Thread by @davidgaffen

My take on the week that was, and what’s next. #OOTT #EFT #shale #OilPrice #crudeoil #OPEC

When oil became waste: a week of turmoil for crude, and more pain to come reut.rs/2xYTiFz

So a bit more on this. A lot right now rests on what happens next, both in terms of various economic regions trying to recover a bit and find ways to do a bit more business - and whether that's possible. #OOTT #OPEC

After all it's not often you see a nation like Azerbaijan tell a BP-led consortium that yes, you have to stop producing. Usually the big oil companies are exempt from this sort of thing. #OOTT #OPEC

Not anymore. @dmitryZ_reuters

“We have never done it before since they came to the country in 1994 and signed the contract of the century,” a senior Azeri official told Reuters.

reuters.com/article/us-glo…

And #Chevron had its license to operate in Venezuela revoked, and it barely emitted a peep. "The global climate is terrible," said one person close to a Western oil co in Venezuela. "The license almost didn't matter anymore." @cohenluc @mariannaparraga

reuters.com/article/us-ven…

So you have those things. And then Continental Resources decides to declare force majeure effectively on low prices - which is going to make for a very difficult legal argument.

Unless, as @anasalhajji told me, you accept the idea that these are no longer usual circumstances.

Which maybe they aren't - but you could say the same if a refiner did the same if oil prices were at $150. It's pissed off a lot of people, but then again there's the whole "better to beg forgiveness to ask permission." (Again, not a legal doctrine.)

reuters.com/article/us-con…

That's caused a lot of strife all around North Dakota as you can imagine, along with Oklahoma and other states. Those cuts have come very quickly, as our @Devikakrishnak @lailakearney and others are reporting.

So now what? Well, it's another big week. We've got earnings this week out of #Exxon #Chevron #BP #Shell and then #TotalSA comes in a couple of weeks. So a lot happening, so follow @ronbousso1 @Jennifer_Hiller on that.

reuters.com/article/us-glo…

#OOTT

And then we have US GDP figures coming too. This may crystallize things. As Frederick Lawrence of the IPAA said, we won't really in a way know how bad it is till we see the numbers - job losses, well shutin, rig count declines, and of course, GDP figures.

There's a lot of anxiousness about getting back to work and just getting back to life, naturally. But we risk the fits-and-starts of not fully having gotten past the virus, too; but others more qualified to talk on that should talk rather than me.

The main thing, though, that we're going to keep seeing, however, is that we could really start to see additional shutins when refineries run out of storage. That's why they're talking about frack tanks here and the like.

reuters.com/article/us-glo…

So what's it looking like in terms of the lockdown, worldwide? Let's do the A to Z thing again, folks, using the TomTom tracker:

Atlanta? Still pretty well locked in.

Still quiet in Bangkok.

Cairo's weekends are dead quiet, but a few busier days in the middle of the week. One to watch.

A bit more in Dusseldorf, too...

Edinburgh is quiet. Miss you, fair Scotland.

Florence is also calm, but some of the big European cities also don't the same kind of congestion as other continents.

Guangzhou looks busier!

As does Hong Kong.

Will finish this later....

Still quiet in traffic nightmare Istanbul.

Same goes for Jakarta.

Calm in Kobe.

Lima is normally jammed. Not right now per #TomTom. #OOTT

Mumbai is quite the city, but now, it's quiet.

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of?

#NYC

Odessa? Quiet.

Pretty chill in Porto Alegre...

Quiet in Quebec...

#OOTT

Rome, closed city.

Santiago is normally jammed and now it isn't.

#OOTT

Tokyo is still quiet..

#OOTT

Options for U aren't great, but here's Utrecht.

Vancouver is still quiet.

Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, has picked up, though far from normal traffic.

Pretty normal in Xiamen.

Yekaterinburg is still pretty chill.

Zurich, too, is far from busy. That's about it, folks. Til tomorow. #OOTT