David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Energy

    OPEC Must Rethink Plans as $60 Oil Brings New Glut, IEA Says

    This article by Javier Blas and Grant Smith for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    "Established producers need to reconsider their production plans quickly and substantially in light of the huge production increase from U.S. shale," the agency’s Executive Director Fatih Birol said Monday on the sidelines of the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston. Asked whether he was referring to OPEC nations, Birol said: "All OPEC producers are established producers."

    The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia, Mexico and Kazakhstan agreed to cut production in late 2016 in an effort to clear a glut in crude inventories. They defied the skeptics by going deeper than their pledged curbs and maintaining them for long enough to deplete the bloated stockpiles.

    Yet the strategy has also backfired by unleashing “a new wave of growth from the U.S.” that leaves little space for OPEC to increase output once the cuts expire at the end of the year, according to the agency’s report.

    The U.S. will dominate global oil markets for years to come, satisfying 80 percent of global demand growth to 2020, the IEA said. Supplies from other non-OPEC nations will make up the rest.

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    Email of the day on the potential for downtrends

    Your recent assessments of the markets appear to be that a period of ranging is likely to be followed by markets going up again. Of course, whilst no one knows what the future will be, I wonder why you don't see the greater likelihood of markets turning down after some consolidation. With the amount of US debt increasing, interest rates increasing, and stock market levels already high by historical standards, are you not more concerned that markets, being forwards looking, might be more likely to head down than up? Esp. since markets struggle when interest rates go above 3%? I appreciate your talk of share rotation, but a rising tide lifts all boats and surely the opposite is true when markets tank?

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    Musings from the Oil Patch February 20th 2018

    Thanks to a subscriber for this edition of Allen Brooks’ ever informative report for PPHB. Here is a section on methane hydrates:

    The attacks on the oil and gas industry in the U.S. for its methane emissions have been based on reports and estimates of the volume of leaks from its drilling and transportation activities.  Fighting these leaks is in the companies’ best interests because it will help the bottom lines as less natural gas will be lost to the atmosphere and income will be enhanced.  Fixing the leaks on their own is also a way the oil and gas industry can hope to stave off further debilitating regulations.  Now, however, the industry is hopeful of an easing of the methane containment rules for companies drilling and producing natural gas from federal lands by the Trump administration.  

     

    While the discussion about methane leak control for the oil and gas industry is dominating the headlines, there remains a huge untapped source of natural gas in the form of methane hydrates under the ocean that some governments are working to exploit.  These hydrates are where molecules of methane gas are entrapped within an ice lattice.  They form under very low temperatures or high pressures, or a combination of the two.  They are usually found on the outer continental shelves around the world.  (They have been found in the pink areas of the global map in Exhibit 18.)  The challenge is that they have been difficult (risky) to mine, as well as costly.  They have the potential to blow up any vessel attempting to extract the hydrates from the sea floor.  The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) estimates that the U.S. has 51,338 trillion cubic feet of methane hydrate gas resources.  If only half of BOEM’s estimate is realized, there are 1,000 years of supply based on the current consumption rate of natural gas in the United States.

     

    Last year, China, a country with significant needs for more natural gas but lacking success in finding and developing meaningful reserves, has been experimenting with tapping methane hydrates.  The country’s focus is on hydrates situated in the South China Sea, which helps explain China’s attempt to claim territorial rights to that area of the Pacific Ocean.  At the same time, Japan, another nation lacking adequate energy resources, has successfully extracted methane hydrates from an area offshore the Shima Peninsula.  The implications of successful development of methane hydrate mining by either or both countries would be significant for the future of the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) business.

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    Shale Sends U.S. Output Past Historic 10 Million-Barrel Mark

    This article by Jessica Summers for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

     

    U.S. oil production surged above 10 million barrels a day for the first time in four decades, another marker of a profound shift in global crude markets.

    The milestone comes weeks after the International Energy Agency said the U.S. is poised for "explosive" growth in oil output that would push it past Saudi Arabia and Russia this year. New drilling and production techniques have opened up billions of barrels of recoverable U.S. oil in shale rock formations in the past 10 years, reversing decades of declining output and turning the nation into an exporter.

    The news also comes after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided last year to extend an agreement with several non-OPEC members to curb output in response to a global supply glut fed in part by shale. That agreement was finally showing signs of working, with prices emerging from a three-year downturn. After falling near $26 a barrel in 2016, the global benchmark oil price climbed above $70 a barrel in January, and the U.S. price is following suit. Yet, increasing output from the U.S. may threaten rising price.

    “You are starting to see a little bit of a shift in market sentiment on oil given the fact that production is really starting to ramp up,” Joseph Bozoyan, a portfolio manager at Manulife Asset Management LLC in Boston, said by telephone.

    “These U.S. production numbers are starting to take the wind out of the sails of the crude oil market.”

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    Musings from the Oil Patch January 23rd 2017

    Thanks to a subscriber for this edition Allen Brooks’ ever interesting report for PPHB. Here is a section:

    Speculation Grows That OPEC Will End Cuts Early as Prices Rise

    This article by Christopher Sell for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    "I don’t think the deal per se will end" as inventories near the five-year average, said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodity analyst at SEB AB. The Declaration of Cooperation -- the 2016 accord that first established the group of 24 oil producers-- will still stand, but be modified to allow for production cuts to gradually unwind from mid-2018, he said.

    Giovanni Staunovo, commodity analyst at UBS Group AG, expects a similar outcome. Citigroup Inc., whose data show that global oil stockpiles are already back in line with the five- year average, predicts a summer agreement to ramp up production.

    The oil producers themselves say they’re sticking to the plan. While Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on Jan. 12 that the meeting in Oman could include discussion of mechanisms for gradually exiting the cuts, four days later he affirmed that the pact should continue. Ministers from the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Kuwait also insisted there’s no need to change tack.

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    Email of the day China, Currencies, Inflation and Gold

    In the video today, you emphasized the significance of recent moves by China regarding its currency and inflation.  These issues were discussed in length in a Mises Institute report which will be of interest to many readers.

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    Musings from the Oil Patch January 17th 2018

    Thanks to a subscriber for this edition of Allen Brooks’ ever interesting report for PPHB. Here is a section: