recap
By allowing/encouraging the oil price to stay over $100 a barrel, OPEC unwittingly created a pricing umbrella that spawned a significant new, relatively high cost, shale oil industry in the US that, at its peak last year, was pumping an extra 5 million barrels of crude a day onto the world market. At that point, world supply rose above demand, with the natural consequence that prices began to fall.
The OPEC response ot lower prices has been to increase its production, with the intention of spurring new demand and of forcing shale oil producers out of business. Since for most OPEC countries, oil is the principal source of GDP and of hard currency, more barrels out the door also eased revenue shortfalls somewhat. Nevertheless, OPEC is generally experiencing a significant cash squeeze.
The plan has worked, to some degree. American consumers have lost their taste for compact cars and are buying gas-guzzling trucks in huge numbers. Shale oil production is gradually fading. Overall world demand continues to rise at 1.5+ million barrels per day.
where we stand now
The excess of supply over demand is still about two million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency, (whose latest monthly report can be found in financial newspapaers).
The end to economic sanctions on Iran is likely to free 500,000 barrels of Persian oil for sale sometime next year, however–and that figure might be as high as a million. And China has been using the fall in prices to increase its strategic petroleum reserve. Some reports say that this process is close to an end.
storage is a key
The most important near-term factor to watch, in my view, is overall world inventories–which are at extremely high levels.
Petroleum storage is of two types:
–storage of crude, normally in tank farms, but also in rented oil tankers
–refined products storage, both in tank farms owned by refiners and (the thing we know least about) in customers’ hands–from industry to the gas tanks in individuals’ automobiles.
We do know that crude tank farms in Asia and Europe are full, and that refiners’ output storage tanks are bursting at the seams. In addition, the cost of renting a crude oil tanker to store barrels for future delivery is now higher than the profit an arbitrageur would make by buying oil now and entering a futures contract for later delivery.
On top of all that, warm weather has meant that the usual seasonal buying surge for heating oil has not yet happened.
to summarize
At the current rate of adjustment, oil supply and demand may not come into balance until late 2016–and maybe early 2017.
The world is running out of places to stash the extra crude. The globe already appears to have run out of places to do so at a profit.
Therefore, it’s possible that, at the very least, the oil price will decline again–even in a period of seasonal strength like the present–to a level where the arbitrage of buying now and storing for future delivery makes money. But when stuff like this happens, the world is rarely rational. The Goldman scenario in which the crude price falls to $20 no longer seems like a footnote. It’s something that has–I don’t know–say, a one in three chance of occurring.
If that happens, I think it would be a great chance to sift through the rubble for medium-sized US shale oil firms that will survive until better days arrive in maybe 18 months.