Listado de la etiqueta: barrels
‘Well-Timed’ OPEC Talk Forces Oil Bears Into Record Reversal
OPEC has done it again.
Talk of a potential deal to freeze output helped push oil close to $50 a barrel and prompted money managers to cut bets on falling prices by the most ever. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, went from a bear to a bull market in less than three weeks.
OPEC is on course to agree to a production freeze because its biggest members are pumping flat-out, said Chakib Khelil, the group’s former president. Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said that the talks may lead to action to stabilize the market.
«This is all courtesy of some very well-timed comments from the Saudi oil minister,» said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund focused on energy. «They’ve been successful over the last year in jawboning the market, and this is the latest example.»
Hedge funds trimmed their short position in WTI by 56,907 futures and options during the week ended Aug. 16, the most in data going back to 2006, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Futures rose 8.9 percent to $46.58 a barrel in the report week and closed at $48.52 a barrel on Aug. 19. WTI is up more than 20 percent from its Aug. 2 low, meeting the common definition of a bull market.
«This was a very short market so we were bound to get some covering,» said Stephen Schork, president of the Schork Group Inc., a consulting company in Villanova, Pennsylvania. «You probably won’t hear a lot from OPEC with prices up here, but if we get down to where we were a few weeks ago we can expect to hear more.»
Informal Talks
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries plans to hold informal talks to discuss the market at the International Energy Forum next month in Algiers. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that the nation was open to discussing a freeze.
Talks to implement a production freeze collapsed in April when Saudi Arabia said it wouldn’t take part without Iranian participation. Iran was restoring exports after sanctions over its nuclear program were lifted in January.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and non-member Russia are producing at, or close to, maximum capacity, Khelil said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Aug. 17. Saudi Arabia told OPEC that its production rose to an all-time high of 10.67 million barrels a day in July, according to a report from the group.
Ample Stockpiles
Declining crude and gasoline stockpiles in the U.S. also bolstered the market last week. Crude supplies dropped by 2.51 million barrels as of Aug. 12, Energy Information Administration data show. Gasoline inventories slipped 2.72 million barrels during the period. Stockpiles of both crude and gasoline remain at the highest seasonal levels in decades even after the declines.
«There’s a high level of uncertainty right now, so fairly small news can move the market a lot,» said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts. «It still remains the case that we have a huge surplus of supply and aren’t going to see it disappear anytime soon.»
Money managers’ short position in WTI dropped to 163,232 futures and options. Longs, or bets on rising prices, increased 0.1 percent, while net longs advanced 56 percent, the most since July 2010.
In other markets, net-bearish bets on gasoline climbed 54 percent to 1,970 contracts. Gasoline futures rose 5.7 percent in the report week. Net-long wagers on U.S. ultra low sulfur diesel increased more than fivefold to 10,835 contracts. Futures advanced 9.8 percent.
Copyright: Rig Zone
Mexico 2017 Budget Cuts To Squeeze Pemex, Primary Surplus Eyed
Mexico’s government on Thursday set out plans for a bigger-than-anticipated cut in public spending in 2017, with struggling state oil company Pemex earmarked for a 100 billion peso ($5.36 billion) reduction in funding.
New Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said the budget foresaw planned spending cuts of 239.7 billion pesos ($12.83 billion), targeting a primary surplus of 0.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017. It would be the first such surplus since 2008.
Of the cuts, 100 billion pesos fall on Pemex, which is already facing a funding squeeze and has racked up multi-billion dollar losses for years. Since the government ended its oil and gas monopoly nearly three years ago, Pemex has faced stiff competition from the private sector.
«Pemex is making the biggest contribution to the cuts,» Meade said, presenting the budget proposal to Congress a day after he was sworn in as finance minister following the resignation of Luis Videgaray.
In late 2013, the government threw open the industry to private capital to reverse a protracted slide in oil production, but falling crude prices have undermined those efforts.
Currently running at some 2.16 million barrels per day (bpd), Mexican oil production will slip to an average of 1.928 million bpd in 2017, the budget forecasts. The last time Mexican crude output fell below 2 million bpd was in 1980.
Still, the budget does foresee changes aimed at easing Pemex’s heavy tax load.
Less than two years remain before the next presidential election, and President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government is struggling to ramp up economic growth, having fallen well short of its original ambition to achieve annual rates of 5-6 percent.
Hurt by uneven U.S. demand for its goods, Mexico’s economy shrank in the second quarter for the first time in three years.
Next year, the budget foresees growth of between 2 and 3 percent, compared with 2.0-2.6 percent in 2016.
Despite the 2017 cuts – well above the 175.1 billion the government eyed in April – non-discretionary spending was expected to rise by 144.3 billion pesos, inflated by higher financing costs and a slide in the peso’s value.
Next year the government foresees an overall deficit of 2.9 percent of GDP, 0.6 percentage points less than the 2016 target.
The budget foresaw the peso averaging 18.2 per dollar in 2017, and an average price of $42 per barrel for Mexican crude, in line with the government’s hedging program. ($1 = 18.6600 Mexican pesos)
Copyright: Rig Zone
Russian, Gulf Arab Oil Ministers Meet as OPEC Cut Looms
Russia’s energy minister met with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf oil-producers to discuss steps to stabilize crude markets amid OPEC’s drive to win cooperation from the biggest supplier outside the group in limiting output to prop up prices.
Ministers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates gathered in Riyadh for oil talks at the offices of the Gulf Cooperation Council secretariat. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak met with them later on Sunday for a separate round of talks and was expected to speak afterward at a news conference. Oman was the only one of the GCC’s six members not attending.
“Oil markets are on the way to being re-balanced,” Saudi Arabia’s Energy and Industry Minister Khalid Al-Falih said at the start of the GCC meeting. “Low oil prices are putting pressure on GCC countries’ development plans.” Russia was invited to attend the Gulf ministers’ talks, he said. “We are working with Russia and other oil producers to stabilize the market.”
Novak is set to meet representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries on Monday in Vienna for talks that could include production cuts, and officials from Russia and Saudi Arabia will hold bilateral discussions later this month. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged to cooperate with OPEC, he’s been vague about whether the country will trim output or just freeze production at September’s post-Soviet record.
OPEC is seeking to attract other producers to join the plan it agreed to last month at a meeting in Algeria to put into effect the group’s first output cuts in eight years. Crude plunged to a 12-year low in January, squeezing the budgets of producers from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia. The price slide led OPEC to abandon its two-year-old Saudi-led policy of allowing members to pump as much as they could in an effort to protect market share.
“We hope that they can reach an overall agreement on which Russia and other non-OPEC producers will join and cooperate with OPEC members,” Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told reporters on Sunday in Tehran.
Iraq asked OPEC for an exemption from participation in any cuts, Oil Minister Jabber Al-Luaibi said Sunday at a news conference in Baghdad. He cited Iraq’s war against Islamic militants as the reason the country should be grouped with Iran and Nigeria as members not required to contribute to the collective cuts OPEC agreed on last month in Algeria.
Record Output
Russia is producing about 10.9 million barrels a day on average this year, according to Energy Ministry data. Officials have emphasized the nation’s ability to keep pumping; the latest draft of Russia’s energy strategy sees a potential increase in annual production from 534.1 million metric tons last year to 555 million tons, or 11.1 million barrels a day, by 2020.
OPEC’s 14 members pumped a record 33.75 million barrels a day in September, with the Saudis accounting for 10.58 million barrels, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Output in Saudi Arabia, the group’s biggest producer, fell short of the 10.66 million-barrel-a-day record in July, the data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, has gained almost 40 percent this year, trading at about $52 a barrel last week. OPEC is trying to determine which members will reduce their output and by how much, with details to be made final at the group’s Nov. 30 meeting.
Copyright:Bloomberg
Mexican President Weighs Bids on Huge New Oil Refinery Construction
Sputnik News / Latin America / December 10
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) – Mexico’s new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday that tenders for the construction of a new large oil refinery in the country’s southeastern state of Tabasco would be announced no later than March 2019.
«The oil refinery will be built here because oil will be processed here as well, it will not be exported. This is the best site for the construction of the new refinery,» Obrador said at a ceremony of the laying of a symbolic cornerstone for the future facility as quoted by the Excelsior news portal.
The Mexican president also confirmed that the state-owned Pemex petroleum company would receive additional $3.6 billion to boost its oil production.
According to Obrador, Mexico will seek to increase oil production from the current less than 1.8 million barrels per day to 2.4 million barrels per day in 2024. The new oil refinery is expected to process 340,000 barrels of oil per day.
Sputnik News / Latin America / December 10
Mexican President-Elect Pledges to Save Country’s Oil Sector
MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) – Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has pledged to save the country’s oil sector just like former Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas, who headed the country from 1934 to 1940, had done.
In March 1938, Cardenas announced the nationalization of the oil industry, and only in 2013, the Mexican Congress approved an energy reform opening the oil sector to private companies, including the foreign ones.
«We will produce oil because oil and gas production has been decreasing since the beginning of the energy reform. We will save the oil industry like Gen. Cardenas did in 1938,» Lopez Obrador posted on Twitter late on Sunday.
In September, Lopez Obrador, who won the election in July and will assume office on December 1, pledged that crude oil production would increase up to 2.6 million barrels per day from the current level of 1.8 million barrels per day by the end of his six-year-long administration.
In August, Pemex, Mexico’s major oil and gas company, produced oil at the average level of 1,816 million barrels per day, which is a 5.9 percent decrease year-on-year, and a 28 percent decrease compared with the notch registered in August 2013.
Chevron signs contract for refined fuels terminal in Mexico
Hydrocarbons Technology / September 17
Chevron Combustibles de México has signed a long-term contract with Sempra Energy’s Mexican subsidiary, Infraestructura Energética Nova (IEnova), to use 50% of the initial capacity of the proposed Topolobampo refined fuels marine terminal.
IEnova is developing the refined fuels terminal in Sinaloa, Mexico, with an initial capacity of one million barrels.
Pursuant the contract, subsidiaries of Chevron will have storage capacity of 500,000 barrels of refined fuels.
In addition, Chevron will have an option to purchase up to 25% of the equity in the terminal following the commencement of commercial operations.
IEnova also signed a contract with an undisclosed US refiner for the remaining 50% of the facility’s initial storage capacity.
“The Topolobampo project provides an important supply source of refined fuels for Mexico.”
IEnova executive chairman Carlos Ruiz Sacristán said: “The Topolobampo project provides an important supply source of refined fuels for Mexico. Together, working with our customers, this terminal will increase reliability of supply, create jobs and provide benefits to millions of Mexican consumers.”
IEnova received a 20-year contract in July this year from the Topolobampo Port Administration Terminal to develop, construct and operate the marine terminal in Sinaloa.
The terminal involves an estimated investment of $150m and is expected to become operational in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Last week, IEnova reached a deal to allow British Petroleum to use 50% of the one-million-barrel initial capacity of the refined fuels Baja Refinados terminal, which is to be constructed in Baja California.
Earlier this year, Chevron booked the other 50% initial capacity of the Baja Refinados facility.
Hydrocarbons Technology / September 17
