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The Iran war is over. Now what for oil?

The Iran war is over. Now what for oil?

Commodities

Adam Button

2 hours ago

  • Oil up $1.65 to $70.20 today

The important lessons of the Iran war:

    1. The global economy is much more resilient than feared. The 1970s style fears about the United States falling into recession over oil prices were always over done. It’s such a smaller shares of wallet and industrial costs now but in the emerging world and even in parts of Europe, it’s a significant cost. Yet almost everywhere, the consumer powered through basically unscathed. Take that as a positive sign.
    1. No one understands the oil market. The math on the missing barrels doesn’t add up. Yes, we have SPR releases and commercial inventories falling but there is still a huge gap. What’s particularly puzzling is China dropping imports by 4-5 million barrels per day. How have they been able to do that? Have they been stockpiling for years? If so, what’s their actual baseline demand? Or is this drop below $70 a mirage that’s driven by huge short positions? There is a temptation to say that we’ve round-tripped the Hormuz oil rally but the crude still isn’t flowing at anywhere near pre-war levels so it’s not over yet but the world’s understand of the oil market will never be the same.
    1. There is now a premium on strategic commodity reserves and strong supply chains. An early lesson of the war was that the point of having gold reserves is that sometimes you need to use them. Turkey sold $120 billion in gold to protect its currency and that marked a peak for gold. In time, the buyers will be reloading and there appears to be some buying at $4000, which could be sovereigns stepping back in. Along the same lines, expect countries to place increasing importance on raw materials reserves and supply chains in reliable places like Canada.

So what now for oil? We had a fresh attack on two commercial ships in the Oman shipping lane today and that highlights how Iran is determined to extract tolls. There is a big convoy of ships finally leaving Hormuz today headed for Japan but the current state of affirs argues for a very slow return of ships into the Strait and that should tightening the oil market.

Then again, should is doing a lot of work there as oil prices are seemingly far too low for where they should be. For one, refineries have been on a buyers' strike and that's blown out crack spreads, which is what is keeping gasoline prices high.

Still, it's hard to find buyers. Saudi Arabia has only offered its flagship Arab Light for Far East delivery at minus $1.50 a barrel or less twice in the last 25 years: once during the 2015 price war against US shale, and again in 2020 during the price war against Russia. It's doing that again now, suggesting the physical market isn't hunting for barrels.

What is bullish for oil is that BofA reports that oil equities saw their biggest outflow in two years last week. John Kemp also shows just how bearish positioning is in oil.

money managers oil

I'm fairly confident that China, refineries and specs will come back to the market at some point. Governments will also stop releasing emergency supplies and commercial inventories should recover as well. All that will be positive for oil but the tougher question is: when?

Technically, today's rise above $70 is a sign of life but it probably needs to get to $80 to sustain any kind of momentum. At this point, I think the oil bulls (and companies) would settle for a $70-80 range.

oil daily chart

WTI crude oil daily chart

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