The Next Flashpoint In This Emerging Energy Hub (30 April 2019): By Vanand Meliksetian - The Eastern Mediterranean is quickly turning into an energy hub due to the discovery of significant gas resources in recent years. Egypt, for example, has already started production at its giant Zohr gas field, which transformed North-African state from an importer into an exporter of energy. Israel, for the first time in its history, will become a net exporter instead of importer concerning gas. Also, Cypriot waters have seen their fair share of significant discoveries in recent years. Lebanon, on the other hand, ... (Source: Oil Price)
Putin: Saudis Shouldn't Break Output Cut Deal (29 April 2019): By Irina Slav - Russia’s president Vladimir Putin hopes Saudi Arabia does not begin to reverse the production cuts agreed in December to fill the gap of Iranian oil on global markets. Responding to a question on the sidelines of an investment event in Beijing, Putin said “I hope this does not happen in the end - but theoretically speaking, we have agreements under OPEC+,” as quoted by Reuters. “We have not received any information from our Saudi partners or anyone else, any OPEC members, indicating they are ready to quit the agreements,” the Russian president added. (Source: Oil Price)
Trump’s Offshore Drilling Boom May Not Happen Before 2020 (26 April 2019): By Irina Slav - President Donald Trump is considering a delay in the introduction of a plan for the expansion of oil and gas drilling in federal waters until after the 2020 elections, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. A delay would make sense given the opposition that the offshore drilling plan has been attracting from governors and legislators from coastal states, including Republicans. If the five-year offshore lease sale plan is released now and features more acreage to be offered to drillers, the argument goes, Trump will lose votes in next year’s election. (Source: Oil Price)
Saudi Arabia Will Cap The Oil Price Rally (25 April 2019): By Rystad Energy - The US said on Monday that it won’t extend the sanctions waivers for eight countries importing crude oil from Iran. The move could remove around 1.1 million barrels per day from the market. Although Rystad Energy anticipated a further tightening of sanctions, the details in the announcement have led us to revise our forecast downward for Iranian crude production. Rystad Energy forecasts that production will drop to 2.27 million bpd for the second half of 2019, reaching this level by July 2019, which equates to a drop of 0.43 million barrels per day (bpd) from current March 2019 levels.)
Saudi Arabia in no hurry to boost supply as US tightens noose on Iran oil exports (24 April 2019): Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter has said it would adopt a wait and watch approach to ramping up production, amid calls from the US to boost supply following the cancellation of waivers to Iran’s oil clients. “[There is] no need to raise oil output immediately. Saudi Arabia remains focused on balancing global oil markets,” Saudi energy minister Khalid Al Falih told a finance conference in Riyadh on Wednesday. (Source: The National (UAE))
Why Goldman Sachs Believes Oil Won’t Go Higher (23 April 2019): By Tsvetana Paraskova - Despite the somewhat sudden end of the U.S. sanction waivers for all Iranian oil buyers, Goldman Sachs doesn’t see oil prices rallying much higher. “While we acknowledge the near-term upside price risks, we reiterate our fundamentally derived Brent price trading range of $70-75 per barrel for the second quarter of 2019,” Reuters quoted the investment bank’s note from Monday. Before the U.S. announcement on Monday that it would not be extending waivers to anyone after they expire in May, Goldman Sachs was one of the investment banks that don’t see oil prices reaching $80 a barrel as they did in Q3 last year because there’s only modest upside to price gains. (Source: Oil Price)
Oil Climbs Higher As U.S. Looks To End Iran Sanction Waivers (22 April 2019): By Irina Slav - The U.S. administration is preparing to announce an end to sanction waivers for countries importing oil from Iran, Reuters reports, citing a source from Washington who wished to remain unnamed. The report comes on the heels of another one, by the Washington Post, which also quoted a Washington official as saying, "The goal of the policy is to drive up the costs of Iran's malign behavior and more strongly address the broad range of threats to peace and security their regime presents." (Source: Oil Price)
Did This Gas Major Just Ensure Its Survival? (21 April 2019): By Tim Daiss - Australia’s second largest independent gas producer, Santos Ltd., has posted a Q1 production record. The Adelaide-based company said production for the first quarter ending March 31 rose to a record 18.4 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe), up from 13.8 mmboe for the same quarter last year, a 33 percent increase. Revenue came in at $1.02 billion, the second-highest quarterly revenue on record, it said. ... (Source: Oil Price)
Key Oil Demand Driver Set For Boost Later This Year (18 April 2019): By Tsvetana Paraskova - The oil price rally so far this year was as much a result of tightening supply as it was a sign of oil demand growth holding resilient and defying doom-and-gloom forecasts of a significant slowdown due to faltering global economic growth and trade disputes. With oil prices rallying more than 30 percent year to date, concerns started to emerge (again) that higher oil prices will begin to dampen demand in large oil-importing nations, especially in the key demand centers in Asia. (Source: Oil Price)
Scientists Find Oil-Eating Superbacteria On Bottom Of The Ocean (16 April 2019): By Haley Zaremba - Scientists from Ocean University in Qingdao, China and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England have made an incredible discovery that could one day save the planet from the ecological devastation of oil spills. In the deepest depths of the ocean, a team of researchers from England, China, and Russia discovered a bacteria that eats oil. The groundbreaking discovery was published this week in the scientific journal Microbiome. (Source: Oil Price)
U.S. Doubles Oil Exports In 2018 (16 April 2019): By Julianne Geiger - The United States nearly doubled its oil exports in 2018, the Energy Information Administration reporting on Monday, from 1.2 million barrels per day in 2017. The 2.0 million barrels of oil per day exported in 2018 was in line with increased oil production, which averaged 10.9 million barrels per day last year, and was made possible by changes to the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) which allowed it to load VLCCs. The changes to LOOP and to the sheer volume of exports were not the only changes for the US crude oil industry. The destination of this oil shifted in 2018 as well, and even shifted within the year as the trade row between China and the United States took hold. (Source: Oil Price)
Saudi Aramco acquires 17 per cent stake in South Korea's Oilbank (15 April 2019): Saudi Aramco reached an agreement with Hyundai to acquire a 17 per cent stake in Oilbank, one of the South Korean company’s subsidiaries, in a transaction valued at $1.25 billion. “This acquisition demonstrates our investment in the highly complex refining sector in Asia, and continuous commitment to the region’s energy security and development,” said Abdulaziz Al Judaimi, Saudi Aramco's senior vice president of downstream. (Source: The National (UAE))
Trump’s New Ambassador Scrambles To Salvage Relationship With Riyadh (14 April 2019): By Tim Daiss - The Senate has confirmed President Trump’s nominee to be the new U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Though Trump has been in office for more than two years, it will be the first ambassador of his administration to this key middle eastern ally. The Senate approved retired Gen. John Abizaid by a 92-7 vote on Wednesday. The vote comes almost five months after Trump first announced his intention to nominate Abizaid, a 68-year-old retired four-star Army general, who led U.S. Central Command during the contentious Iraq war. (Source: Oil Price)
Chevron To Buy Anadarko In $33B Deal (12 April 2019): By Irina Slav - Chevron Corporation said on Friday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to buy Anadarko Petroleum Corporation in a stock and cash transaction valued at US$33 billion that will boost Chevron’s position in the Permian, the Gulf of Mexico, and in liquefied natural gas (LNG). The acquisition consideration is structured as 75 percent stock and 25 percent cash, providing an overall value of US$65 per share based on the closing price of Chevron stock on April 11, 2019. (Source: Oil Price)
IEA: Saudi Oil Production Falls To Two-Year Low (11 April 2019): By Irina Slav - Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production slumped to the lowest in two years as the Kingdom doubled down on efforts to boost prices, the International Energy Agency said in the new edition of its Oil Market Report. The country’s rate of compliance with the OPEC+ production cut agreement reached 153 percent, the IEA said, adding that this fact, coupled with a sharp drop in production in Venezuela under the weight of sanctions and a string of blackouts, helped reduce global oil supply by 340,000 bpd in March.
OPEC Oil Output Dips To Four-Year Low As Cartel Tightens Market (10 April 2019): By Tsvetana Paraskova - OPEC’s crude oil production dropped by more than 500,000 bpd month on month in March, to the lowest since February 2015, as Saudi Arabia followed through its commitment to cut deeper than pledged and Venezuela’s crisis, sanctions, and blackouts hit its supply harder than in previous months. In its closely-watched Monthly Oil Market Report, ... (Source: Oil Price)
Smart Money Is Piling Into Oil (9 April 2019): By Nick Cunningham - Oil prices jumped to five-month highs this week, pushed higher by a bullish cocktail of supply outages, geopolitical unrest and a sputtering shale sector. The most recent factor is the sudden eruption of the long simmering feud in Libya between rival factions. The attack on Tripoli by the Libyan National Army (LNA), a militia led by Khalifa Haftar, led to a spike in oil prices on Monday as the market priced in the possibility of supply outages. (Source: Oil Price)
Oil & Gas Discoveries On The Rise As Oil Majors Dive In (8 April 2019): By Rystad Energy - Oil and gas exploration is off to a flying start in 2019, with majors taking a bigger bite of the conventional resources discovered in the first quarter, according to Rystad Energy. Global discoveries of conventional resources in the first quarter reached a robust 3.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Most of the gains were recorded in February, posting 2.2 billion barrels of discovered resources – the best monthly tally on record since August 2015. “If the rest of 2019 continues at a similar pace, this year will be on track to exceed last year’s discovered resources by 30%,” says Taiyab Zain Shariff, Upstream Analyst at Rystad Energy.
Goldman: The Renewables Revolution Is Good For Big Oil (7 April 2019): By Irina Slav - The renewable energy revolution that many have been seen as a threat for the oil and gas industry will actually benefit one significant segment of it: Big Oil. That’s what Goldman Sachs’s head of natural resources research in the EMEA region told CNBC this week. The reason for the counterintuitive conclusion has everything to do with size: the same factor that has made Big Oil the most likely winner in the shale patch as long as oil and gas prices don’t slump too low. (Source: Oil Price)
World Economic Forum Mena 2019: EBRD to swing to profit growth this year and invest €2bn in the Middle East (6 April 019): The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will swing back to profit this year after being impacted by Turkey’s economic volatility and plans to invest about 10 billion euros (Dh41.21bn) this year of which about 20 per cent will be in the Middle East, its president said. Over the past seven years, the EBRD has invested billions of euros in 213 projects, and Egypt ... (Source: The National (UAE))
Saudi Arabia Threatens To Drop Dollar For Oil Trades (5 April 2019): By Irina Slav - Saudi Arabia has threatened the United States to stop using dollars for its oil trades in an attempt to discourage legislators from passing a bill dubbed NOPEC aimed at holding OPEC liable for cartel practices under U.S. law. Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources, that the switch from U.S. dollars to other currencies had been discussed in senior Saudi circles and that it had also been shared with U.S. government officials from the energy department. (Source: Oil Price)
Why Oil Markets Need New OPEC+ Cuts (4 April 2019): By Rystad Energy - As oil prices approach $70 a barrel, Rystad Energy expects that a short-lived price rally through the first half of 2020 will then lose momentum and be replaced by a need for additional production cuts by Russia and the cartel of oil producing countries, OPEC. “We retain our bullish stance for the second half of 2019 and first half of 2020 as we anticipate OPEC+ to extend production cuts through 2019, while we also expect bullish oil market effects due to the introduction of IMO 2020 regulations on sulfur content in marine fuels,” says Bjørnar Tonhaugen, Head of Oil Market Research at Rystad Energy.
Oil nears $70 a barrel (3 April 2019): Oil rallied for a fourth day, rising with other financial markets, as a report the US and China are getting closer to reaching a trade deal overshadowed a bigger than expected jump in American crude stockpiles. West Texas Intermediate for May delivery gained 28 cents to $62.86 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 10:51am in Singapore after finishing up 1.6 per cent on Tuesday. Brent for June settlement rose 40 cents to $69.77 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange after getting to $69.87 earlier. The global benchmark crude’s premium over WTI for the same month widened to $6.87 a barrel. (Source: The National (UAE))
Oil price hits highest so far this year (2 April 2019): Oil hit a 2019 high above $69 a barrel on Tuesday on the prospect that more sanctions against Iran and further Venezuelan disruptions could deepen an Opec-led supply cut, and as the market became less worried that demand may slow. The United States is considering more sanctions against Iran, whose oil exports have been halved by existing measures, an official said. A key crude terminal in Venezuela, also under US sanctions, has halted operations again. West Texas Intermediate for May delivery rose as much as 50 cents to $62.09 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the highest since November 8. It traded at 62.07 as of 11:06 am in London.(Source: The National (UAE))
Federal Judge Reinstates Ban On Drilling Oil In Arctic (1 April 2019): By Julianne Geiger - United States District Court for the District of Alaska judge Sharon L. Gleason decided late on Friday to reinstate the drilling ban on millions of acres in the Arctic that President Barack Obama put in place prior to the expiration of his presidential term. Gleason, an Obama-era appointee, determined that President Trump’s decision to open up Arctic waters to oil drilling was an overreach. (Source: Oil Price)