Chasing tankers in Beautiful British Columbia

The Oilholic has crossed the international dateline and has gone from being 6000 miles east of London in Tokyo, Japan to being 4700 miles west in "Beautiful British Columbia, Canada" as vehicle registration plates in Vancouver remind you with customary aplomb.

It’s a bit cloudy and tad soggy here, a marked contrast to sunny Tokyo. In between meeting family, friends and contacts, yours truly has also penned two Forbes columns – one on the direction of the South Korean economy and a second one on the oil price bottoming out.

This blogger would say it is all well and good that both global benchmarks – Brent and WTI – are lurking at or just below the $40 per barrel level, and some, including the International Energy Agency, are opining that prices may well have bottomed out. While accepting those sentiments is not difficult, China’s anticipated flat demand could spell trouble over the medium term, as one explained in the latter Forbes post. 

Shipping traffic out of this Canadian province where yours truly is at the moment, typifies the oil and gas world’s dependency on emerging markets in general and Far Eastern economies in particular, led by – who else – but China.

Wherever you admire BC’s amazing shoreline and Vancouver’s beautiful waterfronts – atop Grouse Mountain (above left), Concord Pacific Place in Downtown Vancouver (right), City Harbour inlet (below left), Port Moody or on the other side of the Burrard Inlet from English Bay beach (one's favourite spot) – you cannot miss umpteen oil and gas tankers either waiting to dock or waiting to leave with their crude cargo from the area.

Over the last 12 years on each visit to the area, the Oilholic has only seen the volume of traffic rise exponentially. Unsurprisingly, it causes much consternation among the very strong regional environmentalist groups. Their worst fears were heightened again by the spillage of bunker fuel in April 2015 off West Vancouver’s Sandy Cove.

Prior to that, there have been other incidents, though the most serious one dates back to July 2007 when an excavator working on a sewage line pierced a oil pipeline releasing more than 250,000 litres of crude oil. Nearly 70,000 litres flowed into the Burrard Inlet, with the resulting clear-up costing the province $20 million.

Yet loading and outflow of oil (and gas) from British Columbia, a province which has very little of its own and serves mainly as a transit point, to the Far East is only going to increase not decrease. In the last election, Canada’s new carbon footprint conscious Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals bagged 17 of 42 seats in the province; their best result since 1968.

Some, to quote a retired civil servant and old contact, can be described as “tree huggers”, which is not necessarily a bad thing and there are plenty of trees to hug in BC. Tree huggers or not, Trudeau promptly appointed three of his MPs from BC to his cabinet. 

But with the Canadian economy going through a lacklustre patch, oil markets grappling with oversupply and China expected to buy less, the stakes are going to get higher even if the Western Canadian Select – which trades at a discount (currently above US$14) to the West Texas Intermediate – goes lower. Quite frankly, there is very little the carbon conscious PM can do here.

Furthermore, if anecdotal evidence is to be believed, BC Premier Christy Clark and her provincial Liberals were actually banking on an oil and gas boom in time for a 2017 regional election, eyeing both jobs and revenue.

Instead they, along with much of the oil and gas world, now have a complicated and prolonged bust on their hands, with the general direction of Canadian oil dispatches more than likely to be Eastwards, even if the US remains Canada’s largest trading partner for oil and much else. Just ask neighbouring Alberta; the politics (and economics) of it all is likely to get much more complicated! 

However, given lower demand from both Japan and China, it is quite likely that you might spot marginally fewer tankers in British Columbian waters. The Oilholic does stress on the word ‘marginally’ though, and that won't satisfy the tree huggers. That’s all for the moment from Vancouver folks! Next stop San Francisco, California, USA via short stopover in Phoenix, Arizona. Keep reading, keep it ‘crude’! 

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© Gaurav Sharma 2016. Photo I: View of Vancouver from Grouse Mountain, North Vancouver, Photo II: Concord Pacific Place, Downtown Vancouver, Photo III: City Harbour inlet, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada © Gaurav Sharma, March 2016.

Oil price dip & those tankers on the horizon

Crude year 2015 has well and truly begun with the oil price slipping several notches further, as tankers begin carrying their January cargo that is worth considerably less than it was 12 months ago.

With the full trading week to Jan 9 seeing an uptick in trading volumes back to normal levels after the festive period, the Oilholic spent a day looking at tankers in English Bay on a beautiful sunny afternoon in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Most of these behemoths (see left, click to enlarge photo) ferry Canadian crude to Asian markets finding their way to the vastness of the ocean from Vancouver's Burrard Inlet. 

As tankers disappeared away from eyesight and yet more dotted the landscape, one's first 5-day assessment of this year saw Brent down 11.44% on the week before, WTI -8.2% and the OPEC Basket a whopping -16%. For now, the Canadian oil and gas industry is holding up pretty well and strategically bracing itself for a further drop in price to as low as US$35 per barrel.

Beyond that, of course all bets are off. Whatever the price, local environmental lobby groups don’t quite like these tankers “blotting the coastline of beautiful British Columbia” to quote one. Data suggests traffic has risen seven-fold since 2001. Of course, the oil being shipped isn’t local as British Columbia doesn’t have too much of its own.

Rather, as many of you would know, all of it is piped in from Alberta by Kinder Morgan to its Westport Terminal on the South East shoreline of Burrard Inlet in Burnaby. The company is the middle of a full on bid to increase pipeline capacity. However, standing on the beach, more than one environmentalist would tell you that a spill was inevitable, especially if you happen to declare you are an energy analyst.

Yet, both major incidents over the last ten years have been on land and weren’t down to the crude behemoths of the sea. In 2007, a construction mishap saw a Kinder Morgan pipeline break in Burnaby spilling oil into the Burrard Inlet while dousing some 50 homes in the neighbourhood with the crude stuff. 

Nearly two years later, a storage tank spilt 200,000 litres of oil on Burnaby Mountain. Thankfully, a containment bay prevented spillage into the wider environment. All this might not help Kinder Morgan's medium term public relations drive, but the volume of traffic and cargoes, even with the existing pipeline capacity, isn’t going to ebb over 2015 unless the global economy sees a severe downtown.

If the Russians, Americans and Saudis are in no mood to lower production, the Canadians aren’t going to either, according to anecdotal evidence. The Oilholic’s thoughts on how an oil price below $60 might well hit exploration and production in Canada (and elsewhere) are here in a Forbes piece one wrote earlier. 

This blogger does see an uptick in price from around the halfway point of 2015, as a supply correction is likely to kick-in. For the moment, barring a financial tsunami knocking non-OECD economic activity, the Oilholic's prediction is for a Brent price in the range of $75 to $85 and WTI price range of $65 to $75 for 2015. Weight on Brent should be to the upside, while weight on WTI should be to the downside of the aforementioned range.

Come Christmas, we should be looking at around $80 per Brent barrel. One thing is for sure, the days of a three-figure price aren’t likely to be seen over the next 12 months. That’s all for the moment folks! Keep reading, keep it ‘crude’! 

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To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com

© Gaurav Sharma 2015. Photo: Oil tankers in English Bay, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada © Gaurav Sharma 2015