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A Glimpse Of Things To Come: Bankrupt Shale Producers “Can’t Give Their Assets Away”

A Glimpse Of Things To Come: Bankrupt Shale Producers “Can’t Give Their Assets Away”

Over the course of the last several weeks, we’ve spent quite a bit of time sounding the alarm bells on America’s growing list of bankrupt oil and gas drillers.

We’ve also been keen to point out that the long list of cash flow negative US producers has only managed to stay in business this long because Wall Street has thus far been willing to plug the sector’s funding gap with cheap financing thanks to ZIRP and investors’ insatiable demand for anything that looks like it might offer some semblance of yield.

It is not a matter of “if” but rather a matter of “when” the entire complex goes under and when that happens, the relatively paltry sums banks have set aside against losses in their energy books will balloon as everyone on Wall Street simultaneously pulls a BOK Financial.

Indeed, we’re already hearing the not-so-distant rumblings of this oncoming default freight train as JP Morgan raises its net loan loss reserves for the first time in 22 quarters, Wells Fargo discloses $17 billion in “mostly” junk energy exposure, and Citi dodges questions about the reserves it’s holding against a $58 billion energy book that the bank may or may not be marking to market depending on what the Dallas Fed “didn’t” tell banksearlier this month.

M2M or no, higher provisions or not, the end of America’s oil “miracle” is coming and there’s nothing Wall Street can do to stop it. At this point in the game, no one is going to finance these companies’ cash flow deficits and the fundamentals in the oil market are laughably bad. Storage is overflowing, demand is withering, and supply is, well, “drowning” us all, to quote the IEA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Price Crash: How low will the oil price go?

Oil Price Crash: How low will the oil price go?

In August 2015 I gave a crude answer to that question based on history in a post called The Oil Price: how low is low? where I observed:

To get straight to the point. Brent will need to fall below $30 to match the lows seen in 1986 and to below $20 to match the lows seen in 1998.

This observation was based on deflated annual average price from BP ($2014). The notion of $20 oil has since caught on and some commentators are now speculating that $10 is possible. It is time to have a closer look at what history tells us.

This article was originally published on the Energy Matters blog.

First a look at recent oil price action.

Figure 1 Long term picture of WTI and Brent daily spot oil prices. The most recent falls have taken the oil price to the 2008 lows that technically may provide price support. But supply demand fundamentals are against that. The last time we had an over-supply based rout was 1998/99 (arrow) where in money of the day, Brent bottomed at $10/bbl. Adjusted for inflation, that is approximately $15/bbl in today’s money.

On a money of the day basis, the oil price has now reached the lows, and support level, seen in the wake of the 2008 finance crash. In detail, the support level has already been pricked and on a deflated basis, that support is already broken.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada Set To Unleash Negative Rates As Oil Patch Dies, Depression Deepens

Canada Set To Unleash Negative Rates As Oil Patch Dies, Depression Deepens

This Wednesday, the Bank of Canada has a decision to make.

Canada’s oil “dream” is dying thanks to the inexorable slide in crude prices and as the IEA made clear earlier today, the pain is set to persist for the foreseeable future as the world “drowns in oversupply.”

“Lower for longer” has hit the country’s oil patch hard. We’ve spent quite a bit of time documenting the plight of Alberta, where job cuts tied to crude’s slide have led directly to rising suicide rates, soaring property crime, and increased food bank usage (not to mention booming business for repo men).

Adding insult to injury for Canadians is the plunging loonie. Because the country imports most of its fresh fruits and vegetables, the weak currency has triggered a sharp increase in the price of many items in the grocery aisle as documented in a hilarious series of tweets by incredulous Canadian shoppers.

The question for the Bank of Canada is this: is the risk of an even weaker loonie worth taking if a rate cut has the potential to head off the myriad risks facing the economy?

We’ll find out what the BOC thinks tomorrow, but in the meantime, analysts have weighed in. JP Morgan’s Daniel Hui says CAD needs to fall further lest producers should simply close up shop. “[W]ith West Canada Select (WCS) now sitting just a dollar above the average per-barrel operational cost of $20 (Canadian), the risk is that any further decline will cause a whole new host of spillovers including potential shutdown and retrenchment of energy extraction and exports (with its attendant growth and balance of payment effects) or the potential of highly leveraged companies running operational losses, and the more contagious financial impact that might have in Canada, with broader spillovers.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada Rebels against the Destruction of the Loonie

Canada Rebels against the Destruction of the Loonie

The fear of “currency instability.”

“Without precedent” — that’s what National Bank of Canada’s chief economist Stéfane Marion called the wholesale destruction of the loonie.

The Canadian dollar is in a tailspin. Rarely has it tumbled so far so fast, and against so many currencies. The steepness of the CAD’s depreciation against the USD is without precedent, -33%, or 3.5 standard deviations, in 24 months.

In the two weeks so far this year, the loonie has dropped 5.8% against the euro, 5.3% against the greenback, and 8.6% against the yen. “Even the likes of Norway (+5.4% against the CAD) and Sweden (+3.9%) are mocking the once-mighty Canadian dollar,” Marion wrote in the note. “Australia and New Zealand? Not to worry, they are also gaining ground against the CAD.”

The Canadian dollar plunged to a fresh 13-year low last week and hasn’t recovered since, hovering at US$0.688, below $0.70 for the first time since spring 2003.

People are getting alarmed. A lot of consumer goods are imported, including 81% of fruits and vegetables. The plunging loonie makes them more expensive for Canadians: meat prices rose 5% last year, fruits 9%, vegetables 10%. The average household ended up spending C$325 more for food in 2015 than in 2014, according to the Food Price Report. And it’s likely to get worse.

When Stephen Poloz became governor of the Bank of Canada in 2013, he set out to hammer down the Canadian dollar. In 2015, he redoubled his efforts. He relied on ceaseless jawboning. He even invoked the absurdity of negative interest rates. And he cut the overnight rate twice, the infamous surprise cut in January and the telegraphed cut in July, at a time when the Fed was flip-flopping about raising rates.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The great condensate con: Is the oil glut just about oil?

The great condensate con: Is the oil glut just about oil?

My favorite Texas oilman Jeffrey Brown is at it again. In a recent email he’s pointing out to everyone who will listen that the supposed oversupply of crude oil isn’t quite what it seems. Yes, there is a large overhang of excess oil in the market. But how much of that oversupply is honest-to-god oil and how much is so-called lease condensate which gets carelessly lumped in with crude oil? And, why is this important to understanding the true state of world oil supplies?

In order to answer these questions we need to get some preliminaries out of the way.

Lease condensate consists of very light hydrocarbons which condense from gaseous into liquid form when they leave the high pressure of oil reservoirs and exit through the top of an oil well. This condensate is less dense than oil and can interfere with optimal refining if too much is mixed with actual crude oil. The oil industry’s own engineers classify oil as hydrocarbons having an API gravity of less than 45–the higher the number, the lower the density and the “lighter” the substance. Lease condensate is defined as hydrocarbons having an API gravity between 45 and 70. (For a good discussion about condensates and their place in the marketplace, read “Neither Fish nor Fowl – Condensates Muscle in on NGL and Crude Markets.”)

Refiners are already complaining that so-called “blended crudes” contain too much lease condensate, and they are seeking out better crudes straight from the wellhead. Brown has dubbed all of this the great condensate con.

Brown points out that U.S. net crude oil imports for December 2015 grew from the previous December, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. U.S. statistics for crude oil imports include condensate, but don’t break out condensate separately.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Negative Oil Prices Arrive: Koch Brothers’ Refinery “Pays” -$0.50 For North Dakota Crude

Negative Oil Prices Arrive: Koch Brothers’ Refinery “Pays” -$0.50 For North Dakota Crude

Do you have some extra space in your garage or attic? Or perhaps you own an oil tanker you aren’t currently using. Or maybe you have a storage unit that’s got a little extra room next to an old mattress and box springs.

If so, you may want to call up oil producers in North Dakota and ask if they’d care to send you some free oil, because the crude glut is now so acute that the Koch brothers are actually charging $0.50/bbl to take low grade oil at their Flint Hills Resources refining arm.


North Dakota Sour is a high-sulfur grade of crude and “is a small portion of the state’s production, with less than 15,000 barrels a day coming out of the ground,” Bloomberg notes, citing John Auers, executive vice president at Turner Mason & Co. in Dallas. “The output has been dwarfed by low-sulfur crude from the Bakken shale formation in the western part of the state, which has grown to 1.1 million barrels a day in the past 10 years.”

High-sulfur grades are more expensive to refine and thus fetch lower prices at market. As Bloomberg goes on to note, “Enbridge stopped allowing high-sulfur crudes on its pipeline out of North Dakota in 2011, forcing North Dakota Sour producers to rely on more expensive transport such as trucks and trains [and] the price for Canadian bitumen — the thick, sticky substance at the center of the heated debate over TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline — fell to $8.35 last week, down from as much as $80 less than two years ago.”

So there you have it. The global deflationary supply glut has now reached the point that the market is effectively forcing producers to pay to give their oil away or else see it sit in bloated storage facilities until Riyadh decides enough is enough and until the world comes to terms with the return of Iranian supply.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Financial Apocalypse Accelerates As Middle East Stocks Crash To Begin The Week

The Financial Apocalypse Accelerates As Middle East Stocks Crash To Begin The Week

Apocalyptic - Public DomainIt looks like it is going to be another chaotic week for global financial markets.  On Sunday, news that Iran plans to dramatically ramp up oil production sent stocks plunging all across the Middle East.  Stocks in Kuwait were down 3.1 percent, stocks in Saudi Arabia plummeted 5.4 percent, and stocks in Qatar experienced a mammoth 7 percent decline.  And of course all of this comes in the context of a much larger long-term decline for Middle Eastern stocks.  At this point, Saudi Arabian stocks are down more than 50 percent from their 2014 highs.  Needless to say, a lot of very wealthy people in Saudi Arabia are getting very nervous.  Could you imagine waking up someday and realizing that more than half of your fortune had been wiped out?  Things aren’t that bad in the U.S. quite yet, but it looks like another rough week could be ahead.  The Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are all down at least 12 percent from their 52-week highs, and the Russell 2000 is already in bear market territory.  Hopefully this week will not be as bad as last week, but events are starting to move very rapidly now.

Much of the chaos around the globe is being driven by the price of oil.  At the end of last week the price of oil dipped below 30 dollars a barrel, and now Iran has announced plans “to add 1 million barrels to its daily crude production”

Iran could get more than five times as much cash from oil sales by year-end as the lifting of economic sanctions frees the OPEC member to boost crude exports and attract foreign investment needed to rebuild its energy industry.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Just Happened With OIL?

What Just Happened With OIL?

Yesterday, we reported exclusively how the Dallas Fed is pulling strings behind the scenes to conceal the fallout from the oil market crash. As Dark-Bid.com’s Daniel Drew notes, by suspending mark-to-market on energy loans and distorting the accounting, they are postponing the inevitable as long as possible. The current situation is eerily reminiscent to the heyday of the mortgage market in 2007, when mortgage defaults started to pick up, and yet the credit default swaps that tracked them continued to decline, bringing losses to those brave enough to trade against the crowd.

Amidst the market chaos on Friday, a trader brought something strange to my attention. He asked me exactly what the hell was going on with this ETN he was watching. I took a closer look and was baffled. It took me awhile to put the pieces together. Then when I saw the story about mark-to-market being suspended, it all made sense.

Here is the daily premium for the last 6 months on the Barclays iPath ETN that tracks oil:

Initially, Dark-Bid.com’s Daniel Drew thought this was merely a sign of retail desperation. As they faced devastating losses on their oil stocks, small investors turned to products like oil ETNs as they tried to grasp the elusive oil profits their financial adviser promised them a year ago. Oblivious to the cruel mechanics of ETNs, they piled in head first, in spite of the soaring premium to fair value. After all, Larry Fink is making the rounds to convince the small investor that ETFs are indeed safer than mutual funds. Because nothing says “safe” like buying an ETN that is 36% above its fair value.

Sure, there are differences between ETFs and ETNs, particularly regarding their solvency in the event of an issuer default, but the premium/discount problem plagues ETFs and ETNs alike. Nonetheless, widely trusted retail sources of investment information perpetuate the myth that ETNs do not have tracking errors.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Iran Unleashes Oil Flood, Will Quintuple Crude Revenue In 2016

Iran Unleashes Oil Flood, Will Quintuple Crude Revenue In 2016

On Saturday, Iran marked what President Hassan Rouhani called a “golden page” in the country’s history when the IAEA ruled that Tehran had stuck to its commitments under last year’s nuclear accord.

Moments after the ruling was handed down, the US and the EU each lifted nuclear-related financial and economic sanctions on the “pariah state,” much to the chagrin of Israel and Tehran’s regional rivals who view the West’s rapprochement with the Iranians with deep suspicion.

Everybody is happy except the Zionists, the warmongers who are fuelling sectarian war among the Islamic nation, and the hardliners in the U.S. congress,” Rouhani said, referring directly to Israel, the Saudis, and GOP lawmakers in the US.

In addition to the never-ending feud with the Israelis, Tehran is embroiled in a worsening conflict with Riyadh triggered by Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and subsequent attacks on the Saudi embassy and consulate in Iran. The argument has raised the specter of an all-out conflict between the Sunni and Shiite powers and stoked sectarian discord across the region.

With sanctions lifted, Iran will now have access to some $100 billion in frozen funds and will be able to increase its oil revenue exponentially even as prices remain suppressed.

It’s easy to see why the Saudis and other Gulf Sunni monarchies are nervous. Iran plans to immediately boost output by 500,000 b/d with an additional 500,000 b/d coming online by year end. “The oil ministry, by ordering companies to boost production and oil terminals to be ready, kicked off today the plan to increase Iran’s crude exports by 500,000 barrels,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Sunday, citing Amir Hossein Zamaninia, deputy oil minister for commerce and international affairs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why We May Never See $100-a-Barrel Oil Again

Why We May Never See $100-a-Barrel Oil Again

‘Race for What’s Left’ author surveys geopolitical fortunes in aftermath of a pricequake.

Oil-Barrels

Pricequake: Recent turmoil could spell doom — not just for ‘tough oil’ projects now underway — but for some over-extended companies (and governments) that own them. Oil barrel photo via Shutterstock.

As 2015 drew to a close, many in the global energy industry were praying that the price of oil would bounce back from the abyss, restoring the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century. All evidence, however, points to a continuing depression in oil prices in 2016 — one that may, in fact, stretch into the 2020s and beyond. Given the centrality of oil (and oil revenues) in the global power equation, this is bound to translate into a profound shakeup in the political order, with petroleum-producing states from Saudi Arabia to Russia losing both prominence and geopolitical clout.

To put things in perspective, it was not so long ago — in June 2014, to be exact — that Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was selling at $115 per barrel. Energy analysts then generally assumed that the price of oil would remain well over $100 deep into the future and might gradually rise to even more stratospheric levels. Such predictions inspired the giant energy companies to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in what were then termed “unconventional” reserves: Arctic oil, Canadian tar sands, deep offshore reserves, and dense shale formations. It seemed obvious then that whatever the problems with, and the cost of extracting, such energy reserves, sooner or later handsome profits would be made. It mattered little that the cost of exploiting such reserves might reach $50 or more a barrel.

As of this moment, however, Brent crude is selling at $33 per barrel, one-third of its price 18 months ago and way below the break-even price for most unconventional “tough oil” endeavours [Editor’s note: Since this story first appeared, prices fell below $30 per barrel].

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Norway Pushes Panic Button: “We’re In A Crisis Now, We Can’t Deny That”

Norway Pushes Panic Button: “We’re In A Crisis Now, We Can’t Deny That” 

We’ve spent quite a bit of time documenting Norway’s precarious balancing act in the face of slumping crude prices.

On the one hand, falling crude puts pressure on the krone which essentially allows the Norges Bank to compete in the regional currency wars without resorting to the same type of deeply negative rates as the ECB, the Riksbank, the Nationalbank, and the SNB. In short, a falling krone preserves export competitiveness in a world gone Keynesian crazy.

At the same time, falling crude puts enormous pressure on the country’s economy, which is heavily dependent on oil production

Additionally, collapsing crude revenue means the country will soon be forced to drawdown its $830 billion sovereign wealth fund (the largest in the world) to plug the various budget leaks caused by “lower for longer.”

Now, Norway has declared that its oil industry has entered a “crisis.”

“[The] industry is in a crisis now, we can’t deny that,” Bente Nyland, director general of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, told Bloomberg who reminds us that “Norway depends on oil and gas for about one-fifth of its economic output and nationwide, the petroleum industry has cut almost 30,000 jobs.”

The government last year announced plans to boost spending on the way to shoring up the flagging economy and officials says those measures – which are part of the reason why Norway will pull money from the SWF – should be sufficient to offset the pain from lower crude prices. “Finance Minister Siv Jensen says budget proposals put forward last year already contain ‘a lot of expansion’ and will help stem job losses,” Bloomberg continues, before noting that “the question is how quickly the economic adjustment brought on by a weaker krone will manifest itself.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Freezes Government Salaries As Canada’s Oil Patch Enters Second Year Of Recession

Alberta Freezes Government Salaries As Canada’s Oil Patch Enters Second Year Of Recession

On Wednesday, we documented the astonishing prices beleaguered Canadians are now forced to pay for groceries thanks to the plunging loonie.

Oil’s inexorable decline has the Canadian dollar in a veritable tailspin and because Canada imports the vast majority of its fresh food, prices on everything from cucumbers to cauliflower are on the rise, tightening the screws an already weary shoppers.

Soaring food prices are but the latest slap in the face for Canadians and especially for Albertans who have been hit the hardest by 13 months of crude carnage. Resources account for a third of provincial revenue and with oil and gas investment expected to have fallen over 30% in 2015, Alberta’s economy has is expected to contract  for the foreseeable future.

The economic malaise has had a number of nasty side effects including soaring property crime in Calgary, rising food bank usage, and sharply higher suicide rates.

With the outlook for oil prices not expected to improve in the near-term, ATB now says the province faces two long years of recession. “The pain is going to be concentrated in the first half of the year. But we don’t really see any ending in sight to a downturn at least until the end of the year. So we are calling for another contraction,” ATB’s Chief Economist Todd Hirsch says in The Alberta Economic Outlook Q1 2016 report.

“This low price environment continues to discourage new investment and spending and has weighed down employment — not only in the oilpatch, but throughout most sectors of the province,” Hirsch continues. “This downturn is longer in duration certainly than 2009 was which was a very quick downturn but very short-lived. This one is going to linger on longer.

Indeed. Here are some charts from the report which underscore the magnitude of the sharp reversal in fortunes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Last Bubble Standing

Last Bubble Standing

EM debt bubble… emaciated, FX Carry… crucified, Crude…crushed,  High yield bonds… burst, Chinese equities… blown, Trannies… trounced, Small Caps… slammed, Biotechs… busted, and FANGs finally FUBAR!But there is one big (very big) bubble left in the world that no one is talking about, and a rather large liquidity-busting pin beckons…

In May 2015 we first explained exactly why China was blowing its equity market bubble. Simply put, with more “equity,” companies were better able to refinance/roll (note, no interest in debt reduction or deleveraging) their record-breaking mountain of debt and avoid the systemic collapse that is utterly imminent for just a few more months/years.

Now that the equity market bubble has burst, Chinese authorities have chased investors into another bubble.

In October 2015, we warned of the relative risk building in the Chinese corporate bond market.

As the rout in Chinese stocks this year erased $5 trillion of value, investors fled for safety in the nation’s red-hot corporate bond market. They may have just moved from one bubble to another.

Into Chinese corporate bonds…

As we detailed just two months ago, this historic bond bubble is paradoxical for the simple reason that China’s credit fundamentals have never been worseand as we further showed, as a result of the ongoing collapse in commodity prices (which today’s Chinese rate and RRR-cut will have absolutely no impact on), more than half of commodity companies can’t generate the cash required to even pay their interest, a number which drops to “only” a quarter when expanded to all industries.

“The equity rout merely reflects worries about China’s economy, while a bond market crash would mean the worries have become a reality as corporate debts go unpaid,” said Xia Le, the chief economist for Asia at Banco Bilbao. “A Chinese credit collapse would also likely spark a more significant selloff in emerging-market assets.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency

Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency

It was just yesterday when we documented the continuing slide in the loonie, which is suffering mightily in the face of oil’s inexorable decline.

As regular readers are no doubt acutely aware, Canada is struggling through a dramatic economic adjustment, especially in Alberta, the heart of the country’s oil patch. Amid the ongoing crude carnage the province has seen soaring property crime, rising food bank usage and, sadly, elevated suicide rates, as Albertans struggle to comprehend how things up north could have gone south (so to speak) so quickly.

The plunging loonie “can only serve to worsen the death of the ‘Canadian Dream'” we said on Tuesday.

As it turns out, we were exactly right.

The currency’s decline is having a pronounced effect on Canadians’ grocery bills. As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada imports around 80% of its fresh fruits and vegetables. When the loonie slides, prices for those good soar. “With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress,” Bloomberg continues.

Of course with the layoffs piling up, you can expect more households to fall into the “lower-income” category where they will have to struggle to afford things like $3 cucumbers, $8 cauliflower, and $15 Frosted Flakes. Have a look at the following tweets which underscore just how bad it is in Canada’s grocery aisles.

Three bucks. For a cucumber.

Albert Edwards Hits Peak Pessimism: “S&P Will Fall 75%”, Global Recession Looms

Albert Edwards Hits Peak Pessimism: “S&P Will Fall 75%”, Global Recession Looms

2016 has thus far been a year characterized by remarkable bouts of harrowing volatility as the ongoing devaluation of the yuan, plunging crude prices, and geopolitical uncertainty wreak havoc on fragile, inflated markets.

With asset prices still sitting near nosebleed levels after seven years of bubble blowing by a global cabal of overzealous central planners with delusions of Keynesian grandeur, some fear a dramatic unwind is in the cards and that this one will be the big one, so to speak.

December’s Fed liftoff may well go down as the most ill-timed rate hike in history Marc Faber recently opined, underscoring the fact that the Fed probably missed its window and is now set to embark on a tightening cycle just as the US slips back into recession amid a wave of imported deflation and the reverberations from an EM crisis precipitated by the soaring dollar.

One person who is particularly bearish is the incomparable Albert Edwards. SocGen’s “uber bear” (or, more appropriately, “realist”) is out with a particularly alarming assessment of the situation facing markets in the new year.

“Investors are coming to terms with what a Chinese renminbi devaluation means for Western markets,” Edwards begins, in a note dated Wednesday. “It means global deflation and recession,” he adds, matter-of-factly.

First, Edwards bemoans the lunacy of going “full-Krugman” (which regular readers know you never, ever do):

I have always said that if inflating asset prices via loose monetary policy were the route to economic prosperity, Argentina would be the richest country in the world by now ?and it is not! The Fed?s pursuit of negligently loose monetary policies since 2009 is a misguided attempt to boost economic growth via asset price inflation and we will now reap the whirlwind (the ECB, Bank of Japan and the Bank of England are all just as bad).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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