BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Syrian insurgents took over most of Aleppo on Saturday, establishing positions in the country’s largest city and controlling its airport before expanding their shock offensive to a nearby province. They faced little to no resistance from government troops, according to fighters and activists. A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized control of Aleppo International airport, the first international airport to be controlled by insurgents. The fighters claimed they seized the airport and posted pictures from there. Thousands of fighters also moved on, facing almost no opposition from government forces, to seize towns and villages in northern Hama, a province where they had a presence before being expelled by government troops in 2016. They claimed Saturday evening to have entered the city of Hama. The swift and surprise offensive is a huge embarrassment for Syria’s President Bashar Assad and raises questions about his armed forces’ preparedness. The insurgent offensive launched from their stronghold in the country’s northwest appeared to have been planned for years. It also comes at a time when Assad’s allies were preoccupied with their own conflicts. The insurgents, led by the Salafi jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and including Turkey-backed fighters, launched their shock offensive on Wednesday. They first staged a two-pronged attack in Aleppo and the Idlib countryside, entering Aleppo two days later and securing a strategic town that lies on the highway that links Syria’s largest city to the capital and the coast. By Saturday evening, they seized at least four towns in the central Hama province and claimed to have entered the provincial capital. The insurgents staged an attempt to reclaim areas they controlled in Hama in 2017 but failed. The lightning offensive threatened to reignite the country’s civil war, which had been largely in a stalemate for years. On a state TV morning show Saturday, commentators said army reinforcements and Russia’s assistance would repel the “terrorist groups,” blaming Turkey for supporting the insurgents’ push into Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Russia’s state news agency Tass quoted Oleg Ignasyuk, a Russian Defense Ministry official coordinating in Syria, as saying that Russian warplanes targeted and killed 200 militants who had launched the offensive in the northwest on Friday. It provided no further details. NN: The savages losing the ability to attack Israel…. Now turn back to slaughtering each other,
Oil Was Written Off. Now It’s the Most Productive US Industry
Industry Innovations Pump Up Profits
America’s oil industry has gone from being an outsider in the world’s crude market to stealing market share from OPEC, turning the US into a net exporter of petroleum and becoming an engine of the economy. Investors were fleeing the sector just a few years ago, betting on the green transition as a global oil glut weighed on producers. But the iterative process of drilling thousands of wells each year—and learning from each one—has been a major reason for US productivity gains after years of tepid growth. US oil production will grow by 600,000 barrels a day in 2025, about 50% more than this year’s growth, due to higher well productivity, according to BloombergNEF. Lower crude prices—which energy companies can still profit from, thanks to higher efficiencies—feed through to other industries. “Efficiency gains help keep the US competitive as the resource base degrades over time,” says Raoul LeBlanc, vice president for North American unconventionals at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “But in the end, geology always wins.” Even though the shale revolution is now 15 years old, its success has yet to be replicated outside the US, where geology, property rights and available capital combine to make it possible. Higher levels of productivity across all sectors could add $10 trillion to US gross domestic product from 2023 to 2030, according to a McKinsey Global Institute analysis. Productivity in the oil and gas extraction sector almost tripled in the 10 years ending in 2022, compared with a near-doubling in some tech-driven industries. America’s oil resurgence over the past decade was a different kind of technological breakthrough, the combination of drilling horizontally through layers of shale and then fracturing, or fracking, the rock with blasts of water, sand and chemicals to extract hydrocarbons. But shale drilling was initially thought to cost more and be geologically more limited over the long term than drilling the free-flowing reservoirs of the Middle East. Output from US basins like the Permian of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico was expected to run out of steam as producers exhausted well locations and faced rising costs. “We’re getting more efficient in everything we’re doing” in the Permian, says Chevron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth. “We’re getting more for every dollar we spend, applying new technologies.” Chevron has doubled production in the Permian to nearly 1 million barrels a day just in the past five years, without making any significant acquisitions. Operators continue to improve the fracking process. That includes drilling longer wells and releasing the water at half the rate, reducing friction that can slow the process and waste horsepower. Explorers are now drilling 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) wells horizontally through layers of shale, up from 3 miles only a year or two ago. Industry consolidation is aiding the trend. Producers, by buying companies with neighboring acreage, are gaining access to larger swaths of land into which they can drill lengthier wells.
Oil price per barrel
As crude prices slid in July through September, in part because of faltering demand in China, it was OPEC that was forced to give way, not US shale. The cartel delayed plans to restore long-curtailed production as American drillers carried on increasing output.
Monster Shale Wells
US oil production per shale well in the Lower 48 states, in barrels
“The one thing that’s been remarkable is the persistent productivity gain that we’ve seen, particularly in the oil and gas space,” says Ken Medlock, senior director of Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. “If you go back to 2012, there were books written about how shale is going to be a flash in the pan, it’s going to go away, and here we are 11 to 12 years later, and it hasn’t gone away—it still keeps growing.” NN: Add to the astonishing production gains Trumps drill baby drill and $35 WTI here we come. And its a proven fact we know how to cash in BIG TIME!
Libya Sets New Oil Production Record
Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) said it has hit a new production high, pumping 1,386,030 barrels of crude oil and condensate daily, along with 203,017 barrels of gas equivalent (boe). That brings Libya’s total production to 1,589,047 barrels per day—a major milestone for the oil-rich nation. The announcement comes as global oil prices remain relatively steady, with Brent crude trading at $73.04 per barrel. The US benchmark WTI is trading at $68.58. Last month, Libya’s National Oil Company said its crude oil production had recovered to 1.3 million barrels per day following the resolution of the political dispute over the appointment of a new governor to the Libyan central bank. This came only after crude production at most Libyan oilfields had been suspended for over a month starting in late August. NN: Everyone in the oil business is hunting money. Look out below.
US general arrives in Beirut to oversee Israel-Hezbollah truce
Major General Jasper Jeffers, a top American military officer, arrived in Beirut to help oversee a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, according to the US Central Command (CENTCOM). Jeffers, from Special Operations Command Central, will co-chair a monitoring group alongside US envoy Amos Hochstein. The group includes representatives from the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Israeli military, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and France, CENTCOM said. Hochstein will hold the civilian co-chair position temporarily until a permanent appointment is made. The truce began this week, aiming to ease tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border. NN: This peace deal will stick. Because of Trump who the whole world fears. Biden is a joke who the savages’ walked over
Hezbollah chief declares victory against Israel
Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem on Friday proclaimed victory in the conflict against Israel, in his first address after the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon came into force on Wednesday. Qassem stated that Hezbollah’s victory surpassed the one from 2006 when Israel also withdrew its forces from Lebanon after 34 days of conflict. He also stressed that Israel failed to achieve any of its goals and the conflict resulted in hundreds of thousands of Israelis being displaced from their homes. At the same time, he reiterated the militant group’s commitment to supporting Palestine, adding that it would “take various forms.” Hezbollah is prepared to respond in case Israel decides to resume the conflict, Qassem said. NN: Below is one of many examples of what the Islamic savages call victory:
Sweden formally asks China to cooperate with investigation into damaged undersea cables
This is not the first time in recent years that infrastructure under the Baltic Sea has been damaged.
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which connected Russia to Germany and transported natural gas, were blown up in an explosion in September 2022. Then, the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged in October 2023. A Chinese cargo ship named NewNew Polar Bear was found responsible. China probing for weakness.
US Oil Production Could Surge by 3 Million BPD
In a Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB) report sent to on Thursday, Ole R. Hvalbye, a commodities analyst at the company, said “speculation surrounding a potential surge in U.S. oil production – up three million barrels per day – has gained attention”.
Hvalbye warned in the report that such a ramp-up could drive crude prices below $50 per barrel but added that it “is considered unrealistic”. NN: Not only is it REALISTIC IT WILL HAPPEN
“U.S. producers understand the strategic risks involved, particularly with OPEC+ holding an estimated five to six million barrels of spare capacity,” the analyst said in the report. “A significant production increase by the U.S. would likely provoke a strong response from OPEC+, potentially flooding the market to protect market share,” he added. “Such a scenario would lead to sharp price declines, ultimately punishing U.S. production rather than fostering growth. This dynamic makes the proposed ramp-up highly unlikely,” he went on to state.
In a separate report sent to on Tuesday by Standard Chartered Bank Commodities Research Head Paul Horsnell, analysts at the bank, including Horsnell, highlighted that, on June 6, Scott Bessent, who was recently nominated Treasury Secretary by the Trump team, spoke at a conference at the Manhattan Institute. The analysts outlined that, following his nomination, Bessent’s session “was scrutinized as a potential guide to policy”. “During that talk, Bessent was asked which version of the late Shinzo Abe’s three arrows economic plan he would recommend to an incoming President Trump,” the analysts noted in the report. “Bessent (an admirer of Abe) put forward the
three targets of three percent economic growth, cutting the budget deficit by three percent of GDP by the end of the administration, and ‘three million more oil barrels equivalent a day from U.S. energy production’,” they added.
“Much of the commentary on Bessent’s nomination seized on the third arrow as implying a target to lift U.S. crude oil production by three million barrels per day, raising it 30 percent to about 16.5 million barrels per day by 2028. We think this interpretation is incorrect, with the key words in Bessent’s description of the arrow being ‘equivalent’ and ‘energy’,” they continued. The analysts went on to state in the report that the addition of three million per barrels of oil equivalent to U.S. energy production is a significantly less ambitious target, “even if we interpret energy production in this context as solely oil and gas”. “U.S. oil and gas output is currently about 40.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day,” the analysts highlighted in the report. “It has grown by an average of about 123,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day per month since 2015; at that rate, three million barrels of oil equivalent per day would be added in less than 25 months,” they said. “Forty-one percent of the post-2015 increase has come from natural gas, 28 percent from natural gas liquids (NGLs), just 28 percent from crude oil, and three percent from other oil liquids (mainly corn ethanol),” they added. NN: I can in time make a case for $35 WTI Half where it is today.
Syrian rebels launch major offensive against Assad, hundreds killed…… Russia launches ‘intense’ airstrikes on Syrian rebels
Syrian rebels launched a massive offensive against the Syrian regime in Aleppo province
Houthis say US, UK conducted strikes in Hodeida region
The Houthi movement claimed on Thursday that the United States and the United Kingdom launched airstrikes targeting the Bajil district in Hodeida province in western Yemen, as reported by Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA). There was no further information about the attack or potential casualties and material damage. The last confirmed strikes by the US and UK on Yemen occurred on November 10 and involved what the Pentagon said were precision strikes against Houthi weapons facilities.
Wall Street Macro Traders Head for Worst Year Since the Pandemic
The world’s banks are on track to report the lowest revenue from foreign-exchange and rates trading since the pandemic, hit by tighter margins and a challenging macroeconomic backdrop.
Over 250 firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley are forecast to make a total of $32 billion from trading of Group-of-10 rates and $16.7 billion from currencies, according to data collected by Coalition Greenwich. That’s about 17% and 9% less than last year, respectively.
Investor confidence in making big macro calls dwindled this year as economic data surprises whiplashed bets on interest-rate cuts from the world’s major central banks. A seemingly too-close-to-call US presidential election and the unwind of once-popular yen-funded carry trades also rattled markets. “2024 has been a year of sitting and waiting on the sidelines,” said Angad Chhatwal, head of global macro markets at Coalition Greenwich. “Hedge funds have come into the market sporadically around data points and events but they’ve not been as active on a continuous basis compared to previous years.”
G-10 Rates, FX Desks Set for Worst Year Since 2021
Revenue projected to slump 17% and 9% year-on-year respectively
Macro trading revenues have also been hit by tighter margins this year, Chhatwal said, as increasing industry competition and advancements in electronic trading weigh on prices. Coalition Greenwich forecasts rates trading revenues will drop further to around $30.9 billion in 2025 and $28.1 billion in 2026 as non-bank market makers expand their presence and as bonds catch up on the electronification of other markets. Meanwhile, the performance of currency traders is seen improving to $17.2 billion in revenues in 2025 and $17.6 billion in 2026. Donald Trump’s administration is expected to fuel volatility in the $7.5 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market. “We see a lot more positioning happening on the FX side around the rate change cycle,” said Chhatwal. “Corporate activity is also becoming more robust and that has much more of a positive impact for FX versus rates.