After five weeks of being whiplashed by financial market fears, crude reconnected with its own fundamentals over March 12-16, only to become locked in a narrow price band, with WTI anchored at $60/barrel and Brent at $65. Predictions of ballooning non-OPEC oil supplies were counter-balanced by reiterations of confidence in strong global oil demand growth this year, depriving the market of any incentive to either go long or short.
The limbo could prove to be short-lived. As the week came to a close, Iran and the fate of its nuclear deal had moved to the top of news headlines. The sudden departure of Rex Tillerson, a moderate on Iran, and his replacement as US secretary of state by the more hawkish CIA director Mike Pompeo, could precipitate a clash between the two countries over the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal. The fate of the Iran nuclear deal is now a cliffhanger and likely to inject a fear premium in crude over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, anxiety over the possible outbreak of trade wars, especially between the US and China, as well as the US and its partners in the precarious North American Free Trade Agreement — Canada and Mexico — could continue to rattle the financial markets. The fears come on top of lingering uncertainty over the course of US inflation rates and monetary policy. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting March 20-21.
Myriad concerns rippling through the financial markets since the start of February ultimately converge to hang a question-mark over the presumed strong and synchronous global economic growth this year. They have rattled equity markets across the world and are likely to continue buffeting crude as well. A deceleration in the global economic growth would not bode well for the health of oil demand.
The oil market’s focus this week was primarily on OECD inventory data and outlook for global oil supply and demand balances. The closely-watched monthly oil market reports from OPEC and the International Energy Agency released on Wednesday and Thursday respectively were remarkably similar in tone and almost evenly split between the bullish and bearish elements on the horizon. The weekly US stocks data also pulled market sentiment in opposite directions, showing a major build in crude inventories and a plunge in gasoline and distillate stocks for the week ended March 9.
The OPEC and IEA reports lent further credence to expectations of a shale renaissance in 2018, given their projections of US crude production vaulting by 1 million b/d or more this year, way higher than the growth recorded in 2017. The market is once again paying attention to the weekly US rig count data after mostly ignoring it through the latter half of last year, once the shale growth trajectory had become clear. The rig numbers are not a good proxy for US crude production rates, but a useful input for market participants continuously trying to assess or validate their assessment of shale’s growth.
Unfortunately, the rig count is also not telling a coherent story yet. Baker Hughes reported a drop of four in the number of oil rigs operating in the US in the week ended March 9 to a total of 796, reversing six successive weeks of increases, and leaving the market guessing on what the trend might be.
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Market Watch
Headline crude prices for the week beginning 11 February 2019 – Brent: US$61/b; WTI: US$52/b
Headlines of the week
Upstream
Midstream & Downstream
Natural Gas/LNG
Forecast Highlights
Global liquid fuels
Natural gas
Electricity, coal, renewables, and emissions
2018 was a year that started with crude prices at US$62/b and ended at US$46/b. In between those two points, prices had gently risen up to peak of US$80/b as the oil world worried about the impact of new American sanctions on Iran in September before crashing down in the last two months on a rising tide of American production. What did that mean for the financial health of the industry over the last quarter and last year?
Nothing negative, it appears. With the last of the financial results from supermajors released, the world’s largest oil firms reported strong profits for Q418 and blockbuster profits for the full year 2018. Despite the blip in prices, the efforts of the supermajors – along with the rest of the industry – to keep costs in check after being burnt by the 2015 crash has paid off.
ExxonMobil, for example, may have missed analyst expectations for 4Q18 revenue at US$71.9 billion, but reported a better-than-expected net profit of US$6 billion. The latter was down 28% y-o-y, but the Q417 figure included a one-off benefit related to then-implemented US tax reform. Full year net profit was even better – up 5.7% to US$20.8 billion as upstream production rose to 4.01 mmboe/d – allowing ExxonMobil to come close to reclaiming its title of the world’s most profitable oil company.
But for now, that title is still held by Shell, which managed to eclipse ExxonMobil with full year net profits of US$21.4 billion. That’s the best annual results for the Anglo-Dutch firm since 2014; product of the deep and painful cost-cutting measures implemented after. Shell’s gamble in purchasing the BG Group for US$53 billion – which sparked a spat of asset sales to pare down debt – has paid off, with contributions from LNG trading named as a strong contributor to financial performance. Shell’s upstream output for 2018 came in at 3.78 mmb/d and the company is also looking to follow in the footsteps of ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP in the Permian, where it admits its footprint is currently ‘a bit small’.
Shell’s fellow British firm BP also reported its highest profits since 2014, doubling its net profits for the full year 2018 on a 65% jump in 4Q18 profits. It completes a long recovery for the firm, which has struggled since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, allowing it to focus on the future – specifically US shale through the recent US$10.5 billion purchase of BHP’s Permian assets. Chevron, too, is focusing on onshore shale, as surging Permian output drove full year net profit up by 60.8% and 4Q18 net profit up by 19.9%. Chevron is also increasingly focusing on vertical integration again – to capture the full value of surging Texas crude by expanding its refining facilities in Texas, just as ExxonMobil is doing in Beaumont. French major Total’s figures may have been less impressive in percentage terms – but that it is coming from a higher 2017 base, when it outperformed its bigger supermajor cousins.
So, despite the year ending with crude prices in the doldrums, 2018 seems to be proof of Big Oil’s ability to better weather price downturns after years of discipline. Some of the control is loosening – major upstream investments have either been sanctioned or planned since 2018 – but there is still enough restraint left over to keep the oil industry in the black when trends turn sour.
Supermajor Net Profits for 4Q18 and 2018
1. ExxonMobil:
- 4Q18 – Net profit US$6 billion (-28%);
- 2018 – Net profit US$20.8 (+5.7%)
2. Shell:
- 4Q18 – Net profit US$5.69 billion (+32.3%);
- 2018 – Net profit US$21.4 billion (+36%)
3. Chevron:
- 4Q18 – Net profit US$3.73 billion (+19.9%);
- 2018 – Net profit US$14.8 billion (+60.8%)
4. BP:
- 4Q18 – Net profit US$3.48 billion (+65%);
- 2018 - Net profit US$12.7 billion (+105%)
5. Total:
- 4Q18 – Net profit US$3.88 billion (+16%);
- 2018 - Net profit US$13.6 billion (+28%)