', average minimal wage in 2016 is worth 102.2154132$
http://docs.cntd.ru/document/420322326
http://docs.cntd.ru/document/420357459

Data about average exchange rate taken from
https://www.audit-it.ru/currency/sr...eriod_year=2013&finyear_start=0&getcurrency=1

That presents, as one of signs of harmed economy, ~61$ worth of drop in minimal monthly wage.

 

Exactly; that's why they wanted to shut down the shale oil industry. They want to sell out in 10 years or so and get a much higher price for their sovereign fund. they are also lying about how big their remaining reserves are for the same reasons.

 

ARAMCO is merely a holding company. Their 'efficiency' at actual production is zero. The drilling, transportation, refining, what little they do, is all done by foreign multi-nationals. This is true in every field in the world, though I think Russia has some independent capacity of its own; they still contract out to companies like Exxon-Mobil in many fields, including pipeline construction and the like. Though I guess Haliburton now qualifies as a 'local company', technically, since they suddenly had a need to relocate to a state with no extradition treaties with the U.S. at the end of Bush's last term.

 

Citing costs per barrel is also highly misleading, as the final costs are only meaningful when that last 'barrel' is pumped from a field, which is almost never. Shale oil has high upfront startup costs, around $1 billion on average, for a plant and drilling and pumping, but as with any other well the average costs go down with every barrel. Yes, shale has higher operating costs per barrel than 'regular' petroleum, but it depends on how many barrel/equivalents are ultimately pumped, and the costs are not etched in stone. Don't go by costs put out by the oil industry itself; they have lobbied for all kinds of accounting gimmicks and tax bennies since the beginning of the American industry in 1857, with the short but key beginning of the coal oil industry and the rise of the first oil boom in the Titusville area very shortly after in 1860. Yes, it's more expensive to produce and also to refine, but triple the costs? Highly doubtful.

 

Saudi Arabia has many weights and viscosities of crude from very light to sour and heavy.. VZ oil is universally heavy and sour .. Their oil industry is in terrible shape.. VZ nationalized in 1976 and have screwed over so many foreign companies rather than buying their assets.

Oilfields are declining rapidly and they have no capital to invest and no willing foreign investors.

 

In Muscovy all oil services are in the hands of 2 or 3 oil service companies. If USA stops this fan , Muscovy dies , not my words but a Muscovite expert Demura , You can write him in Facebook

 

Saudi ARAMCO isn't a holding company.. and they are well integrated both vertically and horizontally. Haliburton has been working in KSA for 50 years. Some of them were my neighbors..

KSA monitors ALL pipeline in the kingdom for flow rate and pressure from a computer bank in Dhahran.. Likewise they do directional drill hundreds of miles away in real time from Dhahran.

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You would accuse them of lying about reserves because you don't know how reserves are measured.

 

I know. GazProm and the others contract out to companies like Exxon-Mobil, who in turn contract out to drilling companies, pipeline builders, etc., etc. British ones, too.

 

Another comedy post. lol I know exactly how they're measured, and by internal company standards, not those used for tax and royalty accounting purposes and for public consumption. Go spread some BS in some other thread, or wait for somebody on another shift to come on and post who might know what they're talking about under your handle.

Hint: No oil company on the planet is ever going to release accurate info on their reserves, period.

 

How are reserves measured? LOLOL

 

You don't know? Can't tell us yourself?

 

You ridiculed me.. so YOU explain it. I have explained how they are measure MANY times on this board.

 

I know exactly all the weights and grades because I was just reading an oil quality evaluation of all the major oils across the world. Saudi Arabia's best oil is still sour and isn't as light as WTI or Brent.

 

Well, Manifa is certainly sour.. Have you been there? I visited it in 1957, 1964 1984 when it was shut down. .. and not too long ago when it was reopened and expanded.

http://www.pennenergy.com/content/dam/Pennenergy/online-articles/2013/February/Manifa%20offshore%20oil%20field.JPG

There are still light, sweet fields around Udaleah and Uthmania.

 

Ghawar is sweet between 33 and 40 AP.. WTI and Brent fall between those two numbers.

Safanyia about 200 miles north of Dh.. has 27 API.

The VZ oil business is in a terrible state of decline.

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Here's Manifa today.

http://www.pennenergy.com/content/d...ticles/2013/February/Manifa offshore oil fiel d.JPG

 

Sweet or sour has nothing to do with the specific gravity of the oil (API). It looks like you don't know what you're talking about.

The Venezuelan government can change their situation by picking up the phone and calling BP, Exxon, Shell etc.

 

I doubt it. VZ screwed Exxon, BP and Shell in the past.

 

You brought the topic up and pretended to be some giant expert on it and contradicting others, so go ahead, put me in my place here and and tell us about your vast knowledge of anybody's oil reserves.

 

Venezuela's oil is among the most expensive to raise, somewhere near $10 plus per barrel last I checked, some 7 years ago or so; it's under swamps; even many off-shore sites are cheaper to produce. But yes, it's an intermediate grade, with some smaller pools having better than average grades. And you're right, like most countries it's local abilities to produce efficiently are low to non-existent. Their 'national oil companies' are mostly just shells and holding companies, set up to collect royalties and distribute funds, and don't actually produce much hands on, just like ARAMCO.

 

You obviously know very little about the chemical properties of oil. As I said, Saudi Arabia's oil is Sour with its Light oil having a ~1.77% Sulphur mass (not even close to Sweet).

Who knows what you were doing in Saudi Arabia, certainly wasn't working in any serious position within the oil industry, that's for sure.

As for Venezuela, it is time to reset the relationship and drill-baby-drill I reckon. We should get iron-clad assurances from the Venezuelan government that they will provide security, protection of wells and associated supply chain.

 

Oil _ gas business is not that simple , it needs western high technologies , that's why States - gas - stations so badly need the free world. USA first of all...Do you think Muscovites can get any profit today without USA technologies, and help ?

 

~$10 a barrel is middle of the pack buddy. Still not as cheap as the some of the Middle East countries, however the associated costs of doing business and the sovereign risk will be less, looking at it on the surface. Also this price should drop when production really ramps up.

 

Well, the British and Dutch can, too, and the Russians are developing their own, but slowly; they've come up with some pretty impressive drilling bits, for instance, They can do small scale production and refining, probably, but not nearly what they're producing now with the multi-nationals organizing fields and projects and handling the supply chain management. Exxon-Mobil is the general contractor for the China pipeline project, for instance.