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Oil Prices Tank As Supply Glut Fears Return

November 21, 2018

Oil Prices Tank As Supply Glut Fears Return

flaring

Oil prices collapsed on Tuesday for the second time in a week. During midday trading, WTI fell below $55 per barrel and Brent dropped below $65 per barrel. Both benchmarks are off more than $20 per barrel from their October highs.

“Oil prices are under pressure in the face of ample supply, falling stock markets and an increasingly gloomy economic outlook,” Commerzbank said on Tuesday.

Tuesday also saw a plunge in global equities, which is dragging down all sorts of different sectors, including oil prices. “I think you’re going to see a risk-off type of market,” Tariq Zahir, a New York-based commodity fund manager at Tyche Capital Advisors LLC, told Bloomberg. “It wouldn’t be surprising to see new lows being printed on oil” if crude stocks rise sharply. U.S. crude oil inventories likely rose by 3.5 million barrels last week, a sign that the surplus continues to build.

In fact, concerns about a supply glut are growing by the day. The IEA said in its November Oil Market Report that the global surplus could average 0.7 million barrels per day (mb/d) in the fourth quarter.

On the one hand, the meltdown in prices significantly increases the odds that OPEC+ will agree to curb supplies. Saudi Arabia has already announced production cuts on the order of 500,000 bpd for December. Russia has been non-committal, but it would seem likely that the group would agree to curb production to stop the slide in prices. After all, the originally supply cut announced at the end of 2016 was intended to put a floor beneath prices. The group wouldn’t want to see prices crash all over again.

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Is The Oil Supply Glut Set To Return?

October 29, 2018

Is The Oil Supply Glut Set To Return?

Barrels

Is the oil market tightening too much or is a glut on the verge of making a comeback?

There were a series of mixed messages from both OPEC and the IEA in recent days, offering a muddy outlook for the oil market. First was the TASS interview with Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih. His main message was that Saudi Arabia has enough spare capacity to cover for any shortfall related to Iran, although he noted that any further unexpected outages – from, say, Venezuela, Libya or Nigeria – would test the cartel’s abilities.

Libya appears to be doing its part for now. Mustafa Sanalla, the head of Libya’s National Oil Corp., said that Libya is aiming to increase production to 1.6 million barrels per day by the end of 2019, which would mark the highest level since the Arab Spring and civil war began in 2011.

Al-Falih remains confident that the market is well-supplied. But separately, he said that OPEC is in “produce as much as you can mode.” Meanwhile, a technical committee working within OPEC suggested that it would prepare options for 2019, which could include a production cut in order to prevent a supply glut from re-emerging. OPEC+ announced plans to increase production by 1 million barrels per day in June, but the deterioration of the global economy in recent weeks “may require changing course,” the committee said.

Despite his confidence in the TASS interview, al-Falih sounded a bit more concerned about too much supply when he spoke to Saudi media, admitting that he was worried about rising inventories. “We (have) entered the stage of worrying about this increase,” Al-Falih said. Indeed, the U.S. has seen a sharp increase in inventories lately. Crude stocks are up more than 28 million barrels since mid-September.

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

January 18, 2016

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.

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Is The Oil Crash A Result Of Excess Supply Or Plunging Demand: The Unpleasant Answer In One Chart

August 21, 2015

Is The Oil Crash A Result Of Excess Supply Or Plunging Demand: The Unpleasant Answer In One Chart

One of the most vocal discussions in the past year has been whether the collapse, subsequent rebound, and recent relapse in the price of oil is due to surging supply as Saudi Arabia pumps out month after month of record production to bankrupt as many shale companies before its reserves are depleted, or tumbling demand as a result of a global economic slowdown. Naturally, the bulls have been pounding the table on the former, because if it is the later it suggests the global economy is in far worse shape than anyone but those long the 10Year have imagined.

Courtesy of the following chart by BofA, we have the answer: while for the most part of 2015, the move in the price of oil was a combination of both supply and demand, the most recent plunge has been entirely a function of what now appears to be a global economic recession, one which will get far worse if the Fed indeed hikes rates as it has repeatedly threatened as it begins to undo 7 years of ultra easy monetary policy.

Here is BofA:

Retreating global equities, bond yields and DM breakevens confirm that EM has company. Much as in late 2014, global markets are going through a significant global growth scare. To illustrate this, we update our oil price decomposition exercise, breaking down changes in crude prices into supply and demand drivers (The disinflation red-herring).

Chart 6 shows that, in early July, the drop in oil prices seems to have reflected primarily abundant supply (related, for example, to the Iran deal). Over the past month, however, falling oil prices have all but reflected weak demand.

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What is the price of oil telling us?

August 17, 2015

What is the price of oil telling us?

Market fundamentalists tell us that prices convey information. Yet, while our barbers and hairdressers might be able to give us an extended account of why their prices have changed in the last few years, commodities such as oil–which reached a six-year low last week–stand mute. To fill that silence, many people are only too eager to speak for oil. And, they have been speaking volumes. So much information in that one price!

First, as prices fell last year when OPEC refused to cut its oil production in the face of slowing world demand, the industry kept saying that it could continue to produce from American tight oil fields at around $80 a barrel and be profitable. Then, as prices fell further, the industry and its consultants assured everyone that while growth in tight oil production would slow, it would still be profitable for the vast majority of wells planned.

Petroleum geologist and consultant Art Berman is probably the best representative from the skeptical camp. For many years Berman has been pointing to the high cost of getting fracked oil out of the ground. And, those costs led to negative free cash flow for most tight oil operators for several years in a row–that is, they spent considerably more cash than they took in, making up the balance with debt and stock issuance. Not surprisingly, the operators took that money and kept drilling as fast as they could.

It was a recipe for oversupply and a crash, one that is now threatening the solvency of many fracking-dependent U.S. oil companies.

As if to the rescue, the giant consulting firm Deloitte called a bottom in the oil price when U.S. futures prices hit $48 a barrel on February 4–a little prematurely it seems. Friday’s price for September futures on the NYMEX closed at $42.50.

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

Oil Drops Below $45; U.S. Stockpiles May Speed Collapse

January 13, 2015

Oil Drops Below $45; U.S. Stockpiles May Speed Collapse

Oil extended losses to trade below $45 a barrel amid speculation that U.S. crude stockpiles will increase, exacerbating a global supply glut that’s driven prices to the lowest in more than 5 1/2 years.

Futures fell as much as 4.1 percent in New York, declining for a third day. Crude inventories probably gained by 1.75 million barrels last week, a Bloomberg News survey showed before government data tomorrow. TheUnited Arab Emirates, a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, will continue to expand output capacity, while shale drillers will probably be the first to curb production as prices fall, according to Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei.

Oil slumped almost 50 percent last year, the most since the 2008 financial crisis, as the U.S. pumped at the fastest rate in more than three decades and OPEC resisted calls to cut production. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said crude needs to drop to $40 a barrel to “re-balance” the market, while Societe Generale SA also reduced its price forecasts.

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STREETTALK LIVE – The Daily X-Change – Houston, We Have A “Fracking” Problem

October 20, 2014

STREETTALK LIVE – The Daily X-Change – Houston, We Have A “Fracking” Problem.

Last week, I touched on the issue of oil prices and demand stating:

“First, the development of the “shale oil” production over the last five years has caused oil inventories to surge at a time when demand for petroleum products is on the decline as shown below.”

Oil-Consumption-Supply-101614

“The obvious ramification of this is a “supply glut” which leads to a collapse in oil prices. The collapse in prices leads to production “shut ins,” loss of revenue, employee reductions, and many other negative economic consequences for a city dependent on the production of oil.

Secondly, I have also discussed that the “fracking miracle” may not be all that it is believed to be due to fast production decline rates and massive amounts of leverage. Just recently Yves Smith posted an article discussing this very issue stating:”

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

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