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2021-09-17
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The 'Three Musketeers' of the Crude Oil Market: Viruses, Hurricanes and the U.S. Government
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There are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complicated impact on the international oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus.</b>Since July this year, the global COVID-19 pandemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus, affecting the United States and China as the world's top two oil consumers.<b>This round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day. Considering that the global oil consumption remained strong from June to July this year, the global flight data showed that the demand in August was not weak, and the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies were limited, the marginal impact of the new round of epidemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited. From July to August this year, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI crude oil futures fell to a new low since the epidemic.<b>At present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) pricein the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane.</b>Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in the United States on August 29th, has attracted widespread market attention. With reference to the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, we judge that,<b>The overall impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited:</b>In the short term, it may show a slight pull-up, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the persistent power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent and have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. government dumps its reserves.</b>On August 23rd, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it planned to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves, which will be delivered between October 1st and December 15th this year, with the highest sales scale since 2011. We combed the impact of six large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990. On the whole, the sale of strategic oil reserves by the United States may curb international oil prices in the short term (within half a year).<b>The five sales in the period 1991-2011 all caused oil prices to fall, with the largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with intervals of about 1-3 months.</b>The size and pace of this sale may be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, the possibility of the Biden administration's follow-up policy efforts to curb oil prices is not ruled out.<b>The U.S. government's dumping of reserves and other actions may have a more obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Based on our comprehensive judgment, we lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December 2021 to the range of US$65-75/barrel, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below US$65/barrel in the short term. 1) On the demand side,</b>Although the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, we are more cautious in our judgment of global oil demand in the second half of the year. Moreover, since the epidemic in China has been controlled while the epidemic in the United States is still spreading, Brent crude oil price may remain relatively strong against WTI crude in the next 1-2 months.<b>2) On the supply side,</b>The US government's dumping of reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure. However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.<b>3) In terms of financial environment,</b>Even if the Federal Reserve implements Taper during the year, the U.S. financial market may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year, and the probability of sharp strength of the U.S. dollar is not high. However, it is still necessary to be vigilant that the Fed officially announced the volatility risk of financial markets before and after Taper, and the possibility of oil prices falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out at that time.</p><p><b><i>Risk warning: The impact of the global COVID-19 epidemic exceeded expectations, the output increase of OPEC + exceeded expectations, and the Fed's policy exceeded expectations.</i></b></p><p><b>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock, and there are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government (Chart 1).</b></p><p>On July 5, WTI crude oil and Brent oil prices rose to highs of $76.3 and $77.2/barrel, respectively. But the good times didn't last long,<b>The global spread of Delta COVID-19 continues to trigger market panic,</b>Superimposing the short-lived differences between the UAE and OPEC + agreement, resulting in the end of the upward trend of oil prices. Since August, international oil prices have fallen for three consecutive weeks, among which<b>August 11U.S. White House calls on OPEC + to increase production</b>, exacerbating the downward trend of oil prices. WTI crude and Brent crude fell to $62.1 and $65.2/barrel on August 20, down 19% and 16%, respectively, from their July 5 highs.</p><p>In late August, a Mexican rig platform fire and<b>Disturbance of oil supply caused by Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico, USA</b>Helping the oil price rebound strongly, WTI crude oil and Brent crude oil rose by 11% and 13% respectively during August 23rd-30th, and Brent oil price stabilized at $70/barrel again, but WTI oil price continued to be lower than $70/barrel, and the price difference between the two kept widening. On August 23,<b>The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it plans to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves from October to December this year,</b>It also adds variables to the subsequent oil price trend.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f4a2c42a831aaa0c7decefabbcc9849b\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"562\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In June 2021, we judged that the international oil price will mainly remain in the range of 70-80 USD/barrel in the second half of 2021, and at the same time, we do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will rise above 80 USD/barrel in a short time (refer to the report \"Could Oil Price Be the Next\" Grey Rhino \"?\" dated June 30, 2021). However, the impact of Delta mutant virus on China and the United States and other big oil demand countries, the disturbance of supply by American hurricanes, and the US government's attempt to curb oil prices by dumping reserves all exceeded our previous expectations. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complex impact on the oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus</b></p><p><b>After July this year, the global COVID-19 epidemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus (Chart 2). Among them, the United States and China, as the top two oil consumers in the world, have attracted great attention from the crude oil market.</b>In China, the number of newly confirmed cases in China remained basically in single digits before July, but at the worst in early August, the number of local cases increased by more than 100. Against this background, governments in many places have re-strengthened epidemic prevention and control, and the market began to worry about the decrease in transportation and other activities and the decrease in demand for related petroleum products. In particular, China's crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia (seasonally adjusted) declined by 6.8% and 6.6% consecutively in June and July, and the import volume in July was a new low since October 2020 (Chart 3). In the United States, the number of newly confirmed cases in COVID-19 in a single day rose from less than 20,000 before July to more than 100,000 in August. The rising pandemic combined with the slow pace of vaccination has forced the U.S. government to delay announcing a complete unlockdown of the economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f654a9bb5e37ceec93d9aed135d3b74\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Due to the disturbance of the mutated virus, international institutions have successively lowered the forecast of crude oil demand in the second half of 2021, and the sentiment of long crude oil in the futures market has been suppressed.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day and lowered global oil demand for the full year by 100,000 barrels per day to 96.2 million barrels per day. The August reports of the EIA and OPEC kept their respective forecasts for world oil demand growth in 2021 and 2022 unchanged, but OPEC expects demand for OPEC crude oil to decrease by 200,000 barrels per day to 27.4 million barrels per day in 2021. If EIA's forecast in August is compared with that in June, it forecasts that global consumption of petroleum products will decrease by 350,000 barrels per day and 210,000 barrels per day in November and December 2021, respectively (Chart 4). At the same time,<b>The crude oil market continues to price in a new round of epidemic impact,</b>The results of IPE futures trading show that since late June, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI has begun to decline, and continues to hit a new low since the epidemic. The selling of bulls has also aggravated the downward trend of oil prices (Chart 5).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62310fd6577cecaa5c4a97fe953cbd41\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"462\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We judge that the marginal impact of the new COVID-19 pandemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited.</b>First, in June and July this year, global oil consumption remained strong under the disturbance of the epidemic, and the impact of this epidemic on oil demand has not yet emerged. Compared with the data updated by EIA in June and August, the actual global oil consumption in June and July this year increased beyond expectations, exceeding the forecast values of 360,000 barrels per day and 300,000 barrels per day in June respectively.<b>Second, high-frequency data show that global traffic demand is not weak in August.</b>For example, the number of global flights counted by Flightradar24 did not decrease significantly during July and August, and current levels are already close to pre-pandemic levels in 2019 (Chart 6).<b>Third, the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies is limited, which in turn has limited impact on economic activities and oil demand.</b>Asian economies such as China and Japan have upgraded their epidemic prevention and control in the short term, but the intensity is still relatively limited. European and American economies such as Britain, Germany and the United States tend to \"lie flat\" under vaccine protection. According to the website of Our World in Data of Oxford University, after the outbreak of a new round of epidemic, the \"Stringency Index\" of governments in major economies for epidemic prevention and control has not significantly exceeded the level at the beginning of this year (Chart 7).</p><p><b>In short, this round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations. However, at present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) price in the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/799839faff99fbad6c6508c1dc1d4c04\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"472\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane</b></p><p><b>On August 29, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region was hit by Category 4 Hurricane Ida, which shut down 90-95% of oil production offshore the Gulf of Mexico (involving production capacity of about 1.7 million barrels per day).</b>The hurricane was downgraded to a \"tropical storm\" 16 hours after landfall, but it caused \"catastrophic\" damage to Louisiana's power grid. It is expected that the power outage will last for about 3 weeks, during which it may lead to the shutdown of oil processing and chemical plants.</p><p><b>Historically, the impact of hurricanes on oil prices has been uncertain, as hurricanes may affect oil supply and demand at the same time, and the U.S. government may also stabilize oil prices by selling strategic oil reserves.</b>Hurricane Katrina (Category 5) in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey (Category 4) in 2017 were the two biggest economic hurricanes in U.S. history. In 2005, a hurricane in the United States raised oil prices within a week, because the hurricane mainly damaged oil production and supply; However, the US government then sold its strategic oil reserve, which kept oil prices downward for 2-3 months (Chart 8). Hurricanes in the United States in 2017 dropped oil prices slightly in a week because hurricanes mainly affected refinery production, meaning that refinery demand for crude oil weakened; The subsequent sale of strategic oil reserves did not stop the upward trend of oil prices in the second half of the year (Chart 9).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5e98fbd93acc9858d4f588e1475352cf\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"464\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, the impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited as a whole: in the short term, it may show a slight increase, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the continuous power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent, which may have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. Government Throws Reserves</b></p><p><b>On August 23, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management issued an announcement that it plans to identify contracts to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves by September 13, and deliver them between October 1 and December 15 this year. The sale was the largest since 2011.</b></p><p><b>We have combed the impact of previous large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990 (Chart 10).</b>Since 1990, the U.S. government has carried out six sales of strategic oil reserves with a scale of 15-30 million barrels. The triggers include emergencies such as wars and hurricanes, as well as alleviating fiscal deficits, easing seasonal oil shortages, or pleasing voters.</p><p><b>First, on the whole, the United States sells strategic oil reserves or curbs oil prices in the short term (within half a year), but it is difficult to change the medium-term (more than half a year) trend.</b>Five sales from 1991 to 2011 all caused oil prices to fall. The largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices were in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with the largest declines in the interval of about 1-3 months and an average of 52 days. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, due to the small sale scale of strategic oil reserves (only 15 million barrels) and the slow release pace (lasting for about 4 months), the oil price did not fall but rose.</p><p><b>Second, if the scale of dumping is large (for example, it exceeded 30 million barrels in 2000 and 2011) or the selling pace is fast (for example, it only took 2 months in 1991), the corresponding oil price adjustment range will be greater.</b></p><p><b>Third, the trends of WTI and Brent oil prices during the dumping period in the United States did not deviate significantly, indicating that the dumping of the United States will have a global impact on the crude oil market.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7e046e19bc7f6b35c7d9957201c2eab8\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"556\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd944ce72bd31291da7afd82aa39971a\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"761\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We believe that the main reason for this strategic oil reserve sale is that the Biden administration wants to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures.</b></p><p><b>First of all, the growth rate of oil prices is highly correlated with the trend of U.S. inflation indicators.</b>Starting from the structure of U.S. CPI, according to the data released by BLS in July, the energy sub-item (including energy goods and energy services) accounted for 7.2% of the U.S. CPI, and the transportation service sub-item accounted for 5.3%. We estimate that in the 5.4% year-on-year growth rate of US CPI in July, the combined pull of the two is 2 percentage points. Historical data show that the U.S. CPI is highly correlated with the monthly year-on-year growth rate of oil prices (Chart 11), because the prices of goods and services except energy goods are generally relatively stable.</p><p><b>Second, concerns about high U.S. gasoline prices were expressed during Biden's speech on Aug. 11.</b>He said that in the future, the United States will strengthen the supervision of the oil market and crack down on illegal behavior of gouging oil prices. It is noted that historically, the price trends of gasoline and crude oil in the United States have basically matched, but in 2021, the price increase of gasoline in the United States significantly exceeded that of crude oil, especially since July, the correction of WTI crude oil price has not driven the price of gasoline to fall (Chart 12). At the same time, Biden \"shouted\" OPEC that the production reduction plan implemented after the epidemic should be reversed with the global economic recovery to lower the consumer price of petroleum products. Sullivan, the US national security adviser, also said on the same day that OPEC + plans to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day every month since August, which is \"far from enough\", and said that the White House is contacting OPEC member states on the importance of competitive markets, which once triggered the market panic about the US intervention in OPEC + production decisions.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/359ab0b4d89955b5d6d39ea5450d972d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"457\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, if the scale of this strategic oil reserve sale is 20 million barrels, and it will be released in less than three months, then the scale and pace of this sale will be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, considering that the Biden administration currently has a strong willingness to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures, it does not rule out the possibility of its subsequent policy efforts or more measures. On the whole, the U.S. government's actions such as dumping reserves may have an obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Lowering the target range of oil price for September-December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel</b></p><p><b>According to the comprehensive judgment, we have lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel range, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below 65 USD/barrel in the short term during this period.</b></p><p><b>First, on the demand side,</b>We believe that the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, but<b>We are more cautious about global oil demand in the second half of the year.</b>In addition, since the epidemic in China is under control and the epidemic in the United States is still spreading,<b>Brent crude oil prices are likely to remain relatively strong against WTI crude for the next 1-2 months.</b></p><p>Previously, considering the hedging of the two forces of \"herd immunity\" and \"epidemic counterattack\" (at present, it seems that the power of \"epidemic counterattack\" may be stronger). We expect crude oil demand to grow at a similar rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year. In the fourth quarter of this year, the service industry and related oil demand in the United States and major developed economies still have sufficient room for recovery. However, it should be noted that summer in the Northern Hemisphere is usually the season with the strongest demand for services such as transportation and tourism (the number of global flights peaks in July-September each year, Chart 6). This round of epidemic has affected the service industry in this quarter, so even if the impact of COVID-19 epidemic subsides in the fourth quarter, because winter itself is not conducive to the development of economic activities such as transportation, the global demand for petroleum products may be difficult to repair as quickly as previously expected.</p><p><b>Second, on the supply side, the US government's throwing reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure.</b>(And if the new round of epidemic in the United States in October is still not effectively controlled, the oil price may fall below $65/barrel due to the double negative supply and demand.)<b>However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.</b></p><p><b>We believe that the key factors (repairing corporate liabilities or national fiscal deficits, demand for economic transformation, etc.) that restrict U.S. oil companies and OPEC + Group from substantially increasing production in the second half of the year remain unchanged.</b>Up to now, the \"supply constraints\" of the global crude oil market are basically in line with our expectations.<b>In the United States,</b>U.S. crude oil inventories remain low, and the number of U.S. crude oil rigs is still weaker than historical performance (Chart 13);<b>In terms of OPEC +,</b>On July 18th, OPEC + agreed to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day month by month since August.<b>On September 1st, OPEC + announced that it would maintain its plan to increase production unchanged, but this range was still restrained.</b>OPEC's production in July this year was only 26.66 million barrels per day, which is still 3.2 million barrels per day (11% less) compared with the 2019 average, while the gap between the global oil consumption in July and the 2019 average according to EIA statistics was only 2.1 million barrels per day (only 2% less). Assuming that OPEC has increased production by 400,000 barrels per day per month since August, its production increase may still be less than the increase in global oil demand (Chart 14).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ad43a3241848d00f3bbe66eba485218d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"458\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Third, in terms of financial environment,</b>Although the Federal Reserve has a high probability of implementing Taper within the year (November or December), the monetary easing environment in the United States will not be suddenly tightened. In addition, this round of Federal Reserve pays special attention to communication with the market, and the financial market in the United States may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year.<b>The probability of a sharp strength in the dollar is unlikely</b>(Refer to the report \"Next for the US Dollar\"). However, as the non-agricultural data in August interfered with market expectations to some extent, it is still necessary to be alert to the volatility risk of financial markets before and after the Fed's official announcement of Taper. Before and after the interest rate meeting of the Federal Reserve on September 22nd, as this meeting may announce the specific decision about Taper, the fall of risk appetite and the strength of the US dollar may cause the oil price to fall in the short term. At that time, the possibility of the oil price falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out.</p>","source":"lsy1631857626729","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>The 'Three Musketeers' of the Crude Oil Market: Viruses, Hurricanes and the U.S. Government</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nThe 'Three Musketeers' of the Crude Oil Market: Viruses, Hurricanes and the U.S. Government\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">钟正生经济研究</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2021-09-17 13:47</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p><b>Core Summary</b></p><p>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock. There are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complicated impact on the international oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus.</b>Since July this year, the global COVID-19 pandemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus, affecting the United States and China as the world's top two oil consumers.<b>This round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day. Considering that the global oil consumption remained strong from June to July this year, the global flight data showed that the demand in August was not weak, and the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies were limited, the marginal impact of the new round of epidemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited. From July to August this year, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI crude oil futures fell to a new low since the epidemic.<b>At present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) pricein the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane.</b>Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in the United States on August 29th, has attracted widespread market attention. With reference to the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, we judge that,<b>The overall impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited:</b>In the short term, it may show a slight pull-up, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the persistent power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent and have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. government dumps its reserves.</b>On August 23rd, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it planned to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves, which will be delivered between October 1st and December 15th this year, with the highest sales scale since 2011. We combed the impact of six large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990. On the whole, the sale of strategic oil reserves by the United States may curb international oil prices in the short term (within half a year).<b>The five sales in the period 1991-2011 all caused oil prices to fall, with the largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with intervals of about 1-3 months.</b>The size and pace of this sale may be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, the possibility of the Biden administration's follow-up policy efforts to curb oil prices is not ruled out.<b>The U.S. government's dumping of reserves and other actions may have a more obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Based on our comprehensive judgment, we lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December 2021 to the range of US$65-75/barrel, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below US$65/barrel in the short term. 1) On the demand side,</b>Although the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, we are more cautious in our judgment of global oil demand in the second half of the year. Moreover, since the epidemic in China has been controlled while the epidemic in the United States is still spreading, Brent crude oil price may remain relatively strong against WTI crude in the next 1-2 months.<b>2) On the supply side,</b>The US government's dumping of reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure. However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.<b>3) In terms of financial environment,</b>Even if the Federal Reserve implements Taper during the year, the U.S. financial market may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year, and the probability of sharp strength of the U.S. dollar is not high. However, it is still necessary to be vigilant that the Fed officially announced the volatility risk of financial markets before and after Taper, and the possibility of oil prices falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out at that time.</p><p><b><i>Risk warning: The impact of the global COVID-19 epidemic exceeded expectations, the output increase of OPEC + exceeded expectations, and the Fed's policy exceeded expectations.</i></b></p><p><b>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock, and there are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government (Chart 1).</b></p><p>On July 5, WTI crude oil and Brent oil prices rose to highs of $76.3 and $77.2/barrel, respectively. But the good times didn't last long,<b>The global spread of Delta COVID-19 continues to trigger market panic,</b>Superimposing the short-lived differences between the UAE and OPEC + agreement, resulting in the end of the upward trend of oil prices. Since August, international oil prices have fallen for three consecutive weeks, among which<b>August 11U.S. White House calls on OPEC + to increase production</b>, exacerbating the downward trend of oil prices. WTI crude and Brent crude fell to $62.1 and $65.2/barrel on August 20, down 19% and 16%, respectively, from their July 5 highs.</p><p>In late August, a Mexican rig platform fire and<b>Disturbance of oil supply caused by Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico, USA</b>Helping the oil price rebound strongly, WTI crude oil and Brent crude oil rose by 11% and 13% respectively during August 23rd-30th, and Brent oil price stabilized at $70/barrel again, but WTI oil price continued to be lower than $70/barrel, and the price difference between the two kept widening. On August 23,<b>The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it plans to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves from October to December this year,</b>It also adds variables to the subsequent oil price trend.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f4a2c42a831aaa0c7decefabbcc9849b\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"562\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In June 2021, we judged that the international oil price will mainly remain in the range of 70-80 USD/barrel in the second half of 2021, and at the same time, we do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will rise above 80 USD/barrel in a short time (refer to the report \"Could Oil Price Be the Next\" Grey Rhino \"?\" dated June 30, 2021). However, the impact of Delta mutant virus on China and the United States and other big oil demand countries, the disturbance of supply by American hurricanes, and the US government's attempt to curb oil prices by dumping reserves all exceeded our previous expectations. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complex impact on the oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus</b></p><p><b>After July this year, the global COVID-19 epidemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus (Chart 2). Among them, the United States and China, as the top two oil consumers in the world, have attracted great attention from the crude oil market.</b>In China, the number of newly confirmed cases in China remained basically in single digits before July, but at the worst in early August, the number of local cases increased by more than 100. Against this background, governments in many places have re-strengthened epidemic prevention and control, and the market began to worry about the decrease in transportation and other activities and the decrease in demand for related petroleum products. In particular, China's crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia (seasonally adjusted) declined by 6.8% and 6.6% consecutively in June and July, and the import volume in July was a new low since October 2020 (Chart 3). In the United States, the number of newly confirmed cases in COVID-19 in a single day rose from less than 20,000 before July to more than 100,000 in August. The rising pandemic combined with the slow pace of vaccination has forced the U.S. government to delay announcing a complete unlockdown of the economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f654a9bb5e37ceec93d9aed135d3b74\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Due to the disturbance of the mutated virus, international institutions have successively lowered the forecast of crude oil demand in the second half of 2021, and the sentiment of long crude oil in the futures market has been suppressed.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day and lowered global oil demand for the full year by 100,000 barrels per day to 96.2 million barrels per day. The August reports of the EIA and OPEC kept their respective forecasts for world oil demand growth in 2021 and 2022 unchanged, but OPEC expects demand for OPEC crude oil to decrease by 200,000 barrels per day to 27.4 million barrels per day in 2021. If EIA's forecast in August is compared with that in June, it forecasts that global consumption of petroleum products will decrease by 350,000 barrels per day and 210,000 barrels per day in November and December 2021, respectively (Chart 4). At the same time,<b>The crude oil market continues to price in a new round of epidemic impact,</b>The results of IPE futures trading show that since late June, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI has begun to decline, and continues to hit a new low since the epidemic. The selling of bulls has also aggravated the downward trend of oil prices (Chart 5).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62310fd6577cecaa5c4a97fe953cbd41\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"462\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We judge that the marginal impact of the new COVID-19 pandemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited.</b>First, in June and July this year, global oil consumption remained strong under the disturbance of the epidemic, and the impact of this epidemic on oil demand has not yet emerged. Compared with the data updated by EIA in June and August, the actual global oil consumption in June and July this year increased beyond expectations, exceeding the forecast values of 360,000 barrels per day and 300,000 barrels per day in June respectively.<b>Second, high-frequency data show that global traffic demand is not weak in August.</b>For example, the number of global flights counted by Flightradar24 did not decrease significantly during July and August, and current levels are already close to pre-pandemic levels in 2019 (Chart 6).<b>Third, the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies is limited, which in turn has limited impact on economic activities and oil demand.</b>Asian economies such as China and Japan have upgraded their epidemic prevention and control in the short term, but the intensity is still relatively limited. European and American economies such as Britain, Germany and the United States tend to \"lie flat\" under vaccine protection. According to the website of Our World in Data of Oxford University, after the outbreak of a new round of epidemic, the \"Stringency Index\" of governments in major economies for epidemic prevention and control has not significantly exceeded the level at the beginning of this year (Chart 7).</p><p><b>In short, this round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations. However, at present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) price in the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/799839faff99fbad6c6508c1dc1d4c04\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"472\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane</b></p><p><b>On August 29, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region was hit by Category 4 Hurricane Ida, which shut down 90-95% of oil production offshore the Gulf of Mexico (involving production capacity of about 1.7 million barrels per day).</b>The hurricane was downgraded to a \"tropical storm\" 16 hours after landfall, but it caused \"catastrophic\" damage to Louisiana's power grid. It is expected that the power outage will last for about 3 weeks, during which it may lead to the shutdown of oil processing and chemical plants.</p><p><b>Historically, the impact of hurricanes on oil prices has been uncertain, as hurricanes may affect oil supply and demand at the same time, and the U.S. government may also stabilize oil prices by selling strategic oil reserves.</b>Hurricane Katrina (Category 5) in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey (Category 4) in 2017 were the two biggest economic hurricanes in U.S. history. In 2005, a hurricane in the United States raised oil prices within a week, because the hurricane mainly damaged oil production and supply; However, the US government then sold its strategic oil reserve, which kept oil prices downward for 2-3 months (Chart 8). Hurricanes in the United States in 2017 dropped oil prices slightly in a week because hurricanes mainly affected refinery production, meaning that refinery demand for crude oil weakened; The subsequent sale of strategic oil reserves did not stop the upward trend of oil prices in the second half of the year (Chart 9).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5e98fbd93acc9858d4f588e1475352cf\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"464\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, the impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited as a whole: in the short term, it may show a slight increase, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the continuous power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent, which may have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. Government Throws Reserves</b></p><p><b>On August 23, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management issued an announcement that it plans to identify contracts to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves by September 13, and deliver them between October 1 and December 15 this year. The sale was the largest since 2011.</b></p><p><b>We have combed the impact of previous large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990 (Chart 10).</b>Since 1990, the U.S. government has carried out six sales of strategic oil reserves with a scale of 15-30 million barrels. The triggers include emergencies such as wars and hurricanes, as well as alleviating fiscal deficits, easing seasonal oil shortages, or pleasing voters.</p><p><b>First, on the whole, the United States sells strategic oil reserves or curbs oil prices in the short term (within half a year), but it is difficult to change the medium-term (more than half a year) trend.</b>Five sales from 1991 to 2011 all caused oil prices to fall. The largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices were in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with the largest declines in the interval of about 1-3 months and an average of 52 days. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, due to the small sale scale of strategic oil reserves (only 15 million barrels) and the slow release pace (lasting for about 4 months), the oil price did not fall but rose.</p><p><b>Second, if the scale of dumping is large (for example, it exceeded 30 million barrels in 2000 and 2011) or the selling pace is fast (for example, it only took 2 months in 1991), the corresponding oil price adjustment range will be greater.</b></p><p><b>Third, the trends of WTI and Brent oil prices during the dumping period in the United States did not deviate significantly, indicating that the dumping of the United States will have a global impact on the crude oil market.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7e046e19bc7f6b35c7d9957201c2eab8\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"556\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd944ce72bd31291da7afd82aa39971a\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"761\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We believe that the main reason for this strategic oil reserve sale is that the Biden administration wants to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures.</b></p><p><b>First of all, the growth rate of oil prices is highly correlated with the trend of U.S. inflation indicators.</b>Starting from the structure of U.S. CPI, according to the data released by BLS in July, the energy sub-item (including energy goods and energy services) accounted for 7.2% of the U.S. CPI, and the transportation service sub-item accounted for 5.3%. We estimate that in the 5.4% year-on-year growth rate of US CPI in July, the combined pull of the two is 2 percentage points. Historical data show that the U.S. CPI is highly correlated with the monthly year-on-year growth rate of oil prices (Chart 11), because the prices of goods and services except energy goods are generally relatively stable.</p><p><b>Second, concerns about high U.S. gasoline prices were expressed during Biden's speech on Aug. 11.</b>He said that in the future, the United States will strengthen the supervision of the oil market and crack down on illegal behavior of gouging oil prices. It is noted that historically, the price trends of gasoline and crude oil in the United States have basically matched, but in 2021, the price increase of gasoline in the United States significantly exceeded that of crude oil, especially since July, the correction of WTI crude oil price has not driven the price of gasoline to fall (Chart 12). At the same time, Biden \"shouted\" OPEC that the production reduction plan implemented after the epidemic should be reversed with the global economic recovery to lower the consumer price of petroleum products. Sullivan, the US national security adviser, also said on the same day that OPEC + plans to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day every month since August, which is \"far from enough\", and said that the White House is contacting OPEC member states on the importance of competitive markets, which once triggered the market panic about the US intervention in OPEC + production decisions.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/359ab0b4d89955b5d6d39ea5450d972d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"457\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, if the scale of this strategic oil reserve sale is 20 million barrels, and it will be released in less than three months, then the scale and pace of this sale will be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, considering that the Biden administration currently has a strong willingness to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures, it does not rule out the possibility of its subsequent policy efforts or more measures. On the whole, the U.S. government's actions such as dumping reserves may have an obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Lowering the target range of oil price for September-December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel</b></p><p><b>According to the comprehensive judgment, we have lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel range, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below 65 USD/barrel in the short term during this period.</b></p><p><b>First, on the demand side,</b>We believe that the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, but<b>We are more cautious about global oil demand in the second half of the year.</b>In addition, since the epidemic in China is under control and the epidemic in the United States is still spreading,<b>Brent crude oil prices are likely to remain relatively strong against WTI crude for the next 1-2 months.</b></p><p>Previously, considering the hedging of the two forces of \"herd immunity\" and \"epidemic counterattack\" (at present, it seems that the power of \"epidemic counterattack\" may be stronger). We expect crude oil demand to grow at a similar rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year. In the fourth quarter of this year, the service industry and related oil demand in the United States and major developed economies still have sufficient room for recovery. However, it should be noted that summer in the Northern Hemisphere is usually the season with the strongest demand for services such as transportation and tourism (the number of global flights peaks in July-September each year, Chart 6). This round of epidemic has affected the service industry in this quarter, so even if the impact of COVID-19 epidemic subsides in the fourth quarter, because winter itself is not conducive to the development of economic activities such as transportation, the global demand for petroleum products may be difficult to repair as quickly as previously expected.</p><p><b>Second, on the supply side, the US government's throwing reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure.</b>(And if the new round of epidemic in the United States in October is still not effectively controlled, the oil price may fall below $65/barrel due to the double negative supply and demand.)<b>However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.</b></p><p><b>We believe that the key factors (repairing corporate liabilities or national fiscal deficits, demand for economic transformation, etc.) that restrict U.S. oil companies and OPEC + Group from substantially increasing production in the second half of the year remain unchanged.</b>Up to now, the \"supply constraints\" of the global crude oil market are basically in line with our expectations.<b>In the United States,</b>U.S. crude oil inventories remain low, and the number of U.S. crude oil rigs is still weaker than historical performance (Chart 13);<b>In terms of OPEC +,</b>On July 18th, OPEC + agreed to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day month by month since August.<b>On September 1st, OPEC + announced that it would maintain its plan to increase production unchanged, but this range was still restrained.</b>OPEC's production in July this year was only 26.66 million barrels per day, which is still 3.2 million barrels per day (11% less) compared with the 2019 average, while the gap between the global oil consumption in July and the 2019 average according to EIA statistics was only 2.1 million barrels per day (only 2% less). Assuming that OPEC has increased production by 400,000 barrels per day per month since August, its production increase may still be less than the increase in global oil demand (Chart 14).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ad43a3241848d00f3bbe66eba485218d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"458\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Third, in terms of financial environment,</b>Although the Federal Reserve has a high probability of implementing Taper within the year (November or December), the monetary easing environment in the United States will not be suddenly tightened. In addition, this round of Federal Reserve pays special attention to communication with the market, and the financial market in the United States may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year.<b>The probability of a sharp strength in the dollar is unlikely</b>(Refer to the report \"Next for the US Dollar\"). However, as the non-agricultural data in August interfered with market expectations to some extent, it is still necessary to be alert to the volatility risk of financial markets before and after the Fed's official announcement of Taper. Before and after the interest rate meeting of the Federal Reserve on September 22nd, as this meeting may announce the specific decision about Taper, the fall of risk appetite and the strength of the US dollar may cause the oil price to fall in the short term. At that time, the possibility of the oil price falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out.</p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> source：<a href=\"https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AVil3ZOAN09SphKITpHHrQ\">钟正生经济研究</a></p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/692502bb8980265a56b3787aba9119b3","relate_stocks":{"DWT":"三倍做空原油ETN","SCO":"二倍做空彭博原油指数ETF","USO":"美国原油ETF","DUG":"二倍做空石油与天然气ETF(ProShares)","DDG":"ProShares做空石油与天然气ETF","UCO":"二倍做多彭博原油ETF"},"source_url":"https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AVil3ZOAN09SphKITpHHrQ","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2168523595","content_text":"核心摘要\n今年7月以来，国际油价经历大幅震荡下行，这背后有三个关键词——病毒、飓风和美国政府。上述“三剑客”将对今年9月以后的国际油价产生复杂影响，本文重点讨论其影响并再次展望今年下半年油价走势。\n剑客一：Delta变异病毒。今年7月以后，全球新冠疫情因Delta变异病毒而进一步恶化，美国和中国作为全球前两大石油消费国均受影响。本轮疫情暂时仍未对全球石油消费造成明显冲击，但显著打击了需求预期。国际能源署（IEA）8月报告中，将2021年下半年原油需求预估下调55万桶/日。考虑到，今年6-7月全球石油消费维持强劲、全球航班数据显示8月需求不弱、主要经济体本轮防疫政策力度有限等，新一轮疫情对全球经济活动及石油需求的边际影响或有限。今年7-8月WTI原油期货非商业多头占比下滑至疫情以来新低。目前市场可能已经充分（甚至过度）pricein本轮疫情对于下半年石油需求的冲击。\n剑客二：飓风。8月29日登陆美国的艾达飓风广受市场关注。参考2005年卡特里娜飓风和2017年哈维飓风的影响，我们判断，本次艾达飓风对油价的影响整体有限：短期或表现为小幅拉升，因墨西哥湾石油生产活动受阻；但在未来的2-3周，路易斯安那州的持续性停电将主要影响石油加工厂的生产活动，或一定程度上减弱石油需求并对油价形成一定抑制作用。\n剑客三：美国政府抛储。8月23日美国能源部宣布拟至多出售2000万桶战略原油储备，于今年10月1日至12月15日之间交付，出售规模为2011年以来最高。我们梳理了1990年以来美国6次大规模出售战略石油储备对油价的影响。整体来看，美国出售战略石油储备或短期（半年内）抑制国际油价。1991年-2011年期间的五次出售均造成了油价下跌，WTI和布伦特油价最大跌幅分别为20-44%和16-45%区间，时间间隔在1-3个月左右。本次出售的规模和节奏或将大于和快于历史平均水平。同时，不排除拜登政府后续加大政策力度以抑制油价的可能性。美国政府抛储等行动可能对今年下半年油价形成较为明显的抑制作用。\n综合判断，我们下调2021年9-12月国际原油价格目标区间至65-75美元/桶区间，且不排除油价短期下探至65美元/桶下方的可能性。1）需求方面，虽然本轮疫情对全球经济活动和石油需求的边际影响有限，但我们对下半年全球石油需求的判断更加谨慎。此外，由于中国疫情已经控制而美国疫情仍在蔓延，布伦特原油价格可能在未来1-2个月仍保持对WTI原油的相对强势。2）供给方面，美国政府抛储将提高今年10-12月的石油供给，期间油价大概率承压。但若不考虑美国抛储的影响，下半年原油供给偏紧的格局仍将维持，这也是我们并未大幅下调油价目标区间的关键原因。3）金融环境方面，即使美联储在年内实施Taper，下半年美国金融市场或保持相对稳定，美元大幅走强的概率也不高。不过，仍需警惕的是，美联储正式宣布Taper前后金融市场的波动风险，届时不能排除油价跌破65美元/桶的可能性。\n风险提示：全球新冠疫情影响超预期，OPEC+增产幅度超预期，美联储政策超预期。\n今年7月以来，国际油价经历大幅震荡下行，这背后有三个关键词——病毒、飓风和美国政府（图表1）。\n7月5日，WTI原油和布伦特油价分别涨至76.3和77.2美元/桶的高位。但好景不长，Delta新冠变异病毒的全球扩散持续引发市场恐慌，叠加阿联酋与OPEC+协议出现短暂分歧，致使油价上行趋势终结。8月以来，国际油价连续三周下跌，其中8月11日美国白宫呼吁OPEC+增产，加剧了油价的下行趋势。8月20日WTI原油和布伦特原油分别跌至62.1和65.2美元/桶，距离7月5日高点分别下跌19%和16%。\n8月下旬，墨西哥钻机平台火灾与美国墨西哥湾“艾达”飓风对石油供给的扰动，助力油价强力反弹，WTI原油和布伦特原油在8月23-30日期间分别涨11%和13%，布伦特油价重新企稳于70美元/桶，但WTI油价持续低于70美元/桶，二者价差不断拉大。8月23日，美国能源部宣布拟于今年10-12月出售至多2000万桶战略原油储备，又为后续油价走势增添变数。\n\n我们在2021年6月判断，2021年下半年国际油价主要维持在70-80美元/桶区间，同时不排除油价短时间升破80美元/桶的可能（参考2021年6月30日报告《油价会不会是下一个“灰犀牛”？》）。但Delta变异病毒对中美等石油需求大国的冲击、美国飓风对供给的扰动、以及美国政府通过抛储等手段企图抑制油价，这些均超出我们此前的预期。上述“三剑客”将对今年9月以后的油价产生复杂影响，本文重点讨论其影响并再次展望今年下半年油价走势。\n剑客一：Delta变异病毒\n今年7月以后，全球新冠疫情因Delta变异病毒而进一步恶化（图表2），其中美国和中国作为全球前两大石油消费国，其疫情影响受到原油市场高度关注。中国方面，7月以前本土新增确诊数基本保持个位数，但8月上旬最严重时本土病例日增破百。在此背景下，多地政府重新加强防疫管控，市场开始担忧交通出行等活动减少及相关石油产品需求的减少。尤其是，6月和7月中国自沙特进口原油数量（季调）环比连续下滑6.8%和6.6%，且7月进口数量为2020年10月以来新低（图表3）。美国方面，新冠单日新增确诊数从7月以前的2万人以下，升至8月的10万人以上。疫情抬头叠加疫苗接种速度缓慢，使美国政府不得不推迟宣布经济的彻底解封。\n\n因变异病毒扰动，国际机构陆续下调2021年下半年原油需求预测，期货市场做多原油情绪受到抑制。国际能源署（IEA）在8月报告中将2021年下半年原油需求预估下调55万桶/日，将全年全球石油需求下调10万桶/日至9620万桶/日。EIA和OPEC的8月报告保持各自对2021年和2022年世界石油需求增长预测不变，但欧佩克预计2021年对欧佩克原油的需求将减少20万桶/日至2740万桶/日。若将EIA在8月的预测与6月比较，其预测2021年11月和12月全球石油产品消费量分别减少了35万桶/日和21万桶/日（图表4）。同时，原油市场持续price in新一轮疫情冲击，IPE期货交易结果显示，6月下旬以来，WTI非商业多头占比开始下滑，并继续创下疫情以来新低，多头的抛售也加剧了油价的下行（图表5）。\n\n我们判断，新一轮新冠疫情对全球经济活动及石油需求的边际影响可能有限。第一，今年6、7月全球石油消费在疫情扰动下维持强劲，本轮疫情对石油需求的冲击尚未显现。对比EIA在6月和8月更新的数据，今年6、7月全球石油实际消费量反而超预期增加，分别超过6月预测值36万桶/日和30万/桶日。第二，高频数据显示8月全球交通需求不弱。例如，Flightradar24统计的全球航班数在7月和8月期间并未大幅减少，且当前水平已经接近2019年疫情前的水平（图表6）。第三，主要经济体本轮防疫政策力度有限，继而对经济活动和石油需求的影响有限。中国、日本等亚洲经济体短期升级了防疫管控，但力度仍较有限；英国、德国和美国等欧美经济体在疫苗保护下趋于“躺平”。据牛津大学Our World in Data网站测算，新一轮疫情爆发后，主要经济体政府防控疫情的“严格指数”（Stringency Index）并未显著超过今年年初水平（图表7）。\n总之，本轮疫情暂时仍未对全球石油消费造成明显冲击，但显著打击了需求预期。不过，目前市场可能已经充分（甚至过度）price in本轮疫情对于下半年石油需求的冲击。\n\n剑客二：飓风\n8月29日，美国墨西哥湾地区遭遇四级飓风“艾达”，导致墨西哥湾近海90-95%的石油生产关闭（涉及产能约170万桶/日）。该飓风在登陆16小时后降级为“热带风暴”，但其对路易斯安那州的电网造成“灾难性”破坏。预计停电将持续3周左右，期间或导致石油加工和化工厂停产。\n历史上，飓风对油价的影响并不确定，因飓风可能同时影响石油供需，且美国政府还可能通过出售战略石油储备以平抑油价。2005年“卡特里娜”飓风（五级）和2017年哈维飓风（四级）是美国历史上对经济影响最大的两次飓风。2005年美国飓风在一周内拉升油价，因飓风主要破坏了石油生产和供给；但美国政府随后出售战略石油储备，令油价持续2-3个月下行（图表8）。2017年美国飓风在一周内使油价小幅下跌，原因是飓风主要影响炼油厂生产，意味着炼油厂对原油的需求减弱；而随后战略石油储备的出售并未阻止下半年油价上行趋势（图表9）。\n\n总之，本次艾达飓风对油价的影响整体有限：短期或表现为小幅拉升，因墨西哥湾石油生产活动受阻；但在未来的2-3周，路易斯安那州的持续性停电将主要影响石油加工厂的生产活动，或一定程度上减弱石油需求，这或对油价形成一定抑制作用。\n剑客三：美国政府抛储\n8月23日，美国能源部化石能源和碳管理办公室发布公告，计划在9月13日之前确定至多出售2000万桶战略原油储备的合同，并于今年10月1日至12月15日之间交付。这次出售规模为2011年以来最高。\n我们梳理了1990年以来美国历次大规模出售战略石油储备对油价的影响（图表10）。1990年以来美国政府进行过6次规模在1500-3000万桶的战略石油储备出售，触发因素包括战争、飓风等紧急事件，以及缓解财政赤字、缓解季节性用油紧张、或讨好选民等。\n第一，整体来看，美国出售战略石油储备或短期（半年内）抑制油价，但难改中期（半年以上）趋势。1991年-2011年期间的五次出售均造成了油价下跌，WTI和布伦特油价最大跌幅分别为20-44%和16-45%区间，最大跌幅时间间隔在1-3个月左右、平均为52天。而2017年哈维飓风后，由于战略石油储备出售规模较小（仅1500万桶）、且释放节奏较慢（持续约4个月），油价不跌反涨。\n第二，如果抛储规模较大（如2000年和2011年均超过3000万桶）或者抛售节奏较快（如1991年仅耗时2个月），则相应油价调整幅度也越大。\n第三，美国抛储期间的WTI和布伦特油价走势并未发生明显背离，说明美国抛储将对原油市场产生全球性的影响。\n\n我们认为，本次战略石油储备出售的主要原因在于，拜登政府希望抑制油价以缓解通胀压力。\n首先，油价增速与美国通胀指标走势高度相关。从美国CPI的结构出发，据BLS在7月公布的数据，能源分项（包括能源品和能源服务）占美国CPI的比重为7.2%，交通运输服务分项占比5.3%。我们测算，在7月美国CPI同比增速的5.4%中，二者合计拉动就有了2个百分点。历史数据显示，美国CPI与油价月度同比增速走势高度相关（图表11），因为除能源品外的其他商品和服务价格通常是相对稳定的。\n其次，8月11日拜登演讲时表达了对美国汽油价格高企的担忧。他表示，未来美国将加强对石油市场的监管，打击哄抬油价的违法行为。注意到，历史上美国汽油和原油价格走势基本匹配，但2021年美国汽油价格涨幅明显超过原油，尤其7月以来WTI原油价格回调并未带动汽油价格回落（图表12）。同时，拜登“喊话”OPEC称，疫情后实施的减产计划应该随着全球经济复苏而扭转，以降低石油产品消费价格。美国国家安全顾问沙利文当日也表示，OPEC+计划自8月开始逐月增产40万桶/日“远远不够”，且表示白宫正在就竞争性市场的重要性与欧佩克成员国进行接触，这一度引发市场对于美国干预OPEC+生产决策的恐慌。\n\n总之，如果本次战略石油储备出售规模为2000万桶，且将于不到3个月的时间里释放，那么这次出售的规模和节奏将大于和快于历史平均水平。同时考虑到，拜登政府当前有强烈意愿抑制油价以缓解通胀压力，不排除其后续加大政策力度或出台更多措施的可能性。综合来看，美国政府抛储等行动，可能对今年下半年油价形成较为明显的抑制作用。\n下调今年9-12月油价目标区间至65-75美元/桶\n综合判断，我们下调今年9-12月国际原油价格目标区间至65-75美元/桶区间，且不排除在此期间油价短期下探至65美元/桶下方的可能性。\n第一，需求方面，我们认为本轮疫情对全球经济活动和石油需求的边际影响有限，但我们对下半年全球石油需求的判断更加谨慎。此外，由于中国疫情已经控制而美国疫情仍在蔓延，布伦特原油价格可能在未来1-2个月仍保持对WTI原油的相对强势。\n此前，考虑到“群体免疫”和“疫情反扑”两股力量的对冲（目前看来，“疫情反扑”的力量可能会更强一些）。我们预计原油需求在下半年或保持与上半年相近的增长速度。今年四季度，美国及主要发达经济体服务业以及相关石油需求仍有充分复苏空间。但需要注意，北半球夏季通常是交通运输、旅游业等服务业需求最旺盛的季节（全球航班数量在每年7-9月达到峰值，图表6）。而本轮疫情影响了本季度的服务业，所以即使四季度新冠疫情影响消退，由于冬季本身并不利于交通出行等经济活动的开展，因此全球石油产品需求或难如此前预期得那样快速修复。\n第二，供给方面，美国政府抛储将提高今年10-12月的石油供给，期间油价大概率承压。（且若10月美国新一轮疫情仍未得到有效控制，油价可能因供需双重利空而跌破65美元/桶。）但若不考虑美国抛储的影响，下半年原油供给偏紧的格局仍将维持，这也是我们并未大幅下调油价目标区间的关键原因。\n我们认为，下半年限制美国石油企业和OPEC+集团大幅增产的关键因素（修复企业负债或国家财政赤字、经济转型需求等）不变。截至目前，全球原油市场“供给约束”情况基本符合我们的预期。美国方面，美国原油库存仍然维持低位，美国原油钻机数量仍然弱于历史表现（图表13）；OPEC+方面，7月18日OPEC+同意自8月开始逐月增产40万桶/日，9月1日OPEC+宣布维持增产计划不变，但这一幅度仍然是克制的。今年7月OPEC产量仅2666万桶/日，比2019年平均水平相比仍有320万桶/日的差距（少11%），而EIA统计的7月全球石油消费量与2019年均值的差距仅为210万桶/日（仅少2%）。假设OPEC自8月开始每月增产40万桶/日，其增产幅度或仍不及全球石油需求的增加（图表14）。\n\n第三，金融环境方面，虽然美联储大概率在年内（11或12月）开始实施Taper，但美国货币宽松环境不会骤然收紧，加上本轮美联储格外注重与市场的沟通，下半年美国金融市场或保持相对稳定，美元大幅走强的概率不大（参考报告《美元下一步》）。不过，由于8月非农数据一定程度干扰了市场预期，仍需警惕美联储正式宣布Taper前后金融市场的波动风险。9月22日美联储议息会议前后，由于本次会议可能宣布有关Taper的具体决策，风险偏好回落和美元走强或使油价短期下挫，届时不能排除油价跌破65美元/桶的可能性。","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"DDG":0.9,"CLmain":0.9,"UWTIF":0.9,"DWTIF":0.9,"BZmain":0.9,"DWT":0.9,"USO":0.9,"DUG":0.9,"QMmain":0.9,"UCO":0.9,"SCO":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2816,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":884282150,"gmtCreate":1631893975070,"gmtModify":1676530665025,"author":{"id":"4090738864033950","authorId":"4090738864033950","name":"jakbs","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/73dd405470a37c726bbce6896181ecfd","crmLevel":1,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"4090738864033950","idStr":"4090738864033950"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"?","listText":"?","text":"?","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/884282150","repostId":"2168523595","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2168523595","kind":"highlight","pubTimestamp":1631857629,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2168523595?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-09-17 13:47","market":"us","language":"zh","title":"The 'Three Musketeers' of the Crude Oil Market: Viruses, Hurricanes and the U.S. Government","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2168523595","media":"钟正生经济研究","summary":"核心摘要\n今年7月以来，国际油价经历大幅震荡下行，这背后有三个关键词——病毒、飓风和美国政府。上述“三剑客”将对今年9月以后的国际油价产生复杂影响，本文重点讨论其影响并再次展望今年下半年油价走势。\n剑","content":"<p><b>Core Summary</b></p><p>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock. There are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complicated impact on the international oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus.</b>Since July this year, the global COVID-19 pandemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus, affecting the United States and China as the world's top two oil consumers.<b>This round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day. Considering that the global oil consumption remained strong from June to July this year, the global flight data showed that the demand in August was not weak, and the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies were limited, the marginal impact of the new round of epidemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited. From July to August this year, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI crude oil futures fell to a new low since the epidemic.<b>At present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) pricein the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane.</b>Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in the United States on August 29th, has attracted widespread market attention. With reference to the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, we judge that,<b>The overall impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited:</b>In the short term, it may show a slight pull-up, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the persistent power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent and have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. government dumps its reserves.</b>On August 23rd, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it planned to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves, which will be delivered between October 1st and December 15th this year, with the highest sales scale since 2011. We combed the impact of six large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990. On the whole, the sale of strategic oil reserves by the United States may curb international oil prices in the short term (within half a year).<b>The five sales in the period 1991-2011 all caused oil prices to fall, with the largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with intervals of about 1-3 months.</b>The size and pace of this sale may be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, the possibility of the Biden administration's follow-up policy efforts to curb oil prices is not ruled out.<b>The U.S. government's dumping of reserves and other actions may have a more obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Based on our comprehensive judgment, we lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December 2021 to the range of US$65-75/barrel, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below US$65/barrel in the short term. 1) On the demand side,</b>Although the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, we are more cautious in our judgment of global oil demand in the second half of the year. Moreover, since the epidemic in China has been controlled while the epidemic in the United States is still spreading, Brent crude oil price may remain relatively strong against WTI crude in the next 1-2 months.<b>2) On the supply side,</b>The US government's dumping of reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure. However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.<b>3) In terms of financial environment,</b>Even if the Federal Reserve implements Taper during the year, the U.S. financial market may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year, and the probability of sharp strength of the U.S. dollar is not high. However, it is still necessary to be vigilant that the Fed officially announced the volatility risk of financial markets before and after Taper, and the possibility of oil prices falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out at that time.</p><p><b><i>Risk warning: The impact of the global COVID-19 epidemic exceeded expectations, the output increase of OPEC + exceeded expectations, and the Fed's policy exceeded expectations.</i></b></p><p><b>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock, and there are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government (Chart 1).</b></p><p>On July 5, WTI crude oil and Brent oil prices rose to highs of $76.3 and $77.2/barrel, respectively. But the good times didn't last long,<b>The global spread of Delta COVID-19 continues to trigger market panic,</b>Superimposing the short-lived differences between the UAE and OPEC + agreement, resulting in the end of the upward trend of oil prices. Since August, international oil prices have fallen for three consecutive weeks, among which<b>August 11U.S. White House calls on OPEC + to increase production</b>, exacerbating the downward trend of oil prices. WTI crude and Brent crude fell to $62.1 and $65.2/barrel on August 20, down 19% and 16%, respectively, from their July 5 highs.</p><p>In late August, a Mexican rig platform fire and<b>Disturbance of oil supply caused by Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico, USA</b>Helping the oil price rebound strongly, WTI crude oil and Brent crude oil rose by 11% and 13% respectively during August 23rd-30th, and Brent oil price stabilized at $70/barrel again, but WTI oil price continued to be lower than $70/barrel, and the price difference between the two kept widening. On August 23,<b>The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it plans to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves from October to December this year,</b>It also adds variables to the subsequent oil price trend.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f4a2c42a831aaa0c7decefabbcc9849b\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"562\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In June 2021, we judged that the international oil price will mainly remain in the range of 70-80 USD/barrel in the second half of 2021, and at the same time, we do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will rise above 80 USD/barrel in a short time (refer to the report \"Could Oil Price Be the Next\" Grey Rhino \"?\" dated June 30, 2021). However, the impact of Delta mutant virus on China and the United States and other big oil demand countries, the disturbance of supply by American hurricanes, and the US government's attempt to curb oil prices by dumping reserves all exceeded our previous expectations. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complex impact on the oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus</b></p><p><b>After July this year, the global COVID-19 epidemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus (Chart 2). Among them, the United States and China, as the top two oil consumers in the world, have attracted great attention from the crude oil market.</b>In China, the number of newly confirmed cases in China remained basically in single digits before July, but at the worst in early August, the number of local cases increased by more than 100. Against this background, governments in many places have re-strengthened epidemic prevention and control, and the market began to worry about the decrease in transportation and other activities and the decrease in demand for related petroleum products. In particular, China's crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia (seasonally adjusted) declined by 6.8% and 6.6% consecutively in June and July, and the import volume in July was a new low since October 2020 (Chart 3). In the United States, the number of newly confirmed cases in COVID-19 in a single day rose from less than 20,000 before July to more than 100,000 in August. The rising pandemic combined with the slow pace of vaccination has forced the U.S. government to delay announcing a complete unlockdown of the economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f654a9bb5e37ceec93d9aed135d3b74\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Due to the disturbance of the mutated virus, international institutions have successively lowered the forecast of crude oil demand in the second half of 2021, and the sentiment of long crude oil in the futures market has been suppressed.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day and lowered global oil demand for the full year by 100,000 barrels per day to 96.2 million barrels per day. The August reports of the EIA and OPEC kept their respective forecasts for world oil demand growth in 2021 and 2022 unchanged, but OPEC expects demand for OPEC crude oil to decrease by 200,000 barrels per day to 27.4 million barrels per day in 2021. If EIA's forecast in August is compared with that in June, it forecasts that global consumption of petroleum products will decrease by 350,000 barrels per day and 210,000 barrels per day in November and December 2021, respectively (Chart 4). At the same time,<b>The crude oil market continues to price in a new round of epidemic impact,</b>The results of IPE futures trading show that since late June, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI has begun to decline, and continues to hit a new low since the epidemic. The selling of bulls has also aggravated the downward trend of oil prices (Chart 5).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62310fd6577cecaa5c4a97fe953cbd41\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"462\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We judge that the marginal impact of the new COVID-19 pandemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited.</b>First, in June and July this year, global oil consumption remained strong under the disturbance of the epidemic, and the impact of this epidemic on oil demand has not yet emerged. Compared with the data updated by EIA in June and August, the actual global oil consumption in June and July this year increased beyond expectations, exceeding the forecast values of 360,000 barrels per day and 300,000 barrels per day in June respectively.<b>Second, high-frequency data show that global traffic demand is not weak in August.</b>For example, the number of global flights counted by Flightradar24 did not decrease significantly during July and August, and current levels are already close to pre-pandemic levels in 2019 (Chart 6).<b>Third, the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies is limited, which in turn has limited impact on economic activities and oil demand.</b>Asian economies such as China and Japan have upgraded their epidemic prevention and control in the short term, but the intensity is still relatively limited. European and American economies such as Britain, Germany and the United States tend to \"lie flat\" under vaccine protection. According to the website of Our World in Data of Oxford University, after the outbreak of a new round of epidemic, the \"Stringency Index\" of governments in major economies for epidemic prevention and control has not significantly exceeded the level at the beginning of this year (Chart 7).</p><p><b>In short, this round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations. However, at present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) price in the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/799839faff99fbad6c6508c1dc1d4c04\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"472\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane</b></p><p><b>On August 29, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region was hit by Category 4 Hurricane Ida, which shut down 90-95% of oil production offshore the Gulf of Mexico (involving production capacity of about 1.7 million barrels per day).</b>The hurricane was downgraded to a \"tropical storm\" 16 hours after landfall, but it caused \"catastrophic\" damage to Louisiana's power grid. It is expected that the power outage will last for about 3 weeks, during which it may lead to the shutdown of oil processing and chemical plants.</p><p><b>Historically, the impact of hurricanes on oil prices has been uncertain, as hurricanes may affect oil supply and demand at the same time, and the U.S. government may also stabilize oil prices by selling strategic oil reserves.</b>Hurricane Katrina (Category 5) in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey (Category 4) in 2017 were the two biggest economic hurricanes in U.S. history. In 2005, a hurricane in the United States raised oil prices within a week, because the hurricane mainly damaged oil production and supply; However, the US government then sold its strategic oil reserve, which kept oil prices downward for 2-3 months (Chart 8). Hurricanes in the United States in 2017 dropped oil prices slightly in a week because hurricanes mainly affected refinery production, meaning that refinery demand for crude oil weakened; The subsequent sale of strategic oil reserves did not stop the upward trend of oil prices in the second half of the year (Chart 9).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5e98fbd93acc9858d4f588e1475352cf\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"464\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, the impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited as a whole: in the short term, it may show a slight increase, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the continuous power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent, which may have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. Government Throws Reserves</b></p><p><b>On August 23, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management issued an announcement that it plans to identify contracts to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves by September 13, and deliver them between October 1 and December 15 this year. The sale was the largest since 2011.</b></p><p><b>We have combed the impact of previous large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990 (Chart 10).</b>Since 1990, the U.S. government has carried out six sales of strategic oil reserves with a scale of 15-30 million barrels. The triggers include emergencies such as wars and hurricanes, as well as alleviating fiscal deficits, easing seasonal oil shortages, or pleasing voters.</p><p><b>First, on the whole, the United States sells strategic oil reserves or curbs oil prices in the short term (within half a year), but it is difficult to change the medium-term (more than half a year) trend.</b>Five sales from 1991 to 2011 all caused oil prices to fall. The largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices were in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with the largest declines in the interval of about 1-3 months and an average of 52 days. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, due to the small sale scale of strategic oil reserves (only 15 million barrels) and the slow release pace (lasting for about 4 months), the oil price did not fall but rose.</p><p><b>Second, if the scale of dumping is large (for example, it exceeded 30 million barrels in 2000 and 2011) or the selling pace is fast (for example, it only took 2 months in 1991), the corresponding oil price adjustment range will be greater.</b></p><p><b>Third, the trends of WTI and Brent oil prices during the dumping period in the United States did not deviate significantly, indicating that the dumping of the United States will have a global impact on the crude oil market.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7e046e19bc7f6b35c7d9957201c2eab8\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"556\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd944ce72bd31291da7afd82aa39971a\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"761\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We believe that the main reason for this strategic oil reserve sale is that the Biden administration wants to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures.</b></p><p><b>First of all, the growth rate of oil prices is highly correlated with the trend of U.S. inflation indicators.</b>Starting from the structure of U.S. CPI, according to the data released by BLS in July, the energy sub-item (including energy goods and energy services) accounted for 7.2% of the U.S. CPI, and the transportation service sub-item accounted for 5.3%. We estimate that in the 5.4% year-on-year growth rate of US CPI in July, the combined pull of the two is 2 percentage points. Historical data show that the U.S. CPI is highly correlated with the monthly year-on-year growth rate of oil prices (Chart 11), because the prices of goods and services except energy goods are generally relatively stable.</p><p><b>Second, concerns about high U.S. gasoline prices were expressed during Biden's speech on Aug. 11.</b>He said that in the future, the United States will strengthen the supervision of the oil market and crack down on illegal behavior of gouging oil prices. It is noted that historically, the price trends of gasoline and crude oil in the United States have basically matched, but in 2021, the price increase of gasoline in the United States significantly exceeded that of crude oil, especially since July, the correction of WTI crude oil price has not driven the price of gasoline to fall (Chart 12). At the same time, Biden \"shouted\" OPEC that the production reduction plan implemented after the epidemic should be reversed with the global economic recovery to lower the consumer price of petroleum products. Sullivan, the US national security adviser, also said on the same day that OPEC + plans to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day every month since August, which is \"far from enough\", and said that the White House is contacting OPEC member states on the importance of competitive markets, which once triggered the market panic about the US intervention in OPEC + production decisions.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/359ab0b4d89955b5d6d39ea5450d972d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"457\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, if the scale of this strategic oil reserve sale is 20 million barrels, and it will be released in less than three months, then the scale and pace of this sale will be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, considering that the Biden administration currently has a strong willingness to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures, it does not rule out the possibility of its subsequent policy efforts or more measures. On the whole, the U.S. government's actions such as dumping reserves may have an obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Lowering the target range of oil price for September-December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel</b></p><p><b>According to the comprehensive judgment, we have lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel range, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below 65 USD/barrel in the short term during this period.</b></p><p><b>First, on the demand side,</b>We believe that the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, but<b>We are more cautious about global oil demand in the second half of the year.</b>In addition, since the epidemic in China is under control and the epidemic in the United States is still spreading,<b>Brent crude oil prices are likely to remain relatively strong against WTI crude for the next 1-2 months.</b></p><p>Previously, considering the hedging of the two forces of \"herd immunity\" and \"epidemic counterattack\" (at present, it seems that the power of \"epidemic counterattack\" may be stronger). We expect crude oil demand to grow at a similar rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year. In the fourth quarter of this year, the service industry and related oil demand in the United States and major developed economies still have sufficient room for recovery. However, it should be noted that summer in the Northern Hemisphere is usually the season with the strongest demand for services such as transportation and tourism (the number of global flights peaks in July-September each year, Chart 6). This round of epidemic has affected the service industry in this quarter, so even if the impact of COVID-19 epidemic subsides in the fourth quarter, because winter itself is not conducive to the development of economic activities such as transportation, the global demand for petroleum products may be difficult to repair as quickly as previously expected.</p><p><b>Second, on the supply side, the US government's throwing reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure.</b>(And if the new round of epidemic in the United States in October is still not effectively controlled, the oil price may fall below $65/barrel due to the double negative supply and demand.)<b>However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.</b></p><p><b>We believe that the key factors (repairing corporate liabilities or national fiscal deficits, demand for economic transformation, etc.) that restrict U.S. oil companies and OPEC + Group from substantially increasing production in the second half of the year remain unchanged.</b>Up to now, the \"supply constraints\" of the global crude oil market are basically in line with our expectations.<b>In the United States,</b>U.S. crude oil inventories remain low, and the number of U.S. crude oil rigs is still weaker than historical performance (Chart 13);<b>In terms of OPEC +,</b>On July 18th, OPEC + agreed to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day month by month since August.<b>On September 1st, OPEC + announced that it would maintain its plan to increase production unchanged, but this range was still restrained.</b>OPEC's production in July this year was only 26.66 million barrels per day, which is still 3.2 million barrels per day (11% less) compared with the 2019 average, while the gap between the global oil consumption in July and the 2019 average according to EIA statistics was only 2.1 million barrels per day (only 2% less). Assuming that OPEC has increased production by 400,000 barrels per day per month since August, its production increase may still be less than the increase in global oil demand (Chart 14).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ad43a3241848d00f3bbe66eba485218d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"458\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Third, in terms of financial environment,</b>Although the Federal Reserve has a high probability of implementing Taper within the year (November or December), the monetary easing environment in the United States will not be suddenly tightened. In addition, this round of Federal Reserve pays special attention to communication with the market, and the financial market in the United States may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year.<b>The probability of a sharp strength in the dollar is unlikely</b>(Refer to the report \"Next for the US Dollar\"). However, as the non-agricultural data in August interfered with market expectations to some extent, it is still necessary to be alert to the volatility risk of financial markets before and after the Fed's official announcement of Taper. Before and after the interest rate meeting of the Federal Reserve on September 22nd, as this meeting may announce the specific decision about Taper, the fall of risk appetite and the strength of the US dollar may cause the oil price to fall in the short term. At that time, the possibility of the oil price falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out.</p>","source":"lsy1631857626729","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>The 'Three Musketeers' of the Crude Oil Market: Viruses, Hurricanes and the U.S. Government</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nThe 'Three Musketeers' of the Crude Oil Market: Viruses, Hurricanes and the U.S. Government\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">钟正生经济研究</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2021-09-17 13:47</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p><b>Core Summary</b></p><p>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock. There are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complicated impact on the international oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus.</b>Since July this year, the global COVID-19 pandemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus, affecting the United States and China as the world's top two oil consumers.<b>This round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day. Considering that the global oil consumption remained strong from June to July this year, the global flight data showed that the demand in August was not weak, and the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies were limited, the marginal impact of the new round of epidemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited. From July to August this year, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI crude oil futures fell to a new low since the epidemic.<b>At present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) pricein the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane.</b>Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in the United States on August 29th, has attracted widespread market attention. With reference to the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey in 2017, we judge that,<b>The overall impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited:</b>In the short term, it may show a slight pull-up, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the persistent power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent and have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. government dumps its reserves.</b>On August 23rd, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it planned to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves, which will be delivered between October 1st and December 15th this year, with the highest sales scale since 2011. We combed the impact of six large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990. On the whole, the sale of strategic oil reserves by the United States may curb international oil prices in the short term (within half a year).<b>The five sales in the period 1991-2011 all caused oil prices to fall, with the largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with intervals of about 1-3 months.</b>The size and pace of this sale may be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, the possibility of the Biden administration's follow-up policy efforts to curb oil prices is not ruled out.<b>The U.S. government's dumping of reserves and other actions may have a more obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Based on our comprehensive judgment, we lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December 2021 to the range of US$65-75/barrel, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below US$65/barrel in the short term. 1) On the demand side,</b>Although the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, we are more cautious in our judgment of global oil demand in the second half of the year. Moreover, since the epidemic in China has been controlled while the epidemic in the United States is still spreading, Brent crude oil price may remain relatively strong against WTI crude in the next 1-2 months.<b>2) On the supply side,</b>The US government's dumping of reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure. However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.<b>3) In terms of financial environment,</b>Even if the Federal Reserve implements Taper during the year, the U.S. financial market may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year, and the probability of sharp strength of the U.S. dollar is not high. However, it is still necessary to be vigilant that the Fed officially announced the volatility risk of financial markets before and after Taper, and the possibility of oil prices falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out at that time.</p><p><b><i>Risk warning: The impact of the global COVID-19 epidemic exceeded expectations, the output increase of OPEC + exceeded expectations, and the Fed's policy exceeded expectations.</i></b></p><p><b>Since July this year, the international oil price has experienced a sharp downward shock, and there are three key words behind this-virus, hurricane and the US government (Chart 1).</b></p><p>On July 5, WTI crude oil and Brent oil prices rose to highs of $76.3 and $77.2/barrel, respectively. But the good times didn't last long,<b>The global spread of Delta COVID-19 continues to trigger market panic,</b>Superimposing the short-lived differences between the UAE and OPEC + agreement, resulting in the end of the upward trend of oil prices. Since August, international oil prices have fallen for three consecutive weeks, among which<b>August 11U.S. White House calls on OPEC + to increase production</b>, exacerbating the downward trend of oil prices. WTI crude and Brent crude fell to $62.1 and $65.2/barrel on August 20, down 19% and 16%, respectively, from their July 5 highs.</p><p>In late August, a Mexican rig platform fire and<b>Disturbance of oil supply caused by Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico, USA</b>Helping the oil price rebound strongly, WTI crude oil and Brent crude oil rose by 11% and 13% respectively during August 23rd-30th, and Brent oil price stabilized at $70/barrel again, but WTI oil price continued to be lower than $70/barrel, and the price difference between the two kept widening. On August 23,<b>The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it plans to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves from October to December this year,</b>It also adds variables to the subsequent oil price trend.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f4a2c42a831aaa0c7decefabbcc9849b\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"562\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In June 2021, we judged that the international oil price will mainly remain in the range of 70-80 USD/barrel in the second half of 2021, and at the same time, we do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will rise above 80 USD/barrel in a short time (refer to the report \"Could Oil Price Be the Next\" Grey Rhino \"?\" dated June 30, 2021). However, the impact of Delta mutant virus on China and the United States and other big oil demand countries, the disturbance of supply by American hurricanes, and the US government's attempt to curb oil prices by dumping reserves all exceeded our previous expectations. The above-mentioned \"Three Musketeers\" will have a complex impact on the oil price after September this year. This article focuses on its impact and looks forward to the oil price trend in the second half of this year again.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman One: Delta Variant Virus</b></p><p><b>After July this year, the global COVID-19 epidemic has been further worsened by the Delta variant virus (Chart 2). Among them, the United States and China, as the top two oil consumers in the world, have attracted great attention from the crude oil market.</b>In China, the number of newly confirmed cases in China remained basically in single digits before July, but at the worst in early August, the number of local cases increased by more than 100. Against this background, governments in many places have re-strengthened epidemic prevention and control, and the market began to worry about the decrease in transportation and other activities and the decrease in demand for related petroleum products. In particular, China's crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia (seasonally adjusted) declined by 6.8% and 6.6% consecutively in June and July, and the import volume in July was a new low since October 2020 (Chart 3). In the United States, the number of newly confirmed cases in COVID-19 in a single day rose from less than 20,000 before July to more than 100,000 in August. The rising pandemic combined with the slow pace of vaccination has forced the U.S. government to delay announcing a complete unlockdown of the economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f654a9bb5e37ceec93d9aed135d3b74\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Due to the disturbance of the mutated virus, international institutions have successively lowered the forecast of crude oil demand in the second half of 2021, and the sentiment of long crude oil in the futures market has been suppressed.</b>In its August report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) lowered its crude oil demand forecast for the second half of 2021 by 550,000 barrels per day and lowered global oil demand for the full year by 100,000 barrels per day to 96.2 million barrels per day. The August reports of the EIA and OPEC kept their respective forecasts for world oil demand growth in 2021 and 2022 unchanged, but OPEC expects demand for OPEC crude oil to decrease by 200,000 barrels per day to 27.4 million barrels per day in 2021. If EIA's forecast in August is compared with that in June, it forecasts that global consumption of petroleum products will decrease by 350,000 barrels per day and 210,000 barrels per day in November and December 2021, respectively (Chart 4). At the same time,<b>The crude oil market continues to price in a new round of epidemic impact,</b>The results of IPE futures trading show that since late June, the proportion of non-commercial bulls in WTI has begun to decline, and continues to hit a new low since the epidemic. The selling of bulls has also aggravated the downward trend of oil prices (Chart 5).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62310fd6577cecaa5c4a97fe953cbd41\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"462\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We judge that the marginal impact of the new COVID-19 pandemic on global economic activities and oil demand may be limited.</b>First, in June and July this year, global oil consumption remained strong under the disturbance of the epidemic, and the impact of this epidemic on oil demand has not yet emerged. Compared with the data updated by EIA in June and August, the actual global oil consumption in June and July this year increased beyond expectations, exceeding the forecast values of 360,000 barrels per day and 300,000 barrels per day in June respectively.<b>Second, high-frequency data show that global traffic demand is not weak in August.</b>For example, the number of global flights counted by Flightradar24 did not decrease significantly during July and August, and current levels are already close to pre-pandemic levels in 2019 (Chart 6).<b>Third, the current round of epidemic prevention policies in major economies is limited, which in turn has limited impact on economic activities and oil demand.</b>Asian economies such as China and Japan have upgraded their epidemic prevention and control in the short term, but the intensity is still relatively limited. European and American economies such as Britain, Germany and the United States tend to \"lie flat\" under vaccine protection. According to the website of Our World in Data of Oxford University, after the outbreak of a new round of epidemic, the \"Stringency Index\" of governments in major economies for epidemic prevention and control has not significantly exceeded the level at the beginning of this year (Chart 7).</p><p><b>In short, this round of epidemic has not caused a significant impact on global oil consumption for the time being, but it has significantly hit demand expectations. However, at present, the market may have sufficiently (or even excessively) price in the impact of this epidemic on oil demand in the second half of the year.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/799839faff99fbad6c6508c1dc1d4c04\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"472\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Swordsman II: Hurricane</b></p><p><b>On August 29, the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region was hit by Category 4 Hurricane Ida, which shut down 90-95% of oil production offshore the Gulf of Mexico (involving production capacity of about 1.7 million barrels per day).</b>The hurricane was downgraded to a \"tropical storm\" 16 hours after landfall, but it caused \"catastrophic\" damage to Louisiana's power grid. It is expected that the power outage will last for about 3 weeks, during which it may lead to the shutdown of oil processing and chemical plants.</p><p><b>Historically, the impact of hurricanes on oil prices has been uncertain, as hurricanes may affect oil supply and demand at the same time, and the U.S. government may also stabilize oil prices by selling strategic oil reserves.</b>Hurricane Katrina (Category 5) in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey (Category 4) in 2017 were the two biggest economic hurricanes in U.S. history. In 2005, a hurricane in the United States raised oil prices within a week, because the hurricane mainly damaged oil production and supply; However, the US government then sold its strategic oil reserve, which kept oil prices downward for 2-3 months (Chart 8). Hurricanes in the United States in 2017 dropped oil prices slightly in a week because hurricanes mainly affected refinery production, meaning that refinery demand for crude oil weakened; The subsequent sale of strategic oil reserves did not stop the upward trend of oil prices in the second half of the year (Chart 9).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5e98fbd93acc9858d4f588e1475352cf\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"464\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, the impact of Hurricane Ida on oil prices is limited as a whole: in the short term, it may show a slight increase, due to the blockage of oil production activities in the Gulf of Mexico; However, in the next 2-3 weeks, the continuous power outage in Louisiana will mainly affect the production activities of oil processing plants, or weaken oil demand to some extent, which may have a certain inhibitory effect on oil prices.</b></p><p><b>Swordsman III: The U.S. Government Throws Reserves</b></p><p><b>On August 23, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management issued an announcement that it plans to identify contracts to sell up to 20 million barrels of strategic crude oil reserves by September 13, and deliver them between October 1 and December 15 this year. The sale was the largest since 2011.</b></p><p><b>We have combed the impact of previous large-scale sales of strategic oil reserves in the United States on oil prices since 1990 (Chart 10).</b>Since 1990, the U.S. government has carried out six sales of strategic oil reserves with a scale of 15-30 million barrels. The triggers include emergencies such as wars and hurricanes, as well as alleviating fiscal deficits, easing seasonal oil shortages, or pleasing voters.</p><p><b>First, on the whole, the United States sells strategic oil reserves or curbs oil prices in the short term (within half a year), but it is difficult to change the medium-term (more than half a year) trend.</b>Five sales from 1991 to 2011 all caused oil prices to fall. The largest declines in WTI and Brent oil prices were in the range of 20-44% and 16-45% respectively, with the largest declines in the interval of about 1-3 months and an average of 52 days. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, due to the small sale scale of strategic oil reserves (only 15 million barrels) and the slow release pace (lasting for about 4 months), the oil price did not fall but rose.</p><p><b>Second, if the scale of dumping is large (for example, it exceeded 30 million barrels in 2000 and 2011) or the selling pace is fast (for example, it only took 2 months in 1991), the corresponding oil price adjustment range will be greater.</b></p><p><b>Third, the trends of WTI and Brent oil prices during the dumping period in the United States did not deviate significantly, indicating that the dumping of the United States will have a global impact on the crude oil market.</b></p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7e046e19bc7f6b35c7d9957201c2eab8\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"556\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd944ce72bd31291da7afd82aa39971a\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"761\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>We believe that the main reason for this strategic oil reserve sale is that the Biden administration wants to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures.</b></p><p><b>First of all, the growth rate of oil prices is highly correlated with the trend of U.S. inflation indicators.</b>Starting from the structure of U.S. CPI, according to the data released by BLS in July, the energy sub-item (including energy goods and energy services) accounted for 7.2% of the U.S. CPI, and the transportation service sub-item accounted for 5.3%. We estimate that in the 5.4% year-on-year growth rate of US CPI in July, the combined pull of the two is 2 percentage points. Historical data show that the U.S. CPI is highly correlated with the monthly year-on-year growth rate of oil prices (Chart 11), because the prices of goods and services except energy goods are generally relatively stable.</p><p><b>Second, concerns about high U.S. gasoline prices were expressed during Biden's speech on Aug. 11.</b>He said that in the future, the United States will strengthen the supervision of the oil market and crack down on illegal behavior of gouging oil prices. It is noted that historically, the price trends of gasoline and crude oil in the United States have basically matched, but in 2021, the price increase of gasoline in the United States significantly exceeded that of crude oil, especially since July, the correction of WTI crude oil price has not driven the price of gasoline to fall (Chart 12). At the same time, Biden \"shouted\" OPEC that the production reduction plan implemented after the epidemic should be reversed with the global economic recovery to lower the consumer price of petroleum products. Sullivan, the US national security adviser, also said on the same day that OPEC + plans to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day every month since August, which is \"far from enough\", and said that the White House is contacting OPEC member states on the importance of competitive markets, which once triggered the market panic about the US intervention in OPEC + production decisions.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/359ab0b4d89955b5d6d39ea5450d972d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"457\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>In short, if the scale of this strategic oil reserve sale is 20 million barrels, and it will be released in less than three months, then the scale and pace of this sale will be greater and faster than the historical average. At the same time, considering that the Biden administration currently has a strong willingness to curb oil prices to ease inflationary pressures, it does not rule out the possibility of its subsequent policy efforts or more measures. On the whole, the U.S. government's actions such as dumping reserves may have an obvious inhibitory effect on oil prices in the second half of this year.</b></p><p><b>Lowering the target range of oil price for September-December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel</b></p><p><b>According to the comprehensive judgment, we have lowered the international crude oil price target range from September to December this year to 65-75 USD/barrel range, and do not rule out the possibility that the oil price will drop below 65 USD/barrel in the short term during this period.</b></p><p><b>First, on the demand side,</b>We believe that the marginal impact of this pandemic on global economic activity and oil demand is limited, but<b>We are more cautious about global oil demand in the second half of the year.</b>In addition, since the epidemic in China is under control and the epidemic in the United States is still spreading,<b>Brent crude oil prices are likely to remain relatively strong against WTI crude for the next 1-2 months.</b></p><p>Previously, considering the hedging of the two forces of \"herd immunity\" and \"epidemic counterattack\" (at present, it seems that the power of \"epidemic counterattack\" may be stronger). We expect crude oil demand to grow at a similar rate in the second half of the year as in the first half of the year. In the fourth quarter of this year, the service industry and related oil demand in the United States and major developed economies still have sufficient room for recovery. However, it should be noted that summer in the Northern Hemisphere is usually the season with the strongest demand for services such as transportation and tourism (the number of global flights peaks in July-September each year, Chart 6). This round of epidemic has affected the service industry in this quarter, so even if the impact of COVID-19 epidemic subsides in the fourth quarter, because winter itself is not conducive to the development of economic activities such as transportation, the global demand for petroleum products may be difficult to repair as quickly as previously expected.</p><p><b>Second, on the supply side, the US government's throwing reserves will increase the oil supply from October to December this year, during which the oil price is likely to be under pressure.</b>(And if the new round of epidemic in the United States in October is still not effectively controlled, the oil price may fall below $65/barrel due to the double negative supply and demand.)<b>However, if the impact of dumping reserves in the United States is not considered, the pattern of tight crude oil supply will remain in the second half of the year, which is the key reason why we have not significantly lowered the target range of oil prices.</b></p><p><b>We believe that the key factors (repairing corporate liabilities or national fiscal deficits, demand for economic transformation, etc.) that restrict U.S. oil companies and OPEC + Group from substantially increasing production in the second half of the year remain unchanged.</b>Up to now, the \"supply constraints\" of the global crude oil market are basically in line with our expectations.<b>In the United States,</b>U.S. crude oil inventories remain low, and the number of U.S. crude oil rigs is still weaker than historical performance (Chart 13);<b>In terms of OPEC +,</b>On July 18th, OPEC + agreed to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day month by month since August.<b>On September 1st, OPEC + announced that it would maintain its plan to increase production unchanged, but this range was still restrained.</b>OPEC's production in July this year was only 26.66 million barrels per day, which is still 3.2 million barrels per day (11% less) compared with the 2019 average, while the gap between the global oil consumption in July and the 2019 average according to EIA statistics was only 2.1 million barrels per day (only 2% less). Assuming that OPEC has increased production by 400,000 barrels per day per month since August, its production increase may still be less than the increase in global oil demand (Chart 14).</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ad43a3241848d00f3bbe66eba485218d\" tg-width=\"1080\" tg-height=\"458\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"></p><p><b>Third, in terms of financial environment,</b>Although the Federal Reserve has a high probability of implementing Taper within the year (November or December), the monetary easing environment in the United States will not be suddenly tightened. In addition, this round of Federal Reserve pays special attention to communication with the market, and the financial market in the United States may remain relatively stable in the second half of the year.<b>The probability of a sharp strength in the dollar is unlikely</b>(Refer to the report \"Next for the US Dollar\"). However, as the non-agricultural data in August interfered with market expectations to some extent, it is still necessary to be alert to the volatility risk of financial markets before and after the Fed's official announcement of Taper. Before and after the interest rate meeting of the Federal Reserve on September 22nd, as this meeting may announce the specific decision about Taper, the fall of risk appetite and the strength of the US dollar may cause the oil price to fall in the short term. At that time, the possibility of the oil price falling below $65/barrel cannot be ruled out.</p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> source：<a href=\"https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AVil3ZOAN09SphKITpHHrQ\">钟正生经济研究</a></p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/692502bb8980265a56b3787aba9119b3","relate_stocks":{"DWT":"三倍做空原油ETN","SCO":"二倍做空彭博原油指数ETF","USO":"美国原油ETF","DUG":"二倍做空石油与天然气ETF(ProShares)","DDG":"ProShares做空石油与天然气ETF","UCO":"二倍做多彭博原油ETF"},"source_url":"https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AVil3ZOAN09SphKITpHHrQ","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2168523595","content_text":"核心摘要\n今年7月以来，国际油价经历大幅震荡下行，这背后有三个关键词——病毒、飓风和美国政府。上述“三剑客”将对今年9月以后的国际油价产生复杂影响，本文重点讨论其影响并再次展望今年下半年油价走势。\n剑客一：Delta变异病毒。今年7月以后，全球新冠疫情因Delta变异病毒而进一步恶化，美国和中国作为全球前两大石油消费国均受影响。本轮疫情暂时仍未对全球石油消费造成明显冲击，但显著打击了需求预期。国际能源署（IEA）8月报告中，将2021年下半年原油需求预估下调55万桶/日。考虑到，今年6-7月全球石油消费维持强劲、全球航班数据显示8月需求不弱、主要经济体本轮防疫政策力度有限等，新一轮疫情对全球经济活动及石油需求的边际影响或有限。今年7-8月WTI原油期货非商业多头占比下滑至疫情以来新低。目前市场可能已经充分（甚至过度）pricein本轮疫情对于下半年石油需求的冲击。\n剑客二：飓风。8月29日登陆美国的艾达飓风广受市场关注。参考2005年卡特里娜飓风和2017年哈维飓风的影响，我们判断，本次艾达飓风对油价的影响整体有限：短期或表现为小幅拉升，因墨西哥湾石油生产活动受阻；但在未来的2-3周，路易斯安那州的持续性停电将主要影响石油加工厂的生产活动，或一定程度上减弱石油需求并对油价形成一定抑制作用。\n剑客三：美国政府抛储。8月23日美国能源部宣布拟至多出售2000万桶战略原油储备，于今年10月1日至12月15日之间交付，出售规模为2011年以来最高。我们梳理了1990年以来美国6次大规模出售战略石油储备对油价的影响。整体来看，美国出售战略石油储备或短期（半年内）抑制国际油价。1991年-2011年期间的五次出售均造成了油价下跌，WTI和布伦特油价最大跌幅分别为20-44%和16-45%区间，时间间隔在1-3个月左右。本次出售的规模和节奏或将大于和快于历史平均水平。同时，不排除拜登政府后续加大政策力度以抑制油价的可能性。美国政府抛储等行动可能对今年下半年油价形成较为明显的抑制作用。\n综合判断，我们下调2021年9-12月国际原油价格目标区间至65-75美元/桶区间，且不排除油价短期下探至65美元/桶下方的可能性。1）需求方面，虽然本轮疫情对全球经济活动和石油需求的边际影响有限，但我们对下半年全球石油需求的判断更加谨慎。此外，由于中国疫情已经控制而美国疫情仍在蔓延，布伦特原油价格可能在未来1-2个月仍保持对WTI原油的相对强势。2）供给方面，美国政府抛储将提高今年10-12月的石油供给，期间油价大概率承压。但若不考虑美国抛储的影响，下半年原油供给偏紧的格局仍将维持，这也是我们并未大幅下调油价目标区间的关键原因。3）金融环境方面，即使美联储在年内实施Taper，下半年美国金融市场或保持相对稳定，美元大幅走强的概率也不高。不过，仍需警惕的是，美联储正式宣布Taper前后金融市场的波动风险，届时不能排除油价跌破65美元/桶的可能性。\n风险提示：全球新冠疫情影响超预期，OPEC+增产幅度超预期，美联储政策超预期。\n今年7月以来，国际油价经历大幅震荡下行，这背后有三个关键词——病毒、飓风和美国政府（图表1）。\n7月5日，WTI原油和布伦特油价分别涨至76.3和77.2美元/桶的高位。但好景不长，Delta新冠变异病毒的全球扩散持续引发市场恐慌，叠加阿联酋与OPEC+协议出现短暂分歧，致使油价上行趋势终结。8月以来，国际油价连续三周下跌，其中8月11日美国白宫呼吁OPEC+增产，加剧了油价的下行趋势。8月20日WTI原油和布伦特原油分别跌至62.1和65.2美元/桶，距离7月5日高点分别下跌19%和16%。\n8月下旬，墨西哥钻机平台火灾与美国墨西哥湾“艾达”飓风对石油供给的扰动，助力油价强力反弹，WTI原油和布伦特原油在8月23-30日期间分别涨11%和13%，布伦特油价重新企稳于70美元/桶，但WTI油价持续低于70美元/桶，二者价差不断拉大。8月23日，美国能源部宣布拟于今年10-12月出售至多2000万桶战略原油储备，又为后续油价走势增添变数。\n\n我们在2021年6月判断，2021年下半年国际油价主要维持在70-80美元/桶区间，同时不排除油价短时间升破80美元/桶的可能（参考2021年6月30日报告《油价会不会是下一个“灰犀牛”？》）。但Delta变异病毒对中美等石油需求大国的冲击、美国飓风对供给的扰动、以及美国政府通过抛储等手段企图抑制油价，这些均超出我们此前的预期。上述“三剑客”将对今年9月以后的油价产生复杂影响，本文重点讨论其影响并再次展望今年下半年油价走势。\n剑客一：Delta变异病毒\n今年7月以后，全球新冠疫情因Delta变异病毒而进一步恶化（图表2），其中美国和中国作为全球前两大石油消费国，其疫情影响受到原油市场高度关注。中国方面，7月以前本土新增确诊数基本保持个位数，但8月上旬最严重时本土病例日增破百。在此背景下，多地政府重新加强防疫管控，市场开始担忧交通出行等活动减少及相关石油产品需求的减少。尤其是，6月和7月中国自沙特进口原油数量（季调）环比连续下滑6.8%和6.6%，且7月进口数量为2020年10月以来新低（图表3）。美国方面，新冠单日新增确诊数从7月以前的2万人以下，升至8月的10万人以上。疫情抬头叠加疫苗接种速度缓慢，使美国政府不得不推迟宣布经济的彻底解封。\n\n因变异病毒扰动，国际机构陆续下调2021年下半年原油需求预测，期货市场做多原油情绪受到抑制。国际能源署（IEA）在8月报告中将2021年下半年原油需求预估下调55万桶/日，将全年全球石油需求下调10万桶/日至9620万桶/日。EIA和OPEC的8月报告保持各自对2021年和2022年世界石油需求增长预测不变，但欧佩克预计2021年对欧佩克原油的需求将减少20万桶/日至2740万桶/日。若将EIA在8月的预测与6月比较，其预测2021年11月和12月全球石油产品消费量分别减少了35万桶/日和21万桶/日（图表4）。同时，原油市场持续price in新一轮疫情冲击，IPE期货交易结果显示，6月下旬以来，WTI非商业多头占比开始下滑，并继续创下疫情以来新低，多头的抛售也加剧了油价的下行（图表5）。\n\n我们判断，新一轮新冠疫情对全球经济活动及石油需求的边际影响可能有限。第一，今年6、7月全球石油消费在疫情扰动下维持强劲，本轮疫情对石油需求的冲击尚未显现。对比EIA在6月和8月更新的数据，今年6、7月全球石油实际消费量反而超预期增加，分别超过6月预测值36万桶/日和30万/桶日。第二，高频数据显示8月全球交通需求不弱。例如，Flightradar24统计的全球航班数在7月和8月期间并未大幅减少，且当前水平已经接近2019年疫情前的水平（图表6）。第三，主要经济体本轮防疫政策力度有限，继而对经济活动和石油需求的影响有限。中国、日本等亚洲经济体短期升级了防疫管控，但力度仍较有限；英国、德国和美国等欧美经济体在疫苗保护下趋于“躺平”。据牛津大学Our World in Data网站测算，新一轮疫情爆发后，主要经济体政府防控疫情的“严格指数”（Stringency Index）并未显著超过今年年初水平（图表7）。\n总之，本轮疫情暂时仍未对全球石油消费造成明显冲击，但显著打击了需求预期。不过，目前市场可能已经充分（甚至过度）price in本轮疫情对于下半年石油需求的冲击。\n\n剑客二：飓风\n8月29日，美国墨西哥湾地区遭遇四级飓风“艾达”，导致墨西哥湾近海90-95%的石油生产关闭（涉及产能约170万桶/日）。该飓风在登陆16小时后降级为“热带风暴”，但其对路易斯安那州的电网造成“灾难性”破坏。预计停电将持续3周左右，期间或导致石油加工和化工厂停产。\n历史上，飓风对油价的影响并不确定，因飓风可能同时影响石油供需，且美国政府还可能通过出售战略石油储备以平抑油价。2005年“卡特里娜”飓风（五级）和2017年哈维飓风（四级）是美国历史上对经济影响最大的两次飓风。2005年美国飓风在一周内拉升油价，因飓风主要破坏了石油生产和供给；但美国政府随后出售战略石油储备，令油价持续2-3个月下行（图表8）。2017年美国飓风在一周内使油价小幅下跌，原因是飓风主要影响炼油厂生产，意味着炼油厂对原油的需求减弱；而随后战略石油储备的出售并未阻止下半年油价上行趋势（图表9）。\n\n总之，本次艾达飓风对油价的影响整体有限：短期或表现为小幅拉升，因墨西哥湾石油生产活动受阻；但在未来的2-3周，路易斯安那州的持续性停电将主要影响石油加工厂的生产活动，或一定程度上减弱石油需求，这或对油价形成一定抑制作用。\n剑客三：美国政府抛储\n8月23日，美国能源部化石能源和碳管理办公室发布公告，计划在9月13日之前确定至多出售2000万桶战略原油储备的合同，并于今年10月1日至12月15日之间交付。这次出售规模为2011年以来最高。\n我们梳理了1990年以来美国历次大规模出售战略石油储备对油价的影响（图表10）。1990年以来美国政府进行过6次规模在1500-3000万桶的战略石油储备出售，触发因素包括战争、飓风等紧急事件，以及缓解财政赤字、缓解季节性用油紧张、或讨好选民等。\n第一，整体来看，美国出售战略石油储备或短期（半年内）抑制油价，但难改中期（半年以上）趋势。1991年-2011年期间的五次出售均造成了油价下跌，WTI和布伦特油价最大跌幅分别为20-44%和16-45%区间，最大跌幅时间间隔在1-3个月左右、平均为52天。而2017年哈维飓风后，由于战略石油储备出售规模较小（仅1500万桶）、且释放节奏较慢（持续约4个月），油价不跌反涨。\n第二，如果抛储规模较大（如2000年和2011年均超过3000万桶）或者抛售节奏较快（如1991年仅耗时2个月），则相应油价调整幅度也越大。\n第三，美国抛储期间的WTI和布伦特油价走势并未发生明显背离，说明美国抛储将对原油市场产生全球性的影响。\n\n我们认为，本次战略石油储备出售的主要原因在于，拜登政府希望抑制油价以缓解通胀压力。\n首先，油价增速与美国通胀指标走势高度相关。从美国CPI的结构出发，据BLS在7月公布的数据，能源分项（包括能源品和能源服务）占美国CPI的比重为7.2%，交通运输服务分项占比5.3%。我们测算，在7月美国CPI同比增速的5.4%中，二者合计拉动就有了2个百分点。历史数据显示，美国CPI与油价月度同比增速走势高度相关（图表11），因为除能源品外的其他商品和服务价格通常是相对稳定的。\n其次，8月11日拜登演讲时表达了对美国汽油价格高企的担忧。他表示，未来美国将加强对石油市场的监管，打击哄抬油价的违法行为。注意到，历史上美国汽油和原油价格走势基本匹配，但2021年美国汽油价格涨幅明显超过原油，尤其7月以来WTI原油价格回调并未带动汽油价格回落（图表12）。同时，拜登“喊话”OPEC称，疫情后实施的减产计划应该随着全球经济复苏而扭转，以降低石油产品消费价格。美国国家安全顾问沙利文当日也表示，OPEC+计划自8月开始逐月增产40万桶/日“远远不够”，且表示白宫正在就竞争性市场的重要性与欧佩克成员国进行接触，这一度引发市场对于美国干预OPEC+生产决策的恐慌。\n\n总之，如果本次战略石油储备出售规模为2000万桶，且将于不到3个月的时间里释放，那么这次出售的规模和节奏将大于和快于历史平均水平。同时考虑到，拜登政府当前有强烈意愿抑制油价以缓解通胀压力，不排除其后续加大政策力度或出台更多措施的可能性。综合来看，美国政府抛储等行动，可能对今年下半年油价形成较为明显的抑制作用。\n下调今年9-12月油价目标区间至65-75美元/桶\n综合判断，我们下调今年9-12月国际原油价格目标区间至65-75美元/桶区间，且不排除在此期间油价短期下探至65美元/桶下方的可能性。\n第一，需求方面，我们认为本轮疫情对全球经济活动和石油需求的边际影响有限，但我们对下半年全球石油需求的判断更加谨慎。此外，由于中国疫情已经控制而美国疫情仍在蔓延，布伦特原油价格可能在未来1-2个月仍保持对WTI原油的相对强势。\n此前，考虑到“群体免疫”和“疫情反扑”两股力量的对冲（目前看来，“疫情反扑”的力量可能会更强一些）。我们预计原油需求在下半年或保持与上半年相近的增长速度。今年四季度，美国及主要发达经济体服务业以及相关石油需求仍有充分复苏空间。但需要注意，北半球夏季通常是交通运输、旅游业等服务业需求最旺盛的季节（全球航班数量在每年7-9月达到峰值，图表6）。而本轮疫情影响了本季度的服务业，所以即使四季度新冠疫情影响消退，由于冬季本身并不利于交通出行等经济活动的开展，因此全球石油产品需求或难如此前预期得那样快速修复。\n第二，供给方面，美国政府抛储将提高今年10-12月的石油供给，期间油价大概率承压。（且若10月美国新一轮疫情仍未得到有效控制，油价可能因供需双重利空而跌破65美元/桶。）但若不考虑美国抛储的影响，下半年原油供给偏紧的格局仍将维持，这也是我们并未大幅下调油价目标区间的关键原因。\n我们认为，下半年限制美国石油企业和OPEC+集团大幅增产的关键因素（修复企业负债或国家财政赤字、经济转型需求等）不变。截至目前，全球原油市场“供给约束”情况基本符合我们的预期。美国方面，美国原油库存仍然维持低位，美国原油钻机数量仍然弱于历史表现（图表13）；OPEC+方面，7月18日OPEC+同意自8月开始逐月增产40万桶/日，9月1日OPEC+宣布维持增产计划不变，但这一幅度仍然是克制的。今年7月OPEC产量仅2666万桶/日，比2019年平均水平相比仍有320万桶/日的差距（少11%），而EIA统计的7月全球石油消费量与2019年均值的差距仅为210万桶/日（仅少2%）。假设OPEC自8月开始每月增产40万桶/日，其增产幅度或仍不及全球石油需求的增加（图表14）。\n\n第三，金融环境方面，虽然美联储大概率在年内（11或12月）开始实施Taper，但美国货币宽松环境不会骤然收紧，加上本轮美联储格外注重与市场的沟通，下半年美国金融市场或保持相对稳定，美元大幅走强的概率不大（参考报告《美元下一步》）。不过，由于8月非农数据一定程度干扰了市场预期，仍需警惕美联储正式宣布Taper前后金融市场的波动风险。9月22日美联储议息会议前后，由于本次会议可能宣布有关Taper的具体决策，风险偏好回落和美元走强或使油价短期下挫，届时不能排除油价跌破65美元/桶的可能性。","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"DDG":0.9,"CLmain":0.9,"UWTIF":0.9,"DWTIF":0.9,"BZmain":0.9,"DWT":0.9,"USO":0.9,"DUG":0.9,"QMmain":0.9,"UCO":0.9,"SCO":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2816,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}
