IRAN/OIL/OPEC/SANCTIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Taking a cue from President Donald Trump, U.S. lawmakers could soon have a new message to foreign oil producers: NO COLLUSION! Trump regularly deploys his Twitter account to fight oil-price upticks, trying to browbeat the world’s oil-producing bloc — the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries — into boosting production so prices will fall. His administration’s Monday [4-22-19] announcement on ending sanctions waivers for buying Iranian oil risks pushing prices higher and could rev up congressional calls to push OPEC harder. Now Trump’s saber-rattling on OPEC has oil producers and traders unnerved by the prospect he could back cartel-busting legislation that sends prices into a tailspin. The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, a bipartisan bill known as NOPEC, would allow the attorney general to bring an antitrust suit against the bloc — removing the sovereign immunity that currently protects OPEC countries. Lawmakers have been trying and failing to turn it into law for two decades. Trump’s badgering of OPEC has breathed new life into the effort and renewed attention on it from Wall Street to Texas shale fields to OPEC’s Vienna headquarters.”
–Eli Okum, “A threat in Trump’s back pocket: Shaking up the global oil industry,” Politico, April 22, 2019 7:03 pm