Why Oil Prices Are About To Plunge Again: 31 Million Barrels In Floating Storage Are Coming On Shore
By Tyler Durden
One week ago,
As we discussed recently, as a result of a recent surge in hedging activity in the front-end of the strip, absent a dramatic collapse in spot prices, the contango is now so low as to make offshore storage no longer economical. Specifically, based on the all-in cost of operating tanker storage (dirty VLCC tanker day rates, financing, transit and transfer loss, insurance and bunkers, Figure 5), the current storage cost is too high relative to the steepness of the Brent forward curve. This means that prices do not justify inventory build, but rather gradual inventory drawdown as existing storage trades are unwound.
What is the current prevalent duration of booked offshore storage? A comparison of the historical profitability of storage trades of varying lengths indicates that even at the most extreme instances of contango in the last two years, the Brent forward curve is only steep enough over the first 2 to 6 months to justify the floating storage trade. Comparing the trade economics over a one-month horizon (Figure 4) and over a six-month horizon (Figure 6) shows the relative unattractiveness of the six-month trade. We use the second month Brent contract owing to discontinuities in the pricing of the rolling first month contract. Thus we would expect that floating storage trades begun in late January or early February would be unwound by July or August.
As DB calculated, comparing the current level of floating storage (157.3 million barrels) versus that in early February (126.6 million barrels), there may be an additional 31 million barrels of inventory to be drawn down between now and the next inventory trough over the next several months. Depending on the duration of drawdown (three months or six months) this could mean anywhere from 165-330 kb/d of incremental supply.
So how, according to DB, should one trade this imminent surge in incremental supply?
A tactical short position in Brent may benefit from the contango roll yield which over the first six months of the curve is an annualized 14%. Over the first year of the Brent curve, the roll yield is 11.9% p.a., and to provide an extreme comparison, the roll yield over the first six years of the curve is only 5.3% p.a. In other words, in a flat oil price scenario the contango roll yield for a short position would still provide positive returns if the curve structure remains static. In an upside oil-price scenario, the six-month forward contract should rise slower than the spot price.
Long WTI-Brent may be a viable alternative: because positioning in Brent is more clearly extended than NYMEX positioning in WTI, and also because US refineries returning from maintenance may add an incremental 717 kb/d of refinery crude demand between now and June, we believe WTI may be better supported than Brent. Brent net long non commercial positions rose to 164 thousand contracts in the week ending 15March, which is just below the 2015 …read more
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