MARKET WATCH: Egyptian turmoil hikes oil prices
Oil prices escalated July 5 with increased turmoil in Egypt that may escalate into a civil war and eventually threaten exports of crude from the Middle East, analysts said. Natural gas, however, fell in the New York futures market.
At least 51 protestors and 3 security officers died and hundreds of people were injured in the latest street clash in Cairo between the military and supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi who was ousted last week by a coup. Egyptians are deeply divided over the issue, and the Muslim Brotherhood who supports Morsi has called for rebellion against the military.
Initial news of Morsi’s ouster had little effect on oil markets going into the July 4 Independence Day holiday in the US—“an indication [traders] perhaps viewed this development as constructive,” said Marc Ground at Standard New York Securities Inc., the Standard Bank Group. Egyptian generals claim Morsi—longtime leader of the radical Muslim Brotherhood before becoming Egypt’s first democratically elected president—was using his office to strengthen the Brotherhood’s political power.
However, crude prices escalated when the New York market resumed floor trading July 5 with reports of unrest in the Suez and Sinai regions. “Amid persistent uncertainty, the geopolitical risk premium associated with events in Egypt remains elevated,” Ground reported.
“The importance of Egypt in the global crude oil market has less to do with its domestic production than it has to do with transportation,” he said. “It is Egypt’s position as a major transit point for global crude oil movements that explains the current concern and geopolitical risk premium.” The international Suez Canal through Egypt drastically cuts the shipping distance from the Middle East to Mediterranean markets and the east coast of North America. Currently 800,000 b/d of crude moves through the canal—“a fairly small amount compared to global oil trade,” Ground said. “Of greater importance to global crude oil transportation is the SUMED [Arab Petroleum Pipelines Co.] pipeline, which also connects the Red Sea to the Mediterranean with a throughput of 1.7 million b/d (capacity is 2.4 million b/d).”
He said, “Consequently, should unrest in Egypt escalate to the extent that these important routes are closed, around 2.5 million b/d of crude oil and 1.4 million b/d of petroleum products (transported via the Suez Canal) would have to be redirected around Africa, adding around 15 days of transit to shipments destined for Europe and 8-10 days for those destined for the US,” he said. “Clearly, such a disruption would be non-trivial.”
However, Ground said, “While there is still much uncertainty over how things will play out in Egypt, threats to operation of the Suez Canal and the SUMED Pipeline are still far-removed. Consequently, barring a substantial escalation of tensions whereby oil production appears to be threatened either directly in Egypt or via a spreading of instability to other oil producers in the region or more importantly if oil transportation through the Suez Canal or SUMED pipeline looks to be disrupted, this geopolitical risk premium should fade in due course.”
Energy prices
The August contract for benchmark US light, sweet crudes climbed $1.98 to $103.22/bbl July 5 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The September contract gained $1.94 to $103.05/bbl. On the US spot market, West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Okla., was up $1.98 to $103.22/bbl.
Heating oil for August delivery increased 3.85¢ to $2.99/gal on NYMEX. Reformulated stock for oxygenate blending for the same month rose 5.86¢ to $2.90/gal.
The August natural gas contract dropped 7.3¢ to $3.62/MMbtu on NYMEX, wiping out more than the gain in the previous session. On the US spot market, gas at Henry Hub, La., recouped 2.1¢ to $3.54/MMbtu.
In London, the August IPE contract for North Sea Brent escalated $2.18 to $107.72/bbl. Gas oil for July was up $9.50 to $911.75/tonne.
The average price for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ basket of 12 benchmark crudes increased 81¢ to $103.20/bbl. So far this year OPEC’s basket price has averaged $104.96/bbl.
Contact Sam Fletcher at [email protected].
About the Author
Sam Fletcher
Senior Writer
I'm third-generation blue-collar oil field worker, born in the great East Texas Field and completed high school in the Permian Basin of West Texas where I spent a couple of summers hustling jugs and loading shot holes on seismic crews. My family was oil field trash back when it was an insult instead of a brag on a bumper sticker. I enlisted in the US Army in 1961-1964 looking for a way out of a life of stoop-labor in the oil patch. I didn't succeed then, but a few years later when they passed a new GI Bill for Vietnam veterans, they backdated it to cover my period of enlistment and finally gave me the means to attend college. I'd wanted a career in journalism since my junior year in high school when I was editor of the school newspaper. I financed my college education with the GI bill, parttime work, and a few scholarships and earned a bachelor's degree and later a master's degree in mass communication at Texas Tech University. I worked some years on Texas daily newspapers and even taught journalism a couple of semesters at a junior college in San Antonio before joining the metropolitan Houston Post in 1973. In 1977 I became the energy reporter for the paper, primarily because I was the only writer who'd ever broke a sweat in sight of an oil rig. I covered the oil patch through its biggest boom in the 1970s, its worst depression in the 1980s, and its subsequent rise from the ashes as the industry reinvented itself yet again. When the Post folded in 1995, I made the switch to oil industry publications. At the start of the new century, I joined the Oil & Gas Journal, long the "Bible" of the oil industry. I've been writing about the oil and gas industry's successes and setbacks for a long time, and I've loved every minute of it.