Crude Oil & Gas Prices

Oil lower over the past month, while gasoline hovering just over the $3/gallon.

1 Month

Oil cooling off following Iran's capitulation

US Gas & Crude Oil Prices

After surging +20% in the past month, Oil cooled off following Iran's capitulation in the face of Israeli & US bombardments. Their pre-announced "retaliation" against the US base in Qatar was all the market needed to shed its gains.

1 Month

#WTI Getting Slammed to $13/bbl, down 25% on the Day!!

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#OPEC+ #Oil Cuts Deal: @BMO Sees Best outcome of Prices Stabilizing between $20-30 as demand rebuilds

From BMO:

 CONCLUSION:. On the positive side, the agreement avoids a price collapse as it reduces the risk of filling up the global storage capacity completely and most importantly it ends the price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.  Our research team expects the price of oil to remain between $20 and $30 through June while the market assesses the compliance and more importantly the potential rebound in demand at some point. As of this morning, the market reaction has been somewhat muted with Brent and WTI relatively unchanged.

1- TOTAL CUTS OF 13.4Mb/d if you had OPEC at 6.1M b/d, OPEC+ members mostly Russia at 3.6Mb/d and G-20 cuts monastery US/Canada/Brazil at 3.7Mb/d. The cuts are focused on the May-June period then they go down to 8M b/d for July-dec.

2- AVOID PRICE COLLAPSE DUE TO LACK OF STORAGE- Demand destruction is estimated at 17Mb/d for 2Q ( compared to a 13.4M b/d cut but an actual cut from the March level of ONLY 7Mb/d for OPEC+ members). So this means inventories will go up by about 984M barrels versus a total storage capacity including floating storage left of 1.2 billion barrels.

3- END OF THE PRICE WAR- probably the most positive is all this is the end of the price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia

4- CUTS BY THE G-20? US/Canada/Brazil but allows Norway are talking about cutting 3.7M b/d of supply but it is not very clear how. It will  be mostly through Strategic Petroleum Reserves ( SPR) purchases, shut-ins and natural declines.

5- THE TEXAS RAILROAD COMMISSION ( RRC) meets tomorrow Tuesday to discuss production cuts. Based on recent discussions we are doubtful a serious official cut will come out of the US as most of the large producers like Exxon and Chevron have come against it.

6- IDEAL PRICE- we continue to think that $40 WTI is where the Saudis and the Russians want to oil price which is enough to kill US Shale's economics while helping the local budgets of each closer to balance.



Oil & Gas IN Fact Living on the Edge: Historic Deal With a Lot of Unknowns Randy Ollenberger • Oil & Gas (403) 515-1502 Phillip Jungwirth, CFA • Oil & Gas (303) 436-1127 Bottom Line: OPEC+ has reached an agreement to reduce production by 9.7 million b/d in May and June and roughly six million over the balance of the year. The G20 group acknowledged the need to stabilize oil markets and has reportedly agreed to reduce production by 3.7 million b/d. The OPEC+ cut (if adhered to) plus expected shut-in production due to low oil prices could be just enough to keep inventories from breaching capacity. We expect crude oil prices to trade in a $20-30/bbl range through May as the market waits to see if the production cuts materialize and are large enough to stave off disaster. Key Points OPEC+ capitulates. OPEC and its non-OPEC partners have agreed to reduce production by 9.7 million b/d in May and June and by roughly six million b/d for the remainder of the year. The baseline for the determination of production levels is October 2018 except for Saudi Arabia and Russia, which have baselines of 11 million b/d. The group will meet again on June 10 to determine if additional action is required. No commitments but uneconomic shut-ins elsewhere. The broader G20 group did not explicitly commit to any reductions in supply but acknowledged the need to stabilize oil markets and has reportedly agreed to reduce supply by 3.7 million b/d through declines and shut-in of uneconomic production. The OPEC+ cuts are not contingent on commitments from the U.S. and others to reduce supply. We anticipate a drop in non-OPEC production of 1.8 million b/d in the second quarter and growing over the balance of the year due to the drop in activity levels. Level of demand destruction unknown. We believe that global oil demand could be down more than 17 million b/d year over year in the second quarter to roughly 82 million b/d, which would represent the lowest level of demand since 2004. Taking the OPEC+ cuts into consideration we anticipate a year-over-year decline in production of 7 million to 92.8 million b/d, which implies a build of approximately 984 million barrels. We estimate remaining available global storage capacity (including floating storage) is roughly 1.2 billion barrels. While this means there could be adequate storage room there is not much room for error. Pricing in uncertainty. We expect crude oil prices to remain relatively weak through April and May as the market assesses the risk that the level of demand destruction could be higher than expected, leading to the possibility that there is not enough storage available. We also expect regional dislocations where storage fills up leading to wider price differentials in some markets. View Comment >

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#Oil Market Update March 9 2PM EDT #OOTT

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US crude #Oil exports increased 45% to ~3MM b/d in 2019 @EIA_gov #OOTT #TWIP

U.S. crude oil exports averaged 2.98 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2019, an increase of 930,000 b/d (45%) from 2018 (Figure 1). 

The number of destinations for U.S. crude oil exports increased from 41 to 44, and Canada continued to receive the largest share (15%, or 459,000 b/d), followed by South Korea (14%, or 426,000 b/d). U.S. crude oil exports to China, the third-largest export destination in 2018, fell by nearly 100,000 b/d to average 133,000 b/d in 2019. Decreased U.S. crude oil exports to China were more than offset by increases to other destinations, resulting in shifting trade patterns. The growth in U.S. crude oil exports was driven by increasing U.S. crude oil production, expanding domestic infrastructure, and increased global demand for light, low-sulfur crude oils.

#OPEC Ministers agree to cut #Oil production by 1.5MM bopd

Closed session talks continue but headlines leaking out of Vienna from 'delegates' per Bloomberg,confirming the high end scenario floated yesterday morning. Sounds like OPEC (ie Saudi) is going it alone without additional support from Russia after Novak refused to support additional cuts at the JMMC meeting yesterday.

Brent up 70c on the news and +60bps on the day, not exactly a screaming response but step in the right direction. Still waiting on additional details around duration (assume 3M to start) and how many physical barrels 1.5MM translates to given SA already under producing by 0.4MM but combined with 1MM outage from Libya a 1.5MM incremental cut should help to offset a large amount of the China/OECD demand losses, which some estimate to be over 3-3.5MM in 1Q20.

#China’s First #Oil Futures Contract Turns 1. What’s the assessment?

From Platts' The Barrel Blog

Insight from Shanghai: China's international crude contract marks first birthday

It's now a year since China took the first steps to opening up its mainly domestic futures market to the world with the launch of the Shanghai crude oil futures contract.

It was the first of three to be "internationalized" last year – the other two were the existing iron ore and PTA futures contracts. But Shanghai crude was different to those in that it was a new contract, hosted on a new trading venue – the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE) – and designed specifically to attract international participants.

The goal was to create a new China-based global pricing point for crude alongside incumbent international crude futures contracts NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent.

The success of a new futures contract is typically measured by its liquidity, market depth and open interest. In the case of a physically settled contract, the delivery mechanism of any new contract will also be closely scrutinized by the market.

Liquidity & market depth

While liquidity is not everything when it comes to benchmarks, when it comes to derivatives it certainly helps. In February, less than a year after it started trading, 2,116 million barrels of Shanghai Crude were traded. It took ICE Brent more than 14 years to reach a similar monthly volume.

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Liquidity on Shanghai crude is generally concentrated in just one contract. This is usually the contract that expires at the end of the current month. However, in the last 10 days before expiry liquidity moves to the next month forward as traders who are not allowed to take physical delivery are forced to liquidate their positions and roll them into the next contract.

On March 25, with just four days before the April 2019 contract expires, virtually all the volume and open interest had moved to the May 2019 contract, which expires at the end of April.