FUEL YOUR FUTURE

One unusual note about this selloff: WTI has slipped into a slight contango with the December contract trading roughly 20 cents less than January, a phenomenon we haven’t seen in over a year.   That shift in the price curve follows reports that European refiners are actually oversupplied with crude oil, as traders have done too good of a job preparing for the upcoming embargo on Russian imports. Now that crude oil inventories are filling up ahead of their December deadline, the question is if the same feat can be accomplished for diesel before that ban hits in February. 

Right on cue, Kuwait’s new 600mb/day refinery, the largest in the Middle East, continues to slowly bring units online, and reportedly sold its first distillate cargo into the export market this week. While the new refining capacity is certainly welcomed in a world starving for diesel fuel, the challenge will be finding enough cargoes to get that fuel where it needs to go, and tanker rates that are surging as a result.

Meanwhile, while many headlines focused on Qatar not serving beer at the world cup, the country was closing on the longest supply deal in history to supply China with LNG for 27 years.  Long term deals are critical in the LNG market that requires billion dollar facilities to be able to freeze the gas before it can be loaded on ships, and as part of the reason the world is essentially “sold out” on new LNG for the next 3-4 years. 

Money managers reduced their length in petroleum contracts last week with a combination of new short positions and liquidated longs both contributing to the drop.  The total positions held, and the open interest in all contracts continues to suggest there’s plenty of money that’s not playing in the energy arena these days, and whether or not it ever comes back may have a large impact on how prices behave in the coming year.  

Baker Hughes reported a net increase of 1 oil rig and 2 natural gas rigs drilling in the US last week. The total of 623 oil rigs is the highest since the pandemic shutdown started in March 2023, but is still 60 rigs lower than pre-COVID levels. 

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March trading is going out like a lamb as energy prices continue to search for direction with Bears focused on soft demand and fears of a recession, while the Bulls can see supply shortages and the risk of disruption lurking around the corner. 

While March felt chaotic with a new banking crisis and plenty of other domestic and geopolitical controversy going on around us, it was actually a relatively tame month for refined product futures. The trading range for diesel in March was actually the smallest we’ve seen since before the war broke out and was just ¼ of the range we saw in March a year ago. 

Protesters in France agreed to extend refinery strikes through April 4th, which is keeping close to 1 million barrels/day of refining capacity offline.  A Business Wire note this morning highlighted how these strikes may be rapidly depleting the stockpiles built up ahead of February’s sanctions that banned Russian diesel imports.   

The Dallas FED confirmed what we’ve been seeing in the weekly rig counts, showing that activity in the energy sector has stalled out in the first quarter of 2023. Executives surveyed lowered their Crude oil price outlook for the end of the year by $4/barrel from the previous survey but made a much larger change to expectations on Natural Gas prices, slashing those estimates by nearly 40% since Q4.

As if banks don’t have enough on their plate these days: There were reports this week that Wells Fargo is looking to expand its energy trading business. There are also reports that Wells Fargo was fined nearly $100 million for sanctions violations, is under investigation by the CFTC for illegal trading communications, and that a former executive is facing jail time for obstructing the investigation that ended up with the bank paying more than $3 billion in fines for opening fake accounts.  

You may also remember that after the last round of bank bailouts in 2008, the FED moved to make the banks act like banks and not trading houses, which eventually led Morgan Stanley to try and sell their oil trading business to the Russians, only to end up selling it to a firm headed up by a former Enron trader when the Russian deal was nixed by regulators.  You can’t make this stuff up.

Click here to download a PDF of today's TACenergy Market Talk.