Home » Posts tagged 'oil market'

Tag Archives: oil market

The global oil market is in OPEC+ walk-up mode.

That should keep prices supported this week ahead of the (now online) gaggle, which falls on June 2.

After that, price direction hinges on the immediate fallout from the meeting, plus bets about the market’s 2H trajectory.

Conventional wisdom points to an extension of the cartel’s current curbs, especially as weakening near-term timespreads suggest that physical conditions aren’t quite as tight as they have been of late.

Bloomberg’s Grant Smith, a well-seasoned OPEC+ watcher, leans that way, and that looks to be a sound call.

The existing reductions amount to ~2 million bpd, and the tap-tightening has contributed to a growing volume of unused capacity — a theme that may get an airing.

Crude’s sentiment this week will also be shaped by indications of just how strong Memorial Day weekend demand has proved to be in the US as the country embraces the start of the traditional driving season and takes to the roads (and skies).

Early signs have pointed to a solid showing, both on the highways and in the skyways.

US dollar’s dominance in oil markets may face challenge as Saudis reportedly eye yuan-based sales deal with China

March 16, 2022

US dollar’s dominance in oil markets may face challenge as Saudis reportedly eye yuan-based sales deal with China

HANGZHOU, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 04: Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) shakes hands with Saudi Arabian Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to the G20 Summit on September 4, 2016 in Hangzhou, China. World leaders are gathering in Hangzhou for the 11th G20 Leaders Summit from September 4 to 5. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images) — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Saudi Arabia is in talks to sell oil to China and be paid in yuan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
For nearly 50 years, the world’s top oil exporter has traded crude exclusively in US dollars.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and the US have deteriorated under the Biden administration.

Saudi Arabia is in talks to sell oil to China and be paid in yuan instead of dollars, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

About 80% of global oil sales are done in dollars, and Saudi Arabia has conducted its deals exclusively in the greenback since 1974. So if a Saudi-yuan deal were to be made, it would bolster China’s currency at the expense of the dollar as Beijing looks to challenge US leadership in financial markets.

The likelihood of a potential deal between Saudi Arabia and China has picked up recently, according to the Journal. The longtime Mideast ally has grown unhappy with the US due to the Biden administration’s reluctance to do more in the Yemen civil war and its push to revive the Iran nuclear deal.

In 2020, Biden also promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of a journalist. And since becoming president, he has made it clear that he doesn’t consider Saudi Arabia as an ally, but rather as a partner.

What’s more, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam reportedly rejected a request for a call with Biden to discuss Ukraine and boost oil production amid the West’s sanctions against Russia.

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

Running Out of Spare Capacity

December 6, 2021

Running Out of Spare Capacity

Global oil markets could not have looked grimmer than back in the summer of 2020. COVID cases were increasing again and further global economic lockdowns were being threatened. Only two months before, oil prices had crashed into negative territory for the first time in history as global inventories had surged and threatened to overflow. Between the never-ending pandemic and electric vehicles, common investment wisdom believed oil demand was in secular decline, bloated inventories would remain elevated forever, and oil prices would never recover.

At Goehring & Rozencwajg, we love to undertake in-depth insightful research that identifies newly developing investment trends and often comes up with conclusions that differ vastly from consensus opinion. Our goal is to share these results with our investment clients and partners at least twelve months before they become headline news in the financial press. This is an ambitious goal and we don’t always get it right. However, the satisfaction in recognizing trends long before the general investment community not only brings large profits to our investors, but a huge amount of professional pleasure to us as well.

To that end, we titled our 2Q2020 letter “On the Verge of an Energy Crisis”. At the time, no one agreed with us. Now headline after headline talks of an “unforeseen” energy panic. It looks like the energy crisis we discussed 14 months ago is now here.

If the energy crisis has arrived, where does Goehring & Rozencwajg see things 12 months from now? By the end of 2022, we believe global oil demand will have exceeded pumping capability for the first time in history. Just as no one agreed with our assessment of an emerging energy crisis this time last year, almost no one agrees us today either. Instead, conventional wisdom strongly believes OPEC spare capacity will be returned, eventually throwing the market into huge surplus in 2022.

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

365 Days of Climate Awareness 88 – Peak Oil

November 25, 2021

365 Days of Climate Awareness 88 – Peak Oil

Too much demand causes oil prices to rise to an unsustainable level, leading to the oil market’s collapse.

This is another topic, like eutrophication, which is not specifically part of the global warming problem, but it is of direct importance to society and to our use of petroleum. Peak oil theory states that, since petroleum is a finite resource, while humanity is not in imminent danger of running out of recoverable oil, the remaining oil will be increasingly hard to obtain, requiring more time and resources, becoming a less efficient process which is increasingly not beneficial to the economy or humanity.

***

In 1956 Marion King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil, was commissioned to report on future oil recovery in the United States. After a statistical study of all available oil field data, Hubbert developed a bell-curve model for conventional crude oil production predicting a peak in the early 1970’s. In fact conventional oil—wells drilled on land, without the application of advanced recovery techniques—peaked slightly before Hubbert’s prediction, topping out at 9.5 million barrels per day (mmbd). Similarly detailed information is not available for oil fields in other countries—Saudi Arabia is not about to give out detailed information about production and reserves, which would compromise its geopolitical strength, for example—so similarly detailed predictions cannot be made for the planet as a whole.

Furthermore, unconventional oil production has increasingly come to dominate the market, with offshore and fracked wells leading to new peaks in production, notably in the United States (which currently leads the world in crude oil production at slightly over 10.5 mmbd). So what to make of a theory which was correct on its initial terms—predicting maximum onshore oil production in the United States—but avoided predictions for the markets which developed later, and have led to later, higher production?

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

Oil Market Heading For Months Of Deficit

June 6, 2020

Oil Market Heading For Months Of Deficit

The oil market is set for a deficit from August onwards, even after OPEC+ eases the current cuts that are up for a tentative extension through July, Rystad Energy analysts said on Friday.

Assuming that global demand recovery continues in the coming months, the oil market will still be in deficit even after the OPEC+ group relaxes the current cuts from 9.7 million bpd to 7.7 million bpd, as currently planned, Rystad Energy’s Head of Oil Markets, Bjornar Tonhaugen, said, as carried by Oilfield Technology.

“That will ensure a fundamental support for prices, while also spurring a quicker reactivation of curtailed US oil production, and eventually frac crews ending their holidays early,” Tonhaugen said in a note.

“Indications show that a bit more than 300 000 bpd from shut US production is actually coming back online already from June as a result of the current price levels,” he said.

Some U.S. producers have already restarted some curtailed production as prices have rallied in recent weeks and as they need the cash from operations, regardless of how little.

The market deficit coming this summer, however, doesn’t mean that there will be a global oil supply crunch, because inventories and floating storage have yet to begin depleting.

“So, even if demand exceeds supply for a while, that does not mean that we really have a problem to source oil. Oil is there, lots of it, waiting to be drawn from storage facilities,” Rystad Energy’s Tonhaugen said.

Improving global oil demand and faster-than-expected production curtailments from outside the OPEC+ pact are set to push the oil market into deficit in June, according to Goldman Sachs. Yet, there is little room for an oil price rally in the near term because of the still sizeable oversupply of crude oil and refined products, Goldman Sachs said in a note in the middle of May.

Earlier this week, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said he expected a shortage in the oil market in July.

Oil Price Crash Was Inevitable

April 25, 2020

Oil Price Crash Was Inevitable

The oil price crash was inevitable.

To understand why we have to review a bit of history.

In 2013, I began warning of the risk to oil prices due to the ongoing imbalances between global supply and demand. Those warnings fell on deaf ears.

Nobody wanted to pay much attention to the fundamentals at a time when near-zero interest rates were pushing banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms, to chase the “yield” in the energy space. Naturally, with money flooding into the system, companies were forced to drill economically unproductive wells to meet investor demands, which drove supplies higher.

Disclaimer

This week’s #MacroView is a broader commentary on the more general issues of the oil market. However, given this backdrop of what oil prices will likely remain suppressed far longer than most currently imagine, some opportunities exist in the energy space.

We recently added positions in Exxon (XOM), Chevron (CVX), and the SPDR Energy ETF (XLE) to our portfolios. We believed the companies offered significant value before the crisis, and offer even more due to the sell-off in oil.

Based on our discounted cash flow model for XOM and CVX, we think both companies are 25% undervalued. The model assumes very conservative earnings projections for the next three years and a low EPS growth rate after that. In addition to trading at a steep discount, we think their strong balance sheets put these companies in a prime position to purchase sharply discounted energy assets in the months ahead.

These stocks, and the sector, will be volatile for a while, but we intend to add to these positions in the future and potentially hold them for a long time.

Now, for the rest of the story.

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

Coronavirus Could Crush Natgas Market Amid Collapsing Chinese Demand

February 12, 2020

Coronavirus Could Crush Natgas Market Amid Collapsing Chinese Demand

Last week we warned that the drop in Chinese petroleum consumption could spark one of the “biggest shocks to oil markets since the Lehman crisis.” Now it seems the fast-moving contagion has spread to liquefied natural gas (LNG) markets, Fitch Ratings detailed in a new report.

LNG markets in Europe and Asia could experience a shock as Chinese imports of LNG are expected to plunge. The hopes for a rebalanced market have been delayed thanks to the coronavirus outbreak.

The decline in Chinese energy consumption is a severe event risk that needs to be monitored.

Already, commodity spot prices and shipping rates have fallen, suggesting world trade growth could take a big hit in Q1.

LNG importers in China have announced they could cut 70% of seaborne imports in February. Tanker rates for LNG to Europe to the Asia Pacific to the Middle East to the Americas have dropped in the last 30 days.

Fitch notes that Chinese LNG imports account for 17% of global purchases in 2018 and 50% of global demand growth in 2016-2018. Any lapse in demand from China could be devastating for the global LNG markets and commodity-based economies.

Massive demand loss from China will weigh on spot natgas prices this year. It could lead to lower business activity and force some companies into a credit crisis.

The global LNG market was already oversupplied in 2019 amid additional output from Australia, Russia, and the US, which is coming at a time when the global economy is decelerating. Warmer weather in the US, Europe, and Asia has undoubtedly led to an uptick in gas storage. Spot prices for natgas have plunged 40% in the last three months.

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

A New Mega Cartel Is Emerging In Oil Markets

April 30, 2019

A New Mega Cartel Is Emerging In Oil Markets

China and India—two of the world’s largest oil importers and the biggest demand growth centers globally—are close to setting up an oil buyers’ club to have a say in the pricing and sourcing of crude oil amid OPEC’s cuts and U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, Indian outlet livemint reports, citing three officials with knowledge of the talks.

This is not the first time that the two major oil importers are working to create such an oil club.

India and China have discussed creating an ‘oil buyers’ club’ to be able to negotiate better prices with oil exporting countries and will be looking to import more U.S. crude oil in order to reduce OPEC’s sway, both over the global oil market and over prices, India’s Petroleum Ministry said in June 2018.

“With oil producers’ cartel OPEC playing havoc with prices, India discussed with China the possibility of forming an ‘oil buyers club’ that can negotiate better terms with sellers as well as getting more US crude oil to cut dominance of the oil block,” a tweet from the Petroleum Ministry’s Twitter account said in the middle of last year, when oil prices were rising ahead of the return of the U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil industry.

According to the officials cited by livemint, China and India have exchanged senior-level visits several times since then and have made progress on “joint sourcing of crude oil.” Related: Massive Drop In U.S. Oil Rig Count Fails To Arrest Price Slide

Reports of the strengthened Chinese-Indian cooperation in potentially forming an oil buyers’ club come just as the U.S. sanction waivers for all Iranian oil customers expire this week.

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

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The US Moves on Iran’s Oil Market as an Expression of an Irrational Foreign Policy

April 30, 2019

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The US Moves on Iran’s Oil Market as an Expression of an Irrational Foreign Policy

Patrick Lawrence gauges the backfiring potential of Pompeo’s withdrawal on Thursday of U.S. sanction waivers from eight major importers.

A Decisive Defeat in Long-Running Battle with Foreign Policy Minders

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement last week that no importer of Iranian oil will henceforth be exempt from U.S. sanctions is as risky as it is misguided. The withdrawal of waivers as of this Thursday effectively gives eight importers dependent on Iranian crude — India, Japan, South Korea, China, Turkey, Taiwan, Italy, and Greece — 10 days’ notice to adjust their petroleum purchases. This is now a full-court press: The intent is to cut off Iran’s access to any oil market anywhere as part of the administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. “We are going to zero,” Pompeo said as he disclosed the new policy.

Nobody is going to zero. The administration’s move will further damage the Iranian economy, certainly, but few outside the administration think it is possible to isolate Iran as comprehensively as Pompeo seems to expect. Turkey immediately rejected “unilateral sanctions and impositions on how to conduct relations with neighbors,” as Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu put it in a Twitter message. China could do the same, if less bluntly. Other oil importers are likely to consider barter deals, local-currency transactions, and similar “workarounds.” In the immediate neighborhood, Iraq is so far ignoring U.S. demands that it cease purchasing natural gas and electricity from Iran.

Pompeo joining an Iranian diaspora meeting in Dallas, April 15, 2019. (State Department/Ron Przysucha via Flickr)

Insights on Overreach

There are a couple of insights to be gleaned from this unusually aggressive case of policy overreach.

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

Smart Money Is Piling Into Oil

April 10, 2019

Smart Money Is Piling Into Oil

Oil prices jumped to five-month highs this week, pushed higher by a bullish cocktail of supply outages, geopolitical unrest and a sputtering shale sector.

The most recent factor is the sudden eruption of the long simmering feud in Libya between rival factions. The attack on Tripoli by the Libyan National Army (LNA), a militia led by Khalifa Haftar, led to a spike in oil prices on Monday as the market priced in the possibility of supply outages.

One oil export terminal near Tripoli is the most obvious asset at risk. “If this port were to be shut down due to the fighting, this could see a delivery outage of up to 300,000 barrels per day,” Commerzbank said in a note on Tuesday. “The oil market is already undersupplied, so if supply from Libya also falls away the supply deficit will become even bigger.” Brent jumped to $71 and WTI to $64 on the news, the highest level in five months.

Intriguingly, speculators have only recently turned bullish on crude oil in terms of their positions in the futures market. “Indeed, our money-manager positioning index implies that speculative funds only moved from neutral to positive on oil in the latest week,” Standard Chartered wrote in a report on April 9. The investment bank argued that major investors only began to properly factor in geopolitical risk in the last few days, having overlooked risk for much of this year. Standard Chartered analysts said that the “supply security” of Libyan oil is “low,” and that output could decline in both the short and medium term.

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

12 Empty Supertankers Tell Us Everything We Need To Know About The Oil Market

February 24, 2019

12 Empty Supertankers Tell Us Everything We Need To Know About The Oil Market

As the US battles with its OPEC+ rivals over the direction of global oil prices (Trump wants to keep oil prices subdued, while Saudi Arabia and Russia, reeling from years of prices too low to balance their budgets, are desperately hoping to push them higher with another round of production cuts), 12 supertankers sailing across the Atlantic can tell us a lot about the changing supply dynamics in the global oil market.

The tankers have been traveling a route spanning thousands of miles with no cargo other than some seawater needed for ballast. Of course, in normal times, the ships would be filled with heavy, high sulfur Middle East oil for delivery to refineries in places like Houston or New Orleans.

But these aren’t “normal” times. Following the OPE+ agreement to cut 1.5 mb/d, the ships are sailing cargo-less – forgoing profits on half of their journey – just so they can pick up the light crude that US shale producers – which briefly turned the US into a net-exporter of oil for the first time late last year – have been relentlessly pumping, according to Bloomberg.

That’s quite a sacrifice for the owners of the ships, which are traveling 21,000 with nothing to show for it.

The 12 vessels are making voyages of as much as 21,000 miles direct from Asia, all the way around South Africa, holding nothing but seawater for stability because Middle East producers are restricting supplies. Still, America’s booming volumes of light crude must still be exported, and there aren’t enough supertankers in the Atlantic Ocean for the job. So they’re coming empty.
“What’s driving this is a U.S. oil market that’s looking relatively bearish with domestic production estimates trending higher, and persistent crude oil builds we have seen for the last few weeks,” said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING Bank NV in Amsterdam.

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

Oil Markets Could See Deficit In 2019

January 16, 2019

Oil Markets Could See Deficit In 2019

The oil supply surplus is “starting to reverse,” according to a new report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The investment bank noted that oil prices had collapsed in late 2018 not only because of an oversupply problem, but also because of other “non-fundamental factors,” including the selloff of long positions by hedge funds and other market managers, as well as by fear and uncertainty in broader financial markets. Still, the bottom line was that the oil market saw a glut once again emerge in the fourth quarter.

However, “now the 1.3mn b/d surplus in 4Q18 is starting to reverse,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts wrote in a January 10 note. In fact, the bank says that the OPEC+ cuts could translate into a “slight deficit” for 2019. “With investor positioning reflecting a bearish set-up, Brent prices have already bounced back above $60/bbl, and we retain our $70/bbl average forecast for 2019,” BofAML wrote.

Oil price forecasts vary quite a bit, but a dozen or so investment banks largely agree that the selloff in late December, which pushed Brent down to $50 per barrel, had gone too far. BofAML is betting that Brent rises back to $70 per barrel.

However, the investment bank issued a rather significant caveat. This assessment is based on the assumption that the global economy does not take a turn for the worse. BofAML analysts said that Brent could plunge as low as $35 per barrel if global GDP growth slows from 3.5 percent to 2 percent.

At this point, it is anybody’s guess if the global economy slows by that much, but there is a growing number of indicators that at least suggests such a deceleration is possible. The recent data from China showing a shocking slowdown in both imports and exports is discouraging.

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

Darkening Outlook For Global Economy Threatens Crude

January 10, 2019

Darkening Outlook For Global Economy Threatens Crude

“The outlook for the global economy in 2019 has darkened.”

That conclusion came from a new report from the World Bank, citing a variety of data, including softening international trade and investment, ongoing trade tensions, and financial turmoil in emerging markets over the past year. “Storm clouds are brewing for the global economy,” the World Bank warned.

As a result, economic growth in emerging markets could “remain flat” this year, while overall growth could be “weaker than anticipated.”

One of the key backdrops to this assessment is the rate tightening from the U.S. Federal Reserve. “Advanced-economy central banks will continue to remove the accommodative policies that supported the protracted recovery from the global financial crisis ten years ago,” the World Bank report said. After several rate hikes in 2018, the Fed had suggested that two more were on the way in 2019, although the central bank’s chairman Jerome Powell recently softened that tone.

Higher interest rates and a corresponding strengthening of the dollar puts enormous pressure on indebted countries, companies and consumers in emerging markets. Such countries are vulnerable to sudden capital outflows, which could leave them crushed under the weight of dollar-denominated debt. Worse, government debt in low-income countries has surged over the last four years, from 30 percent of GDP to 50 percent of GDP, according to the World Bank. Related: Energy Experts Are Watching This Hotspot In 2019

Growth contracted in Japan, Italy and Germany in the third quarter of last year, and financial turmoil rocked global equities in the final few weeks of 2018.

“At the beginning of 2018 the global economy was firing on all cylinders, but it lost speed during the year and the ride could get even bumpier in the year ahead,” said World Bank Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva.

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

Nothing To See Here, It’s Just Everything

January 4, 2019

Nothing To See Here, It’s Just Everything

The politics of oil are complicated, to say the least. There’s any number of important players, from OPEC to North American shale to sanctions. Relating to that last one, the US government has sought to impose serious restrictions upon the Iranian regime. Choking off a major piece of that country’s revenue, and source for dollars, has been a stated US goal.

In May, the Trump administration formally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known otherwise as President Obama’s “Iran deal.” It was widely expected that pulling out would lead to harsh sanctions against any country continuing to trade using Iranian crude oil.

At the beginning of November, the US government formally re-instated those sanctions. In a surprising compromise, it did issue a number of waivers to countries like South Korea, Greece, Japan, and even China (among several others). That meant a good bit of Iran supply would remain available on global markets as a substitute source.

It is becoming 2018’s version of the 2014 “supply glut”, a benign or nearly so excuse for oil’s otherwise shocking crash. From Bloomberg only last week:

Just in late September, some traders were predicting that global oil prices would hit $100 a barrel over the following months. Their forecasts were based on the prospect of a supply crunch due to U.S. sanctions on Iran that went into effect in November. However, America’s surprise decision to grant waivers from its restrictions to some nations sparked a collapse in crude.

On the surface, the story does seem to check out; the US government did, in fact, keep Iran open for a little while longer. That additional future supply would have to have been factored into the ongoing oil price, further pressure to the downside.

But did it “spark a collapse in crude?” Nope, a demonstrable fallacy.

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

A VERY RARE SETUP: Who Will Win The Tug Of War In The Oil Market?

December 14, 2018

A VERY RARE SETUP: Who Will Win The Tug Of War In The Oil Market?

There has been a tug of war in the oil price over the past two weeks. Due to a very rare setup in the market, the oil price has traded in a very narrow range as traders fight it out to see who will win control… the BULLS or the BEARS. My bet is on the bet is on the bears. Amazingly, the oil price is literally stuck right between two critical technical levels.

Ever since the oil price peaked at $77 at the beginning of October, it has fallen $25 and is now trading in a tight volatile range between $50-$53. As we can see in the chart below, the oil price dropped to $50 at the end of November and now has been trading up and down with no clear direction:

Oil Price Daily Chart (Each candlestick = 1 day of trading)

Even though the oil price touched $54 for a few days, it has mostly been trading in a tight $3 range. In looking at this daily chart, we have no idea why the oil price is behaving in such a way. However, if we look at the longer-term monthly chart, we can see the apparent reason why. The oil price has been pushed between the 50 Month Moving Average (BLUE) and the 300 Month Moving Average (ORANGE):

Oil Price Monthly Chart (Each candlestick = 1 month of trading)

If you look at the magnified view, you will see that the oil price that closed today at $52.58 remains between these two moving averages. The large red candlestick shows the decline in the oil price in November as each candlestick represents one month of trading.

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

Tag Archives: oil market

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Nothing To See Here, It’s Just Everything

Oil Price Daily Chart (Each candlestick = 1 day of trading)

Oil Price Monthly Chart (Each candlestick = 1 month of trading)

Post navigation

Latest Posts