Due to concerns that key pipeline projects may fail to start up by their 2019 target dates, Permian producers increased their 2020 oil-basis hedge positions by 431% in this year’s second quarter, according to Wood Mackenzie’s latest analysis of oil and gas hedging activity.
“It was an anomalously high trading volume for this particular hedging derivative [2020 Midland-Cushing basis-swaps]. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw from this surge is that Permian producers are concerned that key pipeline projects won’t be completed on schedule,” said Andrew McConn, corporate research analyst at WoodMac.
With oil production forecast to rise more than 400,000 b/d year-over-year on average through 2022, Permian basin oil production is running at a breakneck speed. This surge in production is overwhelming the basin’s takeaway capacity and causing oil and gas to sell inside the basin at steep discounts to national indexes.
As recently as 2015, widespread pipeline capacity constraints caused the Midland to Cushing West Texas Intermediate discount to widen to $20/bbl. This has prompted many Permian operators to use derivatives to hedge against the risk of price differentials growing wider.
While midstream operators are racing to complete pipeline projects and expansions to help ease congestion, it could take more than a year before producers in West Texas see sustained relief. Indeed, current underconstruction of final investment decision projects will not provide sufficient capacity until late 2019, WoodMac estimates.
“The more than 52% increase in 2019 Mid-Cush hedge positions suggests that producers perceive risk for that year, as well,” McConn said. “Specifically, the risk that Midland oil prices don’t gradually rise and converge back to parity with the Cushing index—as futures markets currently imply.”
While infrastructure might have lost the race with production in 2018, a massive buildout in late 2019 could flip that script. According to WoodMac’s latest North American Crude Markets short-term outlook, more than 2 million b/d of capacity is slated to come online beginning in late 2019 and early 2020, which will send the basin into a temporary medium-term overbuild.
John Coleman, senior analyst North American crude oil markets at WoodMac, said, “As new pipelines flood the basin and excess capacity provides a cheaper route to the US Gulf Coast market, Midland crude prices could shift from massive discounts to Cushing to slight premium pricing.”
Coleman said, “We forecast potential for approximately 1.5 million b/d of excess pipeline capacity in late 2020. This will have ripple effects on basin pricing for years to come, with expected downward pressure on pipeline tariffs showing up in basin differentials well into the early 2020s.”
