Venezuela is moving ahead with plans to “overcome the financial blockade” by launching an oil-backed cryptocurrency known as Petro, and is now recruiting miners nationwide.
The Unique Registry of Digital Mining that Venezuela has created will be open until January 21, according to local newspaper El Impulso. Registration to the registry is a requirement for natural and legal persons to have access to Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency.
A reluctant Russia is expected to agree with OPEC and other producers to continue to curb global oil production, but the deal may have more caveats than initially expected by the market.
The somewhat rocky road to reaching an agreement by Thursday’s OPEC meeting has also exposed some cracks in the new world order of oil – where Saudi Arabia and Russia use their combined heft to influence prices and global supply. The cause of those "cracks" in the new ‘R-OPEC’ appears to be U.S. shale oil.
While the stock market seems to be hiccupping and frightening the bulls, the turmoil in Saudi Arabia has attracted the notice of the financial world because the agreement between Saudi Arabia and the US regarding the use of the dollar as the preferred currency for oil transactions may be coming to an end or at least about to be changed significantly. The rapprochement with China and Russia has received widespread publicity, and MBS, the Crown Prince, is bent on bringing change and progress to the Kingdom. Allowing women to drive provided that they are accompanied by a family member is revolutionary for the Middle East country. One can therefore assume that MBS is serious about his undertaking to bring the future closer and establish a new modern city in the desert.
Russia is ready to discuss an extension of a global deal between OPEC and other countries to cut oil output in Vienna on November 30, TASS news agency quoted the Energy Minister Alexander Novak as saying on Friday. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and several other major producers cut their combined output by about 1.8 million barrels per day since January to reduce bloated inventories and boost oil prices.
A couple of months ago I had analyzed the bullish pattern that was developing on Crude Oil, when the WTI had exceeded the 200 days moving average and was about to test the crucial resistance of the trendline that joins the 2014 top with the decreasing highs of the first half of this year.
The use of oil in the road transportation sector will increase even as the sale of electric vehicles is expected to rise, according to the annual long-term outlook from OPEC. If a quarter of the world’s cars have batteries, global oil demand would reach a plateau of about 109 million barrels a day during the second half of the 2030s, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its annual World Oil Outlook.
Following their retracement down during the Spring, China and Industrial metals have been moving up since May. Oil has followed with a lag, and from late June, it has been rallying strongly. Again, following China and Industrial Metals by a few weeks, oil topped out late September. We believe that this is an intermediate top and that from November, at the latest, it should resume up towards year-end.
The last Newsletter ended with a suggestion that US marines might soon be setting foot in Venezuela. The fact is that America has been spending a lot of money financing the opposition in this oil-rich country and has been fomenting regime change as a matter of course. The reason for this policy is not only hate for Hugo Chavez and his successor Maduro but rather the huge oil reserves that Venezuela has, which are the largest in the entire world.
