North Sea Brent crude oil futures were lower for a fifth day on Tuesday, trading at a nine-month low below $100 a barrel.
U.S. benchmark crude, down for a fourth day, was at its lowest level so far in 2013, as the market remained under pressure from signs of weak oil demand growth. Keep reading →
Low natural gas prices in North America have prompted many oil and gas companies to jettison their dry gas assets, Fort Worth-based Quicksilver is capitalizing on Asian buyers’ efforts to secure lower-cost LNG feedstock to attract joint venture partners for its acreage in areas like the Horn River and Barnett shales.
Quicksilver is in negotiations for a joint venture partner in its Horn River Basin acreage in Canada. The company appears to be favoring an Asian buyer with an eye to exporting natural gas across the Pacific. Keep reading →
Recent trends suggest that the Gulf Coast is becoming to U.S. oil production what Apple is to the technology sector: a dominant player beset by challenges to its dominance.
Meanwhile, the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Eagle Ford in Southern Texas are playing the role of Google and Samsung – upstarts shaking up the status quo in the sector. Keep reading →
Papua New Guinea is set to join the global LNG game in 2014 when the ExxonMobil-led PNG LNG project is scheduled to ship its first deliveries, but a major announcement today by InterOil suggests an additional LNG export project could come on stream in the Asian Pacific island nation not long after.
InterOil has been active in PNG since the late 1990’s and operates the country’s only refinery which supplies about 65% of domestic refined product demand. Profits from InterOil’s downstream operations are often used to offset the costs of the company’s LNG export project, a major long-term strategic objective for the independent firm. Keep reading →
A reversal of fortunes is underway between major energy commodity markets, with global oil prices trending downward while US natural gas has been showing signs of life breaking above $4 per million Btu. In its latest Monthly Oil Market Report, the International Energy Agency discussed their view of why the recent weakening in global oil benchmark Brent futures prices might be “relatively short-lived.”
“By early April, frontâ€Âmonth Brent futures had tumbled to just shy of $104/bbl for the first time since midâ€ÂJune, and the backwardation on the Brent curve has eased,” the report said, but oil supply and refining capacity have been growing faster than demand. Backwardation is when prices in the distant future are lower than prompt month prices. Keep reading →
Natural-gas futures turned higher Thursday, after the Energy Information Administration reported a 14 billion cubic foot decline in U.S. inventories for the week ended April 5. That was a bit below estimates. Analysts polled by Platts forecast a decline between 20 billion cubic feet and 24 billion.
Changing oil market dynamics appear set to reduce the wide price differential between Brent crude oil and WTI that developed within the past few years, the Energy Information Administration said in its latest Short-Term Energy and Summer Fuels Outlook. These global benchmark crude oil grades are also expected to generally decrease in price from the averages seen last year, while US natural gas prices move well above the historic lows recorded last April.
“EIA expects that the Brent crude oil spot price, which averaged $112 per barrel in 2012 and rose to $119 per barrel in early February 2013, will average $108 per barrel in 2013 and $101 per barrel in 2014. The projected discount of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil to Brent, which increased to a monthly average of more than $20 per barrel in February 2013, is forecast to average $14 per barrel in 2013 and $9 per barrel in 2014, as planned new pipeline capacity lowers the cost of moving midâ€Âcontinent crude oil to the Gulf Coast refining centers,” the EIA said in the report. Keep reading →
Hopes that the advent of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States to Europe could help bring down European prices may prove misguided, according to VTB Capital’s head of energy research, Colin Smith.
“Is US LNG going to cut gas prices in Europe? Probably not by very much, if at all,” Smith said at the VTB Capital New York Investment Forum on April 10. Keep reading →
A concentration of energy-intensive base metals stocks in a handful of warehouses threatens to impede buyer access to needed supply, warned VTB Capital’s global head of commodities research Wiktor Bielski at the firm’s New York Investment Forum on Wednesday.
Prior to 2008, most production of six base metals – aluminum, copper, nickel, zinc, lead and tin – was traded under long-term contract, at prices heavily influenced by a 10% “float component”, which allows both buyer and seller to take up to 10% more or less of the contracted volume. This marginal supply component was broadly distributed among producers, consumers, traders, merchants, and exchange warehouses, and readily accessible in the event of an uptick in demand. Keep reading →
A “crescent of chaos” emerging from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and tensions with Iran could lead to a dramatic turnaround in the price of oil, according to Nomura’s analysis.
Brent crude, which fell to an eight-month low last week on weak U.S. jobs data, is set to climb following Iran’s presidential election in June,the firm said in research published on Tuesday. Keep reading →
