Most of the Oilholic's contacts in City trading circles had been maintaining in recent months that a US$106 per barrel price would be the psychological floor to the year-end, barring bearish trends induced by a wider and unforeseen macroeconomic tsunami.
To be quite honest, the global economy is probably where it has been for a while – in a bit of a lull. So even though things are neither materially better nor all that worse, the level was still breached this Monday morning. Methinks there is going to be further selling and yet more shorting either side of the Atlantic.
Our old friends the hedge funds – held responsible by many for the assetization of black gold – certainly seem to think so. That's if you believe data published by ICE Futures Europe. It indicates speculative bets that the Brent price will rise (in futures and options combined), outnumbered short positions by 119,451 lots in the week ended October 29.
The London-based exchange says that's a reduction of 21% (or 30,710 contracts) from the previous week and the biggest drop since the week ended June 25. Concurrently, bearish positions on Brent outnumbered bullish wagers by 321,470; a 3.2% decrease in net-short positions from October 22. So there you have it!
On a related note, albeit for different reasons, the WTI also closed at its lowest since June 26. In fact the forward month futures contract for December shed as much as 55 cents to $94.06 at one point in intraday trading on Monday.
The Oilholic believes the prices aren’t plummeting; rather they are hitting a much more realistic level. Such a sentiment was echoed by two new supply-side contacts this blogger had the pleasure of running into at the UK business lobby group CBI's 2013 annual conference.
As 2014 is nearly upon us, Steven Wood, managing director (corporate finance) at Moody's, says oil prices should stay robust through next year. His and Moody's quantification of robustness for Brent, factoring in Chinese demand and tensions in the Middle East, stands at around $95 per barrel, and West Texas Intermediate "for slightly less, in the next one to two years."
"And with the worst behind the US natural gas industry, prices for benchmark Henry Hub will average about $3.75 per thousand cubic feet next year," he adds.
Additionally, the good folks at Moody's reckon the E&P sector's fortunes will continue to rise over the next year, with big capital spending budgets keeping fundamentals strong (also for the oilfield service and drilling sector).
One minor footnote though, even if it is still some way off – what if international sanctions on Iran get eased should relations between the Islamic Republic and the West improve? We could then see the Iran add over 750,000 barrels per day to the global oil output pool. Undoubtedly, this would be bearish for oil markets, especially so for Brent. The recent dialogue between both sides has made contemplating the possibility possible!
Away from price-related issues, if you needed any further proof of renewed vigour in North Sea E&P activity, then Norway's Statoil has announced it will go ahead with a decision to build a new platform at its Snorre field to extract another 300 million barrels of the crude stuff at an expense of £4.2 billion. This would, according to the Norwegian media, extend the project's lifetime to 2040.
Statoil will take a final decision on engineering aspects in the first quarter of 2015 with the platform scheduled to come onstream in the fourth quarter of 2021. The Norwegian firm owns 33.3% of the exploration project licence. Other shareholders include Petoro (30%), ExxonMobil (17.4%), Idemitsu Petroleum (9.6%), RWE (8.6%) and Core Energy (1.1%). That’s all for the moment folks! Keep reading, keep it ‘crude’!
To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.
To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com
© Gaurav Sharma 2013. Photo: North Sea oil rig © Cairn Energy plc
