- Home /
- oil prices
Pain at the pump? – blame the woke governments and not the oil majors!
In the UK, forecourt (pump) fuel prices are up +35% for both petrol and diesel (to 191p/199p respectively) from the last time the price of brent crude held above $120/bbl in Q1 2012. With the oil majors having all reported a strong increase in refining margins and downstream profitability, it must be tempting therefore suggest […]
Continue readingTrump’s oil supply leverage
It says a lot for either the weak outlook for global GDP growth or the limited threat posed by the Iranians, that a series of attacks and seizures of oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, a conduit for around 20% of the world’s oil needs, as had no appreciable impact on crude oil prices. […]
Continue readingEngineering a ‘Santa Rally’ in oil, but what then?
If the price of continued US support after the Khashoggi murder was the lower oil price, then it must rank as one of the most expensive assassinations of journalist in history, with Saudi Arabia’s gross oil production revenues down almost $2bn per week. The attempt to resurrect his political reputation at the G20 meeting was […]
Continue readingOil stocks continue to reach beyond a $60/bbl oil price
Mr Micawber it seems is alive and well over at OPEC, where the last ‘do nothing’ meeting has ended in the warm glow of oil prices being up 80% since the last event (in Dec 2015), with the narrative of a market experiencing a net reduction in non-OPEC supply of approx -740k b/d against global […]
Continue readingIs there an oil price where Shell’s offer for BG doesn’t work?
Is there an oil price where Shell’s BG offer doesn’t make sense? Listening to Shell’s narrative, the position was initially that the oil price was going to rebound into 2016 and beyond, but then as this got progressively pushed back as prices relapsed, the emphasis was placed on the natural hedge that the share component […]
Continue readingMarket complacency may be its undoing
Welcome to the Q1 reporting season. If you hadn’t noticed yet, Easter came early this year (good for retailers, airlines etc) and there is a minefield of shifting currencies and commodity prices to adjust for as well as some decidedly mixed macro data coming out from the major trading economies. If you’re selling out of […]
Continue readingAirlines and oil prices
With fuel costs representing 45-50% of an airline’s operating costs and 35% of its revenues, it would seem self-evident that a significant movement in oil, and therefore fuel prices, would have an equally dramatic effect on margins; in particular when the industry’s margins are often the wrong side of 5%. The oil price however is […]
Continue reading