Sometimes, speaking in public about the oil and gas market is fun. Sometimes it's not.
In the matter of public speaking, of course, "fun" is a relative term.
Does anyone speak in public for fun?
The sweaty palms. The racing pulse. The guy who nods asleep before the punchline of the opening joke. What fun is that?
The rewards
Public speaking goes with the job. And it has its rewards. It gets an editor out of the office and into the acquaintance of professionals in the world's most fascinating business, for example.
And when publishing-company vice-presidents with projects certain to be transformational summon everyone but the food-truck driver to the most important meeting ever, the editor able to respond, "Sorry; speaking commitment," gets a pass.
Even speaking in public beats meetings with frantic vice-presidents.
As a subject, moreover, the oil market can be fun.
It's huge. It's complex. It's full of surprise and geopolitical intrigue. It changes constantly.
Knowledgeable audiences know all this. With oil markets, they want forecasts but don't expect them to be right. It's the analysis driving the forecasts that matters most to the audience. Hopefully.
Most important to the speaker-this speaker, anyway-are questions from audience members. Oil industry professionals reveal much about what concerns them most with the questions they ask speakers.
That's an even better reason for an editor to give speeches than the chance to escape another pointless meeting. A busy speaking season is ending now for this editor. Twice each year, OGJ publishes a formal market forecast: the Forecast and Review in the first issue in January and the Midyear Forecast in the first issue of July.
Senior Editor-Economics Conglin Xu and Statistics Editor Laura Bell do the work on those special reports. From the products of their labors, this editor fashions presentations for industry groups, adding analysis and insights from the rich churn of oil and gas news.
So far this year, four audiences have endured the Forecast and Review presentation, tailored to each, and another will do so the evening after this is being written. On Feb. 10, Xu and this editor presented an enhanced version in a webcast, which is archived at www.ogj.com.
The cycle will repeat, with different and possibly fewer audiences, for the Midyear Forecast.
For the Forecast and Review presentation, late February is the use-by date.
Xu and Bell base the January report on monthly forecasts published in December by the International Energy Agency, US Energy Information Administration, and Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
By February, those forecasts have changed. The oil market never holds still.
Changes this year are unusually important.
When the December reports were published, OPEC had just reached its agreement to limit production, and Russia and 10 other producing countries were joining the effort.
Since then, the numbers have changed. But they give early answers to crucial questions: Will OPEC members really cut production? Will non-OPEC collaborators, especially Russia, cut, too? If so, will the consequent price increase stimulate production from shale and tight-oil plays enough to offset coordinated supply restraint? And will price elevation further undermine the project by suppressing demand?
January numbers published this month indicate the answers, in order, are: Yes, yes, possibly, and not so far. But it's early, a starting month's data in a 6-month undertaking, subject to adjustment. At any time, the accord might collapse.
So far, so good, though, for anyone distressed by crude selling below $50/bbl.
Fun again?
Does this make speaking about the oil market fun again?
It's a lot more fun than it was last year, especially with audiences representing the upstream business. The best that can be said about last year is that no one threw anything.
But fun? Supply management has just begun. It's always tenuous. Much is at stake. The market's still oversupplied.
To call speaking about the oil market fun again would ignore too much. But it's more interesting than ever.
