GOM Layoffs

Hearing news that some companies sent out emails today.

Any real facts? Companies? Billets?

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Not surprising with oil at its current prices and Russia not wanting to play.

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Aint gonna be good news. No facts other than $23/24 dollar oil.

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Louisiana Light 5.850 -5.130 -46.72%
WTI is up to 20.73

Not a good outlook for the gulf

It’s not GoM, but it rhymes.

Whiting files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as oil prices hover at $20

The biggest producer of Crude Oil (USA) is not playing either. When the big players gets together and limits worldwide supplies to demand the price will go up.(So will the price at the pump)
The other alternatives are,

  1. A lot of bankruptcies among the frakers in the US
  2. A major war in the Middle East (Involving Iran and the US)

Please, no more war. Enough bad shit going on

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All the US needs is a tariff on imported oil to keep the price of domestic oil stable in the $40 to $50 range. It’s ridiculous to allow Russia and Saudi to bankrupt American companies through monopolistic actions that would be illegal if done by any company.

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Wish it was that simple.

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I agree on the tariff’s.
I thought that the idea from a few years ago of a Border Adjustment Tax of 15% on everything was a great idea. We tax all our companies way more than that now (when you add in Corporate income taxes and the various wage taxes employers pay). No one can say it singles out any particular country or product. God knows the American treasury is going to need the money from some where.

Not all US refineries are set up to handle Texas Intermediate as feed stock…(Saudi Crude is more likely) Retooling may be a costly affair.
Import some, export some may be a better solution.

A form of swap credit would work. (I forget the technical name for it.)

If you want to import a barrel of a Saudi heavy you have to export a barrel of Texas light. (Or some approximate ratio.) Or someone can export a barrel and get a credit they can sell to someone who wants to import a barrel.

If someone imports a barrel without an offsetting credit they have to pay a tariff. If someone exports and can’t sell the credit they loose out which would encourage them to export less.

There’s ways to smooth things out without breaking the markets. The benefit is less boom/bust. The limitation is US companies would see their profit per barrel diminish as production goes past the domestic consumption point. This can be tweaked of course.

I think companies in the US have figured out that boom/bust is best as long as they can count on bailouts during the bust cycle.

I don’t think you quite have the entire picture. OPEC reduces production to keep prices at a sustainable production level, this means that OPEC countries make less money. In the mean time, the tap is still wide open in the states, we get to have our cake and eat it to as we benefit from the higher prices without taking the production hit. That’s been a major point of contention for OPEC countries for a while.

Russia is obviously wanting to swing it’s dick around right now, but at the end of the day, seems like it would be better for everyone involved if countries (ours included) could just play nice and see the overall picture.

Or not. Dino gas is killing the planet, and it’s hard to have an economy when global food crops and supply lines fail… It’s about time we transition away from that stuff anyway. I imagine large scale wind farms will keep a lot of mariners in business until the robots come along at the very least, but now I;m definitely getting off-topic.

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