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Despite finding itself the midst of a massive glut, the United States ethanol industry is set to see three new plants come online over the next year, adding a combined annual production of 270 million gallons to the nation’s already ballooning ethanol oversupply. The industry has been plagued by overproduction and low demand since 2015.

Over the past 5 years, ethanol production has increased by 10.5 percent, rising from 14.3 billion gallons in 2014 to 15.8 billion gallons in 2017. This is despite the fact that only one new ethanol plant began production in the years between 2015 and 2018. The increase is in large part due to more efficient means of production, allowing producers to get more fuel out of each kernel of corn, and the expansion of existing plants in lieu of building new plants from the ground up.

Now there will be three new plants coming online all within a span of mere months. Atlantic, Iowa will be home to 120-million-gallon-a-year dry mill ethanol plant Elite Octane, LLC before the end of 2018. Ring-Neck Energy & Feed, LLC will go online in Onida, South Dakota in early 2019, and ELEMENT, Inc., a 70-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant, is currently under construction in Colwich, Kansas.

In an effort to reduce the U.S. ethanol glut, which is undeniably about to skyrocket even higher, the industry has been strategizing aggressive campaigns to boost demand. It has become abundantly clear that in order to return to its strong profit margins of 2013-2014, the U.S. ethanol industry will need to look overseas. Part of the ethanol industry’s auto-resuscitation plan involves increasing its market share of liquid fuel in the U.S. by promoting higher ethanol blends like E15 (15 percent ethanol to a gallon of gas), E30 (30 percent), and E85 (85 percent), but this angle alone will not produce nearly enough demand to contend with supply.

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Petro-States Face Extinction

October 26, 2018

Petro-States Face Extinction

Petro-states urgently need to begin diversifying their economies, shifting away from oil production, or else they face financial risks in the years ahead.

That conclusion comes from the IEA’s new report, “Outlook for Producer Economies,” which warns that a changing energy system threatens the economies of oil-producing countries. The threat comes in multiple forms, both on the supply side and on the demand side.

Energy efficiency, electric vehicles and other technological changes raise questions about peak demand. Climate regulation also threatens to destroy consumption. On the supply side, U.S. shale could capture a bulk of any demand increase that might have otherwise been met by other oil producers.

These factors pose serious threats to major oil producers, and the IEA focused on six countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Venezuela. All of those countries are significant oil producers and are overwhelmingly dependent on oil revenues to finance their budgets.

That dependence is a risk during normal cycles. The IEA noted that Iraq saw its oil revenues plunge by 40 percent after the 2014 oil price meltdown, while Venezuela saw revenues fall by 70 percent. “Major swings in hydrocarbon revenue can be deeply destabilising if finances and economies are not resilient,” the report said.

However, the problem of petro-dependence is even worse looking forward, because electric vehicles finally offer a competing alternative to crude oil in the transportation sector, while forthcoming carbon restrictions will accelerate the shift off of fossil fuels. This means the threats in the future are structural, not just cyclical.

In the IEA’s central New Policies Scenario, the crisis facing oil producers may not be particularly acute in the 2020s, as U.S. shale is expected to plateau and the potential for medium-term supply tightness could keep revenues aloft.

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The Great Biofuel Swindle

October 24, 2018

The Great Biofuel Swindle

Over the past decade, “biofuel” has been a major buzz word in the world of clean energy and environmental science. As the topic of advanced biofuels continued to trend over the years, investments and studies ballooned accordingly. Now, however, with a bit of hindsight it has become clear that the vast majority of chatter and speculation about the “next big biofuel” set to change the energy landscape was just hot air.

Many claims made by energy startups, blogs, and think tanks were a bit short of credible, to put it lightly. A laundry list of companies over time claimed that they would be able to efficiently convert biomass like straw, wood chips, algae, and other organics into biofuel in an economically viable way. Some of these hopefuls even claimed to be able to do so for as little as a dollar per gallon.

Investors and taxpayers alike funneled money into ventures that had little to no chance of success. Investment went to technologies that had been abandoned decades before, due to economic impracticality. The most striking example can be found in the case of cellulosic ethanol. Converting straw into ethanol is a prohibitively expensive venture, but companies continued–and still continue–to try. What’s more, despite the fact that “commercial” cellulosic ethanol is only being produced at a very small fraction of the projected volumes, it’s currently being sold into the fuel supply, in large part thanks to heavy subsidization from the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Coming in second, only behind cellulosic ethanol, as the most overhyped biofuel is biomass sourced from algae. The concept is not nearly as far-fetched as producing fuel from straw. Some species of algae do produce oils that can be converted into fuel, and crude oil itself is essentially prehistoric algae and plankton.

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Why Is Canadian Crude Selling For $20?

October 24, 2018

Why Is Canadian Crude Selling For $20?

Oil prices in Canada plunged late last month, with the losses continuing throughout much of October. Canadian oil producers exposed to the low prices are now fetching around $40 to 50 per barrel less than their counterparts in the United States.

Western Canada Select (WCS), which tracks heavy oil from Canada, typically trades at a discount relative to WTI. The lower price reflects quality issues, as well as the cost of transport from Alberta to refineries in the U.S.

In early 2018, the discount started to grow significantly, the result of Canadian pipelines filled to the brim. The inability of the Canadian oil industry to build a major pipeline from Alberta to either the U.S. or the Pacific Ocean is increasingly dragging down WCS. Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, Energy East, Trans Mountain Expansion – all of these pipeline projects have run into years of delays, and in the case of Northern Gateway and Energy East, scrapped all together.

That left WCS prices languishing at discounts in excess of $30 per barrel at times this year. But the problem blew up into a deeper crisis in late September. Maxed out pipelines are still a problem, but now refineries in the U.S. Midwest are in maintenance season, curtailing demand for Canadian oil. BP’s massive Whiting refinery in Indiana, Phillips’ Wood River and Marathon’s refinery in Detroit all undertook maintenance, according to CBC. WCS plunged to the low $20s per barrel, implying a discount of about $50 per barrel to WTI. The recent decline of WTI below $70 per barrel has somewhat narrowed the differential to the mid-$40s per barrel.

The discounts mean that the oil industry in Alberta is losing around $100 million per day, according to GMP FirstEnergy and CBC.

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China’s Oil Addiction Is Its Main Weakness As A Superpower

October 24, 2018

China’s Oil Addiction Is Its Main Weakness As A Superpower

For decades, the U.S. was so reliant on foreign crude oil imports that it dictated much of the country’s foreign policy spanning numerous presidential administrations. As far back as the 1970s, especially after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo that threatened economic survival, foreign policy decisions became increasingly subservient to OPEC, and mostly Saudi oil imports. This dynamic can still be felt currently as yet another president, this time Donald Trump, juggles another Middle Eastern geopolitical dilemma with no easy answers over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi likely at the hands of Saudi agents inside Turkey.

Now, however, the U.S. has positioned itself among the top three global oil producers, and it has also removed the vulnerability that saw the U.S. embroiled in several middle eastern conflicts. Additionally, it still has the U.S. Navy’s 5^th fleet guarding oil exports leaving the Middle Eastern region, including the volatile and strategic strait of Hormuz.

While the U.S. still has to figure out its game plan going forward amid a record 11 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil production, and the increasingly complex relationship with long term key ally Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, China is now also finding itself in an increasingly vulnerable spot as it relies more on both foreign crude oil and natural gas imports to fund its growing economy.

Gas thirst

Just the numbers coming out of China should be cause for concern for Beijing energy planners. First, China’s gas consumption in 2017 soared to new record highs, reaching 235.2 billion cubic meters (bcm), marking an increase of 17 percent or 34 bcm from the previous year. However, the real story has been China’s LNG demand spikes.

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Big Oil Walking A Tightrope As Prices Rise

October 23, 2018

Big Oil Walking A Tightrope As Prices Rise

Supermajors have had a great year so far, and their third-quarter results, to be released over the next couple of weeks, are likely to strengthen this impression. But this does not necessarily mean that investors will reward them. Investors have become a lot more careful in the past few years, and chances are they will want to see more proof of post-crisis flexibility and strict cost discipline before stock prices reflect an increase in trust.

On the face of it, Exxon, Shell, Chevron, and their likes have everything going for them: oil prices are higher, free cash flow is coming in at higher rates, and there have even been a few discoveries, most notable among them Exxon’s 4-billion-barrel elephant off the coast of Guyana. But Big Oil still needs to be cautious.

In a recent article for 24/7 Wall Street, its senior editor Paul Ausick noted the heightened prospects of even higher oil prices after a Reuters repor t revealed that OPEC has been having trouble lifting production by the promised 1 million bpd. From May to September, the cartel’s combined production plus Russia’s had fallen well short of that figure because of production declines in Venezuela, Iran, and Angola, among others. These, the internal OPEC document that Reuters saw, offset some substantial output hikes from Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait.

What this means is that there seems to be less spare capacity than optimists believed. This, in turn, means prices are likely to climb further, despite a fresh assurance from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that traders have already factored in the U.S. sanctions against Iran. Mnuchin’s warning that Washington will insist on importers cutting Iranian crude imports by more than 20 percent most certainly has not helped rein in prices, though its effect has yet to be fully acknowledged.

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This Alliance Could Mark A New Era For Oil

October 22, 2018

This Alliance Could Mark A New Era For Oil

Saudi Arabia and Russia could formalize a strategic partnership that would last indefinitely, potentially marking a new era for the oil market.

In a wide-ranging interview with TASS, Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih said that he hopes to setup an official OPEC+ governing body, including a Secretariat, likely to be based in Vienna. The proposal could be finished by December.

To date, OPEC+ has been a somewhat informal group, or at least a provisional one, intended to address the supply glut that emerged following the 2014-2016 market bust.

This past June, the group all but declared mission accomplished, watering down the production targets by agreeing to a vague increase in collective production by 1 million barrels per day (mb/d). Without the urgent need to balance the market, the purpose of the OPEC+ agreement following the June meeting already started to become unclear.

Al-Falih wants to put together an official governing structure that would preside over oil market coordination going forward. “[W]e want to sign a new cooperation agreement that is open-ended. That does not expire after 2020 or 2021. We will leave it open,” al-Falih told TASS. He said that the purpose of OPEC+ would not be aimed at a fixed production target, but to coordinate production levels as they see fit.

But, of course, this has always been the mission of OPEC. The objective of establishing a permanent OPEC+ body raises the question of what is supposed to happen to OPEC. Al-Falih suggests that OPEC+ could “work closely with OPEC.” It seems confusing, since all of the OPEC members are in OPEC+, while OPEC+ contains a bunch of additional countries. How will these two bodies interact and to what degree will they overlap? That much remains unclear.

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U.S. Shale Has A Glaring Problem

October 22, 2018

U.S. Shale Has A Glaring Problem

Oil prices are down a bit, but are still close to multi-year highs. That should leave the shale industry flush with cash. However, a long list of U.S. shale companies are still struggling to turn a profit.

A new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and the Sightline Institute detail the “alarming volumes of red ink” within the shale industry.

“Even after two and a half years of rising oil prices and growing expectations for improved financial results, a review of 33 publicly traded oil and gas fracking companies shows the companies posting negative free cash flows through June,” the report’s authors write. The 33 small and medium-sized drillers posted a combined $3.9 billion in negative cash flow in the first half of 2018.

The glaring problem with the poor financial results is that 2018 was supposed to be the year that the shale industry finally turned a corner. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency painted a rosy portrait of U.S. shale, arguing in a report that “higher prices and operational improvements are putting the US shale sector on track to achieve positive free cash flow in 2018 for the first time ever.”

The improved outlook came after years of mounting debt and negative cash flow. The IEA estimates that the U.S. shale industry generated cumulative negative free cash flow of over $200 billion between 2010 and 2014. The oil market downturn that began in 2014 was supposed to have changed profligate spending, pushing out inefficient companies and leaving the sector as a whole much leaner and healthier.

“Current trends suggest that the shale industry as a whole may finally turn a profit in 2018, although downside risks remain,” the IEA wrote in July.

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The Biggest Winners In The Mediterranean Energy War

October 22, 2018

The Biggest Winners In The Mediterranean Energy War

Former Vice-President of the United States Dick Cheney once said: “the good lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected states… Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.” Europe is surrounded by states with abundant energy resources, but supply from these countries is not always as reliable. Russia, for example, is regularly accused of using energy as a weapon. However, major discoveries of gas in the Eastern Mediterranean could mitigate dependence on Russian gas.

The discovery of a gas field named Tamar near the coast of Israel in 2009 set off a wave of investments in the energy sector. After 9 years, companies are flocking to the region after other discoveries in the territorial waters of Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt. Ever larger finds in the Mediterranean Sea’s Levant Basin such as the Leviathan gas field in 2010 and Zohr in 2015, have the potential to transform the strategic importance of the region.

(Click to enlarge)

Turkey’s energy hub ambitions

Few states in the world are geographically so well positioned as Turkey. The country controls Russia’s only warm water port in the Black Sea and serves as a bridge between east and west. Therefore, during the Cold War Ankara was an indispensable member of NATO. More recently, Turkey has the ambition to become an energy hub for Middle Eastern and Caspian energy. Ankara has had mixed successes in attracting investors and maintaining political stability.

After Israel’s significant discoveries, a U.S. backed initiative presented Turkey as an energy hub. Although a land pipeline is the cheapest option to transport gas from the Mediterranean to Europe, political developments have stalled construction.

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BP CEO: $80 Oil Is Unhealthy For The World

October 21, 2018

BP CEO: $80 Oil Is Unhealthy For The World

Oil prices at $80 a barrel are too high and unhealthy for the world today, Bob Dudley, the chief executive of UK supermajor BP, said on the sidelines of an event on Friday.

“There’s a healthy price for oil and energy and I believe that balances producing countries and consuming countries,” Quartz quoted Dudley as saying on the sidelines of the conference One Young World in The Hague.

“In my mind, it’s somewhere between $50 and $65 a barrel. The world can live with this,” Dudley noted.

Emerging and developing economies like India, South Africa, or Turkey are seeing their highest-ever prices of gasoline because their currencies have rapidly depreciated against the U.S. dollar and because oil prices in dollars are high, BP’s chief executive said.

Currently, oil prices are “artificially high” due to Venezuela “defying gravity” and to the U.S. sanctions on Iran, according to Dudley, who said that once those geopolitical events subside, fundamentals will return to rule the market and prices should return back to $60-$65 a barrel.

BP won’t be joining any EU special purpose vehicle designed to keep trade with Iran flowing, Dudley stressed, noting that “I think it’s full of risk.”

The concerns of BP’s chief executive that $80 oil is unhealthy for the world are shared by major international organizations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Expensive energy is back and it is threatening global economic growth, the IEA said in its Oil Market Report last week.

Also last week, the IMF slightly downgraded its projection for global growth for this year and next—at 3.7 percent, growth is now expected 0.2 percentage point lower than IMF’s forecast from April this year.

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Are Claims Of Peak Oil Production In Russia Overblown?

October 21, 2018

Are Claims Of Peak Oil Production In Russia Overblown?

Russian authorities have announced that domestic oil production hit 11.36 million barrels per day (bpd), on average, in September (Vedomosti, October 2). This marks a new historic peak, reached despite the often-cited poor shape of the Russian economy and negative impact of Western sanctions, not to mention the restrictions self-imposed on Moscow by the 2016 deal with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (see Jamestown.org, March 8). Commenting on this fact, Vagit Alekperov, LukOIL’s CEO and principal shareholder, assumed the current output levels cannot be sustained, arguing that Russia has already reached the limit of its oil production capacity. On the other hand, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak strongly disagreed (Neftegaz.ru, October 3).

Alekperov’s estimate should be considered with at least some degree of skepticism. First of all, such bearish assessments have been made—incorrectly—many times in the past. Back in 2005, then–deputy prime minister Viktor Khristenko predicted that oil production, at that time at 9.6 million bpd, would definitely decline after 2010 (Versia, August 25, 2016). And four years later, Mikhail Krutikhin, one of Russia’s most respected energy analysts, told Western journalists, “We now see production peaked last year,” so, “I believe the decline will continue for quite a number of years” (BBC News, April 15, 2008). Several other notable examples of suggestions that the Russian oil output had peaked could also be mentioned. And until recently, the consensus forecast for 2020 stood at 10.2 million bpd—i.e., more than 10 percent below the rate recorded last month.

Could Russia’s oil output continue to grow in the years to come? Such a scenario is certainly probable, but it will only be achieved as long as several difficult conditions are rectified.

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Leaked Document: OPEC+ Struggling To Lift Oil Production

October 20, 2018

Leaked Document: OPEC+ Struggling To Lift Oil Production

OPEC and its Russia-led non-OPEC allies are struggling to fully deliver on the oil production increase of 1 million bpd promised in June, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting an internal OPEC document that it has seen.

OPEC and allies agreed in June to relax compliance rates with the cuts to 100 percent from the previous over-compliance. The respective leaders of the OPEC and non-OPEC nations part of the deal—Saudi Arabia and Russia—have been interpreting the eased compliance as adding a total of 1 million bpd to the market.

The document that Reuters has seen, however, showed that the significant production increases in Saudi Arabia and Russia were offset by declines in Iran, Venezuela and Angola within OPEC, and by production drops in Mexico, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia from non-OPEC.

Increasing production “is a work in progress,” OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said this week. At an event in India he also reiterated OPEC’s position that “our current view is that the market is at the moment adequately supplied and well-balanced, though in a fragile state.”

According to the internal OPEC document prepared for a technical panel meeting scheduled for Friday, OPEC—excluding Nigeria, Libya, and Congo—increased its combined production by 428,000 bpd in September compared to May. Saudi Arabia put the most extra barrels on the market and boosted its production by 524,000 bpd in September compared to May. Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab (UAE) also increased their production, according to the document seen by Reuters.

However, Iran’s production slumped by 376,000 bpd in September from May, Venezuela’s output plunged by 189,000 bpd, and Angola saw its production drop by 17,000 bpd between May and September.

The non-OPEC partners in the deal have increased their combined production by 296,000 bpd since May. Russia boosted production by 389,000 bpd, but part of that increase was offset by declines in Kazakhstan, Mexico, and Malaysia.

Oil Markets Tremble As Chinese Stocks Crash

October 19, 2018

Oil Markets Tremble As Chinese Stocks Crash

China’s stock market fell sharply on Thursday, dragged down by a range of concerns that should offer a warning to the broader global economy.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell nearly 3 percent on Thursday, falling to its lowest point in nearly four years. The problems in China are dragging down markets across Asia, including in Japan and South Korea.

The Shanghai Composite is now down more than 25 percent since the start of the year, and is down more than 10 percent in the last three weeks alone. Viewed another way, the Chinese stock market has lost more than $3 trillion in the last six months.

(Click to enlarge)

Shanghai Composite Index, last 12 months

The troubling thing about the recent declines is that the factors driving the losses are multiple. The trade war with the United States, mountains of debt held by local governments within China, a broader slowdown in growth, a weakening yuan and high oil prices are all creating headwinds for the Chinese economy.

China’s central bank said that it still has plenty of tools that it could use defend against the trade war. Looser reserve requirements took effect a few days ago, a move the central bank made to inject money into the economy.

The IMF says that China’s GDP growth could slow from 6.6 percent this year to just 6.2 percent in 2019, although the risks are skewed to the downside because of the trade war. The Fund said that a worst-case scenario in which the U.S. slaps stiff tariffs on nearly all imports from China would shave off 1.6 percentage points from Chinese growth.

China won’t see any relief from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Minutes of the Fed’s last meeting in late September were released on Wednesday, and they reveal a determination on the part of the central bank to continue to tighten interest rates.

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Saudi Arabia Calls The End Of Russia’s Oil Prowess

October 17, 2018

Saudi Arabia Calls The End Of Russia’s Oil Prowess

Saudi Arabia has not only called the end of Russia’s prominence as a global oil behemoth, but anticipates that Russia’s oil exports “will have declined heavily if not disappeared” within the next 19 years, Mohammed bin Salman said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

When asked whether Russia and Saudi Arabia had made a backroom deal to increase oil production, MbS was more tight-lipped, saying only that Saudi Arabia was “ready to supply any demand and any disappearing from Iran.” With Russia out of the game, Saudi Arabia would have plenty of oil demand to service, according to MbS.

MbS did not comment on his rationale for Russia’s exit as a major oil producer.

Russia’s oil production in August of 11.21 million barrels per day, near the post-Soviet era high reached the month prior to signing the OPEC+ deal that curbed its production. The 11.21 million barrels places the country in second place of the most prolific oil producers in the world, behind the United States, who overtook both Saudi Arabia and Russia earlier this year, according to EIA data as cited by CNN.

While America managed to rise from its third place seating in 2018, it did so unencumbered by the production-curbing agreement that both Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to. Gazpromneft earlier today said it was no longer restricting its oil output, although it doubtful that either Russia or Saudi Arabia can reclaim their top spots.

Saudi Arabia has been at the forefront of oil news in recent weeks—almost neck and neck with Iran—as traders try to anticipate just how much spare oil production capacity Saudi Arabia has—if any—and if that spare capacity, whether it’s zero or a million barrels per day, will be sufficient to offset any losses sustained from Iran and Venezuela.

The Implications Of A Fractured U.S., Saudi Alliance

October 17, 2018

The Implications Of A Fractured U.S., Saudi Alliance

After the resurgence of the U.S. oil industry in recent years due to hydraulic fracking and the shale oil revolution, most thought the days of Middle Eastern oil producers, Saudi Arabia in particular, being able to threaten use of the so-called oil weapon as geopolitical leverage or even coercion were over. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Even though the U.S. is pumping oil at record levels, hitting 11 million barrels of oil per day, a rate that should have negated such a threat from ever resurfacing, it seems that Washington has also arguably shot global oil markets in the foot by re-imposing economic sanctions against Iran, with more sanctions slated to hit the Islamic Republic’s energy sector in just a matter of weeks.

The loss of Iranian barrels from global oil markets has already pushed prices well past $80 per barrel recently, and prices could break into the $90 plus range after November. Added to the fray are long term production problems in major OPEC producers Venezuela, Nigeria and Libya – in effect offsetting the ramp-up in U.S. production and the ability for shale producers to play the coveted role of oil markets swing producer. Now Saudi Arabia has taken at least marginal control of oil markets back again – not a comforting prospect for many.

Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it would retaliate against any punitive measures from the U.S. linked to the disappearance of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi with even “stronger ones.” In what Bloomberg News called an implicit reference to the kingdom’s petroleum wealth, the Saudi statement noted the Saudi economy “has an influential and vital role in the global economy.”

1973 oil embargo remembered

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