David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Energy

    A resignation, detentions and missiles: 24 hours that shook the Middle East

    This article by Tamara Qiblawi for CNN may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Saudi Arabia was still putting out the fires caused by the missile attack when state TV announced the onset of an anti-corruption crackdown led by the crown prince. Over 17 princes and top officials were arrested on graft charges, according to a list obtained by CNN and cited by a senior royal court official.

    The list includes billionaire business magnate Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns 95% of Kingdom Holding, which holds stakes in global companies such as Citigroup, Twitter, Apple and News Corp.

    The list also includes formal head of the royal court Khaled Al-Tuwaijri, Saudi media mogul Waleed Al-Ibrahim and Prince Turki Bin Nasser.

    "Some of the wealthiest figures in the Arab world are in apprehension today," said military analyst Riad Kahwaji.
    "This is unprecedented. We're seeing it for the first time and it's definitely causing shockwaves across the region."

     

    Read entire article

    Fossil-Fuel Friendly Tax Plan Spares Oil, Not Solar or Tesla

    This article by Alex Nussbaum, Brian Eckhouse and Emma Ockerman for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    The House proposal protects three provisions that save explorers billions of dollars annually, while chopping a few others.

    The legislation preserves the use of last-in-first-out accounting rules, also known as LIFO. The rules let companies value crude stockpiles at the price they’re selling for, rather than the original purchase cost. The bill also allows continued deductions of so-called intangible drilling costs and preserves a measure that lets explorers reduce taxable income to reflect the depreciation of reserves.

    All three were thought to be in jeopardy as Republicans searched for offsets to pay for lowering taxes elsewhere.
    Eliminating the drilling and depletion provisions alone would force energy companies to pay about $25 billion in additional taxes between 2016 and 2026, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated last year.

    The House bill would also end two smaller breaks for “marginal" oil wells and enhanced oil recovery projects, which involve older oil and gas fields. That would cost drillers about $371 million over ten years, the committee estimated.
    The plan spares “the Holy Grail of E&P tax breaks" by maintaining the intangible drilling costs provision, analysts at Houston investment bank Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. said in a research note Friday. Between that and a plan to cut the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, the legislation would be “a net positive for oil and gas," they wrote.

     

    Read entire article

    Brent Oil Tops $60 for First Time Since 2015 Amid OPEC Optimism

    This article by Jessica Summers for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Both the global benchmark and its U.S. counterpart have rallied in October amid increasing belief that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will agree to cut output later into next year, helping to work down global inventories. Statoil ASA’s Chief Executive Officer Eldar Saetre said in a Bloomberg Television interview that he continues to see strong demand and the oil market is “definitely balancing.”

    “People are starting to price in the OECD inventories moving back towards normalized levels into later 2018,” Brad Hunnewell, senior equity analyst at Rockefeller & Co., said by telephone.

    U.S. Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State said in a Twitter message Friday that he “incorrectly” said in an interview with Kurdish Rudaw news agency that there was a cease-fire between Iraqi and Kurdish forces. A rally in WTI immediately followed his message. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi suspended operations by federal forces for 24 hours in disputed areas to allow a joint Iraqi and Kurdish team to deploy forces, Sumaria TV reported.

     

    Read entire article

    Musings from the Oil Patch Ocotber 24th 2017

    Thanks to a subscriber for this edition of Allen Brooks’ ever interesting report for PPHB. Here is a section:

    If you are Saudi Arabia, a one-product (oil) economy, and you are watching the aggressive adoption of government policies around the world to stop the sale of internal combustion engine cars, you have to be concerned.  Given that France and the UK have announced bans on the sale of ICE vehicles by 2040, auto industry executives are assuming China will adopt a similar date.  The Netherlands just adopted a 2025 ban on the sale of new ICE cars, with a 2030 date for all ICE cars to be off Dutch roads.   

    For China, the world’s largest car market, having sold over 28 million cars last year (nearly a 14% year-over-year increase), the banning of ICE vehicles will shrink the need for, and eventually eliminate motor fuels, which will have a material impact on Saudi Arabia’s long-term oil export opportunities.  When considering that Saudi Arabia has been fighting Russia and Iran to gain an increased share of the Asian, and especially Chinese, oil markets, anything threatening the long-term success of that fight is of concern, even if it is a future event.
       
     Is the industrial policy to ban ICE vehicles a signal of the impending end of the Petroleum Age, much like Sheik Yamani predicted?  Is that prospect part of the motivation behind Crown Prince Salman’s plan to sell off a portion of Saudi Aramco, either in an initial public offering or through a direct sale to sovereign wealth funds to raise money now for diversification investments?  In a way, current industry developments and future prospects are similar to the forces that drove OPEC’s formation in 1960.  A brief review of history may help put into perspective why OPEC is struggling to remain relevant now, and will likely continue to struggle in the future. 

     

    Read entire article

    Venezuela's Behind on Its Debt and Facing Two Huge Bond Payments

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Venezuela could still also make the payments on time. While $10 billion in foreign reserves isn’t much for a country that now owes some $140 billion to foreign creditors, it’s still enough to pay the bills for a while.

    And the Maduro government has surprised the bond market before, making payments the past couple years that many traders had anticipated would be missed. Some of those now betting that these next two payments will also be made actually point to the $350 million currently overdue on the other notes as an encouraging sign. Those arrears indicate, they contend, that officials are prioritizing the payment of bonds with no grace period at the expense of those they can put off without penalty.

    Even if Venezuela can make the payments due this year, investors say that, unless oil prices stage some sort of miraculous comeback, they still see default as an inevitable outcome. Credit-default swaps show they’re pricing in a 75 percent chance of a PDVSA default in the next 12 months and 99 percent in the next five years.

     

    Read entire article

    During Irma's Power Outages, Some Houses Kept The Lights On With Solar And Batteries

    This article by Adele Peters for fastcompany.com may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section: 

    Of course, if a storm is strong enough to tear solar panels off a roof and the battery can’t recharge, this type of system wouldn’t work for long. It’s also expensive: A single Powerwall unit, which can store 14 kilowatt-hours of energy, costs $5,500 plus supporting hardware and installation that can cost up to $2,000. A similar battery from Mercedes-Benz ranges from $5,000 to $13,000 for a 20 kilowatt-hour system including installation. In the U.K., where Ikea now sells both solar panels and batteries, its batteries are also nearly $4,000 at current exchange rates. Beyond cost, if someone rents an apartment or house and can’t install solar panels, it’s not an option.

    But the cost is likely to drop, and battery storage and solar power could also be used in community solar projects, where customers don’t have solar panels at their own homes, but invest in or buy power from a nearby microgrid. In Orlando, customers can buy solar energy from a 12-megawatt solar farm built on top of a landfill; while the power is currently sent back to the grid, in the future, it’s possible that it and other community solar farms could use batteries to provide local backup power from multiple locations in emergencies.

     

    Read entire article

    More Lean, More Green

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Goldman Sachs dated June 5th which is no less relevant today and may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    We expect the costs of wind and solar to fall below the level of European power prices in the early 2020s (Exhibit 4). As costs fall below the price of the marginal technology, we expect utilities to ramp up their renewables installations, to keep/gain market share in the generation mix. We expect this to significantly change the generation mix in Europe, and would expect thermal technologies (mainly coal and gas) to be negatively impacted in terms of output. We would expect most governments (aside from those keen to protect a particular technology, such as domestic coal) to support this, as it should help reduce carbon emissions and lower electricity tariffs.  

    Profits for wind developers/manufacturers to accelerate We estimate that the reduction in costs for wind/solar that we forecast will trigger a 30% step-up in annual global renewables investment (MWs) globally, post 2020, for the main European developers (Exhibit 7). We expect this trend to accelerate net income growth to c.2.5% (2017-36E) from 1.5% currently (Exhibit 8). 

    For the European wind turbine manufacturers, we expect an average step-up in annual revenues of c.17% globally over 2017-36E, vs. 2017E (9 pp higher than previously anticipated), boosting annual net income by 58%. We estimate that this will support an equity value c.15% higher than we previously anticipated for the manufacturers.  

    Our forecasts assume a significant change in the generation mix only in Europe: therefore, we would see upside to our renewables estimates if we were to extrapolate this globally.

     

    Read entire article

    Chinese EV market nearing 2% penetration

    This article from mining.com may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    In 2016 Chinese electrical vehicle makers represented 43% of the global EV market, or 873,000 units, overtaking the United States for the first time, according to a July report by McKinsey & Company. The report notes that not only did China up its share of the EV market by 3% compared to 2015, it also made gains on the supply side of EVs including components such as lithium-ion batteries and electric motors. "One important factor is that the Chinese government provides subsidies to the sector in an effort to reduce fuel imports, improve air quality, and foster local champions," McKinsey explained.

    The Chinese government has announced that "new energy vehicles" (NEVs, which includes hybrids) should account for 8% of the passenger vehicle market by 2018, 10% by 2019 and 12% by 2020, according to EV Volumes.com.

    Read entire article

    Gleanings: "When Smart People Talk, We Listen"

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Jeffrey Saut for Raymond James which may be of interest. Here is a section: 

    1. Invest in something when people say they never want to invest in it again, when they are throwing it out the window. Think about that.  We know people that liquidated their portfolios around the March 2009 lows vowing to never buy a stock again.  The same can be said about tech stocks as they were bottoming between November 2002 and May 2003.  Currently, the same thing is being said now about energy stocks, especially the midstream MLPs.

    2. Investing is both qualitative and quantitative. There is room for both disciplines (qualitative and quantitative) in one’s portfolio just like there is room for both passive and active investment management, although currently we favor active. 

    3. The more people ridicule and question you, the more likely you are probably onto a good thing no matter what it is. This was like us buying oil sands stocks in the late 1990s when everyone was buying tech.  Or like when we bought tech stocks near the end of 2002; and, what we are doing now in buying the out of favor energy stocks. 

    4. Don’t invest in an area just because it is depressed, find and wait for the change and invest just before it happens while still unrecognized by the market. My father use to tell me, “Good things happen to cheap stocks,” but stocks can stay cheap for a really long time if other investors do not recognize their cheap valuations.  The charts will tell you when other investors will recognize them too.

     

    Read entire article

    The World Is Creeping Toward De-Dollarization

    Thanks to a subscriber for this article by Ronald-Peter Stöferle for the Mises Institute. Here is a section:

    A clear signal that something is afoot would be the abolition of the Saudi riyal's peg to the US dollar. As recently as April of this year economist Nasser Saeedi advised Middle Eastern countries to prepare for a “new normal” — and specifically to review the dollar pegs of their currencies: “By 2025 it is clear that the center of global economic geography is very much in Asia. What we’ve been living in over the past two decades is a very big shift in the political, economic, and financial geography.”

    While the role of oil-producing countries (and particularly Saudi Arabia) shouldn't be underestimated, at present the driving forces with regard to de-dollarization are primarily Moscow and Beijing. We want to take a closer look at this process.

    There exist numerous political statements in this context which leave no room for doubt. The Russians and Chinese are quite open about their views regarding the role of gold in the current phase of the transition. Thus, Russian prime minister Dimitri Medvedev, at the time president of Russia, held a gold coin up to a camera on occasion of the 2008 G8 meeting in Aquila in Italy. Medvedev said that debates over the reserve currency question had become a permanent fixture of the meetings of government leaders.

    Almost ten years later, the topic of currencies and gold is on the Sino-Russian agenda again. In March, Russia's central bank opened its first office in Beijing. Russia is preparing to place its first renminbi-denominated government bond. Both sides have intensified efforts in recent years to settle bilateral trade not in US dollars, but in rubles and yuan. Gold is considered important by both countries.

     

    Read entire article