Supply side not bullish for oil

Lest we forget:  the reason oil producers are hoping for an output freeze is because the demand side is weakening and world oil inventories are at record highs. But even if an output agreement is achieved in principle next week, the norm is for OPEC members to cheat and pump more than the agreed quantity.  Then there is the self-interest of all the other global producers to keep selling product, in an effort to grab needed cash flow.

Iran will be resistant to any agreement to cut production at November’s OPEC meeting, Again Capital’s John Kilduff told CNBC on Wednesday.

“There’s just no way the Iranians are going to agree to this,” Kilduff said. “I think they see a horizon, potentially, where their oil production and exports get disrupted again by the new Trump administration, … so why would they agree to any sort of cut at all right now?” Here is a direct video link.

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Trump: ‘open mind’ on climate problems

Here is some bad news for Trump believers:  nothing he has said before seems to be binding.  Re the President-elect’s position on the challenges facing our planet however, this trait is good news.  See  Trump to NYT ‘open mind’ on quitting climate accords:

US President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he has an open mind about pulling out of world climate accords and admitted global warming may be in some way linked to human activity.

“I think there is some connectivity. Some, something. It depends on how much,” he told a panel of New York Times journalists.

Asked whether he would make good on his threat to pull the United States out of UN climate accords, he said: “I’m looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it.”

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Must read to comprehend context: ‘No more flyover country’

Raúl Ilargi Meijer of the Automatic Earth has written one of the best context pieces I have found on why status quo systems are losing power and substantive change is mandatory.  This is not partisan, forces underway are our human reality.  Worth the time to read in full and reflect.  See No more flyover country, here is a flavor:

The transition we find ourselves in, into an era as profoundly different as it will be from the one that preceded it, can only possibly be chaotic. Smooth is not an option. Because it takes much time for people to recognize let alone accept that there is such a transition to begin with, and not everyone acknowledges or accepts it at the same time. Many never will at all, they will be left behind in their own realities tied down by the chains of what once was.

This transition is the one away from economic growth and globalization -centralization in general- and towards smaller, less centered and grandiose, politics and markets. It is not an idealistic transition towards self-sufficiency, it’s simply and inevitably what’s left once unfettered growth hits the skids. It doesn’t have to be anywhere near as bad as people would have you believe, or at least not necessarily so. What could make it real bad, though, is the widespread resistance and denial which seem certain to meet it.

Our entire worldviews and ‘philosophies’ are based on ever more and ever bigger and then some, and our entire economies are built upon it. That has already made us ignore the decline of our real markets for many years now. We focus on data about stock markets and the like, and ignore the demise of our respective heartlands and flyover countries, even as we experience Brexit and Trump and similar movements set to come to many more countries.

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