Recent oil supply outages push equilibrium further down the road
Interrupted supply is returning gradually to the market, but this time around the oil market’s rebalancing is in uncharted territory due to unpredictable factors
At the beginning of May, this column said that crude looked tentative on its new perch in the mid-US$40s per barrel because market fundamentals remained weak. In the weeks that followed, both Brent as well as NYMEX crude in the US rose further, to flirt with the psychologically important US$50 per barrel level.
As much as that raises the hopes of beleaguered producers around the world and enabled Opec to feign unity and a sense of purpose without an ideology at its June 2 meeting in Vienna, the latest strength in oil prices cannot be taken for granted. It could sustain for several weeks, without doubt, depending on how long the drop in production in Canada, Venezuela, Nigeria, Iraq and Libya lasts, but it would be risky to assume this is the oil market’s new normal.
A knee-jerk bullish response to the rash of outages in recent weeks – estimated to have removed close to 3 million barrels a day of oil supply from the global market – is understandable for those looking at crude futures from a day-to-day or intra-day perspective. But the outages are all different in nature and by definition are going to vary in duration. That means the interrupted supply is returning gradually to the market, even if at an uncertain pace.
The wildfires that knocked out about 1.27 million barrels a day, or a third of Canadian crude production from May 1, have been gradually moving east, with companies in the western oil sands province of Alberta starting to resume production around the end of May and early June.
In Iraq, power supply interruptions affected 50,000 to 70,000 barrels a day of flows from the country’s south, with the Kirkuk field in the north pumping about 170,000 barrels a day less. But variations of 100,000 to 200,000 barrels a day in Iraqi output, which overall has risen to 4.5 million, are routine. Besides, the producer was due to make up the estimated 164,000 barrels a day drop in May exports versus April by loading additional volumes in June.
Libya had shored up crude output to around 300,000 barrels a day by the end of May from a trough below 200,000 earlier in the month. The North African producer, which remains in the grip of political uncertainty with two rival governments claiming legitimacy, now hopes to boost production to 700,000 by the end of this year. The likelihood of that happening appears the same as output languishing at current levels, due to political instability or ISIS capturing oil facilities in Libya.
In contrast, Venezuelan crude production, having consistently slipped over recent months to around 2.3 million barrels a day, is at the risk of continuing downhill amid severe power supply problems and retreating oil service providers, who have not been paid their dues.
The other reliable output drop is from the US, which is on course to pump an average 8.6 million barrels a day in 2016, versus 9.4 million in 2015, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Commercial crude inventory draw-downs in the US through the second half of May, accompanied by refined product stock declines through much of the month, also helped fuel the market’s bullish sentiment, ignoring the fact that crude, gasoline as well as distillate inventories in the country are higher than 2015 levels and way above the five-year average.
On the bear side of the scenario, Iran has ramped up its crude production to 3.8 million barrels a day, oil minister Bijan Zanganeh said June 2, which suggests an increment of 900,000 from the 2.9 million it pumped in January, as per S&P Global Platts’ survey. The country is targeting 4 million by year-end.
The International Energy Agency in its May report projected a remarkable turnaround of just 200,000 barrels a day of growth in global oil stocks in the second half of this year, dramatically reduced from the 1.3 million estimated for the first semester, though the math behind the numbers is not clear.
As discussed above, most of the current slew of major supply outages should gradually ease up in the coming months, while economic doldrums round the globe present a continued downside risk to oil demand growth, and OPEC appears to have firmly put its production quotas-and-curbs policy behind it in search for a new ideology.
The bottom-line is that this time round, the oil market’s rebalancing is in uncharted territory. The course has been rendered unpredictable by factors including US shale industry economics that are yet to be fully understood, the promise of major supply growth from post-sanctions Iran against several hurdles, Opec renouncing its historical role in search of a new identity, and cheaper oil failing to be a shot in the arm for the global economy as was expected. The oil market’s tango has only just begun.
Vandana Hari is Asia editorial director at S&P Global Platts and research scholar at S&P Global Institute
