After Christmas we had two crises. The problems in Nigeria had a short fuse and there was an immediate drop in shipments while the situation in Iran has a much longer fuse. |
After Katrina, there were a bunch of refineries which didn't sustain structural damage but couldn't turn the power back on. |
Growth is down from last year. The U.S. and China led demand growth last year but that's changing. The situation in China and has changed; they are not using as much distillate fuel for power generation. |
It's a significant amount of oil. If he were successful it would be very significant. But I don't think it will come to pass. |
Prices will come down on imports. There are lots coming our way. |
The crude market isn't tight at all. OPEC and non-OPEC production is rising and if anyone wants, they can buy additional oil from the SPR. |
The market has already bid up the price of gasoline. It's been buy the rumor and sell the fact, |
The oil market has become the instrument used by the entire financial community as a hedge against geopolitical risk. The world's major trouble spots share one feature, they have energy supplies. |
We are up above $60 because of Iran. If something happened in Iran we would be in trouble because there isn't enough spare capacity to make up for the loss. If there was 3 or 6 million barrels of spare capacity there wouldn't be this kind of reaction. |
We have big maintenance going on so refiners can gear up for low-sulfur diesel, so we're going to chew up some of these high product levels. |
With oil prices this high I can't see OPEC cutting production. It's clear they won't change the quotas. Prices aren't going to fall a lot anytime soon. |