Sunday, May 05, 2024 1:24:35 PM
An Oil Price-Fixing Conspiracy Caused 27% of All Inflation Increases in 2021
The FTC just found evidence that American oil companies colluded with the Saudi government to hike gas prices, costing the average family $3,000 last year. The question is, what can we do about it?
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused
MATT STOLLER
MAY 03, 2024
I’m at the Google antitrust closing arguments, and I’ll have some thoughts on that soon. But today’s piece is about some bombshell evidence that just came out on a giant post-Covid conspiracy in the oil industry. And I do mean giant, because there’s now evidence that price-fixingp in the oil industry alone may single-handedly be responsible for a little over a quarter of the total inflationary increase in 2021.
Let’s dive in.
Last Sunday, I wrote a piece alleging that U.S. shale oil producers colluded with the Saudi government from 2021-2023 to drive up gas prices. That essay was based on some reporting I had done, as well as a complaint from a savvy Kansas City class action law firm, Sharp Law, with special expertise in oil. The theory was that American producers, after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, got tired of competing on price with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the affect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission released evidence confirming that collusion played a serious role in hiking oil prices at that time. Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, a leader in the fracking field, “exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output.” Sheffield was explicit about his goal, saying that “if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan,” he said, adding: “I was using the tactics of OPEC+ to get a bigger OPEC+ done.” He talked to shareholders, publicly threatened rivals, and ultimately achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price. “Even if oil gets to $200/barrel,” he said, “the independent producers are going to be disciplined.
By 2021, as the economy roared back from Covid, the independents had joined OPEC. “I don’t think the world can rely much on US shale,” Sheffield said. “It’s really under OPEC control.”.....................
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Trump moves ahead with selling public land to fossil-fuel industry amid coronavirus and oil price freefall
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/trump-fossil-fuel-coronavirus-oil-price-fall-us-public-lands-a9493101.html
Louise Boyle
New York
Thursday 30 April 2020 18:56 BS
................................................................Melyssa Watson, executive director of the Wilderness Society, told The Guardian: “From rolling back EPA’s pollution standards, to pushing for more oil and gas drilling and stifling the public review process, the federal government is fast-tracking rollbacks that deserve public scrutiny."
Last month, Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, announced a rollback on the Obama administration’s emissions standards for vehicles, despite the decision meaning that millions more tonnes of CO2 will be added to the global warming crisis.
The EPA also said last month that it would suspend the enforcement of environmental regulations that punish polluters during the coronavirus outbreak and allow industries to self-monitor.
At the time, the Natural Resources Defense Council tweeted: “This is an open licence to pollute. The administration should be giving its all toward making our country healthier right now. Instead it is taking advantage of an unprecedented public health crisis to do favours for polluters that threaten public health.”
Associated Press contributed to this report
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Trump Administration’s Bad Deal for Public Lands
https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2020/10/07/trump-public-lands-deal-426773
Opinion by JAYNI HEIN and MAX SARINSKY
10/07/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Jayni Hein is the natural resources director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.
Max Sarinsky is an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law
As wildfires exacerbated by climate change ravage the western United States, the Trump administration is fueling future climate disasters by continuing to hand over pristine public lands to private fossil fuel developers at breakneck pace.
That would be bad enough, but this fire sale of public lands is happening at arguably the worst possible moment for the American taxpayer: Global energy prices are at record lows, which means oil and gas developers are unwilling or unable to pay a fair price for access to these lands.
A normal approach to a decline in prices is to delay selling an asset until demand, and prices, recover. So a rational administration would look at the decline in demand for oil and gas leases and see it as an opportunity to hit pause and come up with a fiscally and environmentally smarter way to manage these lands.
Instead, the Trump administration is rushing ahead with these lease sales, locking in more harmful greenhouse gas emissions while failing to earn a decent return for American taxpayers...................................
.....................................These giveaways have become the norm for the Trump administration. In one extraordinary example, it allowed a single company to obtain over 113,000 acres of federal land — the size of over 80,000 football fields — for under $190,000, less than the median price of an American home. The Trump administration offered more acres for lease in its first two years than were offered under President Barack Obama’s entire second term. Last year, the Trump administration offered 1.6 million acres, seven times the amount offered in 2016.
By leasing so much public land and granting developers a 5- to 10-year option to drill, the administration not only deprives the public of the land’s other beneficial uses — such as conservation, recreation and renewable energy development — but also ties the hands of future administrations to enact responsible climate policies.
This recklessness is reminiscent of an era at the turn of the 20th century deemed the “Great Barbecue” for the buffet of federal mineral, grazing and forest lands offered to settlers and prospectors for paltry fees, ultimately leading to rapid and wasteful resource exploitation. Congress and regulators eventually adopted a more rational conservation policy, resulting in the establishment of agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Interior’s Bureau of Land Management that are directed to manage public lands for public benefit.
Today’s flurry of bargain fossil-fuel lease sales could be called a second “Great Barbecue” for creating the conditions for producing the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that fuel climate change. Already, U.S. public lands would rank fifth in the world for greenhouse gas emissions if they were their own country. Continuing to produce large amounts of federal coal, oil and gas contradicts what climate science says we must do to prevent catastrophic climate damages: transition rapidly away from producing and burning fossil fuels..............................................................
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Saudis take 100% control of America's largest oil refinery
https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/investing/saudi-arabia-buys-largest-oil-refinery-port-arthur/index.html
by Matt Egan @MattEganCNN
May 1, 2017: 1:53 PM ET
Code: 6 | Message: The usage license for this video player has e
Saudi Arabia Now Controls the Largest Oil Refinery in North America
The move is a huge boon to Aramco before a big IPO, experts say.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/03/saudi-arabia-now-controls-the-largest-oil-refinery-in-north-america-energy-middle-east-aramco/
By Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy.
MAY 3, 2017, 10:01 AM
The Port Arthur refinery in Texas is North America’s largest oil refinery, and as of this week Saudi Arabia controls all of it. With the stroke of a proverbial pen, Saudi’s state-owned oil giant Aramco took on 100 percent ownership of the port, cementing its access to the lucrative U.S. energy market at a critical time.
Industry experts say this week’s deal is Aramco’s latest power play before its highly anticipated IPO next year. But it also unveils a wider Aramco strategy no other state-owned oil giant has pursued yet: buying up downstream refineries worldwide to ensure steady consumer access regardless of prices.................................
.
The FTC just found evidence that American oil companies colluded with the Saudi government to hike gas prices, costing the average family $3,000 last year. The question is, what can we do about it?
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused
MATT STOLLER
MAY 03, 2024
I’m at the Google antitrust closing arguments, and I’ll have some thoughts on that soon. But today’s piece is about some bombshell evidence that just came out on a giant post-Covid conspiracy in the oil industry. And I do mean giant, because there’s now evidence that price-fixingp in the oil industry alone may single-handedly be responsible for a little over a quarter of the total inflationary increase in 2021.
Let’s dive in.
Last Sunday, I wrote a piece alleging that U.S. shale oil producers colluded with the Saudi government from 2021-2023 to drive up gas prices. That essay was based on some reporting I had done, as well as a complaint from a savvy Kansas City class action law firm, Sharp Law, with special expertise in oil. The theory was that American producers, after a bitter price war from 2014-2016, got tired of competing on price with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or the OPEC oil cartel, and at some point from 2017-2021, decided to join the cartel and cut supply to the market. This action had the affect of raising oil prices, costing oil consumers something on the order of $200 billion a year.
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission released evidence confirming that collusion played a serious role in hiking oil prices at that time. Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, a leader in the fracking field, “exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output.” Sheffield was explicit about his goal, saying that “if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan,” he said, adding: “I was using the tactics of OPEC+ to get a bigger OPEC+ done.” He talked to shareholders, publicly threatened rivals, and ultimately achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price. “Even if oil gets to $200/barrel,” he said, “the independent producers are going to be disciplined.
By 2021, as the economy roared back from Covid, the independents had joined OPEC. “I don’t think the world can rely much on US shale,” Sheffield said. “It’s really under OPEC control.”.....................
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Trump moves ahead with selling public land to fossil-fuel industry amid coronavirus and oil price freefall
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/trump-fossil-fuel-coronavirus-oil-price-fall-us-public-lands-a9493101.html
Louise Boyle
New York
Thursday 30 April 2020 18:56 BS
................................................................Melyssa Watson, executive director of the Wilderness Society, told The Guardian: “From rolling back EPA’s pollution standards, to pushing for more oil and gas drilling and stifling the public review process, the federal government is fast-tracking rollbacks that deserve public scrutiny."
Last month, Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, announced a rollback on the Obama administration’s emissions standards for vehicles, despite the decision meaning that millions more tonnes of CO2 will be added to the global warming crisis.
The EPA also said last month that it would suspend the enforcement of environmental regulations that punish polluters during the coronavirus outbreak and allow industries to self-monitor.
At the time, the Natural Resources Defense Council tweeted: “This is an open licence to pollute. The administration should be giving its all toward making our country healthier right now. Instead it is taking advantage of an unprecedented public health crisis to do favours for polluters that threaten public health.”
Associated Press contributed to this report
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Trump Administration’s Bad Deal for Public Lands
https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2020/10/07/trump-public-lands-deal-426773
Opinion by JAYNI HEIN and MAX SARINSKY
10/07/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Jayni Hein is the natural resources director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.
Max Sarinsky is an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law
As wildfires exacerbated by climate change ravage the western United States, the Trump administration is fueling future climate disasters by continuing to hand over pristine public lands to private fossil fuel developers at breakneck pace.
That would be bad enough, but this fire sale of public lands is happening at arguably the worst possible moment for the American taxpayer: Global energy prices are at record lows, which means oil and gas developers are unwilling or unable to pay a fair price for access to these lands.
A normal approach to a decline in prices is to delay selling an asset until demand, and prices, recover. So a rational administration would look at the decline in demand for oil and gas leases and see it as an opportunity to hit pause and come up with a fiscally and environmentally smarter way to manage these lands.
Instead, the Trump administration is rushing ahead with these lease sales, locking in more harmful greenhouse gas emissions while failing to earn a decent return for American taxpayers...................................
.....................................These giveaways have become the norm for the Trump administration. In one extraordinary example, it allowed a single company to obtain over 113,000 acres of federal land — the size of over 80,000 football fields — for under $190,000, less than the median price of an American home. The Trump administration offered more acres for lease in its first two years than were offered under President Barack Obama’s entire second term. Last year, the Trump administration offered 1.6 million acres, seven times the amount offered in 2016.
By leasing so much public land and granting developers a 5- to 10-year option to drill, the administration not only deprives the public of the land’s other beneficial uses — such as conservation, recreation and renewable energy development — but also ties the hands of future administrations to enact responsible climate policies.
This recklessness is reminiscent of an era at the turn of the 20th century deemed the “Great Barbecue” for the buffet of federal mineral, grazing and forest lands offered to settlers and prospectors for paltry fees, ultimately leading to rapid and wasteful resource exploitation. Congress and regulators eventually adopted a more rational conservation policy, resulting in the establishment of agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Interior’s Bureau of Land Management that are directed to manage public lands for public benefit.
Today’s flurry of bargain fossil-fuel lease sales could be called a second “Great Barbecue” for creating the conditions for producing the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that fuel climate change. Already, U.S. public lands would rank fifth in the world for greenhouse gas emissions if they were their own country. Continuing to produce large amounts of federal coal, oil and gas contradicts what climate science says we must do to prevent catastrophic climate damages: transition rapidly away from producing and burning fossil fuels..............................................................
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Saudis take 100% control of America's largest oil refinery
https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/01/investing/saudi-arabia-buys-largest-oil-refinery-port-arthur/index.html
by Matt Egan @MattEganCNN
May 1, 2017: 1:53 PM ET
Code: 6 | Message: The usage license for this video player has e
Saudi Arabia Now Controls the Largest Oil Refinery in North America
The move is a huge boon to Aramco before a big IPO, experts say.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/03/saudi-arabia-now-controls-the-largest-oil-refinery-in-north-america-energy-middle-east-aramco/
By Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy.
MAY 3, 2017, 10:01 AM
The Port Arthur refinery in Texas is North America’s largest oil refinery, and as of this week Saudi Arabia controls all of it. With the stroke of a proverbial pen, Saudi’s state-owned oil giant Aramco took on 100 percent ownership of the port, cementing its access to the lucrative U.S. energy market at a critical time.
Industry experts say this week’s deal is Aramco’s latest power play before its highly anticipated IPO next year. But it also unveils a wider Aramco strategy no other state-owned oil giant has pursued yet: buying up downstream refineries worldwide to ensure steady consumer access regardless of prices.................................
.
Two people you should never trust:
A religious leader who tells you how to vote.
A politician who tells you how to pray.
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