Posts Tagged ‘crude’
The fuel favour year for India

The US$ per barrel (red line) and the rupee-dollar exchange rate (green line) are plotted to the left scale. The rupee per barrel (blue line) is plotted to the right scale. I have used data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas – the global crude oil price of the ‘Indian Basket’ in US$ per barrel.
It started in early August, the extraordinary slide in petroleum prices. Until then, the international crude oil price of the ‘Indian Basket’ (of crude oils, as it is called) had swung between US$ 110 and US$ 105 per barrel.
The rupee-dollar exchange rate, and the effective price of a barrel of crude oil in Indian rupees (both measures also appear on this chart), fluctuated but little for most of the first half of 2014. In early June 2014, the rupee-dollar rate turned around from 59 and has been rising since, while in early July the rupee price per barrel descended from its plateau of 6,300-6,600 and has been dropping since.
The cost of oil-derived energy has had a number of effects upon our everyday lives in the second half of 2014. It has helped the new NDA-BJP government during its first year by dampening overall inflation (the consumer price index) and particularly food price inflation. This has been particularly fortunate for the NDA-BJP government as the deficient monsoon of 2014 has meant a drop in the production of food staples, and market forces being what they are, food price inflation especially would have been well into the 13%-14% range (last quarter 2014 compared with last quarter 2013).
Galloping consumer price inflation has been forestalled by the plunging price of crude oil. The data I have used for this startling chart is courtesy the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas which computes several times a week the “global crude oil price of Indian Basket in US$ per bbl” – which means the average price we pay per barrel for the various kinds of crude oil we purchase.
A barrel of crude oil is 42 gallons or around 159 litres. This crude, when refined, is turned into diesel, petrol, lighter fuels, feedstock for the manufacture of various plastics, and other products. Typically, up to 70% of the oil we buy is converted into diesel and petrol (and carbon from all those exhaust pipes). Also typically, a barrel of crude oil (which is an extremely dense form of packaged energy) contains around 5.8 million BTUs (British thermal units). More familiar to us is the kilowatt hour (or kWh) and these 5.8 million BTUs are about 1,700 kWh – at current national average rates of per head electricity consumption this is worth about 26 months of electricity!
From early August till the end of December the price we paid for a barrel of crude has dropped from around US$ 103 to US$ 54 and correspondingly (factoring in the rupee-dollar exchange rate) the rupee price of a barrel of crude has dropped from 6,300 to around 3,500. Put another way, the INR 6,300 we paid in early August for 5.8 million BTU could buy, in mid-October 7.1 million BTU and by end-December, 10.4 million BTU.
Most of us tend not to be profligate with energy (our electricity comes mainly from the burning of coal, but the sale of automobiles has continued at a steady pace, or so the industry tells us). The question is whether this windfall energy saving (in terms of petroleum energy units per rupee) has been well used by the sector that can spread the benefit the most – agriculture and food. It will take another three months to judge, and we will keep a wary eye for the next quarter on the Indian crude oil Basket.
Oil’s up, oil’s down, it’s France, it’s China
It’s up. Crude oil rose on speculation that growing French demand for imported fuel because of a strike will reduce stockpiles elsewhere, reported Bloomberg. France is importing “massive” amounts of fuel and tapping reserves to alleviate service-station shortages, Environment and Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said today. The French government last week authorized the use of fuel reserves after Total SA announced it would halt its five active refineries in France and other refiners took measures to reduce output. Workers at the country’s 12 crude-processing plants have extended their labor action since Oct. 12 to protest a plan to raise the minimum retirement age.
It’s up. Crude oil is poised to reach $90 a barrel by the middle of December, according to technical analysis by Lind-Waldock in Chicago. The December contract, which became the front-month contract yesterday, has been trading in an uptrend, a pattern of higher peaks and higher valleys, since touching a low of $75.10 on Sept. 23, Blake Robben, a strategist at Lind-Waldock, a division of MF Global Ltd., said in an interview.
It’s down. Crude oil may decline next week after China’s oil processing grew the least in 18 months as government measures to cool the economy reduced fuel demand, a Bloomberg News survey showed. Fourteen of 30 analysts, or 47 percent, forecast crude oil will fall through Oct. 29. Eleven respondents, or 37 percent, predicted prices will be little changed and five estimated an increase. Last week analysts were split over whether futures would drop or climb. Data from the China Mainland Marketing Research Co. yesterday showed that refineries in the world’s biggest energy- consuming country processed about 8.5 million barrels a day in September. That’s a 6.6 percent gain from a year earlier, the smallest increase since March 2009.
It’s down. Saudi Arabia has rejected claims that the era of cheaply produced oil is over, saying the world’s largest field in the kingdom’s eastern province still holds more than many countries. Many of the largest oilfields in Texas and the North Sea have passed their prime, forcing companies to target more costly prospects such as bitumen deposits in Venezuela, Canadian tar sands and ethanol. But Ali al Naimi, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, pointed to the Ghawar field’s 88 billion barrels of remaining reserves and the kingdom’s large cushion of spare pumping capacity as signs that oil was still abundant. “”I am sorry to disappoint people but the era of easy oil is not over,”” al Naimi said at a conference held in the Saudi capital to celebrate the 50th birthday of OPEC. “”How can you say the era of easy oil is over when we still have 88 billion barrels in the Ghawar field? That is more than many countries in the world. You can dismiss the notion that easy oil in Saudi Arabia is gone.”” The Ghawar field, measuring 280km by 30km, is by far the largest conventional oilfield in the world. Although details of the field’s performance are not made public, it is believed to have produced more than 65 billion barrels already since production began in 1951.
It’s up. Any oil price fall should be seen as an opportunity to buy the contract as the next move in the market is likely to be a rally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. said.“The signal that the next leg higher is imminent will be tighter Dubai forward spreads and a narrower Brent-Dubai spread,” Lawrence Eagles, head of commodity strategy in New York, said in a monthly oil market report. JPMorgan said it expects the dollar to weaken by four to five percent over the next six months, giving oil a boost. A declining dollar increases the appeal of energy as an inflation hedge. The strength in crude is also bolstered by rising demand in several regions, the bank said. A narrowing spread, when Dubai oil rises closer to North Sea Brent, typically shows increasing Asian demand. The Brent-Dubai exchange for swaps, or EFS, for December narrowed 12 cents to $2.40 a barrel today, according to data from PVM Oil Associates. The EFS is the price difference between Brent futures and Dubai swaps contracts and signifies Brent’s premium relative to the Middle East grade. The December-January Dubai spread shrank to minus 36 cents from minus 80 cents on Sept. 27, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The key risk is that we are being too cautious and that the threat of $100 a barrel oil that is implicit in our fourth- quarter 2011 oil forecast arrives much sooner than we expect, driven by not only a weak dollar, but also by rampant Chinese and emerging market demand, the rebuilding of French strategic stocks, and an upward bias to food prices,” Eagles said in the report.