por admin » Dom May 29, 2016 6:38 am
Fueling Oil’s Push to $50: Fear Is Back
Oil-supply outages are at their highest level in more than a decade, bolstering the “fear premium” that has helped push crude prices to $50 a barrel.
About 3.5 million barrels a day worth of production is off line because of disruptions such as militant attacks in Nigeria, wildfires in Canada and political unrest in Libya—more than 3% of the global total, says research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC. That is likely the highest since the Iraq war hit output there in 2003, says Jacques Rousseau, the firm’s managing director of oil and gas.
At the same time, there is less slack to fill supply gaps. Unused production capacity that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries can bring on quickly has dwindled, and the glut of output from other producers, including U.S. shale companies, has ebbed as companies cut back amid lower prices.
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“There isn’t a lot of extra supply out there,” said Ann-Louise Hittle, lead oil-market analyst at energy-consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “That’s when you start to get a risk premium back in the market. It is absolutely to be expected and it is, in our opinion, just the beginning.”
Natural disasters or political unrest in oil-producing nations can halt production and disrupt shipping routes. Such events have historically boosted oil prices, because traders worry about the availability of future supplies.
In 2014 and 2015, however, the oil market mostly ignored occasional supply disruptions, from sanctions on Iran to export-terminal closures in Libya. Traders focused instead on the growing crude surplus produced by U.S. shale companies, sending prices tumbling 76% before they bottomed in February.
After talks of an output freeze among major producing nations fizzled in April, traders say the reduced supply from unplanned outages has been a primary factor driving U.S. oil prices from below $27 a barrel in February to more than $50 a barrel intraday on Thursday. U.S. crude settled Friday at $49.33 a barrel, down 0.3%.
An oil-worker strike in Kuwait in April briefly shut down nearly half the Gulf nation’s production. Wildfires in Alberta, Canada, this month forced the shutdown of production facilities in the country’s oil-sands region.
In Nigeria, a militant group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers has claimed responsibility for attacks on a production facility and an export terminal. The country’s output has fallen to the lowest level since 2009.
Some think the rise in outages is in part a byproduct of depressed crude prices. When oil is cheap, producing nations’ budgets suffer. That makes it harder for some governments to boost spending to head off unrest and deprives oil facilities of money needed for maintenance and recovery.
“At $100 a barrel, you can paper over a lot of problems with money,” said Helima Croft, head of commodities strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “2016 is proving to be the year of reckoning for the weakest producers.”
Some analysts think the boost from the disruptions may already be waning. Canadian officials have lifted a mandatory evacuation order on certain production sites in Alberta, and Kuwait’s output has returned to normal. Even in Libya, where unrest has kept the country’s production below capacity for years, some analysts expect exports to increase.
“Some of the bullish sentiment has to ease,” said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, which oversees $128 billion. “There’s some limits to how far this can go.”
Others aren’t so sure that supply disruptions are going away. Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela together produced 25% of OPEC’s total crude output in April, according to the International Energy Agency. Each is struggling with outages or potential disruptions.
Iraq is trying to keep its production high amid the threat of Islamic State. Many analysts warn that production could fall in Venezuela because of chronic power outages in the cash-strapped nation and disputes about payments to international oil-field-service providers.
Militant attacks continue in Nigeria, including one related to a Chevron Corp. facility on Thursday. “You could be looking at a sustained outage for a long period,” Ms. Croft at RBC said of the country’s total output.
Unplanned production outages are the highest since at least 2003, when the war in Iraq briefly halted nearly all production in that country, analysts say.
Kuwaiti oil workers in April protested over apparent pay cuts and plans to privatize parts of the energy industry, briefly cutting the country’s crude output almost in half.
Kuwaiti oil workers in April protested over apparent pay cuts and plans to privatize parts of the energy industry, briefly cutting the country’s crude output almost in half.Photo: yasser al-zayyat/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
During the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and the overthrow of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, supply disruptions helped lift global crude prices above $110 a barrel on average that year and in 2012, up from an average of about $80 a barrel in 2010.
Since late 2012, global supply disruptions have held more than two million barrels a day off the global crude market, according to ClearView. Fear of lost production after Islamic State seized some Iraqi cities briefly helped push global oil prices above $110 a barrel in mid-2014.
If supply was still growing fast, disruptions might not affect prices as much. But production in the U.S. and other parts of the world is falling as companies cut back.
“Today, it doesn’t look like we will see a return to excess supply conditions,” said Bo Christensen, chief analyst at Danske Invest, which manages $100 billion in assets. “That makes the market susceptible to other types of risks, of course including geopolitical risks.”