We Have So Much Freakin Oil!
As recently as last year, oil cost close to $110 a barrel. Today, oil costs less than $37 a barrel. Why? There’s so much god damn oil!
Oil coming out of the world’s ears right now metaphorically speaking of course.
If you are a cool “trader” you know that the story of 2015 was not any bullshit about hoverboards, or “Grimes”—the real story was oil prices! High five. (Anyone having a New Year’s Eve party? Let me know.) Right around the middle of last year, oil prices began a nosedive of more than 50%. Following a brief bounce early this year, they plunged again, and now they’re wallowing at their lowest point in more than a decade.
Sucks if you own an oil company!
What happened, eh? Well what happened is that America, the greatest country in the world, started producing a lot of its own oil, so our friends in the Middle East got sad because we weren’t buying all of our oil from them any more, so they started pumping out SO MUCH OIL that oil prices dropped low as hell, because there was suddenly SO MUCH OIL everywhere, in the hope that the rest of the world’s oil producers would look at how hard it was to make money selling this crap now at these rock bottom prices and say “eh, fuck this,” and give up the old “oil game,” and then after they got out of the business we would turn back to our friends in the Middle East, who could then start raising the price again. They’re playing “the long game,” my friends, and in the world of oil, you play the long game or you don’t play at all. Mark Twain said that a hundred odd years ago, and it’s still true today**.
What will 2016 bring for oil? My prediction: SO MUCH OIL.
(This also encourages everyone to use oil like it’s nothing which is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing from a global warming perspective but that is NOT the topic of this post, so leave it alone.)
I hope you feel that you’ve learned a little something about our world this morning—just by reading a blog. Fuck college, and Merry New Year.
**I made this up for color.