Even with the Supreme Court temporarily extending a Trump-era policy that bars asylum applicants from entering the U.S. to protect the American population from Covid-19, the Federal Government has offered no viable solutions and little to no help to southern border states to stop a growing wave of illegal immigrants.  White House officials continue to deny that there is a legitimate problem while also claiming they have been “doing the work since day one” to secure the border.  States and border towns are now left to deal with the threat on their own.

Title 42 is a law established in 2020 by Donald Trump which coincided with the governments covid pandemic response.  It requires Border Patrol and law enforcement to immediately transfer apprehended illegal immigrants back across the border instead of allowing them to stay within the US while awaiting courts to rule on their citizenship status.  Using the guise of “asylum seeker,” millions of migrants are crossing the border in an attempt to remain in the country with access to welfare benefits and amenities.

As we have seen in places like El Paso, there is also the ongoing problem of Democrat controlled “sanctuary cities” that have refused to cooperate with an overall state run response.  This past week the Mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser, finally admitted that the region is facing an emergency, which means he will be begging for relief funds but still will not do anything to stop migrants from flooding in.  According to public data, more than 80,000 migrants have invaded El Paso in the last four months.

Leeser warned that after Title 42 ends on December 21st the number of migrants released onto city streets will be “incredible” – Up to 6000 per day or more.  El Paso has requested additional personnel for feeding and housing operations, additional busing operations and state law enforcement. 

Border towns with no prevention operations and those that act as sanctuaries will undoubtedly be overrun in a matter of days once Title 42 expires.  In some cases (like El Paso) they are already being overrun.  Some towns in Texas are starting to realize the gravity of the situation and they are taking action along with state officials, with local news reporting efforts to quickly build make-shift border walls with shipping containers and razor wire:

NEW: The state of Texas is continuing to prepare for the drop of Title 42 next week by placing more shipping containers as a makeshift wall at a popular illegal crossing area in Eagle Pass. Razor wire is in front of them. Also setting up floodlights pointed towards the river. pic.twitter.com/8Sgfi3o6pJ

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) December 17, 2022

While this is better than nothing, the effects of the end of Title 42 are not being properly conveyed to the general public by the government or the media and it is likely that the border crisis will erupt to new levels over the course of the next few months going into Spring 2023.  The conditions for a humanitarian disaster are stacked like dominoes; a perfect storm that the American public will be hearing about on the news daily next year, but only after the damage has already been done. 

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal judge in Rhode Island on Wednesday upheld a newly enacted state law banning the possession of large-capacity magazines that carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The decision came following a request by a Chepachet gun store and several Rhode Island gun owners for a preliminary injunction blocking the law, which they argue violates their constitutional rights, including the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, among other things.

However, U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. on Wednesday said that the plaintiffs, Big Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply; three Rhode Island residents named in the lawsuit as Mary Brimer, James Grundy, and Jonathan Hirons; and a Newport homeowner who lives in Florida, Jeffrey Goyette, had failed to persuade the court that the law is unconstitutional and that they would suffer irreparable harm if it was allowed to take effect.

The judge also said that allowing the law to be enforced was in the public’s interest.

Gov. Dan McKee, a Democrat, signed the high-capacity magazine ban into law in June, noting at the time that Rhode Island was one of the few states to introduce or bolster gun safety legislation aimed at reducing and preventing gun violence in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.

The law, which went into effect on Dec. 18, makes it a felony to possess or own large-capacity magazines that contain more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which the governor said have “enabled numerous mass shootings” across the country.

New Law Could Cause Firearm Business ‘Irreparable Harm’

A string of other measures were also signed into law, including raising the legal age to purchase firearms or ammunition in Rhode Island from 18 to 21, with exceptions for police and other law enforcement personnel, and prohibiting the open carrying of any loaded rifle or shotgun in public.

However, the high-capacity magazine ban soon prompted a lawsuit from the plaintiffs, who claimed that they were now being “forced to dispose of their privately owned, and legally acquired Standard Capacity Magazines by December 18, 2022, without receiving any compensation, or rights with or without conditions of continued ownership to keep their lawfully acquired property.”

“Should the Citizen Plaintiffs not comply with this requirement, each can now be convicted of a felony, and potentially face five (5) years of incarceration. Further, certain firearms, due to the expiration of their production, and for other reasons, cannot be modified for use with a smaller capacity magazine,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Elsewhere, Big Bear Hunting and Fishing Supply, the firearms dealer listed in the lawsuit, argued that the business would suffer irreparable harm as a result of the law, noting that large-capacity magazines make up a substantial amount of their inventory.

Despite their assertions, Judge McConnell Jr. said on Wednesday that the plaintiffs had failed to show that the magazines represented “arms” as stated in the Second Amendment, or presented credible evidence establishing the magazines as a weapon of self-defense, according to The Boston Globe.

The judge also wrote that large-capacity magazines easily be used to convert handguns into semi-automatic weapons capable of rapid fire.

Additionally, McConnell noted that victims of mass shootings are not “chosen randomly” but “because of what they represented to a particular person with a gun and a lot of ammunition.”

‘Victims Have Not Been Chosen Randomly’

“True, they are random in that their identities are usually not known to the shooter, and it appears to matter not to the shooter whether the next one killed is a particular person or the woman standing next to him. But in actuality, victims have not been chosen randomly.

“They have been chosen because they are attending a synagogue in Pittsburgh or church in Sutherland Spring. Or because they are sitting in a school classroom in Newtown or a high school classroom in Parkland. Or because they were at a concert in Las Vegas or a nightclub in Orlando,” McConnell said.

Read more here…

With Title 42 – the Trump-er border policy, set to expire on Wednesday, and numerous border towns panicking ahead of what is expected to be an even greater influx of immigrants at the southern border than is already being experienced, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the scheduled ending while the US Supreme Court considers a bid by Republican state officials to keep the rules in place during a legal fight.

Title 42, a pandemic-related public-health measure allowing migrants to be quickly expelled back to Mexico after crossing the border illegally, is believed to have acted as a deterrent for some migrants seeking asylum because they could be turned back even if they asked for protection.

As JustTheNews reports, an estimated 2.5 million migrants have been removed under the order since its implementation.

Meanwhile, border officials have had to combat already record-high migration numbers, with 2.4 million migrants crossing in fiscal year 2022 alone and roughly 4 million doing so since President Joe Biden took office in January of 2021. Those figures are expected to rise further should the Title 42 border enforcement mechanic render authorities unable to swiftly remove border crossers.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, Chief Justice Roberts, who oversees emergency matters from the District of Columbia, gave the Biden administration until 5 p.m. Tuesday to file its legal response.

The temporary order is to remain in effect until the court decides the emergency request, led by the Republican attorneys general of Arizona and Louisiana.

The order doesn’t indicate the court’s view of the legal issues, but the court’s conservative majority has in other cases issued emergency orders that blocked Biden administration priorities.

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

As we learn more and more from the “Twitter Files,” it is becoming all too obvious that Federal agencies such as the FBI viewed the First Amendment of our Constitution as an annoyance and an impediment. In Friday’s release from the pre-Musk era, journalist Matt Taibbi makes an astute observation: Twitter was essentially an FBI subsidiary.

The FBI, we now know, was obsessed with Twitter. We learned that agents sent Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth some 150 emails between 2020 and 2022. Those emails regularly featured demands from US government officials for the “private” social media company to censor comments and ban commenters they did not like.

The Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), a US government entity that included the FBI as well as other US intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from domestic activities, numbered 80 agents engaged regularly in telling Twitter which Tweets to censor and which accounts to ban. The Department of Homeland Security brought in outside government contractors and (government-funded) non-governmental organizations to separately pressure Twitter to suppress speech the US government did not like.

US Federal government agencies literally handed Twitter lists of Americans it wanted to see silenced, and Twitter complied. Let that sink in.

This should be a massive scandal and likely it would have been had it occurred under a Trump Administration. Indeed, Congress would be gearing up for Impeachment 3.0 if Trump-allied officials had engaged in such egregious behavior. But since these US government employees were by-and-large acting to suppress pro-Trump sentiment, all we hear are crickets.

What is interesting about these Twitter revelations is how obsessed the FBI and its government partners were with satire and humor. Even minor Twitter accounts with small numbers of followers were constantly flagged by the Feds for censorship and deletion. But knowledge of history helps us understand this obsession: in Soviet times the population was always engaged in joking about the ineptitude, corruption, and idiocy of the political class. Underground publications known as samizdat were rich with satire, humor, and ridicule.

Tyrants hate humor and cannot withstand satire. That is clearly why the FBI (and CIA) was determined to see a heavy hand raised against any American poking fun at the deep state.

There is good news in all of this, however. As Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote over the weekend, a new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found that even though the mainstream media has ignored the “Twitter files,” Americans have not. Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that Twitter was involved in politically-motivated censorship in advance of the 2020 election. Some 70 percent of those polled believe Congress must take action against this corporate/state censorship.

As Professor Turley points out, although the First Amendment only applies to the US government, “it does apply to agents or surrogates of the government. Twitter now admits that such a relationship existed between its former officials and the government.”

So now we have proof that the FBI (along with US intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security) have been acting through “private” social media companies to manipulate what Americans are allowed to say when they communicate with each other.

Is there anything more un-American than that? Personally, I find it sickening.

We do not need the FBI and CIA and other federal agencies viewing us as the enemy and attacking our Constitution. End the Fed…and End the Federal Bureau of Investigation!

Quebec, Canada last week approved the used of psilocybin – the primary psychoactive in “magic mushrooms,” as a valid therapy under the state’s medical system.

Advocates hope the move will set a precedent for other Canadian provinces to take similar action, Forbes reports.

“This decision is a huge step forward for the use of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy as a legitimate medical treatment,” wrote TheraPsil, a nonprofit group that advocates for the advancement of psilocybin therapies, in a Dec. 15 statement. “It not only provides greater access to this potentially life-changing treatment for patients in Quebec, but it also sets a precedent for other provinces to follow suit.”

Clinical research and other studies into psychedelics such as psilocybin have shown that the drugs have potential therapeutic benefits, particularly for serious mental health conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety. Research published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Psychiatry in 2020 found that psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy was an effective and quick-acting treatment for a group of 24 participants with major depressive disorder. A separate study published in 2016 determined that psilocybin treatment produced substantial and sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with life-threatening cancer. -Forbes

As we noted in April, psychedelic mushrooms are becoming increasingly popular in the US as a possible treatment for psychiatric disorders, with their main active ingredient, psilocybin, moving from the fringes of medicine, to become increasingly mainstream. It appears that Canada, however, is actually making moves to bring the benefits to actual patients.

And while the benefits of psilocybin have been evident for some time, access to the compound – and related therapy, has been extremely limited in Canada. In some cases, terminally ill patients suffering from palliative depression have been made to wait more than a year for a response from Health Canada – the national health regulator – to gain permission to use magic mushrooms legally. What’s more, even when patients obtained a legal exemption to use the drug, healthcare practitioners were unable to bill for it due to a lack of codes to properly process charges.

That all changed after two doctors, Dr. Houman Farzin and Dr. Jean-François Stephan, successfully billed Quebec after treating a patient with psilocybin which was legally allowed by Health Canada.

After the treatment, Dr. Stephan compiled evidence and submitted a letter, cosigned by 15 colleagues, outlining the medical safety and efficacy of psilocybin. He argued that both doctors participating in the treatment should be covered, noting that existing codes would not allow two doctors to bill for the same patient at the same time. He also explained that scientific evidence demonstrates that patients who have legal access to psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy have a medical indication. -Forbes

“I think it’s amazing news that patients have covered access to such an important treatment option and it’s an encouraging sign for psychedelic medicine. Quebec has chosen to align with the science in regards to psychedelic medicine and recognize it as a medically indicated service in specific circumstances. They didn’t delay this unnecessarily,” said Dr. Stephan, who partnered with the governing body for general practitioners in Quebec, the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec (FMOQ), which negotiated with the government to amend the codes.

“It’s encouraging to see them recognize the evidence available, and make the necessary adjustments to support the financial aspects of treatment so that it’s not an obstacle for patient access. I’m pleased this happened in Quebec, and I hope other provinces follow in their footsteps.”

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There are at least 82 municipalities across 29 states now engaged in guaranteed income experiments, including more than 70 with pilot programs created within the past year, according to a coalition of more than 100 American mayors promoting the concept.

Mayors for Guaranteed Income, and proponents among municipal officials nationwide, are encouraging local governments to seed pilot programs with federal pandemic assistance from a $350 billion fund for state and local governments within the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), adopted in March 2021.

The mayoral group was established by Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, Calif., in June 2020 after the city launched, and later extended, an experiment where 125 residents received $500 monthly in a program financed by the Economic Security Project, a nonprofit that supports guaranteed income experiments.

During a Dec. 15 virtual roundtable discussion, several municipal officials said there is growing public support for basic income models and accelerating momentum to expand these programs through a mix of federal, state, local, and private money.

In fact, much to the chagrin of conservatives and budget hawks, the ARPA state and local recovery fund is being used “as a seed for long-term policy change,” said DePaul University’s Dr. Amanda Kass, who studies how states, cities, and counties spend federal pandemic assistance.

Kass told the panel that ARPA is the first federal program “that has ever produced this amount of highly flexible aid to nearly all governments in the United States—to tens of thousands of governments.”

As a result, she said, because of “the unprecedented nature” of the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak and its accompanying slate of federal pandemic-related bills, local governments are spending ARPA money in innovative ways which makes evaluating how they spent, or plan to spend, that money “a tricky question.” 

Kass said in analyzing how local governments are dispersing ARPA allocations, there’s “not just one avenue” but “many different stories” in how cities and counties “with unique socio-economic conditions” are using the money to address “unique needs.”

Guaranteed Income Programs Gaining Traction

Baltimore Chief Recovery Officer Shamiah Kerney said her city is sponsoring a guaranteed income pilot program in which 200 “18 to 24-year-olds who have children” receive $1,000 a month in supplemental income for two years. 

The city hopes to collect enough data to determine if providing a guaranteed basic income for low-income families with children benefits recipients and taxpayers, she said.

“We’re hoping that will inform the dialogue on a national basis,” Kerney said during the roundtable, cohosted by the National League of Cities and the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), a watchdog panel created by the U.S. Office of Inspector General (OIG) to monitor federal pandemic allocations.

Baltimore’s Young Families Success Fund earmarks $4.8 million in ARPA money for the program. It began dispersing $1,000 a month to 200 recipients with incomes at or below 300 percent of the federal poverty level—$26,200 for a family of four—in August.

By fall 2024, Kerney said, the city suspects data collected from the pilot program will “demonstrate the need” for sustaining, if not expanding, the program.

In Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, the board of supervisors in September approved the nation’s largest guaranteed income pilot program, a $42 million plan mostly using ARPA money to provide $500 monthly to 3,250 households, at or below the federal poverty line, for two years.

Cook County Budget Director Annette Guzman said officials are looking at the program to determine if it should be “a permanent piece” in addressing poverty “going forward.”

On Dec. 13, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen in a 21-1 vote set aside $5 million in ARPA money for a test universal basic income program that will provide 440 families with $500 a month for 18 months.

St. Louis Senior Strategic Initiatives Manager Grace Kyung said the city had already dispersed more than $122 million in ARPA money for direct cash assistance programs, mostly related to housing needs, so the $5 million test program could prove to be a good investment.

The pilot program fits under the city’s “economic justice action plan,” she said, which dovetails with U.S. Treasury ARPA guidelines that “encourage” funding for programs that address “racial and economic inequities” predating, but aggravated by, the pandemic.

Under U.S. Treasury guidelines attached to ARPA state and local allocations “investments to support people or communities with low incomes are allowable” even if initial ARPA outlays “may require investments for an extended period to be successful.”

Using this framework, local governments have secured ARPA money for programs related to community violence mitigation, behavioral health, affordable housing, child care, eviction prevention, medical debt, and cash assistance.

More Than $220 Billion Still Available

According to PRAC, a team of 21 OIG inspectors general who monitor dispersement of $5.7 trillion in federal aid approved between March 2020 and March 2021—beginning with the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act and concluding with ARPA—there is still plenty of pandemic assistance money available to municipalities.

Read more here…

Russia and China have announced new large-scale joint naval drills to be held this week in the East China Sea at a moment the West has continued to be alarmed that relations between Moscow and Beijing have remained unfazed by the Ukraine war.

The Russian defense ministry (MoD) announced the drills will be held December 21-27, with a purpose to “strengthen cooperation between the two navies to maintain peace and stability in the Asian Pacific region.” There will also be an anti-submarine warfare and missile launch training component to the drills.

“The Russian fleet at the exercise will be represented by [the] Pacific Fleet flagship, the missile cruiser Varyag, the frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, and [two] corvettes,” the Russian MoD statement continued.

Dubbed the “Maritime Cooperation 2022” exercise, air forces from both countries are also expected to continue patrolling the Sea of Japan and East China Sea, as they’ve been observed doing of late.

The AP reports based on official statements, “The Russian Defense Ministry said the Varyag missile cruiser, the Marshal Shaposhnikov destroyer and two corvettes of Russia’s Pacific Fleet would take part in maneuvers in the East China Sea starting Wednesday.”

“The ministry said the Chinese navy planned to deploy several surface warships and a submarine for the exercise,” AP continues. “Russian and Chinese aircraft will also take part in the drills, according to the ministry.”

Large groupings of warships have been observed en route just ahead of the drills, with a detachment of Russia’s Pacific Fleet having departed the far eastern port of Vladivostok.

As for the Chinese side, Japan’s Defense Ministry previously said it monitored at least nine Chinese navy warships entering the western Pacific in preparation, including the Liaoning aircraft carrier.

“The Liaoning was spotted transiting from the East China Sea to the western Pacific Ocean through the Miyako Strait, between Japan’s Miyako and Okinawa islands, last Friday,” writes South China Morning Post. “It was escorted by the Type 055 destroyer 103 Anshan, Type 052D destroyer Chengdu, Type 054A frigate Zaozhuang, and the Type 901 supply ship Hulunhu.”

The US has sought to pressure Beijing to back off its “no limits” partnership with Moscow (as was declared not long before Russia’s Feb.24 invasion of Ukraine); however, clearly all signals point in the other direction – that China has remained unswayed and is in fact deepening cooperation even on a military level.

Update (1250ET): Bankman-Fried reportedly wants to see the indictment against him before agreeing to extradition to the United States, according to Reuters, citing a statement made by SBF’s attorney to a court in the Bahamas on Monday.

As Cointelegraph notes, Some members of the crypto space, including the team behind YouTuber Ben Armstrong, also known as Bitboy Crypto, reported on Twitter they appeared in person at the hearing to “look SBF in the eyes.”

We ready. About to go in. Guess who is in front of the line? Finally getting to look @SBF_FTX in the eyes this morning. pic.twitter.com/TtdYXZiUnD

— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) December 19, 2022

*  *  *

It appears crypto-criminal Sam Bankman-Fried would rather take his chances in the relative ‘luxury’ of an American jail than face another night in Bahamian’s corrections department, as he is expected to accept extradition as soon as this morning.

After being arrested and denied bail by a Bahamas court, the 30-year-old has been held at Fox Hill Prison in Nassau.

The facility has been criticized in international reports for overcrowding and lacking sanitation.

Reports indicate that he shares a cell with five other individuals.

The NY Times reports one former Fox Hill inmate Sean Hall, who was freed from jail last year, said:

“It’s no living situation for no type of living being.”

According to Hall, the width of his cell was less than the span of his stretched arms, and they slept on bare metal bunk beds infested with insects.

Another source acquainted with the situation told the Wall Street Journal that Sam Bankman-Fried’s team had provided meals that matched his dietary requirements, but they were uncertain as of Friday if he had received them.

According to people familiar with the matter, Sam Bankman-Fried is due in a Bahamian court on Monday where he is expected to agree to be extradited to the US to face charges of fraud.

Extradition will pave the way for a protracted legal showdown in the U.S. On Tuesday, the Southern District of New York of the Justice Department unsealed a 13-page criminal indictment.

Bitcoinist reports, that, according to defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, Bankman-Fried would likely be detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn upon arriving in the U.S., although some defendants are being kept at jails just outside of New York City owing to congestion at the facility.

It didn’t take long for the Ukrainian government to blast and dismiss former US Secretary of State Kissinger’s peace plan proposal as “appeasing the aggressor”.

“Mr. Kissinger still has not understood anything… neither the nature of this war, nor its impact on the world order,” Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said in response to the 99-year old influential US statesman’s Saturday op-ed in The Spectator entitled How to Avoid Another World War.

“The prescription that the ex-Secretary of State calls for, but is afraid to say out loud, is simple: appease the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine with guarantees of non-aggression against the other states of Eastern Europe,” Podolyak stated, expressing a firm rejection of what Kissinger outlined in his piece. 

The Ukrainian official added that the proposal was simplistic, saying: “All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious: any agreement with the devil – a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories – will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success for autocrats around the world.”

In his weekend op-ed, Kissinger had warned that continued attempts to render Russia “impotent” could result in an uncontrollable and unpredictable spiral. He laid out that along with the sought after “dissolution” of Russia would come a massive power vacuum out of which new threats to the whole world would emerge as bigger powers rush in.

“The dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum,” Kissinger wrote. “Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.”

Henry Kissinger Calls for Negotiated Peace in Ukraine to AVOID THERMONUCLEAR WORLD WAR III https://t.co/c34C0IUWgB pic.twitter.com/xhuKeCHv2w

— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) December 19, 2022

Among the more controversial aspects of Kissinger’s plan was his suggesting the possibility of referendums for contested territories now occupied by Russia and still being fought over “which have changed hands repeatedly over the centuries” [i.e.: particularly the Donbas] – according to the essay.

Kissinger last May also angered Ukrainian officails for daring to propose that Ukraine be willing to recognize Crimea as under Russia, and in return Russian forces would fall back to their lines before the Feb. 24 invasion. Previously he’s been on record as saying “It was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.”

The stance appears similar to Elon Musk’s recent thoughts on a “Russia-Ukraine peace” plan. Musk had evoked widespread anger and denunciation from US and Ukrainian officials and pundits, given he said that nuclear-armed showdown among superpowers over Ukraine must be avoided at all costs, even if that means difficult territorial concessions must be made.  

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

• The recent crude price slump may not be indicative for what is to come in oil markets according to several investment bank analysts.

• OPEC has not consistently produced more than 30 million bpd since 2015-2018.

• Structural underinvestment in new oil supply may lead to structurally higher prices.

In its latest monthly report, OPEC revealed it had yet again failed to produce as much oil as it agreed to produce the last time it discussed output. And it wasn’t by a few thousand barrels per day, either. The shortfall was some 1.8 million barrels daily, but more importantly, that sort of undershooting of its own target has become a regular thing for the cartel. Meanwhile, the United States federal government needs to buy some oil for its strategic petroleum reserve after releasing close to 200 million barrels from it this year as a way of countering fuel price inflation. Yet U.S. drillers are not in a rush to boost production. On the contrary, it seems production growth has lost its place among these companies’ top priorities.

Of course, there are also the sanctions against Russia, which many expect will hurt the country’s oil production, and that may well happen, but it has not happened yet. In fact, the oil sanctions—in the form of a price cap on maritime exports and an embargo on exports to the EU—have had no effect on oil flows out of Russia. For now.

Investment banks expect higher oil prices, despite a recent slump prompted by expectations of an economic slowdown pretty much across the globe. The expectations, now beginning to seep into trader circles, too, are largely based on China’s reversal of its zero-Covid policy. But they also probably take into account the fact that oil remains an indispensable commodity. And the era of cheap oil may well be over for good.

“We remain constructive on oil prices driven by recovering demand (China reopening, aviation recovering) amid constrained supply due to low levels of investment, risks to Russia supply, the end of SPR releases, and slowdown of U.S. shale,” Morgan Stanley said this week in a note.

Yet the situation may be a lot more serious with regard to supply, as noted in a recent market commentary by TortoiseEcoFin’s President and Portfolio Manager, Matt Sallee.

“Global oil inventory is at the lowest level since 2004, the Department of Energy has released 200 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve this year, OPEC continues to struggle to produce at their stated quota and US producers are helping but can only do so much.”

This s a pretty succinct description of the global oil supply situation, but the picture is not one that would invoke positive emotions. It is one that is more likely to evoke concern, and with a good reason. Because there is little evidence that any of these trends will change meaningfully any time soon.

OPEC, for example, has zero motivation to try and boost production, Sallee noted in follow-up comments for Oilprice. It would only do so if it knows oil will remain over $100 per barrel for a longer period of time, but there is no way to be confident about this right now.

Then there are the purely physical constraints on OPEC production, as evidenced by the consistent failure of the group to hit its own—reduced—production targets. Most OPEC members have ambitious production growth plans, but they remain plans while actual production remains subdued for reasons such as natural depletion at mature fields and, ultimately, not enough investment.

As Sallee notes, OPEC has not consistently produced more than 30 million bpd since 2015-2018 when it did so deliberately in a bid to destroy U.S. shale and, to a great extent, succeeded, temporarily. And that’s because it neither wants to nor can it do so.

Underinvestment is turning into a thing in U.S. shale as well, at least from the perspective of the White House. According to the Biden administration, all U.S. producers need to do is spend more on additional production. According to the U.S. producers themselves, the long-term outlook for oil demand is too uncertain about investing in more production.

Then there is the issue of prime acreage, which several experts have been warning is running out. TortoiseEcoFin’s Sallee is among them:

“Best acreage has been drilled, the industry is struggling to attract labor and has limited sources of financing,” he told Oilprice.

According to him, U.S. oil production is unlikely to ever again record annual output increase rates of 1 million bpd or more, as it did in the recent past. A growth rate of 500,000 to 750,000 bpd is far more likely, he believes. And that’s not good news for consumers because demand, although targeted by the energy transition camp, is not going down soon.

The International Energy Agency, one of the most active members of the energy transition movement, in its latest Oil Market Report revised upwards its forecast for global oil demand next year because of an unexpected increase in consumption this year.

Chances are this is a sustainable trend in the absence of viable alternatives to oil products. And this means that demand and supply will be in a precarious balance in the future, constantly on the brink of a shortage or even deep in a shortage, should Big Oil’s pivot to low-carbon energy continue, as it requires they reduce their oil production to hit their net-zero goals. What all this means is that the era of cheap crude oil may well be over for good.