Saudi Arabia Dropping Rigs -- March 8, 2022

Jen Psaki: US shale, you have 9,000 locations to drill. But that's it. That's all we're giving you. No more permits. No more pipelines. No more regulatory relief. You have 9,000 locations, be happy. With 650 rigs, that's 14 locations per rig to drill. If you drill one well with one rig every two weeks, that's 28 weeks, six months. And then you're done. Quit whining. You're done in August. Go on vacation. Have a marguerita. That's what I'm going to do.

Link here.

Twitter feed: everyone is now chiming in, including Saudi Aramco. Panic! Without Russian oil there is less than 2% spare capacity. I'm surprised there's any spare capacity without Russian oil. I doubted there was any spare capacity even before the Biden ban on oil.

But getting back to that graphic above. We've been through this before. Some years ago when oil was surging, Saudi Arabia again said it wasn't going to open the taps to give away there wealth. LOL. If they had the capacity, the reserves, the ability, they would sell all they could at these prices and then invest the profits in US blue chip companies with great dividends and guarantee a revenue stream for generations to come. 

But, some will say, they were able to flood the market a few year ago (2014 - 2016) when they tried to "break" US shale. If you go back and look at data for that period, you will find that flood of oil came out of storage; it was not new drilling. Their inventories right now are at relative historic lows. 

No, Saudi Arabia is not laying down rigs to preserve their oil wealth for future generations. They don't even think like that. Their thinking is tied up in one word: inshallah.