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Oil Price May Have Bottomed Out But China’s Flat Demand Spells Trouble

(Forbes) As the Brent front-month futures contract stabilizes either side of the $40 per barrel level, and WTI lurks within that range too, a comment by the International Energy Agency that the “oil price may have bottomed out” has triggered a lot of market interest.

In its monthly oil forecast for March, the IEA, which advises on energy policy matters of industrialized nations, noted that non-OPEC oil production would fall by 750,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2016, compared with its previous estimate of 600,000 bpd. Specifically, US production is forecast to decline by 530,000 bpd this year.

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The big bust in the oil fields

(Washington Post) Tilden, Tex. — He’d borrowed from banks and investors and retirement funds, all in a frenzied mission to drill for oil and gas, and by the time Terry Swift realized he’d gone too far, this was his debt: $1.349 billion.

His company, founded by his father almost 40 years earlier, had plunged into bankruptcy and laid off 25 percent of its staff. Its shares had been pulled from the New York Stock Exchange. And now Swift was in a company Chevrolet Tahoe, driving back to the flat and dusty place where his bets had gone bust.

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IMF: Oil Prices And The Global Economy – It’s Complicated

(Seeking Alpha) By Maurice Obstfeld, economic counsellor and director of research at the International Monetary Fund; Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, deputy director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund; and Rabah Arezki, chief of the Commodities Unit in the IMF Research Department

Oil prices have been persistently low for well over a year and a half now, but as the April 2016 World Economic Outlook will document, the widely anticipated ” shot in the arm ” for the global economy has yet to materialize.

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Why North-American Oil Is Positioned To Win In The Long-Run

(oilprice.com) Did U.S. investors complete the U.S. E&P’s revolutionary transformation of the global oil market at the end of February?

Very possibly, yes. At a time when oil companies large, medium, and small were cutting more from 2016 capex budgets, Americans were expressing their confidence in the U.S. E&P’s sector’s future, pouring $9.2 billion in new equity into the beleaguered sector.

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An Unlikely Victim Of Oil’s Collapse: Krispy Kreme

(Forbes) Despite humble beginnings in North Carolina, Krispy Kreme has bet big on international expansion in recent years, with nearly three quarters of its 1,100 donut shops now located abroad.

Yet, with plunging oil prices wreaking havoc around the world, there are some places where it probably wishes it hadn’t set up shop.

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Drillers Can’t Replace Lost Output as $100 Oil Inheritance Spent

(Bloomberg) Here’s Why This Is Only the Fourth Time Oil Has Tanked. For oil companies, the legacy of $100 crude is starting to run dry.

A wave of projects approved at the start of the decade, when oil traded near $100 a barrel, has bolstered output for many producers, keeping cash flowing even as prices plummeted. Now, that production boon is fading. In 2016, for the first time in years, drillers will add less oil from new fields than they lose to natural decline in old ones.

About 3 million barrels a day will come from new projects this year, compared with 3.3 million lost from established fields, according to Oslo-based Rystad Energy AS.

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What Happened to Peak Oil?

(greentechmedia.com) Peak oil is the point at which global oil production peaks and can only go down. M. King Hubbert developed the theory of peak oil after observing this pattern in individual oil fields and then extrapolating these trends to the U.S., accurately predicting a peak in U.S. production by 1970.

But in the last few years, as U.S. oil production has dramatically ramped up, many peak oil believers have been left looking a bit silly.

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US rig count, at 476, is lowest in 67 years of record-keeping: Baker Hughes

(platts.com) The total US rig count, which on Friday stood at 476, is now at its lowest point ever in the 67-year history of the Baker Hughes numbers, according to data released by the oilfield service company.

That is down by four from last week and down from 1,069 working the same week in 2015 and a recent peak of 1,931 in late 2014. The previous low was 488 in April 1999, Baker Hughes records show.

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NYMEX Futures 2015 Rallies & Declines 17 Jan 2016
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Another False Oil Price Rally: Crossing A Boundary

(artberman.com) The oil-price rally that began in mid-February will almost certainly collapse.

It is similar to the false March-June 2015 rally. In both cases, prices increased largely because of sentiment. As in the earlier rally, current storage volumes are too large and demand is too weak to sustain higher prices for long.

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Saudi Arabia’s Oil Chief Prepares for a World After Fossil Fuels

(Bloomberg) Even as it pumps near-record quantities of oil, Saudi Arabia is getting ready for a time when the world will no longer need its biggest export.

The world’s largest crude exporter is focusing on renewable-energy sources such as solar power in preparation for a post-oil global economy, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said at a conference in Berlin on Thursday.

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