Here’s some bad news for oil in 2018 (谈股论金)  624次阅读

作者: xiaosan , 发表于: 2017-05-30 (2725天前) @ 新东

COMMODITIES CORNER
Here’s some bad news for oil in 2018
May 29, 2017 at 9:24 a.m. ET
By Myra P. Saefong
Morgan Stanley lowers year-end 2018 WTI forecast to $55
Getty Images
OPEC output cuts haven’t played out as planned because the U.S. has ramped up production, says Morgan Stanley.
Major oil producers led by OPEC have greed to extend their crude output cuts through March of next year, but that could feed a glut of global supplies once the deal is done.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ 14 current members and 10 non-OPEC members agreed Thursday to continue their cuts of 1.8 million barrels a day, generally from October 2016 crude production levels, through the first quarter of 2018.

Read: Why oil is plunging after OPEC extended its landmark output-cut deal

“We do not expect that they will extend [the cuts] much beyond that,” Martijn Rats, head of the European oil and gas research team at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note dated late Thursday. “OPEC production cuts have finite lifespans.”

‘OPEC production cuts have finite lifespans.’
Martijn Rats, Morgan Stanley
Compliance with the cuts by OPEC members has been high—at 96%, according to the International Energy Agency’s May oil report.

But in his note, Rats expressed concerns about what will happen once the deal ends. If that coincides with strong shale-oil growth, the market looks to be oversupplied again, he said.

Rats warned of growing risks to Morgan Stanley’s 2018 oil outlook earlier this month.

Following the OPEC news, he lowered his West Texas Intermediate price CLN7 -0.26% forecast for year-end 2018 to $55 a barrel, from $60, and the year-end 2020 forecast to $60, from a range of $70-$75 a barrel.

“OPEC production cuts are most effective when they support a rebalancing that is already [taking] place, and that is indeed what it looked like at the time of the previous OPEC meeting” in November, said Rats.

At the time, non-OPEC output was falling at a rate of about 700,000 barrels a day, while global demand was growing around 1.5 million barrels a day, year on year, and “visible inventories” were declining by roughly 1.2 million barrels a day, he said.

The output reductions were supposed to “accelerate the normalization of inventories” back to their five-year average, said Rats. That average would be at around 2.7 billion barrels, but they currently stand at about just over 3 billion, according to reports.

Rats said that’s not how the cuts have played out because U.S. producers, which don’t participate in the agreement, have “responded by reactivating a staggering 246 rigs since Nov. 2016—a more than 50% increase in the oil-directed rig count.

On Friday, data from Baker Hughes BHI 1.11%revealed a 19th straight weekly increase in the number of U.S. rigs drilling for oil, though the size of the rise was the smallest so far this year.

Production from non-OPEC members, including the U.S., has “already returned to year-over-year growth and is set to accelerate in 2018,” said Rats.