Foto: REUTERS |
The reasons
are manifold. Looming Iranian sanctions in November, supply problems in the US
and less spare capacity from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(Opec) all have some crude-oil market participants betting that black gold
prices may head to $100 – a price unseen since 2014.
“There’s
really no margin for error in the global markets right now; markets appear to
be undersupplied … We don’t have a big glut of oil any more,” said Rob Thummel,
managing director and portfolio manager at energy-investment firm Tortoise.
As recently
as 2016, Opec overproduction and rising US shale output created an oil glut,
pushing the global benchmark Brent and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI)
crude-oil prices to under $30. Increased global demand and normalized
production levels have caused prices to rise to their current levels of about
$84 for Brent and $74 for WTI, the highest in nearly four years.
Oil prices
slipped hard this week as stock markets fell and figures showed larger stock
piles of oil in the US than expected but traders are increasingly betting that
the only way is up for oil prices. According to data from the CME Group, in the
last week the number of trades speculating on $100 a barrel rose to a record
31,000. As of Wednesday, the current number of open positions is slightly under
that record level. An option is a right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell
a commodity at a certain price.
Much of the
pressure on oil prices comes from Washington. In May, Donald Trump withdrew
from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions, prohibiting Opec’s
third-largest member from selling crude oil. Those sanctions go into effect on
4 November. Thummel says up to 2m barrels a day of Iranian crude oil may be off
the market, which comes at a time when other Opec members like Venezuela are
producing a fraction of what they can pump. Saudi Arabia is also limited with
how much extra it can supply, as it is probably near the top of its capacity.
Energy fund
manager Emil van Essen, chief executive officer and chief investment officer of
Emil van Essen, said no one thought the US would put as much pressure on Iran
as it has. “It is removing a ton of barrels and there really is not enough to
make up for it,” he said.
A potential
row with Saudi Arabia over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
could also spill over into oil, although analysts say there are no signs of
that yet.
The US is
also having its own logistical and economic problems, Daniel Ghali, commodity
analyst at TD Securities, and Thummel said. Pipeline constraints in the US’s
top shale-oil field, Texas’s Permian basin, limit how much oil can leave the
region. Because of the bottleneck, companies drilling there get about $15 a
barrel less for their Permian oil versus the WTI benchmark, which means they
are not benefitting from the price run-up, Thummel said.
If there is
another global supply disruption, “$100 a barrel is not out of the question”,
Ghali said.
Jason
Bloom, global macro exchange-traded fund strategist for Invesco, and a 15-year
oil market veteran, agreed a spike to $100 is possible, but a move higher would
only be temporary, saying that the current supply and demand situation doesn’t
merit $100.
Van Essen
said he doesn’t see $100 oil happening this year, but said supply shortages
next year will be critical because of IMO 2020, new global shipping rules that
go into effect on 1 January 2020, forcing ships to reduce fuel emissions by
using low-sulfur fuel or installing scrubbers to remove the sulfur. “It
requires the oil refiners to use lower-sulfur light sweet crude [to make the
fuel] and there’s just not enough to go around,” he said.
With oil
prices at four-year highs, some global leaders have asked producers to kick in
more oil. On Wednesday, the head of the International Energy Agency urged Opec
and other major oil producers to open the spigots to prevent high prices from
damaging the global economy.
And of
course Trump’s Twitter trigger fingers are notorious for blaming Opec for high
oil prices, despite forcing Iranian oil off the market because of US sanctions.
As recently as September, Trump tweeted for Opec to lower prices.
Bloom said
whenever there is active trading in options prices that are far away from
current values, it can signal that traders have a feeling the price swings may
become more prevalent, and they hope to capture some of that volatile movement.
“Geopolitics
are certainly building in that direction. When you see major governmental
institutions pleading for more crude oil on the market, it’s not a great sign,”
Bloom said.
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