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While President Donald Trump starts his new year opening Venezuela to U.S. oil companies and pining over Greenland\u2019s potential oil and critical mineral reserves, American shale producers are increasingly miffed over the commander-in-chief\u2019s focus on international energy as opposed to their declining domestic profits.<\/p>\n
Although the U.S. is, in fact, churning out barrels of oil near all-time highs, Trump\u2019s \u201cDrill, baby, drill\u201d ethos is ringing hollow amid weaker oil prices and waning drilling activity. The president\u2019s fixation on lower prices at the pump is working in his favor\u2014largely because of higher OPEC output, as he desired. But cheap fuel comes at the detriment of the U.S. oil producers struggling to turn a profit for their crude.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everyone feels a bit slighted here,\u201d the CEO of one big U.S. oil producer told Fortune<\/em>, requesting confidentiality to avoid any potential reprisal from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n The U.S. benchmark for crude oil is sitting just under $60 per barrel, the threshold below which American oil producers struggle to profit and justify new activity. And the amount of active oil drilling rigs has plunged about 15% in a year as of Jan. 16. Despite all that, previous drilling activity and oilfield efficiency gains have pushed domestic oil production near world-leading, all-time highs of 13.8 million barrels a day\u2014a stubbornly high level that\u2019s contributing to lower oil prices. U.S. producers are at least pleased that Trump has expedited greenlighting energy projects and rolled back environmental protections.<\/p>\n At the same time, Trump is urging U.S. companies to move into Venezuela and spend more than $100 billion to rebuild its dilapidated infrastructure and pump more heavy Venezuelan crude oil.<\/p>\n \u201cVenezuela is going to make more money in the next six months than they\u2019ve made in the last 20 years. Every major oil company is coming in with us,\u201d Trump said Jan. 21 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.<\/p>\n In the U.S., Trump said, \u201cWe\u2019ll soon be averaging less than $2 a gallon.\u201d The U.S. average for a gallon of regular unleaded fuel is $2.76 per gallon this week, down 32 cents in a year.<\/p>\n White House spokesman Taylor Rogers said that \u201cthanks to President Trump\u2019s energy dominance agenda, oil and gas production is at an all-time high. President Trump\u2019s historic energy deal with Venezuela has unlocked a new, unprecedented opportunity for oil companies to invest in the world\u2019s largest oil reserve.\u201d<\/p>\n Marshall Adkins, head of energy for Raymond James, said U.S. shale producers are frustrated by low oil prices and Trump\u2019s eagerness to \u201cpress every button\u201d with OPEC and countries around the world, including in Venezuela, to produce more oil.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump has been unequivocal. He wants lower prices,\u201d Adkins said, \u201cand that\u2019s bad for U.S. producers.\u201d<\/p>\n The CEO of a smaller U.S. oil producer in Midland, Texas, said Trump\u2019s oil rhetoric is frustrating and his emphasis on crude oil as a primary reason for forcibly removing Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro was \u201cdisgraceful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c[Trump\u2019s] messaging is annoying, but it\u2019s just noise,\u201d the CEO said, asking for confidentiality, arguing that increasing Venezuelan oil production enough to notably impact pricing would take years. Oil pricing is already at harmful levels, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s miserable,\u201d he said of West Texas\u2019 Permian Basin. \u201cThe fundamentals are negative to keep drilling for oil.\u201d<\/p>\n While there may be some smaller, fast-moving companies going into Venezuela, Adkins said, Trump really needs the Big Oil giants to invest many billions of dollars there to move the needle. And Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods \u201chit the nail on the head\u201d when he recently told Trump that Venezuela is currently \u201cuninvestable.\u201d<\/p>\n So, who will go into Venezuela? <\/p>\n Chevron, for one, because the oil giant is the only U.S. company currently pumping out oil there thanks to its special license. Chevron Vice Chairman Mark Nelson told Trump it could hike its oil flows by 50% in less than two years. But that would equate to raising the country\u2019s overall volumes from almost 1 million barrels of oil daily to more than 1.1 million barrels for a country\u2014with the world\u2019s largest proven oil reserves\u2014that peaked decades ago with an output of nearly 4 million barrels.<\/p>\n And oilfield services drillers also are eager to go back\u2014partly because they\u2019re contractors and not the ones investing many billions of dollars.<\/p>\n Halliburton CEO Jeff Miller said on his Jan. 21 earnings call that he can \u201cscale up very quickly\u201d there as needed.<\/p>\n \u201cMy phone is ringing off the hook in terms of interest in Venezuela,\u201d Miller said, calling it a \u201csmall market\u201d compared to the industry just a decade ago.<\/p>\n Duane Germenis, president of the Intelligent Water Solutions oilfield services firm, used to work in Venezuela periodically before oil assets were expropriated by the government almost two decades ago, but he won\u2019t go back. He said he\u2019s happy to sell equipment to U.S. oil companies going there, but not to operate there.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of oil to find, but how safe are you going to be?\u201d Germenis told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cThe country already owes many vendors lots of money that they\u2019ll never see.\u201d<\/p>\n The leaders of some privately held U.S. oil producers, such as Hilcorp and Armstrong Oil & Gas, told Trump they\u2019re eager to invest in Venezuela, but those companies did not respond to repeated requests for comment by Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n Instead of U.S. producers, major European players may prove to be key investors in Venezuela. Shell CEO Wael Sawan said at a White House meeting that the Big Oil giant has a \u201cfew billion dollars worth of opportunities to invest.\u201d<\/p>\n Likewise, Spain\u2019s Repsol and Italy\u2019s Eni already operate in Venezuela under a joint venture to produce natural gas for much of the country\u2019s domestic electricity. And they said they\u2019d love to produce more crude oil as well with U.S. permission.<\/p>\n Repsol CEO Josu Jon Imaz said the company could triple its relatively small output of 45,000 barrels of oil daily in three years.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are also ready to join with American companies in our assets to develop and go faster with good investors and good know-how from the U.S. companies,\u201d Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi told Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #U.S #oil #producers #slighted #Trumps #international #focus #crude #Venezuela #Greenland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While President Donald Trump s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3510,7192,7371,486,1655,5542,566,364,10115,10116,496,764,3512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\nCrude Venezuelan dreams<\/h2>\n