While Donald Trump is using the oil deal as a feel good moment for him right now?
The New York Times takes hard look at the fine print and finds something that probably might not look anything like what Donald is trying to sell to the public as one of his ‘deals’….
And?
Should take time….
(Donald will be expected to bum rush things like his White House construction an d the Lincoln pool mishap)
Most of it AFTER Trump has left the Presidency….
Among the little the White House has shared publicly about the deal is that it gives the U.S. government a 35 percent stake in a Venezuelan oil production company, which is gaining contracts to operate 17 oil fields with estimated reserves of about 65 billion barrels. The U.S. will maintain rights to purchase the extracted oil.
Even if the opaque, controversial agreement announced Friday night triggers a surge of investment in oil production, industry insiders and analysts say substantial amounts of new crude would not flow out of Venezuela for years.
That much was evident in the shrug with which oil traders responded to the deal. Prices didn’t come down at all over the weekend. They went up. On Tuesday, prices rose again, and bond yields were surging, driven by renewed concerns over the Iran war.
In a sign that faster-acting steps might be needed to ease the price pressure, Trump was due to meet Tuesday with executives of oil refining companies.
Prices at the pump
When Trump announced what he branded “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY,” he said it would “substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans.” But will it?
Not for at least a couple of years, if ever, many in the industry say. Certainly not before voters, who are deeply frustrated by the price of gas, cast their ballots in the fall midterm elections. And probably not before Trump leaves office.
That’s because the tens of billions of barrels of reserves that the U.S. is seeking to gain access to through the novel deal are very difficult to get out of the ground….
…
The Trump administration is maintaining that the new arrangement will not cost U.S. taxpayers anything.
But getting the oil out of the ground and to the market could leave U.S. taxpayers exposed to quite a bit of risk, experts say.
This is one of the points of the deal about which federal officials have been especially cagey. They shared that the U.S. would be claiming its stake through an office of the Pentagon that has been working with private companies to “accelerate and scale private investment in critical supply chain technologies.”
But how that office would engage is unclear. The expectation in the industry is that it would step up with loan guarantees or some other major backing to major oil firms and other investors that have been sitting on the sidelines.
“I don’t know the answer to where the money is coming from,” Book said. “The role the Pentagon is or is not playing remains a mystery.”…
Note….
One CAN expect that the US Taxpayers WOULD be stuck with the bill for this we HAVE with mostly everything Trump has done as President….
Trump IS desperate to find SOMETHING that would drive gas/oil prices down vs the Iran War effect….
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