Oil prices fell today with U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate falling 1.29% to $50.64 a barrel and international benchmark Brent crude down 1.11% to $56.31 a barrel. Oil prices were even lower in the early going with West Texas Intermediate touching $50.23 a barrel at 9:56 a.m. New York time and then $50.19 at 12:50 p.m.
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don’t justify a full post. I’ve decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I’m calling Notes You Need. I launched this new feature on JubakAM.com on December 1. For example, “10:20 a.m.: Â Oil was up on speculation that Tropical Storm Nate would rise to the status of a hurricane and then hit the Gulf Cost, disrupting refineries and oil export platforms again But now oil is down on speculation that the storm won’t hit the Gulf Coast has hard as previous speculation suggested.”
Oil started the day rallying on a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration for a draw down of 6 million barrels in U.S.crude inventories for the week ended September 29. And then oil fell on reports of a surge in U.S. oil experts large enough to raise fears that U.S. light sweet crude would flood global markets just as oil demand moves into seasonal weakness.
U.S. oil producers have hedged more of their oil production in the last two weeks than in the last four to five months. In August a sample of 43 large and small U.S. producers had hedged just 23% of 2018 production. But now with West Texas Intermediate back above $52 a barrel, producers have rushed to finish hedging 2017 production, and the bulk of their 2018 production, and started to establish hedges for 2019.
Will OPEC really keep pumping less oil than it could in an effort to clear the global surplus in crude and to support prices above $50 a barrel and maybe push oil back to $60 a barrel? The annual confab of oil traders this week in Singapore is likely to tell.
The meeting of OPEC and its allies in Vienna today, September 22, ended without an extension of  production cuts (scheduled to expire in March 2018) and without an agreement to make those cuts in output deeper. The after-meeting talk was full of declarations of progress toward reducing the glut in global oil inventories. And there was nary a sign of worry that higher oil prices could bring an increased supply from U.S. oil shale producers back into the market
Want to play along as the oil market tries to guess what OPEC will do at its Friday meeting? West Texas Intermediate moved down, slightly, to $49.56 a barrel, a 0.7% retreat, as of 3 p.m. New York time. International benchmark Brent moved 0.52% lower to $55.19 a barrel. The question is What’s priced into this market?
If you think you’ve heard this before, you’re absolutely right. Nonetheless, oil rallied today on a forecast from the International Energy Agency that oil stockpiles in developed countries could hit or fall below their five-year average “very soon.” West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, closed up 2.2% to $49.30 a barrel. That brings us back near to the $50 level that has defined the top of the range in oil prices for much of 2017. (The high for West Texas Intermediate in 2017 is $54.45 a barrel back on February 23.)Â
Times listed are when I wrote the specific post (New York time.)
10:20 a.m.: The worst storm to hit the oil refineries on the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Wilma in 2005 is on a track to come ashore near Corpus Christi, Texas, on Friday. Hurricane Harvey with its 85 mile an hour winds and drenching rain is likely to disrupt gasoline production and curtail oil and natural gas demand. U.S. crude benchmark West Texas Intermediate closed down 1.63% today. Gasoline, on the other hand, rose 2.35% on anticipation that the storm will curtail supply. 10:40 a.m.: The usual reliable but unnamed sources have said that in September Apple (AAPL) will announce a new Apple TV set-top box that will include a faster processor capable of streaming higher-resolution 4K video. Apple is also said to be testing an updated version of its TV app that can aggregate programming from apps that already offer live streaming.
How soon will U.S. oil production from wells in oil shale geologies peak? It’s the big question for U.S. oil producers and for a global oil market swimming in excess inventory. As long as U.S. oil production continues to increase all of OPEC’s production cuts, intended to reduce that excess supply, aren’t going to get the job done. Since October 2016, U.S. crude oil production increased by more than one million barrels per day.
