Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Price changes for Thursday, November 5th, 2020

 

Hi to all,

 

Here’s what I have for this week’s price changes:

 

*Heating and stove oils show a drop of a penny a litre.

*Diesel fuel shows a drop of 1.4 cents a litre, and...

*Gasoline shows a drop of 2.8 cents a litre.

 

Market highlights

 

More refineries pack it in

Three more refineries have shuttered this week, all reporting dropping demand and issues caused by alternatives and Covid-19’s onslaught.

    A refinery in Australia, Belgium and closer in New Jersey have all added their closures to a rapidly changing market.

    The Paulsboro, New Jersey refinery had a capacity of 180,000 barrels a day and will be converted to produce mostly lubricants and asphalt. Closures and reduced capacity has cost over 410,000 barrels of refining capacity between US east coast refiners during the Covid crisis and economic slowdown so far.

     PHB refiners also decided to dismantle a refinery with 330,000 barrel capacity in the wake of the world slowdown.

 

OPEC+ meets November 30th

OPEC and non-OPEC oil producing nations will meet again to discuss a potential extension to production cuts for another six months as the Coronavirus pandemic continues to impact demand and the recovery of the world economy.

     OPEC and other nations who agreed to output cuts some time ago were scheduled to add an additional 2 million barrels a day to the markets in January as part of the plan to remove a glut of supply of crude in the markets.

     In the meantime, Russia is bargaining with Saudi Arabia to extend the production cuts for three months instead of six months, ending the agreement in March, 2021 instead of January.

 

Libya production on the upswing

After a UN brokered agreement, Libyan oil production is back on the upswing, measuring 800,000 barrels a day over the last two weeks, and well up from the 250,000 barrels as measured last month. The OPEC member was faced with internal issues that saw a production shutdown as factions fought for control of oil exports.

     Libyan exports will add more oil to an already over-burdened market, putting some downwards pressure on Brent prices.

 

Alternatives:

Germany turning to more wind & Norway has too much electric

Norwegian hydroelectric production hit a point last week where they couldn’t put electricity into the grid, paying customers to consume the energy, while across the Denmark Strait, Germany has begun the road of adding at least 40 gigawatts of wind power to their grid by the year 2040.

      They presently have a total of 7.75 Gigawatts of wind-driven electricity capability, with more alternative energy being researched.

       According to RenewableUK, the wind energy industry worldwide has grown by 47 percent since January, and all in spite of the Covid crisis...

    

 

That’s it for this week!

 

Regards,

 

George Murphy

Twitter @GeorgeMurphyOil  

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