Marina Schwarz

Can Saudis Stop Exporting Oil to U.S.?

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Oh, yes, just saw that a couple of hours ago. I think I actually clapped my hands. Not sorry.

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4 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Oil pipeline hater Trudeau looks to be toast shortly, so that should be good news for Canadian Oil Producers as well.

I suspect you and Marina Schwartz dramatically misunderstand internal Canadian politics.   

A couple of basics:  in Canada, as in the USA,  "all politics is local."   As for Jody Wilson-Reynauld, she is an uninspiring figure.  Nobody cares, either about her, or her being "pressured," or anything else.  That whole SNC-Lavalin thing is utterly uninteresting.  The voters really don't give a damn about it. 

SNC-Lavalin is a huge engineering firm, and is called upon to build gigantic projects, such as massive hydroelectic projects, subway systems, that sort of thing. It employs thousands of engineers, lots of them in Quebec. The managers have, for decades, engaged in bribes and kickbacks to certain politicians.  Is it corrupt?  Sure it is.  Does anybody in Quebec care?  Of course not.  Quebec has this long history of internal corruption, going back to the entrenched politics of the Union Nationale and Maurice Duplessis, a conservative politician who was as a practical matter the Dictator of Quebec. 

Quebec society has rapidly evolved in my lifetime, from a rural, conservative habitant culture to a modern industrialized State.  Sure, large chunks of the territory are occupied by farmers, including the very powerful dairy farmers, and most of Quebec is forest, with a huge forest-products industry, but numbers-wise, it is urban.  It is also a lot more secular.  The results are what you find in urban areas everywhere:  good colleges and universities, big industrial sectors, and higher-technology stuff, such as aircraft, railway car manufacture, refineries, auto plants  (albeit now going under), parts manufacturers, all run in the French language.  It is also much more secular, and as with urban areas everywhere, large-scale homosexual sectors, gay bars, lots of drinking, a fully-evolved prostitution scene complete with sophisticated marketing, the whole nine yards. 

Now place this against the sins of SNC-Lavalin.  They paid large bribes to some political figures in Libya in exchange for contracts to build big projects.  Libya is not exactly a part of the world where bribes are frowned upon.  Who cares about the politics of Libya?  Is Canadian taxpayer money being spent by SNC on those bribes?  Of course not.  It comes out of the inflated charges in that project.  Does anybody in Canada, aside from the opposition politicians, care about Libya?  No chance. 

Is Justin Trudeau "against pipelines"?  Of course not.  I doubt he cares one way or the other.  He does what all politicians do:  look to see which way the wind is blowing, and make solemn speeches that will flow with that wind.  He can talk all day long about "carbon" and "Carbon taxes," but at the end of the day it is Justin and his Liberals that goes and spends $4.5 Billion to buy the old Kinder Morgan pipeline from Alberta to Burnaby, BC and the right to twin it, to move Alberta and Saskatchewan oil to port.   He is not "anti-oil" any more than I am.  The difference is that I am not some politician that has to go look over my shoulder.

So-called "pressuring" of someone inside his own cabinet is not even interesting;  that goes on all day long.  Does anyone seriously think the Canadian Voter is going to be swayed by this infighting in Ottawa?  Ottawa itself is not held in high regard by the typical Canadian voter, who has to contend with staggeringly-high electricity bills and bankruptingly high housing costs. Nobody cares about SNC.  

OK, so the chattering classes go on and on about SNC and Jody.  And the pundits find it fascinating, and make the breathless punditry pronouncements.  But at the end of the day, Mr. Canadian is more interested in his shrinking purchasing power.  The local politicians have to snap to it, that is where the votes lie. 

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Saudi Aramco owns quite a bit of refinery capacity in the USA. In fact, the largest refinery in the USA is theirs. SA has tilted east, China and India, because that's where the customer growth is. But I'd be shocked to see them just buy other people's oil. 

 

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23 minutes ago, John Foote said:

Saudi Aramco owns quite a bit of refinery capacity in the USA. In fact, the largest refinery in the USA is theirs. SA has tilted east, China and India, because that's where the customer growth is. But I'd be shocked to see them just buy other people's oil. 

 

when it was motiva's refinery, I believe the refinery was retooled to handle more super light crude from US shale. I believe it is one of the few that doesn't rely on a lot of heavy or sour Venezuela or Mexican crude. 

That said, Motiva, now under Saudi ownership, accounted for 31% of us imports from Saudi Arabia of crude oil in  2018.

I would think that is also light crude. 

someone in oil country may have other additional information.

 

 

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17 minutes ago, Rodent said:

I would think that is also light crude. 

Aramco produces quite a few different grades. The stuff from Shayba is pretty light. Safania is pretty heavy. They can cover the bases.

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