Greetings:
The latest jolt to the always volatile oil markets: Talk coming out of OPEC about a possible move to tighten supplies, which has set off a bit of a rally in crude prices. But does the talk add up to much? And are there any other reasons to bet on (or against) a longer-term upward move in oil?
An OPEC Production Cap. Maybe.
One of the biggest subplots to the recent swoon in oil prices has been OPEC's seeming inability to prop up prices by getting excess supply under control. Historically, the group would act to rein in its production when global oil markets were oversupplied, and open the taps when world oil demand was climbing. But when OPEC announced in November 2014 that it wouldn't curb output in response to falling prices, the decline became a rout. Since then, the cartel has seemed either unwilling or unable to cut output, probably out of fear that producers in the U.S. and elsewhere would take advantage by pumping more and stealing OPEC's market share.
Last week brought a glimmer of hope for oil bulls looking for OPEC to act. Member nations Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Qatar joined nonmember Russia in a proposal to collectively cap production at current levels. So, not a cut, but a possible first step toward one later, right?
But the proposal to cap output comes with key caveats. First, the Saudis and their colleagues said the plan depends on other big exporters, such as Iraq and Iran, getting on board. Winning over Iran seems to be a tough proposition. The recent end to Western oil sanctions against the country has allowed Iranian oil to flow more freely again, and Iran has announced its intention to ramp up exports to take advantage.
Reaching an agreement and sticking to it will be hard. Will Iran do an about-face and agree to hold exports in check after enduring years of punishing sanctions that are finally gone? Especially when doing so requires cooperation with archrival Saudi Arabia? We're skeptical, and we're not alone. OPEC "will freeze [oil output] when I see icebergs floating in the River Styx," says Stephen Schork, editor of energy market newsletter The Schork Report. (Continued below.)
What's more, even if OPEC does cap production, that's a far cry from what's needed to really bolster oil prices. Capping output at today's booming levels would ensure that supply continues to exceed demand for months to come. At current supply and demand levels, the International Energy Agency expects global stockpiles of stored crude to increase by 285 million barrels over the course of 2016, on top of the billion barrels added during 2014 and 2015. That calculation suggests that the world's daily oil output needs to fall by close to 1 million barrels to stop adding to already swollen stockpiles.
A Silver Lining for Bulls
Color us skeptical that OPEC is ready to ride to the oil market's rescue. We have said before that the cartel might eventually act to cut (not cap) production, but only if prices fall sharply enough to convince Saudi Arabia and Iran that joint action is preferable to even more financial pain.
But there is some reason to believe that global oil production will eventually slow. You'll find it happening in Texas and North Dakota, not the Middle East. Precisely tracking the amount of oil produced in the U.S. every day is notoriously difficult, but the Department of Energy's weekly reports are pointing to a downward trend. Over the last month, DOE's tally shows daily U.S. output fell by 100,000 barrels.
Admittedly, it's probably too soon to declare that domestic production is really starting to wane. After all, many forecasters (Kiplinger included) expected production to take a bigger hit than it did in 2015. The price slump caused a sharp drop in drilling activity, raising expectations that output would soon follow. But after hitting a peak of about 9.7 million barrels in April of last year, daily production saw only a slight decline. Even though operators were running fewer rigs, they were scrambling to pump more oil from each well they did drill. That improvement in efficiency helped keep many in business, and also prevented nationwide output from falling very much.
Perhaps the U.S. industry has reached a tipping point, in which improvements in drilling efficiency are no longer enough to compensate for so few new wells being drilled. If so, total output might decline by enough to really put a dent in the worldwide supply glut. Even if that plays out, the U.S. would remain a production powerhouse. But taking a few hundred thousand barrels of daily output off the market would do a lot more than any OPEC production freeze to boost crude prices.
Still, any price rebound is going to take time. Both around the world and in the U.S., storage tanks keep filling up with crude and refined products. Since the start of the year, crude stockpiles here have jumped by almost 22 million barrels and now stand at their highest level on record in DOE data going back to 1982. Gasoline in storage is also at a record high, suggesting that demand from motorists isn't exactly robust at the moment.
If storage tanks get much fuller this winter, oil prices could take another step down. We tend to think such a decline would be brief, because it would almost certainly idle even more drills and cause production to shrink faster. But for an industry that's already suffering from low prices and struggling to secure credit from lenders, even a short-term plunge would be extremely painful.
A Note on the Clean Power Plan
A number of readers have recently asked about the outlook for the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, which aims to require electric utilities to cut back their emissions of carbon dioxide. The Supreme Court took the rare step of ordering a halt to the regulations while it waits for the opportunity to rule on their legality. And now, with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the fate of the plan is even less certain.
In our next issue, we'll be looking at the CPP's legal status and its odds of being implemented as written. While the gyrations in the oil market demand attention, it's only one of many big stories playing out in the energy world so far in 2016.
Sincerely,
Jim Patterson
jpatterson@kiplinger.com
P.S. Don't hesitate to write me, directly with questions or comments about any of the topics we cover, or anything else energy related. You can find previous issues of Kiplinger's Energy Alerts or Kiplinger's Tech Alerts here.
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