G7 Urges Oil Exporters to Increase Production
August 28 (Reuters) — The Group of Seven finance ministers urged oil-producing countries on Tuesday to raise output to ensure the market is well supplied, while warning that Western nations were ready to tap strategic oil reserves to offset rising prices that could hurt global growth.
“We stand ready to call upon the International Energy Agency to take appropriate action to ensure that the market is fully and timely supplied,” the G7 said in a statement. “The current rise in oil prices reflects geopolitical concerns and certain supply disruptions. We encourage oil-producing countries to increase their output to meet demand.”
Oil prices have strengthened as Hurricane Isaac approached the U.S. coast and the administration of President Barack Obama said separately on Tuesday that it was still open to a possible release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
“That option has been on the table for some time, and remains on the table, but we have no announcements to make today,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling to Iowa with President Barack Obama.
Earlier this year, the White House considered tapping the reserve but held off after oil prices fell. Reuters reported this month the White House was dusting off those plans, and some energy experts viewed Isaac as a potential trigger for such a move.
Oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico was down more than 90 percent on Tuesday as Hurricane Isaac headed toward the Louisiana as a Category 1 storm. The storm was expected to make landfall as early as Tuesday night.
Energy analysts do not expect extensive damage to oil and gas infrastructure if the storm stays in line with current projections.
Still, any supply disruptions could raise pressure for a release of emergency oil supplies.
“We remain vigilant of the risks to the global economy. In this context and mindful of the substantial risks posed by elevated oil prices, we are monitoring the situation in oil markets closely,” the G7 said.
Finance ministers also noted that Saudi Arabia had committed at a G20 meeting of world leaders in Mexico earlier this year to use its spare oil production capacity to ensure adequate supply.
The comments from the finance ministers is a strong signal that a release may be imminent, said Jan Stuart, head of energy research at Credit Suisse in New York.
“A significant group of industrialized countries now appears to be ready to make reserves available — they know that when you make statements at this level, you also need to be ready to follow through,” Stuart said.
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Warren,
So you think that oil is a speculative bubble?
no, just price setting by the saudis
Where is the solar powered MT 900 Mr. Mosler? Or the solar powered double hulled super-yacht. Those 400 acres the government wants from you for a park, do you have a solar power farm there?
Why do you persist in using and developing petroleum using technology? Obama has said energy is job 1 of his administration, it must be important if that trumps every other concern of our nation.
http://www.yamaguchy.com/library/denny/denny_index.html 1922
We Fight for Oil
“It is even probable that the supremacy of nations may be determined by the possession of available petroleum and its products.” —President Coolidge
The exploitation of petroleum has become controlled by companies sufficiently powerful to establish their own intelligence branches and sufficiently influential to advise their governments on questions of international policy; for their interests and the interests of the nation as a whole roughly coincide,” said Sir Thomas H. Holland, of British oil fame, in a recent article on “Conditions Affecting the Petroleum Prospects of the Empire.”272
At first it was chiefly commercial rivalry between companies. Later the London Government was involved, then Washington. Now the British and American peoples are being aroused. In this country the old anti-trust crusade against Standard, and the Fall-Doheny-Sinclair scandals, put petroleum in bad odour. The public has been in no mood to champion the cause of any oil company at home or abroad. But this sentiment is changing.
The danger point will be reached when near-shortage drives prices upward, and American automobile-owners are told the British have cornered most of the world supply. Secretary Hoover’s recent anti-British campaign because of the rubber monopoly,273 and the Administration’s publicity drive against Great Britain during the Geneva Naval Conference, show how it is done. What will happen when the enraged force of public opinion is added to the commercial motives of the oil companies and the defence incentives of the Government? Then the Ku Kluxers and Mayor Thompsons may find a hate crusade crying for their “hundred per cent” leadership. Then all the other Anglo-American economic and political conflicts—real and imagined—can be brought out and magnified.
If by ill fortune such a popular movement coincides with the anticipated scrapping of the Washington Naval Treaty, the international situation will be grave. “The possibility is not remote of there being a new world tragedy over the petroleum dispute,” says General Obregon.274
The danger cannot be removed by denying its existence. Peace cannot be maintained by repeating the lie that “war between Great Britain and the United States is impossible.”
War is possible. War is probable—unless the two empires seek through mutual sacrifice to reconcile their many conflicting interests. This would involve sharing raw materials and markets, and dividing sea supremacy, without violating the rights of weaker nations. If some such miracle of diplomacy is achieved oil may cease to be an international explosive.
@Save America,
Give it a rest, Save America. Germany, the uber-renewable fuel nation, is now building 23 new coal-fired power plants to supply needed electricity (they voted to replace all their nuclear after Fukushima) because after two decades solar and wind don’t cut it. Their wind power projects are only producing at 16% capacity and their solar units at even less. Billions of investment for naught. The radioactive waste produced at stage four of the rare earths needed for one turbine is mind-boggling, but purists never consider that, nor see it because we leave that waste in countries other than our own. (Now they want to carve up Northern Quebec for its rare earth deposits. Wait until they see the waste it can produce, and how it will imperil the indigenous peoples’ fishing waters and hunting grounds with the radioactive waste flowing into the Arctic.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html )
Whether you like it or not, oil is still the number one national security issue for the USG (got that straight from Schlesinger). It has nothing to do with supplying oil for cars, or US consumer/business consumption. Military planes don’t fly on solar at night. Neither do ships, tanks, and trucks. Consider the logistics of Afghanistan. We start oil wars to use up or disrupt other country’s supplies before we ever use up our own, and control who has access to it. We opened Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to prevent the Russians from slant-drilling into the field; only reason we did it. Why do you think we’re trying to drain Nigeria and Canada?
Until such time as the USG releases Tesla’s papers from 1942 and we as a society decide that electricity and energy must be free for everyone–or waaaay freer than it is now–there will be no change. We still await that massive change in consciousness, and hysterics like Bill McKibben aren’t helping it with his jejune jolly-jumper climate logic and singular issue…but then he has books to sell. The oil companies buy up all innovative alternative energy inventions and shelve them, or their inventors commit suicide around trees on the way to presenting conferences (as happened to the MI inventor in 1995 who was about to convert my car to plain water fuel). Biofuels are contributing to the starvation in the under-developed worlds and we Americans, wanting to burnish our green credentials, don’t give a damn about that. The price of corn has, what, tripled or quadrupled?
So, develop some perspective on this. There are forces far more entrenched and powerful than you know.
@MRW, You didn’t read the link I provided, as warren says millions of times, go read the linked material. It talks about entrenched oil companies and governments, why do you think it says the opposite?
Anyways I am glad you brought up Tesla, I went to his home in Croatia, found out lots of stuff. Did you know he cut off his balls? He said sex and women would get in the way of his life. He was a real sexist chauvinist pig as judged by women today, a man I can really get behind.
Do a google search for “tesla views on women”, he had a lot of bad things to say about women, their entering the workforce, thier using sex to make mules/slaves of men, etc etc
If you really like Tesla, don’t just do as he said, do as he did, go see a surgeon and have your testacles snipped. 😉
A man so dedicated to science would do nothing less would he? Come on MRW, show us what your made of!!
@Save America,
Lawrence Wilkerson says that DoD is in the vanguard of trying to find new fuel solutions, although he says its understandably clear self-interest on the part of the DoD. Nonetheless, they are concerned. Interview:
“Colin Powell’s Former Chief of Staff Lets Fly”
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/colin_powells_former_chief_of_staff_lets_fly_20120829/
The word “encourage” is a tell. It aims to prompt people who can’t think for themselves and need to be told what to do because they are endemically fearful. Apparently, these people exist in every corner of the globe. But, the encouragers will do nothing. Because they themselves are instinct-driven people dealing with fear in the only way they know how — by making noise.
What’s really shameful about this black gold fixation is that sorts of diversification has been allowed to lapse and redundancy has been wrung out of our economies in the mistaken drive towards monopolies of all kinds. Nature’s organization is redundant, if only to accommodate fluctuations in temperature. Redundancy is not waste. Redundancy makes systems fail-safe. We build it ahead of time, just in case.
Of course, people who have no sense of time can’t appreciate that. Are there many of those? Given that all significant cultures have developed time-keeping systems (e.g.Muslims stop to pray six times a day), one suspects the answer is yes. People who have no sense of time don’t notice that other people are keeping them on track.
“Time is of the essence.”
Romney Economics
http://youtu.be/vIk5-l-pQ9A
I see nothing, I know nothing…Sgt Schultz
Time to start buying the election, endless welfare may not be enough, so throw in some cheap oil to suck in the sheep.
@JBH,
And if he doesn’t, the Republicans will just put gas prices back on their list of things Obama messed up.
@Brian,
As they should..