Skip to main content

Every punter says oil prices are on the rise: Oil hits $48/bbl -- lowest since September 2016

What the hell?

How could this be, punters, advisors, investment bankers all agreed commodity prices  in general and oil prices in particular are on the rise...its a brave new era for producers and exporters -- finally the world is back and demand is going through the roof, except not so much!

What happened?  Well energy is complicated, the world operates in a balance -- 30 days of physical reserves is about all we've got (seriously) this is a just in time business.  So the long term trend always gets hit by short term variations.

Global production over the past 12 months has risen by somewhat less than 1.5% per annum.  As the world market changes production becomes less energy intensive (maybe), but the reality is that the world is growing more slowly -- America Q4 GDP growth was around 1.9% (annualized) Europe is going nowhere fast (the GDP growth in Germany is overshadowed by the lack of growth in France, Italy, Spain (lets say 27 Euro members generated a total GDP growth of 1.2%).  China grew by 6.8% (apparently -- so things are not all bad there!).

Now all these stats are interesting, but all of them could also be used to explain why oil prices are "exploding"  that's the problem.  There is no good predictor of oil prices except gut instinct, and these are usually wrong.  As an example, looking at US exploration and drill rig count, energy analyst assume that over the next 24 months, the US will add nearly 1 million barrel per day in production. Whereas Mexico will se a cut of nearly 500k/bbl/day.  Again last week the US announced that another major find was made in Alaska --

So take my word for it, oil prices are the biggest unknown, and the reason for price reduction are the same as those that can justify a price increase.

enjoy uncertainty...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more