United States

On the day Barack Obama is kowtowing to his Saudi allies, and just days after a senior Obama administration finally made the admission that has been a "conspiracy theory" for years namely that "a lot of the money, the seed money if you will, for what became Al Qaeda, came out of Saudi Arabia," the FT is out with another stunning revelation.

The FT has written an article that supposedly focuses on the US sources of growing diplomatic antipathy between the US and Saudi Arabia. The source of disagreement: the treatment of Iran.

While Congress is scrambling to sweep the recently introduced Bipartisan bill that would allow US families to sue Saudi Arabia for Sept 11, Barack Obama has just landed in Saudi Arabia to reassure his close ally that all is under control.

President Obama with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, center, and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in May 2015

As the WSJ reports, Obama arrived today in the Saudi kingdom for a brief trip "meant to provide reassurances to Gulf allies and to bolster his own foreign-policy legacy."

The biggest catalyst for overnight markets, first reported on this site, was the announcement by Kuwait that its oil workers had ended their strike which disrupted oil production in the 4th largest OPEC producer for 3 days cutting it by as much as 1.7 mmb/d, and had served to offset the negative news from the Doha debacle. Kuwait Petroleum also added that it would boost output to 3m b/d within 3 days, which in turn has pressured the price of oil overnight, and the May WTI contract was back to just over $40 at last check, sliding 2%.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

When Ronald Reagan turned his back on the neoconservatives, fired them, and had some of them prosecuted, his administration was free of their evil influence, and President Reagan negotiated the end of the Cold War with Soviet President Gorbachev. The military/security complex, the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of peace between the two nuclear superpowers.

Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

Oil production can be confusing because there are various “pieces” that may or may not be included. In this analysis, I look at oil production of the United States broadly (including crude oil, natural gas plant liquids, and biofuels), because this is the way oil consumption is defined. I also provide some thoughts regarding the direction of future world oil prices.