The thought occurs that we may not see a typical fall shoulder season and as such the market may be surprised by upcoming inventory draws. Previous data has shown in some years that the fall shoulder season can surprise with modest builds or even inventory declines in crude. (FE makes some good points on this subject see below)
Trading on simple seasonality doesn't always work especially in the current oil market where re-balancing can take on different shapes and forms.
If seasonality can surprise to the downside as it did this summer with elevated levels of imports damping crude inventory withdrawals consider the reverse could be true this fall shoulder season with the unwinding of arbitrage imported barrels.
We know this is already occurring as per saintsinneridiot post today:
'A rare opening of an export window for crude moving from the U.S. Gulf to Western Europe has caused a flurry of interest among oil traders, with at least two securing vessels.
On Tuesday, global marker Brent's premium traded to as much as $2.50 a barrel over U.S. crude futures, the most since late February.
The widening of the premium presented an arbitrage opportunity, prompting oil traders to secure vessels to send crude eastward across the Atlantic, sources said. The shipments are shaping up to be one of the more notable batches of U.S. crude exports bound for Europe since a ban on them was lifted in December 2015.'
U.S. crude exports bound for Europe
We live in a different world with the lifting of the US export ban creating arbitrage and opportunity that can dramatically change U.S storage levels potentially overturning some of the conventional wisdom regarding seasonality. Keep an eye on the weekly DOE export figure as it has started to rise even though the DOE has not historically needed to be overly concerned with exports given the prior U.S oil ban this data is now becoming key. (We may see better reporting and modelling in the the future by the DOE improving the current data as exports increase.) If this figure is understated as FE believes Sep/Oct EIA weekly reports could get interesting especially with the traditional decline in imports by refineries during this period.(as FE aptly states - refineriers will have long ago booked fewer cargoes for arrival in August and September.)
A lot more is occurring then just upcoming OPEC talks, the oil market is re-balancing, inventory is being drawn in many countries including floating storage while supply is rolling over. If the market does look ahead with the likelihood of a supply deficit emerging in 2017, then the crude oil days of being below $50 are very much numbered. I suspect oil will move substantially higher over the next 12 months!
------------------
FE snippets on crude:
-we think that a
bottom has been put in place for crude oil
Crude oil inventories should be shifting lower, and prices higher, with the next few reports. The
speed at which those crude oil inventories fall may surprise some.
-
net barrels flow is still telling us that inventories should be trending lower
the flow of net barrels continues to suggest that inventory draws are imminent
-
Total barrels in (domestic production + imports) less total barrels out (refinery use + exports) is
still suggesting that more barrels are going out than going in.
-unlikely that imports should be trending higher exactly at a time
when
refineries are ready to gear down into the fall maintenance season,
and will have long ago booked fewer cargoes for arrival in August and September.
As such, we think the
import values will shift lower with the next
few reports, lending further strength to our
view that barrels in is less than
barrels out (i.e. inventory draws).
-Even with some of the higher imports of late into the U.S., those
imported barrels are not materializing out of a vacuum. They have to come from somewhere, and every barrel that the U.S. imports means one less barrel to go elsewhere in the world.This is something
else we have been trying to emphasize in that it is going to be the
global balance which ultimately dictates the direction for crude oil prices. Those fundamentals always win, but sometimes it can take longer to see this because the data that tells us about
global fundamental balances does not show up in a timely fashion.
-We fully understand why the market obsesses with the weekly U.S. data
simply because it is of generally good quality and is high frequency. The
market is searching for as many data points as it can devour every day, and
the U.S. data is a good weekly snapshot that provides high visibility and an
opportunity for the market to churn liquidity and move prices. That said,
we think that
prices will begin to churn higher with the next few weekly
U.S. reports as the direction for crude oil inventories will be downward and the speed by which these fall may surprise.
-We further suggest another possibility in that
arbitrage opportunities might be creating a situation where oil players are importing more barrels now, keeping inventories higher than might
be expected, to export more later. If this turns out to be the case, U.S. crude oil exports may rise significantly in the months ahead,acting as a strong downward drag on U.S. crude oil inventories.