IEA's Oil Market Report comes out this week

[dan_s]

IEA is scheduled to publish their monthly "Oil Market Report" on Friday, October 12.

On October 4, Reuters reported major oil producers must take "the right steps" to ease supply concerns that have lifted crude prices to a four-year high, the head of the International Energy Agency told Reuters on Thursday. "It is now high time for all the players, especially those key producers and oil exporters, to consider the situation and take the right steps to comfort the market, otherwise I don't see anybody benefiting," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a telephone interview. "Expensive energy is back at a bad time for the global economy," Birol said.

On October 4, Reuters reported oil traders have piled into wagers that U.S. crude oil could surge to $100 a barrel by next year, a milestone that until recently many considered unthinkable due to record U.S. production growth and relatively flat global demand. But the imminent return of U.S. sanctions on Iran and bottlenecks keeping U.S. oil from getting to market have fueled a rally that has taken benchmark oil prices to four-year highs. While big producing nations say supply is ample, hedge funds and speculators are increasingly skeptical of that argument, believing the market could rally further as sanctions on Iran's crude exports return on Nov. 4. The bullishness is visible in the U.S. options market. The number of open positions on $100 December 2019 WTI call options has risen by 30% in the last week to a record 31,000, according to CME data. "Over the last two weeks, there's been a lot more evidence that even some of the larger customers - India and China - are not going to be buying Iranian crude from November," said John Saucer, vice president of research and analysis at Mobius Risk Group. As a result, he said, "these sanctions are likely to be a lot more effective than people thought."

On October 2, Reuters reported repairs to a dock at Venezuela's main oil export port will take at least another month to complete following a tanker collision more than a month ago, further restraining the OPEC member nation's crude exports, according to sources and shipping data. A minor incident in late August forced state-run oil company PDVSA to shut the Jose port's South dock, one of three used to ship heavy and upgraded oil to customers. Jose port typically handles about 70% of Venezuela's total crude exports, which in September declined 14% compared with the previous month to 1.1 million b/d, according to Eikon data.

On October 2, Reuters reported Russian oil output reached 11.4 b/d in September, a post-Soviet high, Energy Ministry data showed on Tuesday. Production rose from 11.2 b/d in August and topped the record high 11.2 million b/d hit in October 2016.
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There is a lot of good stuff in the IEA's monthly report, but always keep in mind that the European countries that pay the bills for IEA want low oil prices. < My 2 cents worth.