$30 barrel oil?

[M.alex]

Trump needs to tweet about a secret underground storage bunker with a bajillion bbls of storage. There, problem solved. Oil back to $50.

[ExtraSlow]

I keep yammering on about storage. This contributor to Oilprice.com says much the same thing, but with better references.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oi...y-Mid-May.html

Running out of usable storage volume is what can hammer prices downward, and is something WTI and Brent haven't seen ever, as far as I know. I absoloutely see this getting WTI below $10, and WCS going to basically zero.

[nzwasp]

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I keep yammering on about storage. This contributor to Oilprice.com says much the same thing, but with better references.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oi...y-Mid-May.html

Running out of usable storage volume is what can hammer prices downward, and is something WTI and Brent haven't seen ever, as far as I know. I absoloutely see this getting WTI below $10, and WCS going to basically zero.

Is wcs always a percentage difference or is it just what the contracts are priced at for what companies are willing to buy it at ?

[ExtraSlow]

Not a percentage. It's usually discussed in the media as a differential below WTI price, although that's really just for convenience more that anything. It's just another of the 100's of locally priced crude grades around the world. WCS is probably the most widely quoted Canadian grade, although as Killramos will point out, there's lots of others that have their own pricing trends.

[killramos]

WTI is easy to financially hedge prices.

I think there is a relatively liquid market for trading in WCS futures, but that one has been shocked a lot lately which has led to its futures being less useful. What’s useful is there is a market for trading in WCS differentials, meaning you can hedge WTI fiancially, and you can hedge a WCS to WTI differential which helps a ton with risk management.

You can’t really financially hedge MSW or Edmonton Light in Canada shich means light oil players are relatively exposed to differential swings like what happened winter before last. Your only option on MSW is physical hedging, or buying transportation capacity down to Cushing for a fixed toll and into selling your barrels at Edmonton but rather shipping them all down to Cushing at a fixed toll and getting WTIish pricing for your product. You can also do this with WCS, but it’s a bit more complicated because spec WCS is an inferior product and will still suffer a discount in Oklahoma, MSW is actually a relative premium product in this regard.

The only thing I think that could really help WCS long term is what refineries are tooled for down there, not really my wheelhouse but I hear a lot that they are tooled for heavy crude down there so they need to get it form somewhere ( Shale Oil isn’t going to help here ) so I feel like they could put a floor in WCS pricing and could even cause it to be traded north of WTI if there is a relative shortage of heavy feedstock.

At least that’s how I think about it, but as per usual I couldn’t give a rats ass about WCS pricing any more than I care about the price of diesel at the pump.

[ExtraSlow]

Yeah, the gulf coast refinery complex, which is the largest grouping of refinery capacity in the entire world, has a lot of capacity for heavier grades like WCS. The issue is getting the barrels down there, which is a big part of the fluctuations in WCS/WTI differential. If we had more adequate egress capacity, the differential would be much more stable.

Man, I really wish we built northern gateway. That was a really good project that would have had material impact on Alberta prices, and could have avoided the idiots in the lower mainland and the crazy busy shipping lanes in the Burrard Inlet and the Salish Sea.

[ExtraSlow]

Oil output cuts, prices and compliance is on the mind of the DOB editors this morning:

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Oil prices slip
• Benchmarks drop despite output deal: Brent futures fell 25 cents to $31.49 by 0825 GMT after settling 0.8 per cent higher on Monday. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 22 cents at $22.19, having dropped 1.5 per cent in the previous session.
• OPEC+ decision: The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), along with Russia and other producing countries, agreed over Easter to cut output by 9.7 million bbls/d in May and June, equating to about 10 per cent of global supply before the coronavirus outbreak.
• Other cuts: Additional output cuts by the United States and other nations outside the OPEC+ group will take the estimated total reduction to about 19.5 million bbls/d, according to Reuters.
• What the market is saying: "OPEC+ cut volumes are too small to counter the peak impact coming from the demand side," JBC Energy said in a note.
Compliance a concern
• Rystad Energy AS's head of oil markets, Bjornar Tonhaugen, noted that implementing the unprecedented international deal would be a logistical challenge requiring weeks at least.
• “Reducing upstream supply is not just turning off the tap or pushing a button. We would be surprised to see overall OPEC+ compliance at 50 per cent through May,” he said.

[M.alex]

Is there a website where I can download for free daily historical Western Canadian Select oil prices?

[killramos]

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Is there a website where I can download for free daily historical Western Canadian Select oil prices?

NRCAN has the data but it’s not in a particularly great format

[ExtraSlow]

anyone else excited for the EIA weekly status report now including STORAGE data? Just me?

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Notice: The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) will provide weekly estimates of U.S. crude oil storage capacity utilization beginning with the Weekly Petroleum Status Report (WPSR) release on Wednesday, April 8, 2020, with data for week ending April 3, 2020.

[ExtraSlow]

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Is there a website where I can download for free daily historical Western Canadian Select oil prices?

Alberta government publishes monthly data. https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/OilPrice
Bloomberg publishes current data, but you can't download (AFAIK) https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/oil#/WCS_Crude

- - - Updated - - -

WTI already under $20, and it's headed to around$10 this week. WCS headed to $2 or lower.

[nzwasp]

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Alberta government publishes monthly data. https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/OilPrice
Bloomberg publishes current data, but you can't download (AFAIK) https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/oil#/WCS_Crude

- - - Updated - - -

WTI already under $20, and it's headed to around$10 this week. WCS headed to $2 or lower.

I dont know that much about oil but I feel like a reduction from ~$19 now to $10 by friday would be really drastic - I thought that we might see ~15-10 range by the end of the month.

[ExtraSlow]

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I don't know that much about oil but I feel like a reduction from ~$19 now to $10 by friday would be really drastic - I thought that we might see ~15-10 range by the end of the month.

Well,
1) Neither do any of us
2) it IS dramatic
3) we are in the middle of 2 (possibly 3) "black swan" type events. (Unprecedented demand destruction, storage filling). Wild swings are more likely than any kind of stability.

[ExtraSlow]

It does seem that not very many people are worried about the storage thing. So maybe I'm wrong? Reaching physical storage capacity would be absolutely unprecedented and catastrophic. But if it doesn't happen, then, well, not?

[bjstare]

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I dont know that much about oil but I feel like a reduction from ~$19 now to $10 by friday would be really drastic - I thought that we might see ~15-10 range by the end of the month.

What world are you living in where we haven't been seeing drastic changes across all markets for two months now?

[The_Rural_Juror]

The world has filled up physical storage capacity before but I think this might be worse than 2009.

https://www.reuters.com/article/glob...-idUSL8N2BP4OA

[Xtrema]

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What world are you living in where we haven't been seeing drastic changes across all markets for two months now?

Truth be told, he is only arguing by end of the month instead of end of the week. Both are saying $10 possibility which was predicted early March by the market.

So can gas price drop below 50c before Apr is over?

[you&me]

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It does seem that not very many people are worried about the storage thing. So maybe I'm wrong? Reaching physical storage capacity would be absolutely unprecedented and catastrophic. But if it doesn't happen, then, well, not?

I find the storage part of the equation fascinating. As I was reading through the posts this morning, I was wondering if anything like this has ever happened before... I guess your "unprecedented" comment addresses that...

[ExtraSlow]

I THINK it's unprecedented. Not totally sure.

Had a short text chat with the smartest energy investor I know. He is "heavily short oil" right now.

[The_Rural_Juror]

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I THINK it's unprecedented. Not totally sure.

Had a short text chat with the smartest energy investor I know. He is "heavily short oil" right now.

Who dat?