Oil Balance

The past year has seen a couple of refiners transformed, notably HF Sinclair ($DINO), and Friday’s guest Par Pacific, which guides towards completion in Q2 2023 of their acquisition of ExxonMobil’s Billings refinery and associated assets, announced in 2022, is another name that is much bigger and more integrated than it was a year ago. We have Phillips 66 and Par Pacific back-to-back this Friday, January 13th 11AM Eastern Time Phillips 66 (PSX) – Mark …

Yullo, Last evening, I found myself surrounded by people wrapping themselves in blankets complaining about the cold – because it has dropped to 60 degrees here in Morelia, Mexico. I hate to be low grade and tell you what the weather is doing. Not for me to be the proverbial consultant that borrows your watch and tells you the time. Therefore in this note, we move from short termism to mega-theme consideration of the price …

Today, we re-publish highlights of the IEA’s December 2022 Oil Market Report (2022, released this morning) at a time of huge uncertainty in oil markets. Skip to the paragraph below that starts “OMR Scrape”, if you want to jump the next few paragraphs of my meta-analysis on paying for research, particularly IEA research. ~ As someone who started his oil analysis career at the IEA, I have the affection and disaffection of a former employee. …

“He’s the Michael Jordan of Oil & Gas” emailed one trader who read yesterday’s note on Mike Wirth. Meetings in New York yesterday, closing out my “week of Wirth” were received, if not quite at that level, then certainly very warmly. Besides his low-key charisma, what gave Wirth this reputation? The transformation of Chevron, essentially one of capex control and free cashflow & returns generation over his tenure, first in his restructuring what was an …

In our thematic note last week “The E&P Inventory Underhang” we explored growing inventory concerns at Coterra and Pioneer after their 3Q22 earnings reports.  Citing Pioneer’s well productivity deterioration, ill-defined capital allocation philosophy, and a broader question mark on the reduction of Pioneer’s future drillwell inventory, we offered Diamondback Energy (FANG) as an alternative to PXD for those investors seeking large cap E&P exposure to the Permian Basin.  Here, we illustrate the underpinnings of our […]

With 3Q22 oil & gas earnings effectively in the books, we took the opportunity to aggregate 2023 production and capex forecasts across the oil & gas sector.  We looked at consensus estimates for 50 of the largest energy producers in the US, Canada, and Europe and find 2023 production expectations struggle to stay flat as a projected 15% y/y capex inflation continues to undergo upside pressure. The aggregate producer group represents just over 21 mmbbl/d […]

Tonight on Happy Hour, Ira Joseph, Senior Research Scholar, Center on Energy Policy, Columbia University. Former Head of Global Generating Fuels & Electric Power Pricing and Research at S&P Global Platts. Former Head of Global Gas and Power PIRA Energy Group. Former Editor in Chief Energy Intelligence. The man has 30 years form in energy expertise. Ira was recommended by Sankey Research friend Jay Saunders, long term natural resource Portfolio Manager at Jennison, and connoisseur […]

There was plenty of client interest in a comment we made a while ago now, say Q1 2022, that US exploration and production (E&P) companies have become homogenized in terms of what they offer shareholders, as basically all corporate strategies now have, thankfully: Focused on returns and so capital discipline, and Reduced growth to the benefit of market supply & demand balance. Those that cannot resist growth are private or have gone private (Continental Resources) […]

What can you do but write an earnings note during earnings? Well, we put out a theme note yesterday on East Med, which had good reviews, but question marks over the materiality to the big winner, Chevron. As the oil space, and its respective components, have settled into a sensible valuation structure and lack of differentiation between themes, the quest is on to look at Kosmos or offshore drillers for some excitement. And we will […]

Greetings from London Town, The Giants and Packers fans were out in numbers around the West End – I can’t believe the Giants won! My daughter Honor is the expert – her line was that the Giants might be the best-coached team in football. She is deeply cynical about the team, so, powerful words. By the way her life ambition is to be a CEO, and a Giants Season ticket holder. Meanwhile in the pub […]

This evening! Premium Event! Steve Levine on Happy Hour tonight at 5pm ET re: batteries and electric vehicles, he is a world expert. Biography was emailed to you yesterday, impressive. Steve is now Editor of The Electric, a new, exclusive premium publication at The Information on batteries and EVs. Steve Levine 5pm Thursday 29th Sept: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtduuvrDMqEta4M3eKkusntGrE1nVV2HoK ~ Watching the NASDAQ below its 200 weekly moving average for the first time in 13 years “The West” […]

Brooklyn Cop at 844th Precinct accuses innocent Sankey of being “weird-looking” “They” got caught speeding yesterday: fast unwind of long natgas / short refining trade Terrific Happy Hour with Jay Saunders and a couple of other hitters last night; introducing Scope 4 Jennison portfolio manager (PM) Jay Saunders is very popular in the market, you can tell that by the players that dialled in to participate in his call yesterday. He co-runs the Jennison Natural […]

“I, Russia” Putin desperation rising Oil markets: would you rather have weak China demand with low oil product exports, or post lockdown China with high product exports? Yet another inventory release threat: China An inventory release threat, Iran, was highlighted by us as likely to go into instability given reports of the serious illness of the aging Supreme Leader. Say her name: “Mahsa Amini”. Protests raging, rightly. “Morality Police” murdering women. As the Fed raises, […]

PREMIUM EVENT TONIGHT Luke Gromen, high profile strategist, is on Happy Hour this week, Thursday 5pm. Big guest, big views, big themes, Main Event Gromen vs Sankey HH 53. Tonight Sep 15, 2022 05:00 PM ET Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkcemrqDIvHtyqA85Av3APXBad-aTjuSBR Another great call from our Washington DC guru and Happy Hour regular Frank Kelly, who weeks ago said that he did not believe that a rail strike would be tolerable to the […]

Dollar vs oil correlation has moved back to inverted very recently. Right now, the oil price is winning, US$ weakening. For the first time in well over a year, media is stating the oil price is rising on a weakening US$. That’s a bit like saying the NY Giants are dominating the NFL – after winning their first  game of the season. WITH THAT SAID Luke Gromen, high profile strategist, is on Happy Hour this […]

Rest in Peace, Queen Elizabeth II. Long live the King! The rainbows were just amazing. One US media outlet described the Queen as the last human link to Great Britain, the Britain of Empire, such as it was when she became Queen in the 1950s. This resonated with me, the Queen with Churchill in photos, for example. Her passing bought back memories of my father, another link to Empire, who left this mortal coil last […]

Last call for the Sankey Research Party at the Hard Rock Penthouse tonight. If you are in NYC and around Times Square, we have a glittering panoply of oil market experts, CEOs, investors, and some hangers on, all welcome. Kathleen Kelley “OPEC whisperer” will comment on the symbolic cut, and we are highlighting the new CEO of refiner Delek USA Avigal Soreq. RSVP if you want to join, there is plenty of space and we […]

Labor Day outlook for oil and energy markets into year end; there is plenty more research to be done. You could make a big call on oil today for the next four months, and be wrong by Tuesday this week, with OPEC+ meeting Monday. If they cut and crank oil prices, you could make a bear call today, reverse your view on Tuesday and be wrong by Thursday when the ECB may be pushed towards […]

We have spoken about the structural shortage of US refining capacity repeatedly. We have warned that the US refining system has been running very hard, but has been unable to keep inventories from all time lows relative to demand, particularly for distillate. And we have underlined that distillate (think diesel for my newbie readers) is the default “convenience premium” fuel when natgas and coal get short. It is easier to transport, and generally directly substitutable. […]

It’s a time of year when the Wednesday 10:30am US government Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (DOE EIA) weekly oil data matters. We normally disdain trying to jerk our knee faster than the army of commodity analysts who jerk their knees as fast as possible to DOE print, some who go so far to send out the entire tables verbatim (thanks!) but this week, for fun, we are competing for the fast note reaction […]

“The Saudi Put is back” wrote a client yesterday Could well be related to softening in Iran negotiations Certainly, it implies that Saudi wants, enjoys, needs, $100/bbl+ Brent Part of their calculus is a belief in strong demand despite $100/bbl+ this summer, with winter coming That is, the Saudis optimal price is as high as demand can take, and not so high as to cause demand destruction. This summer’s demand strength strongly suggests that range […]

We like the long oil trade here, explained Europe is at war. Russian/EU gas expert Jim Henderson was stark on our call: Russia is waging full scale economic war on Europe. Winter is coming. Darling! I never knew you cared Bull trade in oils is back on, in our view. First, we contend that oil equities often predict the next move in oil, the commodity. As shown below, over the past five days E&Ps (and […]

Delighted to say that Dr James Henderson is on Happy Hour Strategy Session tonight, A PREMIUM EVENT. Jim is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, alongside his consultancy work and professorships. When: this evening, Aug 11, 2022 05:00 PM ET, Zoom, Register in advance: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0sd-CtpjsrGdVM0p-MsG1P4WU0dr3hBWq3 ~ One of my favourite concepts on Wall St (or should I say hated?), is the “pain trade.” I first heard of it 20 years ago and […]

The two weeks, mid-earnings, when we pull together company results transcript comments, are not a science, they are an impressionistic art; a colour to our themes. Basically these are comments that caught our eye over the past week. Like sellside analysts, the companies tend to all present the same more-or-less generic message, but occasionally, as we strive with Sankey Research, a comment stands out, is differentiated, or so wild that it is worthy of note. […]

Tonight Happy Hour: Kathleen Kelley on OPEC. Frank Kelly (invited) on Washington DC – lots of action there. View share on results on what happens next. Today Thursday 4th August 5pm Eastern. Register for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkc-qvqjgrH9NWL5mVuMMR2AyR3q1cZrtm I was on Bloomberg TV bright and early this morning and… I used the “B” word. Just to note, we are long natgas over oil into the coming economic slowdown, and playing for winter. The announcement that Freeport […]

This note outlines the mega-themes that are emerging mid-way through oils’ reporting season. We listened to a lot of calls, read A LOT of transcripts, and distill it here, for your Saturday afternoon reading by the pool on your yacht. Last evening I reflected that this weekend I was as likely to bit hit by a massive piece of falling Chinese space debris, as to win the mega-millions and get my own yacht with pool. […]

Sincere thanks to research partner Greg Bordelon, who has been firing company reports at me while I stumble across Mexico in the quest to Morelia. Sorry for the invconvience, but if you would just request the company-specific notes, that would save me doing a ton of cut-and-paste into what would be a monster drone of a note. So email me and I will forward, on these companies: Key points: will we get restructuring at Baker […]

Canada from the top rope with the 100bps interest rate rise. US with the 9.1% inflation print. Here’s US inflation since 1914. We argued that the 2020’s have nothing like the set up of the “Roaring 20’s”, in our note written in 2020 “The Cliché-Myth of the Roaring 2020s”. For one, the stock market to start the 1920s had been essentially in a bear market for 15 years, hammered by WWI and Spanish Flu. Not […]

Rampant inflation globally, underlined by today’s US CPI print has an extraordinary backdrop – China has been dis-inflationary. In certain key markets, notably crude oil and above all LNG, China demand has been negative at the margin in terms of demand growth, with significant roll-overs from previous rampant import growth. Assuming China works through its COVID issues and pursues its 2022 GDP growth plan, a re-acceleration in demand for key commodities seems certain, particularly in […]

“Happy” Hour yesterday evening, an oil investor self-help group Big week for oils next week with Nordstream 1 and CPC shutdown decisions coming; Biden visits MBS Buffett buying yet more Oxy – he might go… all… the… way Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway filed notice of acquisition of 12m shares Occidental costing about $698m this week, giving it an 18.7% stake. Buffett had also purchased 9.9m OXY shares last week. Total stake is 175.4m shares worth […]

Good to see oil holding, we have broken the bottom of our $110/bbl-$150/bbl range for Brent this summer, but news out of China is positive both in terms of higher oil demand and re-iterated low oil product export quotas. These product export quotas are some 40% below last year levels and underline that Beijing is moving away from energy-intense processing and exports, prioritizing its own air quality and environmental issues. Quotas are cut from 37Mt […]

Back in Brooklyn, Happy July 4th weekend, insert my annual joke about my not recognising US independence, or Make America Great Britain Again. Harry and Meghan’s second kid is eligible to be a female US President, being born in California. Based on the recent candidates, not just the winning ones but the primaries, just about anybody will do better than the current political class. Enough, let’s take a quick look at the first half. As […]

Briefly noted: Gazprom shares plummet -25% as shareholders reject record dividend plan Uniper, largest German buyer of Russian gas, shares plummet -18% as it says it is receiving just 40% of volumes ordered from Gazprom After two weeks in the dark, with no weekly oil data published, the US Department of Energy released the backlog yesterday. The DOE was keen to stress the “systems outage” was not a hack. Better not be, DOE manages emergency […]

Good to see the oils stabilising and bouncing this week, with Brent crude prices holding the bottom of our $110-$150/bbl range for summer. It is clear that to get past the $130/bbl peak Ukraine fear price we hit in early March 2022, will more likely be a squeezing grind higher on strong demand and weak supply, than another spike shock, although these are always possible in oil. With that said, let’s face it, just about […]

Greetings from Hyde Park, We are back in London, Paris was controversial; Patricia considers it the greatest most wonderful place on earth, I get into arguments with Parisians, Selloff dynamics Hess reminder Phillips 66 Comments Morocco? Algeria It’s only rock ‘n’ and I’m 80 On the selloff: To me, the charts are not broken, but we nibbled 5% of the S&P500, then collapsed back to just over 4.1%. It is actually barely visible on the […]

Off to Royal Ascot today, thoughts before we take the train, suited, booted, and in Patricia’s case, hatted. We are with the plebians for a variety of reasons. So, I do not need to dress as a penguin/full morning suit and topper (Royal Enclosure dress requirement; there are tiers of “enclosures” descending from Royal, down to Windsor, based on social class, or in America, you would say money (debt will do)). A suit, plain shirt, […]

Libya down by 1mb/d, maybe President Biden should visit? APA (Apache Oil) duster in Suriname is unfortunate for the marginal mega-bull case BP – like Shell, the non-alcoholic beer of big oils – sells out of Canadian Oil Sands but increases exposure to Western Canada offshore OKLAHOMA CITY, June 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Continental Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CLR) today announced that its board of directors (the “Board”) has received a non-binding proposal letter, dated June […]

January 6th 2021, my personal story, or how the best call of my career cost me a lifetime fortune. DINO, how HollyFrontier won a lifetime fortune Starting with DINO, we had “me old mucker” Rich Voliva, CFO on Strategy Session last evening. He has always been impressive, and we had to laugh about him writing a searing indictment of US ethanol policy, as part of our sellside refining team at Deutsche Bank, when it was […]

Just as I was muttering that there is not much happening, it all kicks off. Notably the fire and outage at Freeport LNG yesterday caused a sudden sell-off in natgas prices. “If it is burning live on TV, it moves the market”. Over/under on the outage is 3 weeks, which is very minor in the grand scheme of things, but a big deal at the margin when natgas prices are screaming at $9.50/mmbtu. Freeport LNG […]

Some real time gasoline demand price elasticity data was given on today’s Casey’s call, and we thought it was worth sharing verbatim, with a little extra cheese. In case you missed it, Casey’s is a huge “convenience store“/gasoline station operator. Some 55% of revenue comes from fuel sales, of $8.7bn, generating 32% of gross profit of $2.4bn. Casey’s, is not just the 3rd largest convenience store in the USA, it is the US’ 5th biggest […]

Concerns that Russia may go ex-OPEC+ quota system, system such as it is, have seen oil prices fall hard this week… from $120/bbl to $113/bbl Brent. The chart continues to look extremely powerful, and I was pondering this morning what happened to all the “Peak Oil” community – which was huge in the 2000s, arguing that we were out of oil supply. Of course, US unconventional oil production growth humiliated them, none of whom forecast […]

Glad tidings, A long weekend in the US, a four day weekend in the UK for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, seventy years as Monarch. Quite the rein. Go easy on your temperamental French executive chef today as he crashes around in a fury having to stoop to make your requested Memorial weekend hot dogs and chicken nuggets. The fact that you intend to slug super-chilled Napa Screaming Eagle Sauvignon blanc is only upsetting him more.  […]

Re-iterate Price Target: Valero $150/share by June 30th. Re-iterate Overweight all US refiners. Illustrating Valero $190/share argument. This is a time of year when the weekly Department of Energy US oil data is crucial: it will be released at 10:30am today. We see an emerging crisis in US oil product markets, depending on how much of that crisis we export to Atlantic Basin markets. It will be a battle of demand destruction: who blinks first […]

Happy Sunday in May, Never a bad thing. Fog this morning has lifted. Aramco results this morning rounded out a week when it became the largest stock in the world by market capitalization, surpassing Apple (not by free float, the Saudi government owns 94%). It  generated an enormous profit in a quarter when Brent averaged just about $100/bbl (actually $99.53/bbl Q1 average).   Refining earnings, as well as continued huge upstream earnings, will be even […]

We had Kathryn Kelley and Bob Jonke on the Strategy Session yesterday. The story of how I managed to steal a major client’s wallet after we watched the Real Madrid vs Man City game with Kathryn was not repeated. It was an accident! Bob is worried about demand destruction and not super-bullish crude here. By contrast, Kathryn sees a 3mb/d shortage of oil in 2H which simply cannot be drawn from inventory, so something has […]

First quarter reporting season is always a crazy flurry, and this one is no different. To add to the excitement, just as I sat back yesterday having published on Antero, news broke that Elliott Associates had gone activist on Suncor. We had Hess IR Jay Wilson on Strategy Session. Hess could be worth $200/share on a five year view, at $100/bbl oil. For sure, Guyana is just about the only major global oil supply growth. […]

The only good number in oil is the oil price The only good demand number in oil is refining margins The only barrier of entry to being an oil analyst is units You are only as good as your last call CNBC want me on this afternoon – unusually they booked me two weeks ago – for the second anniversary of oil prices going negative. Let me go to the grave saying I called for […]

This note starts with some near term Iraq production and export analysis, and works backwards through the short term political history, and long term political history, of the country, in the context of oil. Bottom line, Iraqi political instability continues, but oil production has steadily risen over the past 15 years to around 4.3mb/d – an all-time historic high for Iraq – and can likely rise a few more 100kb/ds, certainly in the medium term. […]

Ripper chart, most bullish I have seen in 30 years following US E&P – quant analysis. Any chart available on request, any stock in the market… Share of S&P500 market cap vs share of S&P500 earnings. Black line is sellside. Blue line is buyside (share of market cap). Buyside is smarter than sellside, read the charts. Mi amigo US E&P, chart most bullish in history; Oxy, PXD, COP, FANG, APA, Hes.. Unprecedented bullish chart, buy […]

China rant PBF – Q1 likely half messy, but finishes running strong into incredible margins as Q2 starts Sankey Recommends: Liverpool vs Man City Premiership decider tomorrow – two of the best club football teams ever to play, at their peak. PBF CEO Tom Nimbley, President Matt Lucey, CFO Erik Young, and IR Colin Murray were on good form on Strategy Session yesterday evening. Nimbley started his career in refining in the 1973 oil price […]