Why Gulf of Mexico’s Hurricane Harvey is bearish for oil (谈股论金)  3542次阅读

作者: 珍惜 , 发表于: 2017-08-24 (2458天前)

Why Gulf of Mexico’s Hurricane Harvey is bearish for oil

By Myra P. Saefong
Published: Aug 24, 2017 2:06 p.m. ET

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Oil, natural-gas prices fail to get a lift from storm’s threat to output
AFP/Getty Images
A flooded oil refinery on Sept. 25, 2005 after Hurricane Rita in Beaumont, Texas.
A storm in the Gulf of Mexico region, home to about 17% of the country’s total crude production, could become the first major hurricane in nearly 12 years to make landfall in the U.S., but oil prices looked set to finish Thursday at their lowest level in a week.

Hurricane Harvey would become the country’s first Category 3 or stronger hurricane to make landfall since Hurricane Wilma touched down in South Florida in October 2005, according to Weather.com. A Category 3 storm, with sustained winds at 111 to 129 miles per hour, would be considered a “major” hurricane.

In an afternoon update Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said Harvey had maximum sustained winds at 85 miles per hour, which would make it a Category 1 hurricane. It’s expected approach the middle of the Texas coast on Friday and make landfall Friday night or early Saturday.

Read: Strengthening tropical storm Harvey heads for Texas, prompting hurricane warning

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. APC, -0.44% and Royal Dutch Shell PLC RDS.B, -0.19% are among the companies that have evacuated personnel from oil and natural-gas platforms and slowed production in the Gulf of Mexico.

But futures prices for West Texas Intermediate crude failed to find support, with the October contract CLV7, -2.00% dropping 99 cents, or 2.1%, to $47.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

NOAA
That is a bit perplexing given that, according to the Energy Information Administration, the region accounts for 17% of total U.S. crude-oil production.

But analysts had a simple explanation: “Harvey looks set to hit the refinery hub of the U.S. and it is likely that refinery runs will fall faster than offshore production,” said Troy Vincent, oil analyst at ClipperData. “Regardless of whether refiners live up to the speculation, this storm is a much greater threat to refinery operations than to offshore production.”

More than 45% of the nation’s petroleum refining capacity is located along the Gulf Coast, as well as 51% of U.S. natural-gas, processing plant capacity, according to the EIA.

Still, natural-gas prices traded modestly higher, with its September contract NGU17, +0.58% tacking on 2 cents, or 0.7%, to $2.948 per million British thermal units.

The EIA reported that domestic natural-gas supplies rose by 43 billion cubic feet last week, which Matt Smith, director of commodity research at ClipperData said generally met with market expectations, leaving natural-gas prices little moved.

At the same time, natural-gas production in the Gulf of Mexico is a sliver of the supply pie these days, “hence the storm is having little to no impact on prices,” he said.

The area’s federal offshore natural-gas output accounts for just about 5% of total domestic dry natural-gas production, according to the EIA.

‘…if disruptions to regional demand are bad enough,” those price gains could “quickly break down on demand problems.’
Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Seaport Global Securities
Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Seaport Global Securities, said key commodity prices could go up on supply fears driven by Harvey, but “if disruptions to regional demand are bad enough,” those price gains could “quickly break down on demand problems.”

“If gasoline cannot get to demand markets, then gasoline inventories could go up a bit, and this would unwind the risk premium very quickly,” he explained. And “if wholesale gasoline prices do not trend higher because of demand, then it feeds back into crude-oil prices in a negative loop. It prevents crude-oil price escalation.”

He said tropical storm Allison in 2001 hit the region hard, but that storm’s impact on oil prices was moderate because of damage to demand. That is because severe storms like Harvey tend to weaken demand for gasoline, as traveling in the wreckage wrought by such catastrophes can be difficult, and storms usually reduce demand for electricity due to downed power lines and outages.

Primary impacts from Harvey “would be crude-oil tanker movements, regional fuel demand, refinery operations and output, and some [natural-gas] terminal and hub operations,” Hastings said.

Harvey’s threat to refinery activity gave gasoline futures prices a boost, sending September gasoline futures RBU7, +2.85% up by 3.1% to $1.670 a gallon, with prices set to finish the session at their highest level of this month.

“Offshore natgas production impacts would be minor,” Hastings said. Still, “crude oil is more vulnerable offshore, and some supply impacts are logical here.”

Meanwhile, the storm’s impact on the region could mark a test run for what’s expected to happen to demand as the summer driving season winds down.

“Refinery demand typically peaks between mid-June and late July to correspond with the height of driving season,” said Tamar Essner, director of energy and utilities at Nasdaq Advisory Services. “As refiners head to fall maintenance, this will be a natural diminution in crude demand.”

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