Miscellaneous Notes On Crude Oil -- Mid-Week -- Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Updates

April 14, 2022: how did US intel reach the soldier in the field? SpaceX sent Starlink satellite internet terminals to Ukraine. Link here. 

Original Post

Russia:

• major crude trading houses are set to slash their purchases of Russia crude oil and crude products starting mid-May
• the operative word is "slash"
• link to Julianne Geiger; source: anonymous Reuters sources.
• this will be a one-two punch
• the first punch will be direct: a decreased purchase of Ruritanian oil (for multiple reasons)
• the second punch will be indirect: lack of western technology will constrain Ruritanian oil production
• a third punch, of course, is the ability to move money between Ruritania and western banks
• if Ms Geiger posted this story at 4:30 p.m. CDT, it was obviously by traders much earlier in the day; as that news trickled out, that explains the sudden jump in the price of Brent and WTI today, Wednesday, April 13, 2022;
• one can assume the White House was monitoring the situation

Ruritania:

• asymmetric warfare;
• without question, the most important aspect of asymmetric warfare is intelligence;
• link here;
• US is moving to significantly expand the intelligence it provides to Ukraine

Comical:

• this was reported the other day: excluding Ruritania, oil output from the rest of the rest of the world (not US) is set to rise by 3.9 million bpd from March, 2022, to December, 2022.
• OPEC+ up by 1.9 million bopd
• non-OPEC+ up by 2.0 million bopd
• US: up by 1.27 million bopd
• source: IEA
• when I first saw that, I had three thoughts:
• surely, they're joking;
• what was I missing? and,
• inshallah.
• Well, it turns out I wasn't the only one who thought this was a joke
• Abhi Rajendran: "this is comical and not going to happen."
• I suppose anything's possible but the tea leaves suggest otherwise.
• Inshallah.