Transcript
Jeff Curry Carlisle (0:00)
Foreign.
Paul Chapman (0:05)
Welcome to the HC Commodities Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the commodities sector and the people within it. I'm your host Paul Chapman. This podcast is produced by HC Group, a global search firm dedicated to the commodities sector. Jeff Curry Carlisle welcome back to the show. For an emergency podcast, as we're terming them, to do two things really. One is to get your current take on what's going on in the market and then secondly to start that process, which is very hard at these early stages, but to divine what do you think the medium and long term impacts of this are? Particularly in the context of our last conversation about the great repricing a rollover from infinitely scalable tech back into assets of recognition that perhaps we've underinvested in molecules in general. And as your recent piece on said, they can't be printed. So lots to discuss. But can we just start with the current events and I'd love to kind of know what are the key questions you're looking to get answered to inform your view on what's going on?
Jeff Curry Carlisle (1:16)
Well, I think there's two questions. One is how quickly and how much and for whom can you restore the flows in the Straits to and I think that the misperception is that the Straits are closed. They're not closed. Chinese barrels are flowing through them right now. So it's open to Chinese and now Indian barrels. And so the China block continues to be supplied, the US Block doesn't. And if we use what we learned in the Red Sea as an example, you never did see the flows fully restored. After two years of military action by the US against the Houthis. They could not reopen the Red Sea to western traffic. And if that were the case, you're Talking about a 5 to 10 million barrel per day disruption for a very long period of time. I think given the magnitude that you would find ways to get around it. SPR is a drop in the bucket. It's not going to do anything. And so when we look at this, that's the first question you're going to have to ask. I don't want to get in the speculation game on this. All I know you've already done so much damage and that's what's not being priced. If we think about the ability of the US to open this again. They were unable to open against the Houthis, but I just want to make so people have a visual on this. This is going up the other side of the strait's got hills, caves. It's a really treacherous, arduous task to be able to open this from a military perspective, it's not something you can bomb your way out of because ultimately you would end up bombing the strait. Somebody sinks a ship, somebody mines it, it's a really delicate situation. So let's just look beyond that and let's just ask how is the market ability to deal with this? And the answer is you're getting already by the time you're into this month of March, you're beginning to run on fumes. If you just look at all the glut that was out there, it was last year. Let's say you've built up relative to the lows of the 2019 through 2026 cycles, you've built out somewhere close to around 800 million barrels. I'm going to give that's what, you know, the biggest of the oil glut people put it at. You will have dusted that down to the 2022 lows in another week. And if this goes on for another month, you're down to minimum operating levels. So by the end of April, mid April, you're in a really serious, precarious situation unless something changes. And I think even if you had a ceasefire tomorrow, you've shut in wells all over the Gulf and the damage is substantial. You have refineries, gas fields. This morning about the pars field being hit. And I think we're up to 108 right now because the Iranians are saying gloves are off. And the fact that we're not at 108 and not 200 is mind boggling. And I think the other important point to watch that I'm focused on is the fiscal markets have disconnected from the financial markets. You know, oman traded yesterday 173. And even with the potential for gloves off, you're only at 108 on Brent right now. There's a huge disconnect. And I think the other issue is this thing is now spreading. I like to call it molecular contagion. And, and it's moving around the world. It's gone intercontinental. And so those are the key things I'm watching. So summarize it. What is the status of the Straits? I'm not a military tactician. I just go, they failed with the Houthis in the Red Sea. Why do you think they're going to be successful here? The Iranians are just playing the exact same playbook that the Houthis played for the past two years. Then the second issue is the question of your inventory coverage. The best you're likely to do is make it to the end of April with the most bearish of the oil supply glut scenarios out there. More likely than not, you're running into problems already in key product markets. Which brings me to the third issue, which is asking when are you going to see a convergence between the physical and the financial markets? And I think we're within days, you know, weeks of that convergence beginning to happen.
