Weekly Review

Oil prices fell steadily during July as the realities of oversupply trumped traders’ hopes that there would be balanced markets and higher prices later this year. July opened with London trading just below $51 a barrel and New York around $49.50. By month’s end, London was down to $42.71 and New York to $40.74. The month’s trading was dominated by reports of increasing oil product inventories and higher OPEC production. The decline of nearly $10 a barrel naturally has had repercussions across the oil industry. For most of July, the US rig count was growing as drillers anticipated that crude prices would soon be at a level where more wells would be profitable. By month’s end, however, these hopes had been dashed, and the US oil rig count had nearly stopped growing.

Concerns are rising that the predictions of the oil markets coming back into balance later this year are wrong and that lower oil prices are ahead. Oil production is not falling as fast as predicted. Some outages are coming to a close and the growing glut of oil products could be as bad as last year’s crude glut. Many analysts now are talking about prices falling below $40 in the next few months and a few are even talking about a return to the $30 level. Although US crude stocks have been falling of late, the growth in the inventories of refined products continues to grow. Europe is running out of storage space for refined products which would force a cut in refining and result in lower demand for crude. Increased refining to support the summer driving season in the US has only another few weeks to run before the increased demand for gasoline comes to an end. The US oil rig count was up for the 6th time in 7 weeks and North Dakota reported that its oil production increased slightly in May.

Futures fell about $4 a barrel during the holiday-shortened US trading week closing at $45.41 in New York and $46.44 in London. Prices edged down early in the week, recovered a bit on Wednesday, and the plunged after the EIA reported that the US crude inventory had dropped by only 2.2 million barrels as opposed to the 6.7-million-barrel drop that the API came up with after their weekly survey. The weekly decline for Brent was the largest since January.

The oil markets remained volatile last week, trading around $48-50 a barrel, amidst much uncertainty about the future of crude prices. In the wake of the Brexit vote, analysts are all over the board as to where prices will be by the end of the year. Some are talking about $85 a barrel while others are looking for a retreat to less than $30 again. Nearly all agree that the markets will “rebalance” with supply and demand coming together as demand increases and the supply continues to drop as the impact of the much lower investment levels during the last two years reduces supply. For the next six months, however, there is uncertainty especially concerning the spate of unplanned outages that have taken place in the past few months. Oil worker strikes such as in France and Norway likely will be settled quickly, and Alberta tar sands production will soon be back to normal by the end of the summer. The outages in Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela, however, are more uncertain and seem to be getting worse rather than better in the immediate future.