Countries (like Nigeria, Angola) are underproducing, forsaking 100's of million of dollars per month. Because they have had the inability to invest new productive capacity. So there are very few members of OPEC that can actually meaningfully grow oil production. Many, including maybe Russia, are near their productive capacity.

We might see OPEC fair capacity exhaustion by the end of this year, which would be very bullish for the oil price, said Nuttall. But only energy producers and investors want higher prices. Therefore, even if Russia were to actually invade Ukraine, it is thought there wouldn't really be sanctions. Politically, democratic leaders maybe can't allow the oil price to go up much further. This might mean relaxing on Iran (the last suppressed producer which could easily come on line), also.

What allows oil producing companies to return the most free cash flow back to investors is long-life reserves, low corporate declines, and strong balance sheets. Canada has the best of all 3 of any jurisdiction in the world, but has among the lowest stock prices, according to Nuttall.

If there is $100 oil, they can privatize themselves, they can buy back every single share that is standing in just 2.6 years, while they are sitting on 15 years of inventory.

He said we're not 'high' in inventory, we're 'normal,' we're back to like the period 2010-2014 (in that 4-year time period, oil averaged over $100 and yet demand continued growing). We're not at the point where high price leads to demand discretion yet, he said, and won't until we see $130 or $140 oil, if like academic history it happens when oil hits 5-6% of global GDP. Nowadays, exhausting capacity plus end of US shale hypergrowth, the fundamental setup is more bullish than 2010-2014.

Because investors want returns (not growth of production), oil companies will continue to pay down debt, do dividends and increase dividends, moderate growth, moderate corporate decline (a company doesn't have to spend as much to keep their production up), rather than start new projects (multi-billion cost and then 4-6 years to come on line and then another 4 years to reach project payout). That means meaningfully higher oil prices.

He thinks demand will continue to grow for 10-15 years.

The perception of 'bad, dirty' oil has over the past years taken investors out, but now they're being 'dragged back in.'

#Energy #OPEC #Nigeria

For years there've been kidnappings of schools full of students in Nigeria. Sometimes they're held for years waiting for ransoms. Sometimes ransoms are paid, sometimes other strategies are used.

Katsina State's governor has told people there to pick up guns and protect themselves, that they are not currently doing enough. He said it was morally wrong for people to sit back and allow bandits to take control of their lives.

Katsina is the home state of the president of Nigeria. For many, if the pres can't secure that state he can't secure any part of the country, and last December bandits abducted around 300 students there. Those in charge have reportedly blamed the citizens, saying that because they're not fighting back, it's emboldening the criminals.

Other officials have said the same thing in the past. The defense minister recently said the defense of the people should be in the hands of the people. They feel that because the government has problems protecting people, it sends the wrong message to the bandits.

#Nigeria #Guns #Protection #SecondAmendment #Bandits

After Twitter deleted a tweet from Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists because it violated Twitter's TOS, that government swiftly banned Twitter and within hours the country's internet providers had shut out access.

The country's TV and radio stations were ordered to delete or deactivate their Twitter accounts by Nigeria's broadcast authority.

Trump made comments in favor of the move.

Many Nigerians continue to use Twitter using VPNs to bypass the censorship.

Nigeria has 201m people, (40m Twitter users) the largest population in Africa, which has 1.2b total.

Twitter is seen as unique among other social media platforms (which are not currently banned) because by Twitter's nature of being text-focused and short in word limit, it is used more for political speech. It is also quoted more in news articles.

The issue enrages some Nigerians because they want to be able to freely express themselves (and their discontent with the government). The government there is viewed by many as one of the biggest creators of propaganda or fake news.

Many Nigerians run businesses at least partially on Twitter, and they are upset because of the loss of investment. Nigerians also believe the government is using the pretext of Twitter's censorship of the president's tweet in order to tighten its control over all internet social media. The government has since announced that all social media platforms have to register within the country.

I tried to watch a debate by minor authorities in Nigeria but they seem to yell a lot.

#Nigeria #censorship