Debate Over Economic Restarts Face Off Against Fears
The holding pattern continues for oil prices this week as a debate over signs of economic restarts, both domestically and abroad, face off against fears of a second-wave of the coronavirus. WTI and ULSD futures are both holding in their recent trading range, while RBOB futures are breaking their upward trend, and threatening a larger selloff.
We’re in the data-deluge week with the EIA, OPEC and IEA all releasing their monthly reports, in addition to the weekly API and DOE data. The first three of those reports have been released already and show a common theme of slowly improving fuel demand, spread unevenly across the various refined products.
OPEC’s oil output rose by 1.8 million barrels/day in April, as Saudi Arabia made good on its threat to flood the global market right as the world was experiencing the largest demand drop in history. That story should flip in May as the price war has ended, and country’s slowly reopen for business.
The API was reported to estimate that U.S. oil inventories built by 7.5 million barrels last week, which was larger than most published forecasts.
The industry group also estimated another gasoline inventory draw-down of 1.9 million barrels, while distillates were up by 4.7 million barrels. You’d be forgiven if you thought the API showed the opposite build/draw in inventories based on the price reaction overnight with RBOB down two cents and ULSD up one, which suggests the early action may have more to do with the charts after RBOB’s trend line broke Tuesday.
Wheels off the charts: The EIA’s monthly short term energy outlook showed how the wild action of the past two months has broken the mold. The front page of that report typically shows a price forecast for WTI, including 95 percent confidence intervals for those projections. This month the EIA is “unable to construct” those intervals because of “data issues” surrounding the extreme volatility and lack of liquidity in options markets it created. In other words, given the two standard deviation from the mean calculation of a confidence interval, and prices doing what they’ve done, the price estimate is around 30 dollars for WTI, but the confidence would be somewhere in the range of plus or minus $50/barrel from that mark.
The STEO was able to estimate that global energy consumption will start outpacing production in the back half of this year, and that energy related CO2 emissions would fall by 11 percent, the largest drop in over 70 years of data.
The DOE’s weekly report is due out at its regular time this morning. Watch the refinery yield and export figures to see how refineries are reacting to their undesirable transition from an excess of gasoline inventory to a glut of diesel. While it may take a few weeks for plants to shift gears, and longer still to show up in the data, the increased complexity and flexibility of many U.S. refineries seems to be more capable of solving the demand puzzle than ever before.
Click here to download a PDF of today's TACenergy Market Talk.
Latest Posts
Energy Prices Up Over 2% Across The Board This Morning
Prices Are Mixed This Morning As The Potential Halt In U.S. Interest Rate Hikes
Week 22 - US DOE Inventory Recap
The Slide Continues This Morning With Fuel Futures Down Another 2% And Oil Down 3%
Social Media
News & Views
View All
Energy Prices Up Over 2% Across The Board This Morning
Refined product futures traded in an 8-10 cent range yesterday with prompt heating oil settling up ~6 cents and RBOB ending up about flat. Oil prices clawed back some of the losses taken in the first two full trading days of the week, putting the price per barrel for US crude back over the $70 mark. Prices are up just over 2% across the board this morning, signifying confidence after the Senate passed the bipartisan debt ceiling bill last night.
The EIA reported crude oil inventories up 4.5 million barrels last week, aided by above-average imports, weakened demand, and a sizeable increase to their adjustment factor. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve continues to release weekly through June and the 355 million barrels remaining in the SPR is now at a low not seen since September 1983. Exports increased again on the week and continue to run well above last year’s record-setting levels through the front half of the year. Refinery runs and utilization rates have increased to their highest points this year, both sitting just above year-ago rates.
Diesel stocks continue to hover around the low end of the 5-year range set in 2022, reporting a build of about half of what yesterday’s API data showed. Most PADDs saw modest increases last week but all are sitting far below average levels. Distillate imports show 3 weeks of growth trending along the seasonal average line, while 3.7 million barrels leaving the US last week made it the largest increase in exports for the year. Gasoline inventories reported a small decline on the week, also being affected by the largest jump in exports this year, leaving it under the 5-year range for the 11th consecutive week. Demand for both products dwindled last week; however, gas is still comfortably above average despite the drop.
The sentiment surrounding OPEC+’s upcoming meeting is they’re not likely to extend oil supply cuts, despite prices falling early in the week. OPEC+ is responsible for a significant portion of global crude oil production and its policy decisions can have a major impact on prices. Some members of OPEC+ have voluntarily cut production since April due to a waning economic outlook, but the group is not expected to take further action next week.
Click here to download a PDF of today's TACenergy Market Talk
Prices Are Mixed This Morning As The Potential Halt In U.S. Interest Rate Hikes
Bearish headlines pushed refined products and crude futures down again yesterday. Prompt RBOB closed the month at $2.5599 and HO at $2.2596 with WTI dropping another $1.37 to $68.09 and Brent losing 88 cents. Prices are mixed this morning as the potential halt in U.S. interest rate hikes and the House passing of the US debt ceiling bill balanced the impact of rising inventories and mixed demand signals from China.
The American Petroleum Institute reported crude builds of 5.2 million barrels countering expectations of a draw. Likewise, refined product inventories missed expectations and were also reported to be up last week with gasoline adding 1.891 million barrels and diesel stocks rising 1.849 million barrels. The market briefly attempted a push higher but ultimately settled with losses following the reported supply increases implying weaker than anticipated demand. The EIA will publish its report at 10am this morning.
LyondellBasell announced plans yesterday to delay closing of their Houston refinery, originally scheduled to shut operations by the end of this year, through Q1 2025. The company “remains committed to ceasing operation of its oil refining business” but the 289,000 b/d facility remaining online longer than expected will likely have market watchers adjusting this capacity back into their balance estimates.
Side note: there is still an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Two oil refineries located east of Russia's major oil export terminals were targeted by drone attacks. The Afipsky refinery’s 37,000 b/d crude distillation unit was struck yesterday, igniting a massive fire that was later extinguished while the other facility avoided any damage. The attacks are part of a series of intensified drone strikes on Russian oil pipelines. Refineries in Russia have been frequently targeted by drones since the start of the military operation in Ukraine in February 2022.