Big_Orrin Profile picture
Jun 30, 2020 9 tweets 2 min read Read on X
1. Thread: the decision of Saudi Arabia to start a price was is probably the worst decision they made because they really did not understand the implications of their actions.

#OOTT
2. First they failed to realise that Trump and The Us had a floor to the price they were willing to accept oil. I believe Saudi thought a price war would please Trump as it brought down the price of gasoline. Huge mistake as can be seen by their back tracking.
3. It showed that Saudi maybe the biggest producer and with the most spare capacity but the swing producer is the USA not because of shale but because they can make Saudi increase and cut their production.
4. All the Saudi actions since of forcing compliance is the reaction to the bully being bullied. I am surprised countries like Nigeria have gone along with the cuts knowing the Saudis could not punish them.
5. To put this in perspective. Saudi started the Price war as way to increase market share particularly from the US. But it has backfired spectacularly. US exports have likely remained above 3mbpd around the same as before COVID-19. Saudi production has fallen more than 2mbpd
6. It means that outside the US, Saudi market share has fallen compared to the US which was really not what they were after doing when they started the price war.
7. Their actions have left the market completely unbalanced and it is hurting their customers refinery margins.They have left the market unbalanced between too much light sweet crude and too little medium/heavy sour crude.
8. This can be seen with extremely low refinery utilization while at the same time record differentials for Crudes like Urals.
9. Saudi talked this week about being the last and biggest producer. It shows they do not understand Geopolitics. They forget customers buy from producers they trust. After the last 3 months, Saudi have lost a lot of trust. Their assumptions like the price war maybe very wrong

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More from @Big_Orrin

Sep 18
1. Physical traders rarely negotiate fixed price for their oil.

What they do negotiate is
- The differential
- The benchmark off pricing
- The pricing period
- plus a few other non-price related factors.
2. Those three things are what they typically haggle over

Differnetials are small a few dollars but they tell you supply/demand situation because you can look at them over a long period. Physical traders talk to each other an share information. Includes Platts, Argus, etc
3. The benchmark negotiated usually is determined by what benchmark the refinery sells their products. Refineries have a natural hedge and try to buy the same amount of crude a day as products they sell.
Read 15 tweets
Sep 12
1. Oil markets fall under the McNamara Fallacy

It was named after Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. And involves making a decision based solely on simple and easy quantitative metrics and ignoring anything difficult to interpret
2. He thought success in war could be easily calculated. In this case the one with the highest body count is the loser.

Spain does this for school teachers where those with best governmental exam results become teachers even if they are useless at teaching.
3. Daniel Yankelovich on McNamara Fallacy:

1. measure whatever is easily measured
2. disregard that which can't easily be measured or given a quantitative value
3. presume that what can't be measured easily isn't important
4.say that what can't be easily measured doesn't exist
Read 6 tweets
Sep 4
1. Short 🧵

The idea the oil market will be in a huge deficit going into 4Q 2024 is not being shown by reality in the physical market.
2. @Amena__Bakr and @energyintel suggested that there would be a deficit of 1.75mbpd in the 2H of 2024. Now let’s put that in perspective.

If it is average over the whole of 2H then at the end of 2024 that deficit would be closer to 3mbpd. That is 3% of demand
3. The only phrase about the oil market supply is 1% below demand is an oil crisis, 1% above demand it is a glut, so what is 3%?

That is more than was being talked about being lost at the beginning of the Russian/Ukraine war. That costs differentials to skyrocket
Read 12 tweets
Jun 11
1. Short 🧵

There are a number of problems with this graph and the forecast for up take of BEVs. The curve is way too steep.

The biggets factor is the purchase of total new cars.

New car purchases are less now than in 2019. they were particularly low through 2020 to 2022.
2.
New car sales in EU
2019: 13028948
2020: 9939418
2021: 9700089
2022: 9255926
2023: 10500000

Despite growing from 242k to 1.5m in that period BEV got a huge boost in their market share through 2020-23 because total car sales fell by nearly 30%.
3.
In the 7 years prior to COVID in 2020, New car sales grew at an average 4.4% each year. If that had continued, New car sales in 2023 would have been 15.5m cars. that would have left BEV market share at 9.69% not the 14.3% it acheived in 2023.
Read 8 tweets
Mar 18
1. Short 🧵on what will be the most overhyped flop in the oil market.

The answer is the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

Canadians think this will have the effect of increasing demand for Canadian crude oil, putting up the differential and make Canadian producers more profitable.
2. There is significant problems in that idea.

Main one is it might create too much supply for demand. Here are the problems.

- The crude is very heavy has huge amounts of sulphur but worst of all most will have aTaN of between 1.6 and 2.2.

Few refineries can refine that
2.
The problem with acidity is where it comes out in the refinery. That acidity number will increase as the crude is seperated. Because this is very heavy crude, the light crude it is blended with will not help disperse the acidity.
Read 11 tweets
Mar 16
1. Short 🧵

Remember Ukrainians are not reducing Russian revenues hugely at moment. More crude oil exported will balance less products.

- But it is doing medium/long term damage to Russian infrastructure at a time where all skilled workers are working in the military complex
2.
- being done at a time when refineries already under strain because of sanctions (quality of spare parts, catalysts, etc.)
- Russia does not have ability to import products in the quantity to replace lost refinery capacity. The Russian system is designed to export not import
3. Ukraine has been restrained against Russian oil and gas until lately
- Both gas and oil pipelines running through Ukraine carrying Russian hydrocarbons have been untouched
- Ukraine not used their aquatic drones against tankers (full or empty) unlike success against warships.
Read 11 tweets

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