For the 9th straight week (and 35th of the last 37 weeks), the US oil rig count rose this week (surging by 14 to 631 - highest since September 2015).
The rig count continues to track the lagged WTI price
US Crude production has accelerated at a faster pace than the lagged rig count...
And that is pushing OPEC to the breaking point:
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The Dutch elections on Wednesday have provided a whole bunch of Orwellian narratives. PM Mark Rutte’s right wing VVD party, actually the ‘business’ -or should we say ‘rent-seekers’ in 2017- party, who lost some 20% of the seats they had obtained in the previous parliamentary election in November 2012, down from 41 to 33 seats, is declared the big winner. While Geert Wilders’ very right wing party, PVV, won 25% more seats -it went from 16 to 20- and is the big loser.
The U.S. policy of "strategic patience" with North Korea has ended, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in South Korea on Friday quoted by Reuters, adding that military action would be "on the table" if North Korea elevated the threat level. Tillerson said that 20 years of trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program had "failed" and that he was visiting Asia “to exchange views on a new approach.”
A quiet start to today's quad-witching St. Patrick's day, with European stocks mixed, Asian shares and U.S. index futures (-0.1%) little changed ahead of industrial production data with just Tiffany's set to report earnings.
Authored by Michael Jabara Carley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,