Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Oil Production

 It might be important to point out that at this time there is no shortage of oil or refined oil products.  Wat drives the price of oil on the futures market is speculation over the future supply and demand.  

When the pandemic hit and shutdowns were imposed worldwide the price of oil plummeted which was good for gas prices but bad for the suppliers who lost billions.  This led to a change in operations which led to a reduction in risk calculations.

Drilling was reduced to more sure fire projects and wells that were not profitable enough were shut down.  So when the economy started to boom oil supply could not increase quickly enough.

This resulted in a jump in price to about pre-pandemic levels.  This was not related to Government policies but to private company business decisions.  Yes the administration cancelled a pipeline that was controversial, but that did not eliminate the Canadian oil just a cheap way to transport it.

The loss of Russian oil impacts the risk equation and supply forecast.  Will the supply increase?  Yes, but slower because of risk uncertainty.  There are other sources of supply that worry drillers so they will not overinvest.

Oil prices will stabalize, it will take a minute or two.

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