Logo

American Security Council Foundation

Back to main site

Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Trump Says OPEC+ Planning To Cut Production 20 Million Barrels a Day

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Economic Security Energy Independence

Comments: 0

Top global oil producers are considering slashing output by 20 million barrels a day under the terms of a deal to boost prices, US President Donald Trump said on Monday.

Trump’s tweet came after OPEC producers and their allies agreed on Sunday to cut production by 9.7 million barrels per day. which some analysts feared would not be enough to stem the damage from the combination of plunging demand amid the coronavirus pandemic and a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“Having been involved in the negotiations, to put it mildly, the number that OPEC+ is looking to cut is 20 Million Barrels a day, not the 10 Million that is generally being reported,” Trump tweeted.

“Thank you to all of those who worked with me on getting this very big business back on track, in particular Russia and Saudi Arabia.”

The US benchmark WTI oil price climbed 1.4 percent in New York after Trump’s tweet to $23.10, while Brent rose 0.9 percent to $31.76.

OPEC members dominated by Saudi Arabia and other producers led by Russia have been negotiating a deal to cut production and support prices for days.

Mexico balked at an agreement on Friday, leading Trump to step in and say the US would help Mexico meet its end of the bargain.

After a Sunday videoconference, the top producers agreed to slash daily production by 9.7 million barrels from May, according to Mexican Energy Minister Rocio Nahle, down from the 10 million barrels a day envisioned earlier.

OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo called the cuts “historic”.

“They are largest in volume and the longest in duration, as they are planned to last for two years,” he said.

The agreement between the Vienna-based Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers foresees deep output cuts in May and June followed by a gradual rise in production until April 2022.

Not enough?

Trump cheered the agreement Sunday, calling it a “great deal for all” and saying it would “save hundreds of thousands of energy jobs in the United States.”

With countries putting their populations under lockdown, the coronavirus pandemic has caused an economic decline, with a global demand slump that has sent oil prices to two-decade lows.

Meanwhile, Russia and Saudi Arabia ramped up output in a price war to hold on to market share and undercut US shale producers.

Calling Trump’s tweet “aspirational,” analyst Andy Lipow said the market reaction to the OPEC+ deal has been “muted,” as uncertainty remains over the degree to which producers will comply with the cuts.

“Lots of questions… remain, as far as compliance and ultimately how much oil is actually taken off the market,” he said. “Any increase in prices over the next few months is going to encourage producers to keep on producing.”

Storage tanks have also rapidly filled up, and Lipow said markets are watching the US, China and India to see whether they will make more purchases for their national reserves to free up capacity.

Trump announced last month the US would buy “large quantities of crude oil” for storage in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Producers have resigned themselves to tough times, with Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak saying he did not expect oil markets to recover before “end of the year, in the best case,” according to Russian news agency TASS.

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman suggested on Monday further cuts could come when OPEC meets in June.

“Flexibility and pragmatism will enable us to continue do more if we have to,” he told Bloomberg. “We have to watch what’s happening with demand destruction or demand improvement, depending on how things evolve.”

Photo: Hussein Malla/AP Photo

Link: https://www.breitbart.com/news/trump-says-opec-planning-to-cut-production-20-mn-bpd-2/

Comments RSS feed for comments on this page

There are no comments yet. Be the first to add a comment by using the form below.