The Brent oil price fell back last night to $51.88 as the US dollar firmed. Henry Hub gas shot through the roof to $2.60mmBtu:
For oil, Libya is making progress against ISIS. But Nigeria is struggling. The EIA has a great chart on the extent of current outages:
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, June 2016 Note: OPEC is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPEC disruptions include crude oil only, while non-OPEC disruptions include crude oil and other liquid fuels.
Unplanned global oil supply disruptions averaged more than 3.6 million barrels per day (b/d) in May 2016, the highest monthly level recorded since EIA started tracking global disruptions in January 2011. From April to May, disruptions grew by 0.8 million b/d as increased outages, largely in Canada, Nigeria, Iraq, and Libya, more than offset reduced outages in Kuwait, Brazil, and Ghana. Along with other factors such as rising oil demand and falling U.S. crude oil production, the rise in disruptions contributed to a month-over-month $5 per barrel increase in Brent crude oil spot prices in May.
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
