Rory Johnston - Latest News and Information
Technology Pulse
EMAIL DIGESTS
Daily
Every morning
Weekly
Tuesday recap
EMAIL DIGESTS
Daily
Every morning
Weekly
Tuesday recap
Last month I wrote a column about whether Trump could take credit for low oil prices. Trump loves to talk about how much he wants/pushes for low prices, but I argued his aggressive foreign policy was a massive bullish driver of crude prices. And now this https://t.co/vCEpqbtRdZ
If you have crude inventory right now you’re selling every single barrel in your tanks (& buying back 6 mths down curve for $30/bbl less pocketing the diff) If you’re not, you’re in a really tough spot because you actually need...
The Brent crude prompt timespread is currently over *$9/bbl*, a new all-time record. Timespreads measure the steepness of the crude futures curve, which at the front (prompt) reflects how tight—loose if neg—the spot market is. The oil market has literally never been...
Statements like this from Trump will make the oil market reaction *worse* No one who has any idea how the oil market works is buying it—all this does is make it seem like Trump believes it, which means the base case...
Behold, the global economy cracking. Brent crude approaching $110/bbl, up >$16 higher since Friday’s close. https://t.co/exH8mOBUXy
Crude >$100 I’d say here we go, but honestly can’t believe we’re still going. https://t.co/14yKcmsMOq
The volume of crude production that Iraq has *already* shut-in is larger than the peak of *feared* [but never realized] Russian supply loss in early 2022 that spiked crude prices above $120 per barrel.
I, too, believe that shopping traffic through the Strait will begin to pick up again, but “regular” isn’t a word that will apply again so long as the war continues And ships will only do so because prices and economic incentives...
This galaxy brain it’s-all-about-China’s-oil talking point drives me *insane* Only reason China was able to buy so much discounted crude from Ven/Irn/Ruz was because of US sanctions, largely imposed by the Trump admin(!), which scared off other buyers and left them...
Wow, one whole large tanker?! Need to up that >100-fold and just simply to return to normal. And that’s not counting the massive backlog of ships, disruptions, and durable damage to both regional infrastructure and global supply chains that will take months...
Axios: “The US and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war” 👀⏰ Nuclear material a predictable a boots-on-the-ground pretext, but what’s most worrying to me...
Been saying this for a while: Guyana (and by extension Exxon) was a big collateral winner of Venezuela developments. https://t.co/QzfRIJKK1F
The best—only?—argument that Trump is bearish for oil prices is that OPEC+ wouldn't have hiked crude production as aggressively last year in a world in which Harris was sitting in the White House.
Roses are red, violets are blue. You can avoid a price collapse despite an oil glut if crude on water's rising, too. 💘 Happy Valentine's Day, oil watchers.
Maximum Pressure 2: More max, more pressure, another round of threatening Chinese sanctioned oil imports. https://t.co/UNNBJOFLTx
Enbridge a no on appetite to build proposed bitumen pipeline to Canada’s west coast “I don’t think investors or the infrastructure companies should be taking on the risk of development in jurisdictions that have historically created a challenge” Still some N Gateway...
🛢️ OIL CONTEXT WEEKLY 🛢️ 📈📉Crude prices rise on Hormuz advisory before falling back on the prospect of longer US-Iran talks, with headlines dotted with a flurry of US sanctions relief on Venezuela’s oil sector. Summary below, link to full report in...
This is actually the best way to describe the difference between GL 49 and GL 50 (the two Venezuela-related General Licenses issued by OFAC today)
Can't help but notice who ISN'T on this list of companies who just gained access to invest and operate in Venezuelan upstream. https://t.co/qrLcy4bd48
This is an interesting oil market transparency development. Argus "will assess three grades of Venezuelan crude oil, Merey, Hamaca and Boscan, for delivery to the U.S. Gulf coast, which Argus said is now the most likely destination for Venezuelan cargoes" https://t.co/RaKzvH53Rp
Brent crude option skew—which many have been treating as a proxy of oil market Iran risk perception (see comp to June 2025)—continues to deflate. Down more than half from a week ago, with prices down ~$3/bbl from Wednesday high. Gives a sense...
Singaporean light distillate (eg gasoline/naphtha) inventories are *very* high right now. (seasonal chart, million barrels) https://t.co/ZgYbX7ZU9F
30-40% growth *from what baseline*?! Venezuelan production has been all over the map over the past few months—some very flattering base effects from which to cherry pick.
Again I’ll say: Virtually anything is physically *possible* in the oil market. Far fewer things are economically viable, let alone profitable. This is a nonsense take.
Secretary Wright, the only way to save Venezuela's oil industry—and I say this as an entirely disinterested party—is to tie any US support to reqs that the VZ oil ministry publicly publish regular, detailed oil industry statistics Simple bulk CSV file...
Sure, the IEA demand forecast update was negative... but pretty inconsequential in the scheme of the supply developments that are actually currently driving the oil market. https://t.co/P0KD7cPlR4
I’ll be in Calgary in early March for a discussion hosted by the Canadian Heavy Oil Association about what recent developments in Venezuela mean for Canada’s oil industry. Join us! And drop me a line if you want to grab a...
🇨🇦🛢️🇺🇸 US Canadian crude imports by importing region and crude grade quality Total US plateauing/rolling over Midwest still key Canadian market, but entirely saturated USGC was the pressure valve, but fell back when TMX opened (first went to West Coast, now increasingly China)...
🇨🇦🏭⛽️ Canadian refineries are running strong in the West, have seen operations slip faster than seasonally normal in Ontario, and have had a bouncing start to the year in Quebec & Eastern Canada. https://t.co/CY8K1qOKIh
US refinery heavy crude sourcing from Canada (red) vs Venezuela (pink), compared to refinery capacity (blue) 2010 on the left, 2024 on the right https://t.co/nKOX5T7tGn
US Gulf Coast refineries (PADD3) have continued to grow distillation capacity while dramatically shrinking imports, displacing imported light and medium crudes with domestic light tight oil from the Shale Patch https://t.co/6EezXrbiQL
The Brent (white) and WTI (blue) futures curves are telling rhyming but importantly different stories right now Both have a backwardated front, depressed belly into contango past 2027 But Brent curve seeing steepening prompt backwardation (70c/bbl now) while WTI weakening (20c) https://t.co/5ZyF18ZPDO
🇲🇽🏭 Mexican refineries are processing more crude right now than any time since 2014. Thanks most obviously to the start-up of the Dos Bocas refinery, but helped along by high utilization across other large facilities. https://t.co/wEpnmiM8He
📊 Fresh N. American Oil Data 📊 Continental petroleum output hits fresh high-water mark with Canadian supply reaching all-time highs amidst a bounceback in oilsands activity, offsetting flat-ish production in the US and Mexico Check out the Full report: https://t.co/7Xk7El7r1l
