North Sea & the 'crude' mood in Aberdeen

The Oilholic spent the wee hours of this morning counting the number of North Sea operational support ships docked in Aberdeen Harbour. Interestingly enough, of the nine in the harbour, six were on the Norwegian ships register.

Whether you examine offshore oil & gas activity in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea or the British sector, there is a sense here that the industry is enjoying something of a mini revival if not a full blown renaissance. As production peaked in the late 1990s, empirical evidence that oil majors had begun looking elsewhere for better yields started emerging. Some even openly claimed they’d given up.

Over a decade later, with new extraction techniques and enhanced hydrocarbon recovery mechanisms in vogue – a different set of players have arrived in town from Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA) to Austria's OMV, from Canada's Talisman Energy to China's Sinopec. Oil recovery from mature fields is now the talk of the town.

Even the old hands at BP, Shell and Statoil – who have divested portions of their North Sea holdings – seem to be optimistic. The reason can be found in the three figure price of Brent! Most commentators the Oilholic has spoken to here, including energy economists, taxation experts, financiers and one roughneck [with 27 years of experience under his belt] are firmly of the view that a US$100 per barrel price or above supports the current level of investment in mature fields.

One contact remarks that the ongoing prospection and work on mature fields can even take an oil price dip to around $90-level. "However, anything below that would make a few project directors nervous. Nonetheless, the connect with between Brent price fluctuation and long term planning is not as linear as is the case between investment in Canadian oil sands projects and the Western Canadian Select (WSC) price."      

To put some context, the WSC was trading at a $30 per barrel discount to the WTI last time yours truly checked. Concurrently, Brent's premium to the WTI, though well below historic highs, is just shy of $10 per barrel. Another contact, who retains faith in the revival of the North Sea hypothesis, says it also bottles down to the UK's growing demand for natural gas.

"It's what'll keep West of Shetland prospection hot. Furthermore, and despite concern about capacity constraints, sound infrastructural support is there in the shape of the West of Shetland Pipeline (WOSP) which transports natural gas from three offshore fields in the area to Sullom Voe Terminal [operated by BP]."

While further hydrocarbon discoveries have been made atop what's already onstream, they are not yet in the process of being developed. That's partially down to prohibitive costs and partially down to concerns about WOSP's capacity. However, that's not dampening the enthusiasm in Aberdeen.

Five years ago, many predicted a rig and infrastructure decommissioning bonanza to be a revenue generator and become a thriving industry itself. "But enhanced oil recovery schemes keep pushing this 'bonanza' back for another day. This in itself bears testimony to what's afoot here," says one contact.

UK Chancellor George Osborne also appears to be listening. In his budget speech on March 20, he said that the government would enter into contracts with companies in the sector to provide "certainty" over tax relief measures. That has certainly cheered industry players in Aberdeen as well the lobby group Oil & Gas UK.

"The move by the Chancellor gives companies the certainty they need over the tax treatment of decommissioning. At no cost to the government, it will speed up asset sales and free up capital for companies to use for investment, extending the productive life of the UK Continental Shelf," a spokesperson says, echoing what many here have opined.

Osborne's budget speech also had one 'non-crude' bit of good news for the region. The Chancellor revealed that one of the two bidders for the UK government's £1 billion support programme for Carbon Capture and Storage (CC&S) is the Peterhead Project here in Aberdeenshire. Overall, the industry sounds optimistic, just don't mention the 'R-word'. Scotland is due to hold a referendum on September 18, 2014 on whether it wants to be independent or remain part of the United Kingdom.

Hardly any contact in a position of authority wants to express his/her opinion on record with the description of political 'hot potato' attributed to the referendum issue by many. The response perhaps is understandable. It's an issue that is dividing colleagues and workforces throughout the length and breadth of Scotland.

General consensus among commentators seems to be that the industry would be better off in a 'United' Kingdom. However, even it were to become a 'Disunited' Kingdom come September 2014, industry veterans believe the global nature of the oil & gas business and the craving for hydrocarbons would imply that the sector itself need not be spooked too much about the result. National opinion polls suggest that most Scots currently prefer a United Kingdom, but also that a huge swathe of the population is as yet undecided and could be swayed either way.

In a bid to conduct an unscientific yet spirited opinion poll of unknown people since known ones were unwilling, the Oilholic quizzed three taxi drivers around town and four bus drivers at Union Square. Result – two were in the 'Yes to independence' camp, four were in the 'No' camp and one said he'd just about had enough of the 'ruddy question' being everywhere from newspapers to radio talk shows, to a stranger like yours truly asking him and that he couldn't give a damn!

Moving away from the politics and the projects to the crude oil price itself, where black gold has had quite a fortnight in the wake of a US political stalemate with regard to the country's debt ceiling. Nervousness about the shenanigans on Capitol Hill and the highest level of US crude oil inventories in a while have pushed WTI’s discount to Brent to its widest in nearly three months by this blogger's estimate.

Should the unthinkable happen and the political stalemate over the US debt ceiling not get resolved, it is the Oilholic's considered viewpoint that Brent is likely to receive much more support at $100-level than the WTI, should bearish trends grip the global commodities market. This blogger has maintained for a while that the WTI price still includes undue froth in any case, thereby making it much more vulnerable to bearish sentiment. 

Just one final footnote, before calling it a day and sampling something brewed in Scotland – according to a recent note put out by the Worldwatch Institute, the global commodity 'supercycle' slowed down in 2012. In its latest Vital Signs Online trends report, the institute noted that global commodity prices dropped by 6% in 2012, a marked change from the dizzying growth during the commodities supercycle of 2002-12, when prices surged an average of 9.5% per annum, or 150% over the stated 10-year period.

Worldwatch Institute says that during the supercycle, the financial sector took advantage of the changing landscape, and the commodities market went from being "little more than a banking service as an input to trading" to a full-fledged asset class; an event that some would choose to describe as "assetization of commodities" and that most certainly includes black gold. Supercycle or not, there is no disguising the fact that large investment banks participate in both financial as well as commercial aspects of commodities trading (and will continue to do so).

Worldwatch Institute notes that at the turn of the century, total commodity assets under management came to just over $10 billion. By 2008 that number had increased to $160 billion, although $57 billion of that left the market that year during the global financial crisis. The decline was short-lived, however, and by the end of the third quarter in 2012, the total commodity assets under management had reached a staggering $439 billion.

Oil averaged $105 per barrel last year and a slowdown in overall commodity price growth was indeed notable, but Worldwatch Institute says it is still not clear if the so-called supercycle is completely over. 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 1: North Sea support ships in Aberdeen Harbour. Photo 2: City Plaque near ferry terminal, Aberdeen, Scotland © Gaurav Sharma, October 2013.

A crude walk down 'Exploration Drive'

The Oilholic finds himself in the 'Granite City' or the 'Oil capital of Europe' as Aberdeen, Scotland has recently come to be known as. Given that context, a street named Exploration Drive in the city's Energy Park has a nice ring to it. In what has been an interesting week – news-wise, market reports-wise and otherwise – right up to this morning, it's good to be here, meeting old friends and making yet newer ones during been. While this blogger's flight got in on time, blustery conditions so common in this part of the world saw one plane overshoot the runway and the airport closed for a few hours. 

That wasn't the only news in town. Reports of the Libyan PM first getting kidnapped and then released, flooded the wires and Shell – Nigeria’s oldest IOC operator – has put up four oil blocks there feeding the Bonny Terminal (the country’s oldest export facility) up for sale, according to the FT.

The chatter, if formally confirmed, would be seen as a retreat by the oil major from a part of the world where theft of crude from pipeline infrastructure is rampant. Shell it seems is getting mighty fed up of constant damage to its pipelines. Moving on from news, it is worth summarising a couple of interesting notes put out by Moody's these past few weeks.

 

In the first, the ratings agency opines that BP can tolerate a moderate penalty related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill without compromising its credit quality. However, a severe penalty resulting from a finding of gross negligence would change the equation according to Moody's, with Phase 2 of the trial to determine limitation and liability having begun stateside.

"BP can tolerate about US$40 billion in penalties, after taxes, under its A2, Prime-1 ratings. A ruling in line with the company's current $3.5 billion provision would leave some headroom to absorb other charges, including settlement costs from payouts awarded for business economic loss claims, which ultimately depend on the interpretation of the Economic and Property Damages Settlement Agreement," Moody's noted.

Other defendants in the case include Transocean, Halliburton and Anadarko. Of these, Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, is exposed to sizable fines and penalties. "Indemnifications will protect Transocean from some liabilities. But other items could ultimately cost the company billions of dollars to resolve," says Stuart Miller, senior credit officer at Moody's.

In its second note, the ratings agency said it had downgraded Petrobras' long term debt ratings to Baa1 from A3. The downgrade reflects Petrobras' high financial leverage and the expectation that the company will continue to have large negative cash flow over the next few years as it pursues its capital spending programme.

With that programme being the largest among its peers, Petrobras' spending in 2013 could be almost double its internally generated cash flow. The company's total debt liabilities increased in the first half of 2013 by $16.3 billion, or $8.36 billion net of cash and marketable securities, and should increase again in 2014, based on an outlook for negative cash flow through 2014 and into 2015. The outlook remains negative, Moody's adds.

Moving away from companies to countries, global analytics firm IHS has concluded that North America’s "Tight Oil" phenomenon is poised to go global. In its latest geological study – Going Global: Predicting the Next Tight Oil Revolution – it says the world has large 'potential technical' recoverable resources of tight oil, possibly several times those of North America.

 

In particular, the study identified the 23 "highest-potential" plays throughout the world and found that the potential technically recoverable resources of just those plays is likely to be 175 billion barrels – out of almost 300 billion for all 148 play areas analysed for the study.

While it is too early to assess the proportion of what could be commercially recovered, the potential is significant compared to the commercially recoverable resources of tight oil (43 billion barrels) estimated in North America by previous IHS studies. The growth of tight oil production has driven the recent surge in North American production. In fact, the USA is now the world largest 'energy' producer by many metrics.

"Before the tight oil revolution people thought oil supply would start to fall slowly in the longer term, but now it is booming. This is important because Russian production has been hovering at the same level for some time, and now the US will exceed the Russia’s total oil and gas production," says Peter Jackson, vice president of upstream research at IHS CERA.

In IHS' view, Russian oil production is unlikely to rise in the medium term. In fact, the firm anticipates that it will start falling because of the lack of investment in exploration in emerging areas such as the Arctic and new plays such as tight oil. "But of course, there is a long lead time between deciding to invest and exploring and then getting that oil & gas out of the ground," Jackson adds.

North America's growth in supply from the tight oil and shale revolution means that the USA is now less worried about the security of energy supply. It is now even thinking of exporting LNG, which would have been unheard of ten years ago, as the Oilholic noted from Chicago earlier this year.

This is having an impact on the direction of exports around the world changing direction, from West to East, for example to China and post-Fukushima Japan. Furthermore, light sweet West African crudes are now switching globally, less directed to the US and increasingly to Asian jurisdictions.

OPEC, which is likely to increase its focus in favour of Asia as well, published its industry outlook earlier this month. While its Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri refused to be drawn in to what production quota it would set later this year, he did say a forecast drop in demand for OPEC's oil was not large.

The exporters' group expects demand for its crude to fall to 29.61 million bpd in 2014, down 320,000 bpd from 2013, due to rising non-OPEC supply. "Tight oil" output would be in decline by 2018 and the cost of such developments means that a sharp drop in oil prices would restrain supplies, Badri said.

"This tight oil is hanging on the cost. If the price were to drop to $60 to $70, then it would be out of the market completely." He does have a point there and that point –  what oil-price level would keep unconventional, difficult-to-extract and low-yield projects going – is what the Oilholic is here to find out over the next couple of days. That’s all for the moment from Aberdeen folks! Keep reading, keep it 'crude'!

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com

© Gaurav Sharma 2013. Photo 1: Exploration Drive, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Photo 2: Weatherford site, Aberdeen Energy Park, Scotland, UK © Gaurav Sharma, October 2013.

Dissecting & summarising PM methodologies

Projects in all sectors of the economy, large or small, need careful planning and consideration. Over the years, project management has evolved considerably to become a crucial standalone genre of management studies.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, literature on the subject has mushroomed. Industry veteran and UCL academic Peter Morris has lent his thoughts via Reconstructing Project Management, which though intentioned as an academic text - is not bland and dry like some other titles vying with it for attention.

In a book of over 300 pages split into four parts and 22 chapters, Morris has offered his take on project management techniques, modes and methodologies drawing on lessons from the past, current discourse and ongoing trends to chart the road ahead. Part I of the book (Constructing Project Management) discusses the history of modern project management and how it evolved into a standalone discipline.

Invariably among the sub-components, oil & gas projects come into view and the author does justice to the sector by flagging it up early on in one of the chapters. He then moves on to the development of project management methodology and standards such as, but not limited to PERT, CPM, APM, PMBOK, etc. In order to contextualise and substantiate his thoughts, there are case studies aplenty.

Moving on to Part II (Deconstructing Project Management), Morris discusses management principles, governance and most importantly the impact (and facets) of risk, governance, people and procurement.

Part III (Reconstructing Project Management) sees the author come into his element, offering his take on the context and character of project management as we know it (or we think we know it) and join the dots to organisational performance. The final Part IV of the book contains a summary and the author's concluding thoughts.

Overall, it’s a good read and a written work likely to retain its value for another couple of decades if not more. The only caveat the Oilholic would like to flag up as an industry observer (and not a practitioner) is that this book is not the meatiest volume out there on project management.

For an outside-in look, what’s here is more than sufficient but some practitioners may beg to differ and demand more detail. Nonetheless, there is strength and uniqueness in brevity too when it comes to tackling such a detailed subject. Hence, this blogger is happy to recommend it to those interested in or involved with project management.

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com

© Gaurav Sharma 2013. Photo: Front Cover - Reconstructing Project Management © Wiley 2013

Crude prices: Syrian conundrum & bearish trends

As the immediate threat of a US-led campaign against Syria recedes, some semblance of decidedly bearish calm has returned to the oil markets. The last two weeks have seen steady declines in benchmark prices as the Assad regime agreed to a Russian-led initiative aimed at opening up the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal to international inspection. Jury is still out on whether it will work, but that’s enough to keep the oil market bulls in check.

 

Supply-side analysts also took comfort from the improving situation in terms of Libyan production. However, an appreciable caveat needs to be taken into account here. Libya’s oil production has recovered, but only to about 40% of its pre-war rate of 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd), and is currently averaging no more than 620,000 bpd, according to the government.

 

A further lull in violence in Egypt has helped calm markets as well. Much of the market fear in this context, as the Oilholic noted from Oman a few weeks ago, was invariably linked to the potential for disruption to tanker traffic through the Suez Canal which sees 800,000 barrels of crude and 1.5 million barrels of petroleum distillate products pass each day through its narrow confines.

 

Furthermore, it wasn’t just the traffic between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea via the canal that was, and to a certain extent still is, an area of concern. Disturbances could also impact the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline which ferries through another 1.7 million bpd. Syria, Libya and Egypt aside, Iran is sending conciliatory notes to the US for the first time in years in its nuclear stand-off with the West.

 

Factoring in all of this, the risk premium has retreated. Hence, we are seeing are near six-week lows as far as the Brent forward month futures contract for November goes. There is room for further correction even though winter is around the corner. On a related note, the WTI’s discount to Brent is currently averaging around US$5 per barrel and it still isn’t, and perhaps never will be, sufficiently disconnected from the global geopolitical equation.

 

Shame really, for in what could be construed further price positive news for American consumers, the US domestic crude production rose 1.1% to 7.83 million bpd for the week that ended September 13. That’s the highest since 1989 according to EIA. At least for what it’s worth, this is causing the premium of the Louisiana Light Sweet (LLS) to the WTI to fall; currently near its lowest level since March 2010 (at about $1.15 per barrel).

 

Moving away from pricing matters, the Oilholic recently had the chance to browse through a Fitch Ratings report published last month which seemed to indicate that increasing state control of Russian oil production will make it harder for private companies to compete with State-controlled Rosneft. Many commentators already suspect that.

 

Rosneft's acquisition of TNK-BP earlier this year has given the company a dominant 37% share of total Russian crude production. It implies that the state now controls almost half of the country's crude output and 45% of domestic oil refining.

 

Fitch analyst Dmitri Marinchenko feels rising state control is positive for Rosneft's credit profile but moderately negative for independent oil producers. “The latter will find it harder to compete for new E&P licences, state bank funding and other support,” he adds.

 

In fact, the favouring of state companies for new licences is already evident on the Arctic shelf, where non-state companies are excluded by law. However, most Russian private oil producers have a rather high reserve life, and Marinchenko expects them to remain strong operationally and financially even if their activities are limited to onshore conventional fields.

 

“We also expect domestic competition in the natural gas sector to increase as Novatek and Rosneft take on Gazprom in the market to supply large customers such as utilities and industrial users. These emerging gas suppliers are able to supply gas at lower prices than the fully regulated Gazprom. But this intensified competition should not be a significant blow to Gazprom as it generates most of its profit from exports to Europe, where it has a monopoly.”

 

There is a possibility that this monopoly could be partly lifted due to political pressure from Rosneft and Novatek. But even if this happens, Marinchenko thinks it is highly likely that Gazprom would retain the monopoly on pipeline exports – which would continue to support its credit rating.

 

Continuing with the region, Fitch also said in another report that the production of the first batch of the crude stuff from the Kashagan project earlier this month is positive for Kazakhstan and KazMunayGas. The latter has a 16.8% stake in the project.

 

Eni, a lead member of North Caspian Operating Company, which is developing Kashagan, has said that in the initial 2013-14 phase, output will grow to 180,000 bpd, compared with current output from Kazakh oilfields of 1.6 million bpd. Kashagan has estimated reserves of 35 billion barrels, of which 11 billion barrels are considered as recoverable.

 

The onset of production is one reason Fitch expects Kazakhstan's economic growth rate to recover after a slight slowdown in 2012. Meanwhile, KazMunayGas expects the Kashagan field to make a material contribution to its EBITDA and cash flow from next year, the agency adds.

 

Increased oil exports from Kashagan will also support Kazakhstan's current account surplus, which had been stagnating thanks to lower oil prices. However, Fitch reckons foreign direct investment may decline as the first round of capital investment into the field slows.

 

What's more, China National Petroleum Company became a shareholder in Kashagan with an 8.3% stake earlier this month. Now this should certainly help Kazakhstan increase its oil supplies to China, which are currently constrained by pipeline capacity. Watch this space! 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: Oil production site, Russia © Lukoil

Profiling Oman's E&P and its wider market impact

The Oilholic has always been intrigued by Oman's oil & gas industry. The oil storage tanks atop the Al Wattayah cliffs of the Hajar Mountain range (see left) dominate the scenery behind Muscat and Muttrah's natural harbours. They also bear a silent but impactful testament to black gold's importance in this part of the world.

In a regional context, and from a geopolitical standpoint, Oman's 5.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) in proven reserves are the largest for any non-OPEC country in the Middle East. Admittedly, in this part of the world, there aren't that many non-OPEC players of significance in any case, let alone one with such a proven reserves position.

However, given that Oman does not have as much in terms of reserves relative to its regional oil exporting peers, is precisely why IOCs get better deals when it comes to oil & gas prospection here. The Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) holds around 92% of Oman's oil reserves. Aside from the government's 60% stake in PDO, Shell is the junior partner with 34%. Total (4%) and Partex (2%) make up the rest with minority stakes.

For all of that, it's actually Occidental Petroleum which has the largest operations of any IOC in Oman and is the country's second largest oil-producer! Chinese presence here is the shape of CNPC, while BP, Repsol and KoGas are meaningful industry participants as well.

The country has come a long way from signing its first export consignment of 543,800 barrels of the crude stuff delivered F.O.B Mina-al Fahal for a purchase price of US$1.42 per barrel (to Shell) way back on that historic date of August 8, 1967. PDO archives reveal that momentous invoice which was the harbinger of things to come (see right, click to enlarge).

The journey so far has not been without hiccups. A lot of soul-searching ensued when production, which at one point was above 950,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) in the late 1990s, plummeted to an all time low of 714,000 boepd in 2007. However, initial anxieties about a general decline in oil & gas production have been replaced by renewed vigour and pragmatism with output rising steadily if not spectacularly in recent years.

Two key decisions taken by the administration of Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said have seen Oman turn a corner. As the Oilholic noted in an earlier blog post, the first move was to diversify Oman's economy away from oil & gas and promote transport, cargo & logistics, regional banking and, of course, tourism sectors. The plan was dubbed "Vision 2020" and initiated in 1998, when the oil price dipped below $10 per barrel.

The second move, kick-started in 2002, saw a strategic increase in petrodollars pumped into boosting oil production via enhanced recovery mechanisms at ageing oilfields. Miscible gas injection, thermal injection and polymer flooding were the techniques which found favour. Of these, thermal has proved most popular being deployed at Mukhaizna, Marmul, Amal-East, Amal-West and Qarn Alam fields. However, the PDO is employing traditional water-flooding at Yibal; the largest oilfield in the country.

The changes are tangible. According to the US EIA, Oman's average production came in at 923,500 boepd in 2012. Updating the figure, a PDO spokesperson told the Oilholic that H1 2013 production was in the region was around 944,200 boepd.

"All said medium term production expectation of over 930,000 boepd based on current investment and undertaking would be a realistic supposition for next few years," he added. The country's Petroleum Investments Directorate at the Ministry of Oil & Gas breaks this up as 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the crude stuff and 3.3 bcm of natural gas. The figure is based on 2012 data from seven – mainly onshore – production blocks.

PDO also looks set to pump additional funds, above and beyond what was budgeted in 2002, into improving production even further. Despite the best efforts of yours truly, a reliable figure was not forthcoming. But if one was to take a cumulative average of what local analysts say – we'd be looking at a minimum spend in the region of $6 billion per annum for the next 10 years.

While onshore prospects have historically been Oman's mainstay, as the Oilholic noted an earlier blog from Khasab – Bukha's offshore prospects are noteworthy. Norwegian independent upstart DNO International's 'Block 8' prospection off the Musandam coastline could well and truly shake things up. Some say it already is! The block is yielding 8,000 bpd, but reliable local sources say that once its full potential is realised, we could be looking at 20,000 bpd.

The big question is – could fresh Omani prospection coupled with the ongoing enhanced recovery programme – push production above the psychologically uplifting and headline grabbing figure of 1 million bpd?

Based on empirical and anecdotal evidence, thoughts of market commentators in Muscat and Abu Dhabi and the Oilholic's own calculations – sadly no! However, Omani production will be tantalisingly close to the magic mark as early as Q1 2014, and this blogger would be delighted for the country were he to be proved wrong, however briefly.

Regardless of the final figures, what does it mean and for whom? Almost 760,000 bpd would be exported by 2014, according to the government. The Far East seems to be the preferred destination for Omani Crude – with China, Japan and South Korea being the buyers. Since 2005, India is also looking towards Oman, more so, since last year, as the availability of Iranian crude remains sanction hit. 

Well, it is nearly time to call it a day here in Muscat. But not before the Oilholic leaves you with a view of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos' Royal Yacht - its one magnificent floater (see above left) ! Additionally, see below, from clockwise from left to right – the Royal Opera House, a very Omani sunset, Muscat's answer to London’s "Boris Bikes" and the Marina Bandar Ar Rawdah. It's been a thoroughly memorable visit to this wonderful country, full of warm, gracious and welcoming people.

One is truly grateful to professionals and commentators from PDO to BankMuscat, from the Oil & Gas Exhibition Centre to local guides who spared their valuable time to discuss various aspects of Oman's oil & gas industry.

However, away from Oman and just before boarding the flight to London Heathrow, one has a bit of reading material to flag-up. First, here's a brilliant column in the FT by Victor Mallet discussing travails of the Indian Rupee, in the current climate of foreign investors wanting to pull their money of emerging markets. The second is a BBC report about Egyptian officials saying they had foiled an attack aimed at disrupting shipping in the busy Suez Canal. This is seriously spooky with on-going problems in Syria, Libya and Egypt itself.

To put things into their proper context, the Suez Canal sees 800,000 barrels of crude and 1.5 million barrels of petroleum distillate products pass each day through its narrow confines between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. Furthermore, it's not just the canal that should be of concern.

With nefarious characters lurking around, another supply route of concern might be the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline which ferries through 1.7 million bpd. Disruption to either could see the risk premium on Brent be hit for six! That's all from Oman folks! Keep reading, keep it 'crude'!

To follow The Oilholic on Twitter click here.

 

To email: gaurav.sharma@oilholicssynonymous.com
 

© Gaurav Sharma 2013. Photo 1: Oil storage tanks atop the Al Wattayah cliffs of the Hajar Mountain range, Muscat, Oman. Photo 2: Invoice of the first consignment of Omani oil exports, 1967. Photo 3: Sultan Qaboos’ Royal Yacht, off Muttrah coast, Oman. Photo 4: Clockwise from left to right – Royal Opera House, Sunset in Muscat, the city’s answer to London’s "Boris Bikes" and the Marina Bandar Ar Rawdah , Oman © Gaurav Sharma, August, 2013.