“When your past calls, don't answer. It has nothing new to say” - Lionel Richie

GEOPOLITICS.

Oil markets are largely avoiding volatility, in spite of escalating conflict in the Middle East.

WTI did rise ~2% today, which almost doesn’t register as a spike, considering the volatility following the recent Aramco attack.

Quick Turkey Recap:

• Turkey begins assault on Syria

• US responds by announcing regional troop deployment

• Sanctions against Turkey are threatened by US Republicans

TANKER TROUBLES.

An Iranian oil tanker was hit by two missiles on Friday morning, ~60 miles (~100km) from the Saudi port of Jeddah.

This latest attack follows numerous tanker incidents involving Saudi Arabia & Iran over the last 5 months.

Hamdi Alkhshali & Ben Westcott from CNN put together a summary of the last few months tanker events (see graphic above) - their article is worth a quick read.

Blame for this most recent attack has yet to be established.

• Initial reports, that the missiles were fired from Saudi, were dismissed by Iran

• The resulting explosions caused an oil leak in the Red Sea

• Luckily, Iran reported that the tanker's crew members are safe

CALIFORNIA.

• The world’s 5th largest economy

• Home of Silicon Valley

• Land of Planned Power Outages…?

California’s dysfunctional energy policy is in the news again -

***this time, for blackouts***

California’s electricity issues began ~20yrs ago, right around the time Gray Davis was elected governor…

…the Gray Davis story famously ended with a recall & removal from office in 2003.

Arnold Schwarzenegger subsequently won the recall election.

And California still has blackouts…

Sometimes, there’s no lesson in a story -

DISCOVERIES.

Following the announcement of CNPC’s pullout of the South Pars project, Iran announced a large natural gas discovery.

In loosely related news, Jordan Blum (Houston Chronicle) published a recap of the largest discoveries in 2019.

Guyana is clearly the story, and will be, for many years to come -

US OIL PATCH

With Q3 earnings still a few weeks away, US E&P news has been relatively quiet:

• Chevron discussed the growth of its Texas operations

• Halliburton announced a round layoffs

That’s it for this week - we’ll be back Tuesday -