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Comment by readitalready | Hacker News Reader

It's why WTI crude never exceeds $100/barrel. Every time it gets that high the insider in the administration shorts it and the administration announces a new policy delaying more strikes.

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Much above $80 and shale oil becomes highly profitable. So swing producers like the US act as a soft ceiling.

That’s how it worked 10 years ago, that’s not really how it works now. The wildcat shale drillers of a decade ago all went bankrupt when prices fell, and lost a bunch of money for their investors. They’ve since all been bought up by larger firms with way more capital discipline, who don’t ramp up drilling just because prices have a little spike, especially when we all know that TACO. Do not expect shale drilling to soften the blow of oil price increases this time.

> TACO

TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out

You don't even need to trade oil, trading gulf country assets also works well. And rebuilding the gulf should be quite profitable if Iran blows it up and the assets will be available cheap.

> And rebuilding the gulf should be quite profitable

Wait. I've heard this story before. Let's ask any of the recently "liberated" countries how that worked out for them...

Germany?

Sure. If you go back 80 years and past several pointless wars you can find one example. Wherein the USA fought with a world wide coalition to defeat the Nazi's only after war had been declared by the Nazi's against the USA.

Germany is occupied by the USA, it isn't liberated at all.

Go tell the Germans that.

I don't need to. I lived there between 2017 and 2019, they told me.

Actually, you can just look in Iraq, and CNOOC, PetroChina, and Zhongman. Companies will benefit, just not American ones.

And the US will clearly have failed to protect allies and project force in the Gulf. If the bulk of OPEC moves to a basket currency trade to ally more with PRC, India, and Russia that will be an astonishing failure.

I wouldn't have thought even Trump and this Republican administration was incompetent enough to break the petrodollar, but here we are, just one year in.

Also, don't look at fracking production curves. Bakken and Eagle Ford are foreshadowing the Permian.

I can see this war being mismanaged enough that gulf countries go to sell in yuans straight. After all, aligning with china will prevent further attacks from iran and almost all the stuff being made in the world already sells in yuans.

Iran can't blow the gulf up in any meaningful sense, even if the war continues for a long time.

It can blow up a few high ROI targets, but that ROI isn't from the cost of rebuilding - it's from the opportunity cost of not having them.

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