We're in a world that faces serious problems with political stability in several key regions. People want to hold more supplies closer to home, and that's going to keep demand high for purchasing imported barrels.
This really comes down to what can Saudi Arabia do.
Now we have a hurricane heading for the bigger part of the coastal refinery center, threatening to blow a huge hole in products supply.
People were worried post-Katrina as we have real tight product supply,
If all the fears start to come true we could be getting to some high price levels.
Katrina blew a big hole in the product market. If Rita doubles that, we are in for some serious problems.
OPEC is going to have to go back to some supply management again if they are going to hold a (price) floor. It should be easy for them to manage, it's not like they have to cut a lot they will still be at high output levels.
People are going to run as hard as they can. The price incentives are there.
People are covering their positions before the weekend. We don't know what's going to happen with Iran.
Refiners are already going to be feeling a bit of a pinch in their ability to provide supply, and importers as well.
I think sanctions that impact oil flows from Iran are very unlikely. The Chinese are major importers of Iranian crude and they would not be too happy to see that.
We are really narrowing our ability for an import bail-out.
We had a huge US crude build and OPEC said they're going to just keep pumping at high levels, so between the two of those it's pretty easy to understand the sell-off.
Under a Kerry administration we'd likely have a much more interventionist SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) policy,
You don't know the legal framework that you are working under. You won't have that until you have a stable government.
Even if the refineries are OK, they could be starved of their imports.
There's some new problems and challenges ahead in the national switch to ethanol.
This is significantly slower than the recovery from (Hurricane) Ivan, ... The easy stuff has been brought back. ... Now the tough stuff is ahead of us.
A million sounds pretty high. I have a hard time seeing that from just existing fields and rehabilitation.