oil

The Mueller indictment made public on Friday charges 13 Russian nationals with trolling the American electoral process to ‘sow discord’ by falsely representing themselves as American dissident personas. Once the field of presidential aspirants had been narrowed in 2016, their goal became to support Donald Trump’s candidacy while disparaging Hillary Clinton. There is no charge that the outcome of the 2016 election was changed by these actions.

(ANTIMEDIA) — Russia will have exclusive rights to produce oil and gas in Syria in accordance with an energy cooperation framework agreement signed in January, Oil Price reports. From Oil Price: “Before the onset of the blood-drenched Civil War, Syrian oil production wavered around 380,000 barrels per day. It has declined for some time then, since its all-time peak production […]

To the victor belongs the spoils.
Forget about the tiresome mainstream media fiction that it was the United States that defeated ISIS.
Russia played an infinitely more prominent and decisive role in crushing the caliphate, which at the time was being funded and trained by the Obama White House for the sole purpose of removing Assad, and stealing Syria’s energy potential.
The keys to Syria’s oil and gas rights now appear to be going to Russia…the country that was invited, under international law, by the internationally recognized government of Syria, to fight ISIS.

GOLAN HEIGHTS – Soon after Saturday’s dangerous escalation involving Syria’s downing of an Israeli fighter jet in its airspace seemed to fizzle out, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israel was approaching the de-escalation period as a time to prepare for large-scale war with its northern neighbor by boosting its air defenses.

In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, four former U.S. diplomats provided remarkably candid commentary on recent U.S. involvement in the Middle East, revealing a number of the most closely guarded secrets of U.S. diplomacy.

Tehran, 2017. A crowd marks the 38th anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution, which overthrew the dynasty of the US-supported Shah. (Photo: Mohammad Hassanzadeh. Source: Wikicommons)
To properly understand what’s going on today with Iran, it is essential to understand the historical context in which current events are taking place.

Tehran, 1953. A resident washes “Yankee Go Home” graffiti from a wall after the CIA-orchestrated coup which restored the Shah to power (Photo: Pahlavi Dynasty. Source: Wikicommons)

The Petrodollar is gaining strength. So is the Petroruble, to coin a phrase.
Yes, that was a pun.
The truth is that over the last twelve months, oil prices have been gradually and steadily on the increase.  At the beginning of 2017, the price for a barrel of crude was about $56.  It sunk gradually until June of last year, bottoming out in the mid $40’s, and has been on the rise again ever since.

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih told reporters in early December that OPEC will monitor oil output and production to ensure that the agreement to curb output is met by all until the end of 2018 [Xinhua]
If you haven’t heard by now, 2017 ends with oil prices well breaching the $60 a barrel mark leaving producers much more confident as they head into 2018.
This is a boon on two fronts for the world’s biggest oil producers Russia and Saudi Arabia.

WASHINGTON (Analysis) — The United States has had Iran in its crosshairs for decades and current media coverage indicates that US-Iranian relations are only getting worse. In 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh, and replaced him with a brutal U.S.- and U.K.-backed dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. As is typically the case with covert CIA operations, the U.S.