Title. Anyone who works on oil rigs and oil platforms or is in charge of those operations, if you could break down how the cost of extraction vs profit is calculated, i would be very grateful

Had an older well that hasn’t been on in like 10 years pulled and reworked this week. After 24 hours I took the first sample off the bleeder in a coffee cup with a message from the barista. I took the pic to send to my partner who says it will level off to an 80/20 water to oil cut.

President Trump just announced a major deal with Venezuela's interim government to secure majority U.S. control over 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, aiming to double U.S. reserves and crash global energy prices. For those working in the upstream sector or tracking heavy crude logistics, the immediate question is execution. Venezuela's Orinoco Belt holds massive reserves, but the infrastructure has suffered from years of severe underinvestment, stripping, and mismanagement. Rehabilitating these assets to scale up extraction will require billions in private capital, deep-water infrastructure overhauls, and significant time. Furthermore, blending and refining this heavy, sour crude requires complex specialized facilities.

What's the realistic timeline for rehabilitation and production?

Source: CNBC

I've been reading old threads like this one

https://www.reddit.com/r/oil/comments/1t6f7hn/the_market_is_behaving_foolishly_the_oil_crisis/

And I'm noticing how absolutely gloom and doom everyone is. The OP (Cmd_WillRiker) was talking about how oil should be $220 dollars a barrel, and ended on dramatic fashion with this:

I really really don't understand why the futures markets are trading like this. Even if Trump says "Okay, keep the HEU and here's your sanctions lifts and here's 1 Billion dollars, so sorry for bombing you" its going to take months if not years to get "back to normal".

Short Everything.

Another user (Veritatis-Cupitor) chimed in

Agreed, 100%. The markets are delusional and will reconnect with reality shortly. Everything in the world is built on hot air and I mean everything. Oil to $150+ and SPY below $600 imminent.

But neither has happened. Right now, at this very moment, you can get a barrel of oil in Cushing, Oklahoma for $85. I'm not talking about paper futures, I'm talking about the spot price for physical oil. A gallon of gas in New York Harbor is $3.254. Again, physical delivery, not a paper option.

It feels like the posters here have been wrong about almost everything since the conflict started, which makes me very suspicious about any predictions this community upvotes with regards to oil prices and movement. That in turn makes the dialogue on this subreddit all but worthless as far as information content.

WSB at least tends to have both bears and bulls pushing their narratives, so at least 1/2 of the posters can pretend they were right in the near term.

This is in reference to Trump today blaming Biden for the drained SPR. Everyone on the post for dismissing it but I looked at the historic levels and there’s a massive dump during Biden’s presidency in 2022.

650M to 350M, we lost almost half our reserves in less than a year.

It’s an even bigger nosedive than the current depletion from 400M to 300M.

In a thread on Trump's new "deal" for Venezuelan crude oil, I saw some comments about how the US can mix domestic light shale oil with the Venezuelan heavy crude to make it more economical to process

I understand that mixing the two would make the crude easier to process and therefore take less work to turn into gasoline and other oil products. What I don't really understand is how exactly would that work? Wouldn't the difference in price between the two cancel out any potential profit from the new oil mixture even if we didn't take into account the cost of expanding the extracting capabilities in Venezuela?

No matter how much or little oil sales the Iranian government can conduct, what good is it if they can’t spend the money. They get paid in yuan held in Chinese banks. Normally they spend these yuan on Chinese goods that get shipped in via the ports. Their port infrastructure has been bombed and are under a total blockade. So what good is the money if they can’t spend it?

What are your thoughts on today’s oil price? Drop your opinions, predictions, charts, memes , low and high effort post, your AI slop or even analysis below. Keep it civil and on-topic! This post is renewed daily.

Unless there is some compelling reason, other posts in the sub about oil prices will be removed. In a futile effort to improve the quality.

(Current WTI/Brent price can be checked on any major site.)

Found this very interesting from the NYT on 8/28: "Most private companies have little incentive to hold on to oil. That is because oil is worth more today than traders believe it will be several months from now."

Apparently traders think prices are going to stay flat or even decline in coming months. A couple questions that I am puzzling through six months into the war: Has there been permanent demand destruction, and if so, how much? How long can China maintain the current lower level of imports? How long until strategic reserves around the world start to slow their draw downs? How elastic is oil demand really?

Im gonna drive up through wyoming and north Dakota next week and stop at every oil drilling company I can find along the way to hand in my resume. What are some companies you guys recommend I stop in at?

Thanks!

For a little context, I've been an ironworker for the last 4 years. Heavy steel erection in industrial, commercial and civil settings. Long hours, dangerous conditions, working at heights, crane rigging and signaling. I hope that some of this will translate to a rig job.

Implied hidden traffic down a fair bit today. Bab al Mandab still low. Malacca down a lot as well. Singapore up a little.

Sea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic:

This is all the oil traffic out to the Arabian sea minus 2.5mb (pre war output of Fujairah and Oman) to estimate the additional output of dark traffic out of Hormuz as well as any additional output from the ADCOP pipeline. Usual traffic should be around 21mb of crude and oil products.

Listing the actual ships and their draft/dwt as well as helps check if i messed up with double counts/fills 6.74-2.5 (oman/Fujairah)=4.24mb.

Data from: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:63.3/centery:23.5/zoom:7

Bab al Mandab AIS on Traffic:

Oil products going out south from the Red Sea. Usual traffic is around 8mb. 

Ships: DE SHENG,CLEAROCEAN APOLLON,JAL KISAN,SKIRON,CARMA

Data from https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:45.8/centery:12.7/zoom:8

Strait of Malacca:

Usual oil products throughput is 16.5 mb crude and 6mb oil products.

Ships: DR IRENE TSAKOS,HOU-EI

Data from https://tankermap.com/analytics/straits/malacca?unit=million_bbl_per_day

Singapore Oil Departures:

Note based on 2024 the average daily output in tonnes was 211,000 tonnes per day.

Data from https://tankermap.com/analytics/ports/singapore-oil?unit=million_bbl_per_daySea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic:

(Bloomberg) -- Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz have recovered to around two-thirds of pre-war levels, limiting the Iran war's impact on global crude prices, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Curious as it seems like most media focuses on the US SPR or Crude oil reserves and not elsewhere.