2010 - Time to Arrest the Oil Extortionists?

by Phil - December 30th, 2009 4:58 am

Is "extortion" too strong a word for what’s being done to us?

Extortion is a criminal offense which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion.  Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force. Such actions are used as leverage, to force the victim to act in the desired way. Coercion may involve the actual infliction of physical pain/injury or psychological harm in order to enhance the credibility of a threat. The threat of further harm may lead to the cooperation or obedience of the person being coerced.

Perhaps there is not much we can do to stop the criminal cartel known as OPEC from withholding the supply of oil (they have cut production by 5M barrels a day globally in the past 18 months) or the US Energy cartel that has taken 32.4% of the US rigs off-line in the past 12 months - EVEN though oil prices are UP 100% over the same time period.  I’m sure, if called to testify before Congress, T Boone and company will do some song and dance to pretend the economics of $80 oil justify 32.4% less drilling than $40 oil did last December rather than the very obvious fact that, by cutting off 32% of our supply, they were able to EXTORT us, to force us to pay through trickery and the pressure of witholding a vital commodity - an extra $40 per barrel. 

$40 a barrel is costing the US consumer $760M a day - and that’s without the refining mark-up.  $760M a day is $277Bn a year stolen from US citizens alone and over $1Tn globally - that’s 20 Madoff scams a year!  If the oil companies were witholding water or air from us and demanding more money for something they were able to readily produce more of, then we would KNOW it was torture, right?  Why should oil be different?   It’s not a choice - for good or ill, we need energy to survive in this modern world every bit as much as we need air and water yet we allow both the blatant cartel of OPEC as well as the private cartel of US petroleum producers to manipulate the supply of energy and FORCE us to pay far more than the market rate could possibly be if the supply were not ARTIFICIALLY constrained.

Last…

Tags: BP, GE, ICE, JPM, MRO, Oil, OPEC, RDSA, XOM

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Goldman’s Global Oil Scam Passes the 50 Madoff Mark!

by Phil - November 11th, 2009 6:18 am

$2.5 Trillion - That’s the size of of the global oil scam.

It’s a number so large that, to put it in perspective, we will now begin measuring the damage done to the global economy in "Madoff Units" ($50Bn rip-offs).  That’s right - $2.5Tn is 50 TIMES the amount of money that Bernie Madoff scammed from investors in his lifetime, yet it is also LESS than the MONTHLY EXCESS price the global population is being manipulated into paying for a barrel of oil. 

Where is the outrage?  Where are the investigations? 

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BP, TOT, Shell, DB and Societe General founded the Intercontinental Exchange in 2000.  ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws.  The exchange was set up to facilitate "dark pool" trading in the commodities markets.  Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se.  They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel.

A Congressional investigation into energy trading in 2003 discovered that ICE was being used to facilitate "round-trip" trades.  Round-trip” trades occur when one firm sells energy to another and then the second firm simultaneously sells the same amount of energy back to the first company at exactly the same price. No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company.  This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.

"Traders of the the ICE core membership (GS, MS, BP, DB, RDS.A, GLE & TOT) wouldn’t really have to put much money at risk by their standards in order to move or support the global market price via the BFOE market. Indeed the evolution of the Brent market has been a response to declining production and the fact that traders could not resist manipulating the market by buying up contracts and “squeezing” those who had sold oil they did not have. The fewer cargoes produced, the easier the underlying market is to manipulate." - Chris Cook, Former Director of the International Petroleum Exchange, which was bought by ICE. 

How widespread are “round-trip’‘ trades? The Congressional Research Service looked at trading patterns in the energy sector and this is what they reported: This pattern of trading…

Tags: BP, DB, Enron, GLE, ICE, Madoff, MS, Oil, Oil Scam, OPEC, RDSA, TOT

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China Pays Too Much for Oil in Iraq - $16 A Barrel!

by Phil - June 25th, 2009 7:42 am

How much smarter is China than the US?

Well let’s see - The US has spent $1,000,000,000,000 fighting in Iraq and thousands of our soldiers have died and we have secured ZERO barrels of oil for ourselves.  China was not part of the coalition of the willing but, for just $8.8Bn, they are getting 550 Million barrels of oil, almost the size of the US’s entire strategic petroleum reserve, through the purchase of Addax Petroleum, and 20% of those reserves are in Iraq .  While Bush filled our reserve up "at any price" and became the single largest buyer of crude in the world, filling our SPR at a rate of 2-3Mb a week at times, China simply waited patiently on the sidelines and is now coming in and buying wholesale.  That’s pretty smart!

Of course patience is a renowned virtue of the Chinese and just one year after the US was paying over $100 a barrel to fill our own reserves, China’s Sinopec is doubling the country’s oil reserves with a single purchase at 1/6th the price.  Sure they have to pump it ($4 per barrel) and ship it ($3 per barrel) as it’s not local but sometimes you have to travel a little to find bargains. 

Earlier this year, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani gave approval for foreign companies developing oil fields in the Kurdish region to export their crude directly to international markets. Addax was a beneficiary of the change and has been shipping oil since the start of this month.  Addax is one of the largest independent oil producers in West Africa and the Middle East by volume. Aside from Kurdistan, it operates off Nigeria, an area that has seen huge exploration success in recent years.  The company produced 136,500 barrels a day on average last year, or about 1.7% of China’s daily consumption.

So why is China still paying too much for oil?  Sinopec is paying about $16 a barrel of proven and probable reserves. The average for African and Middle Eastern deals in 2008 — a year with triple-digit crude prices — was under $5 a barrel, according to consultants IHS Herold and Harrison Lovegrove & Co.  Throw in Addax’s possible reserves and contingent natural-gas reserves and the multiple drops to just over $7 a barrel of oil equivalent. Your average buyer would never factor in such rosy assumptions. But then Sinopec, 66%-owned by the Chinese government, isn’t your average…

Tags: Addax, CHINA, CVX, Iraq, Oil, RDSA, Sinopec, TOT, XOM

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