As the news that Kuwait may struggle to keep its oil output in the coming years, we like to explain some facts on "Base Declines". Kuwait is said to have 3.2mbpd capacity & produces 2.5mbpd in Oct 2021.
Kuwait is major, not minor for the market.
First, think of a conventional oil fields like a "normal distribution" or, after its mathematician, a "Gauss curve". As a field starts producing hydrocarbons, its production is stable or increases (with reservoir pressure & wells No) bf it enters in a "permanent decline".
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Take the Cantarell offshore field in Mexico, one of a few "giant" conventional oil fields ever to be discovered. Do you see the "Gauss" curve below? In May 2021, Cantarell was down to 90kbpd, a fraction of its 2mbpd peak production in 2004.
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Now, let us do that for all 65,000 conventional oil fields in the world & we basically get - Gauss again!
Oil & gas is an extractive industry. If world production needs to be stable, annual reinvestment (replacement of production) is required or global supplies decline.
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More concretely, back in 2018 maturing fields around the globe declined at around 6% pa as reservoir pressure of oil fields globally decrease over time until the production rate eventually declines to a point at which it no longer produces profitable amounts.
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In 2018, the IEA assumed 51 Mbpd of production to be in permenant decline. At 6% annual decline, operators need to replace 3.1 Mbpd with new projects EACH YEAR just to stay still. That is a lot of oil in an industry that is happy to find a new fields with 100mb size.
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Again, in this decade the oil industry needs to replace one "North Sea" each year to keep production stable as ageing oil fields lost more than 3mbpd per year.
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Is the industry re-investing enough? Of course not.
If anything, the industry continues to reduce investments due to Covid-19 & ongoing ESG demands ("Green Shift").
Worse, think about the signalling effect of SPR releases in that context to get lower prices!?
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So if anything, the industry lost potentially up to 4mbpd of barrels in the past 18 months in addition to the impact of project delays or increased decline rates due to "over-production".
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Again, under-investment is going to lead to unsustainable oil production in the near future as reserves deplete from a lack of replacement.
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It gets worse, not only did the industry not invest enough, decline rates are likely to increase too, potentially from 6% to more like 8% or 9%.
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And that is true for Non-OPEC or OPEC fields, as you can easily see from the below table.
On this platform, certain perma bulls keep pushing a bullish crude narrative based on relative U.S. inventories—day after day, for three years now.
Their logic: Total U.S. crude inventories (including the SPR) are at 838 million barrels (orange line), 200 million barrels below the 10-year average → bullish!
Yet, inventories keep falling, and prices remain stuck in a range. Clearly, they are wrong.
1/9 @UrbanKaoboy @Iris62655179 @BrentRuditLeo
The problem with their logic?
a) The U.S. is no longer the marginal importer of crude oil—Asia is (or was).
b) U.S. inventories are artificially high on a 10-year average due to the shale boom, which took off in 2014. Shale growth and Covid distort the data, keeping inventories (ex SPR) elevated. So any 5- or 10-year comparison is meaningless—period.
2/n US Crude Oil Inventory ex SPR
Including SPRs, the picture looks more normalised - but not tight. But does the US really need 700mb of strategic reserves in 2025? I don't think so.
Yesterday, I shared a few thoughts that I’d like to expand on, especially given how volatile the current tariff landscape under this admin has become.
Navigating it isn’t just difficult—it’s nearly impossible to avoid missteps. Hopefully some traders will expand on my thoughts...
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What do we know?
As at 23 March 2025, Comex copper price in New York is trading at 14% premium to LME in London. Buying a tonne of copper in NY costs $11,213 versus 9,842 in London, $1,371 per tonne more than in London.
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Why is that? Because of tariff FEARS, not tariffs.
Traders are hedging future risk of potential tariffs on all forms of the raw material, such as cathodes, concentrates, ores, and even scrap. But there aren't such tariffs in place for copper yet (unlike alumnium).
The current Comex price action in the U.S. is basically a Trump tariff trade mirage and is otherwise as misleading of fundaments as the May 2024 price action of which I warned on multiple occasions.
1/n $/pound
In May 2024 however, U.S. price action was more in synch with London. But it didn't reflect weak Chinese housing & construction fundamentals which has been 15-30% of GLOBAL copper use for the past two decades. Today, U.S. prices trade as if borders close tomorrow.
2/n Comex - LME arb in $/t
Unlike May 2024, copper blue chips like $FCX, however, do not buy the rally. So at least it seems that the equity market understands the tariff aspect of the copper price mirage.
In this episode, we discuss China's 2nd of 5 economic paths it can follow.
This episode will also focus on Xi the leader. To understand Xi means to better understand China's economic path forward.
1/n #China
Can China replace malinvestment with more consumption?
Answer: Maybe a little bit & over a long time frame, but President Xi does not want to focus on this path. Instead, he wants to implement his socialist utopia.
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Yes, China’s rising entrepreneurs were welcomed by the Communist Party for at least two decades. But all of that is in reverse.
Under Xi Jinping, China has moved full circle: from low growth & low freedom in the pre-reform era back towards something similar today.
In this episode, we discuss China's investment-led growth model & the first of 5 economic paths China can follow.
As you would expect, also this episode is full of Chinese characteristics!
1/n #China
Starting in 1990s, China’s economic engine has been fueled by capital investments.
Its central planning bureau defined GDP targets, picked winners and drove growth from debt-driven capital formations (green line).
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Has any other nation tried this before, ever? Not to our knowledge.
We checked at ALL G20 economies and their respective growth models for past 70 years. 45% capital formation share is a unique experiment in economic history.
Over the past 3 years, we made some controversial calls in commodities. We decided to exit our oil holding in Aug 2022, we went short natgas in early 2023 or called for copper to go lower in May.
Why? Because we have an egde on China.
1/n #China
Yes, mainstream media picked up pace on important issues facing China today.
Most came to understand that the property bubble burst, that the economy is slowing, that geopolitical frictions are emerging, that there is too much debt.
But do they understand the underlying forces that drive these issues?
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While the majority of these facts are known, most Western observers, investors & industrialists do not fully appreciate their interdependence & the structural changes that are unfolding in China today.