market folly

We're posting up notes from the Sohn London conference 2017.  Next up is Pierre Andurand of Andurand Capital who gave a presentation on oil.


Pierre Andurand's Sohn London Presentation

Oil prices will go much higher than consensus. In the last 18 months there has been a lot of negative hype about oil prices. The two most discussed factors have been US shale production and electric vehicles. US shale has been called the internet of oil.

Demand for oil has rarely been as strong as it is today. Demand is as high as it was 10 years ago when there was a lot of talk about the super cycle and demand growth. New oil discoveries are at all-time lows.

Supply will peak before demand at current oil prices. Oil demand will peak sometime between 2027 and 2035, much later than the consensus view. The supply of electric vehicles will be constrained by a shortage of batteries.

Supply will peak in 2020. Oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s. They stabilised in the 1990s making a lower peak with US shale discoveries in the early 2000s but they have been declining since then. We are finding 10x less oil than we were 20 years ago. Global reserves are going down fast. We have a 100bn barrels (or 10% less) of reserves than we had 10 years ago when everyone was worried about peak oil. The largest declines have been in ex-US small oil fields. The rate of decline will quicken and supply will be less than expected.

Nobody wants to invest in oil projects that take 6 years to come to market and 20 years to make a profit. Against expectations, US production is flat this year. Productivity per well will go down. We could need $100 a barrel oil to mitigate the fall in supply.

If OPEC goes back to full production, there would still be a deficit of half a million barrels per day. Inventories are low.

OPEC is unlikely to go back to full production leaving a deficit of 1m barrels per day. In this scenario oil could easily reach $80 per barrel.

If there is a geo-political event in the Middle East like a major war, we could see $150 per barrel. There are a lot of potential downside risks to supply. In-fighting in the Saudi Royal Family.  An Iran-Saudi war. The US could impose sanctions on Iran which could push oil price oil prices up.


Be sure to check out the rest of the presentations from Sohn London 2017.