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By Kasper Walet, Founder and Partner AI Energizer and Maycroft
I recently read a very interesting article in the Financial Times about how commodity trading firms are still lagging behind other trading sectors in using Artificial Intelligence solutions. but that the industry is trying hard to catch up. These findings are in line with my practical experiences in our advisory services business: AI Energizer.
Particularly in today’s market situation where margins are squeezed, commodity traders are looking for tools that could help them to increase profitability. Intelligent technologies such as robotic process automation and machine learning, offer new opportunities to improve process performance and realize significant cost savings. These technologies can be implemented in short sprints, focused on a specific problem, with manageable costs.
If you click here, you can read our white paper about successful AI projects we executed for two of the leading energy commodity trading firms in Europe.
Compared to other financial and industrial sectors, commodity traders are coming from way behind. Currency, equities and interest-rates investors have already used algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence to turn data into successful trades for years. Now, commodity traders are seeking ways of exploiting their information to help them profit from price swings as well. It really is a combination of knowing what to look for and using the right mathematical tools for it.
Traders are looking to gather data on a large scale and run machine-learning algorithms to find patterns linking fundamentals with price movements, thus improve decision-making in trading and, as a result, the profitability. With a properly trained algorithm and a sufficiently sized historical data set, a company using machine learning to identify patterns in the trading data - even when the data has inconsistencies – will reduce redundant trades and streamline the entire process. To accommodate all this commodity trading firms are investing in people, processes and systems to centralize their data.
Despite this new enthusiasm, the road to electronification may not come easily. One issue is that some of the larger commodities traders face internal resistance in centralizing information on one platform. With each desk in a trading house in charge of its profit-and-loss account, data are closely guarded even from colleagues. The move to ‘share all our data with each other’ is a very, very big cultural shift.
Another problem is that in some trading houses, staff operate on multiple technology platforms, with different units using separate systems. Rather than focusing on analytics, some data scientists and engineers are having to focus on harmonizing the platforms before bringing on the data from different parts of the company. Even where the digital infrastructure is in place, it may take some time before AI becomes a large part of commodities trading.
Company leaders should start with the following three steps:
Step 1: Focus on value
As AI can solve targeted problems, it's up to company leaders to identify applications that offer the most potential value. Demonstrating strong returns in a short time will convert the cynics. AI projects typically happen in a series of sprints and can be completed in around 3-4 months.
Step 2: Change Management
Automation alone does not save money or improve performance: People and processes will also have to change. This is an area where there is understandable anxiety; automation stokes fears that machines will take people's jobs. But practice suggests that many of the tasks being automated are activities people tend not to want to undertake, such as spending half the day pulling and loading data. Or they are tasks for which small automation can actually improve people's performance - for instance, by introducing predictive algorithms that help them make better decisions and free up their time for more rewarding, interesting, and higher value-add activities.
This is an entirely new way of working, and company leaders will need to ensure that both they and their people have the right knowledge and skills, such as programming and data science knowledge and process improvement skills - to be successful. And they'll need to ensure that everyone's mind-set and behaviors also shift accordingly.
Step 3: Strategy is King
The backbone of this new way of working is strategy. Companies need to know their own strengths. There will be "keep the lights on" activities that can become touchless, as well as differentiating activities that should become increasingly intelligent. Moreover, companies need to take a fresh look at their organizational structure to ensure that it gives teams the freedom to develop creative solutions and experiment.
Conclusion
Concluding we can say that digitization is increasingly driving trading, and needs to be embraced, as many commodities executives believe. “It’s another tool that traders have to understand.”
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It has been 21 years since Japanese upstream firm Inpex signed on to explore the Masela block in Indonesia in 1998 and 19 years since the discovery of the giant Abadi natural gas field in 2000. In that time, Inpex’s Ichthys field in Australia was discovered, exploited and started LNG production last year, delivering its first commercial cargo just a few months ago. Meanwhile, the abundant gas in the Abadi field close to the Australia-Indonesia border has remained under the waves. Until recently, that is, when Inpex had finally reached a new deal with the Indonesian government to revive the stalled project and move ahead with a development plan.
This could have come much earlier. Much, much earlier. Inpex had submitted its first development plan for Abadi in 2010, encompassing a Floating LNG project with an initial capacity of 2.5 million tons per annum. As the size of recoverable reserves at Abadi increased, the development plan was revised upwards – tripling the planned capacity of the FLNG project to be located in the Arafura Sea to 7.5 million tons per annum. But at that point, Indonesia had just undergone a crucial election and moods had changed. In April 2016, the Indonesian government essentially told Inpex to go back to the drawing board to develop Abadi, directing them to shift from a floating processing solution to an onshore one, which would provide more employment opportunities. The onshore option had been rejected initially by Inpex in 2010, given that the nearest Indonesian land is almost 100km north of the field. But with Indonesia keen to boost activity in its upstream sector, the onshore mandate arrived firmly. And now, after 3 years of extended evaluation, Inpex has delivered its new development plan.
The new plan encompasses an onshore LNG plant with a total production capacity of 9.5 million tons per annum. With an estimated cost of US$18-20 billion, it will be the single largest investment in Indonesia and one of the largest LNG plants operated by a Japanese firm. FID is expected within 3 years, with a tentative target operational timeline of the late 2020s. LNG output will be targeted at Japan’s massive market, but also growing demand centres such as China. But Abadi will be entering into a far more crowded field that it would have if initial plans had gone ahead in 2010; with US Gulf Coast LNG producers furiously constructing at the moment and mega-LNG projects in Australia, Canada and Russia beating Abadi’s current timeline, Abadi will have a tougher fight for market share when it starts operations. The demand will be there, but the huge rise in the level of supplies will dilute potential profits.
It is a risk worth taking, at least according to Inpex and its partner Shell, which owns the remaining 35% of the Abadi gas field. But development of Abadi will be more important to Indonesia. Faced with a challenging natural gas environment – output from the Bontang, Tangguh and Badak LNG plants will soon begin their decline phase, while the huge potential of the East Natuna gas field is complicated by its composition of sour gas – Indonesia sees Abadi as a way of getting its gas ship back on track. Abadi is one of Indonesia’s few remaining large natural gas discoveries with a high potential commercialisation opportunities. The new agreement with Inpex extends the firm’s licence to operate the Masela field by 27 years to 2055 with the 150 mscf pipeline and the onshore plant expected to be completed by 2027. It might be too late by then to reverse Indonesia’s chronic natural gas and LNG production decline, but to Indonesia, at least some progress is better than none.
The Abadi LNG Project:
Market Watch
Headline crude prices for the week beginning 10 June 2019 – Brent: US$62/b; WTI: US$53/b
Headlines of the week
Upstream
Midstream & Downstream
Natural Gas/LNG
A month ago, crude oil prices were riding a wave, comfortably trading in the mid-US$70/b range and trending towards the US$80 mark as the oil world fretted about the expiration of US waivers on Iranian crude exports. Talk among OPEC members ahead of the crucial June 25 meeting of OPEC and its OPEC+ allies in Vienna turned to winding down its own supply deal.
That narrative has now changed. With Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov suggesting that there was a risk that oil prices could fall as low as US$30/b and the Saudi Arabia-Russia alliance preparing for a US$40/b oil scenario, it looks more and more likely that the production deal will be extended to the end of 2019. This was already discussed in a pre-conference meeting in April where Saudi Arabia appeared to have swayed a recalcitrant Russia into provisionally extending the deal, even if Russia itself wasn’t in adherence.
That the suggestion that oil prices were heading for a drastic drop was coming from Russia is an eye-opener. The major oil producer has been dragging its feet over meeting its commitments on the current supply deal; it was seen as capitalising on Saudi Arabia and its close allies’ pullback over February and March. That Russia eventually reached adherence in May was not through intention but accident – contamination of crude at the major Druzhba pipeline which caused a high ripple effect across European refineries surrounding the Baltic. Russia also is shielded from low crude prices due its diversified economy – the Russian budget uses US$40/b oil prices as a baseline, while Saudi Arabia needs a far higher US$85/b to balance its books. It is quite evident why Saudi Arabia has already seemingly whipped OPEC into extending the production deal beyond June. Russia has been far more reserved – perhaps worried about US crude encroaching on its market share – but Energy Minister Alexander Novak and the government is now seemingly onboard.
Part of this has to do with the macroeconomic environment. With the US extending its trade fracas with China and opening up several new fronts (with Mexico, India and Turkey, even if the Mexican tariff standoff blew over), the global economy is jittery. A recession or at least, a slowdown seems likely. And when the world economy slows down, the demand for oil slows down too. With the US pumping as much oil as it can, a return to wanton production risks oil prices crashing once again as they have done twice in the last decade. All the bluster Russia can muster fades if demand collapses – which is a zero sum game that benefits no one.
Also on the menu in Vienna is the thorny issue of Iran. Besieged by American sanctions and at odds with fellow OPEC members, Iran is crucial to any decision that will be made at the bi-annual meeting. Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh, has stated that Iran has no intention of departing the group despite ‘being treated like an enemy (by some members)’. No names were mentioned, but the targets were evident – Iran’s bitter rival Saudi Arabia, and its sidekicks the UAE and Kuwait. Saudi King Salman bin Abulaziz has recently accused Iran of being the ‘greatest threat’ to global oil supplies after suspected Iranian-backed attacks in infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. With such tensions in the air, the Iranian issue is one that cannot be avoided in Vienna and could scupper any potential deal if politics trumps economics within the group. In the meantime, global crude prices continue to fall; OPEC and OPEC+ have to capability to change this trend, but the question is: will it happen on June 25?
Expectations at the 176th OPEC Conference