Free Fallin' - COVID-19, Declining Energy Commodity Prices and What Might Lie Ahead

On Friday, global energy markets entered uncharted territory. Already facing declining demand due to the impact of COVID-19, markets then were dealt a body blow with the collapse of the OPEC-Plus alliance and the resulting prospect of a significant increase in supply. Saudi Arabia wanted to manage supply to balance against lower demand, but Russia was having none of it. Instead, reports from the OPEC-Plus meeting indicate that Vladimir Putin has declared war on U.S. shale. Then on Saturday, the plot thickened. Saudi Arabia made huge cuts in the price of its crude oil, presumably in a high-stakes move to bring Russia back to the negotiating table. Even though we are witnessing unprecedented market conditions, it’s not Armageddon. Crude oil will continue to be pumped, piped, shipped and refined. Most infrastructure projects under construction before the collapse in oil prices will be completed. The big question is, how will the market adapt? In today’s blog, we’ll begin an exploration of that question.

Well, now we all know how it feels when the bottom falls out. In fact, it seems there is no bottom, with WTI crude at Cushing settling on Wednesday at $20.37/bbl, down $6.58/bbl. There is no point in belaboring the sad story here. You can read about pandemics, OPEC price wars and collapsed markets in every periodical on the planet. Likewise, there is no point in trying to predict what will happen next. Any pundit who tries to predict future prices in this environment is picking numbers out of the air at best. But at RBN, we are energy market analysts. As such, we are compelled to analyze something. And in these market conditions, there is one thing we can hang our hat on: No matter how bad things get, hope springs eternal. Thus, the market consensus is that things will be better a year from now, and even better a year after that. The implication? In a flash, crude is in steep contango, and that has repercussions for pipeline flows, regional price differentials and for storage — in production areas, at refineries, in VLCCs on the water, and especially at Cushing, OK, the king of oil storage hubs. Today, we examine one aspect of the chaos that now envelopes all aspects of energy markets.

The E&Ps have cut Capex to the bone, but as a group they expect oil and gas production in 2015 to increase versus last year.  That’s true from an overall perspective, and it is an important indicator of upcoming production trends.  But the real revelations come when you dig into the details.  In the oily sector, small and mid-size companies are making deeper cuts but are faring much better than the big boys.  On the gassy side, E&Ps in Appalachia are knocking it out of the park, while more diversified gassy players are having a much harder time of it.   Today we begin a blog series to drill deeper into the company numbers to see why and how these differences happen.