Phil Flynn: Can't Get Away From Greece

Global oil markets are falling as the Greece problem continues to weigh on market sentiment. Market odds put a Greek default at 98% and rising. The Wall Street Journal reported, "In Greece, the cabinet of Prime Minister George Papandreou met on Sunday to discuss growing concerns over the nation's ability to meet its fiscal targets. The so called "troika" of international lenders the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission are withholding the next disbursement of aid to Greece until the government comes up with a credible plan to meet its deficit-reduction commitments."


In a sharply worded statement released after the cabinet meeting Sunday, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the government takes full responsibility for the implementation of the agreed program, but also warned that Greece shouldn't be the "scapegoat" used by European institutions to hide their inability to manage the euro-zone crisis." So take that and please write me a check! The Greek government knows that it is going to be very messy for the Euro Zone if they are allowed to fail so at some point they may just tell Europe to either come up with more cash or face the consequences that will come when Greek goes belly up.....Read the entire article.


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Demand Concerns, European Debt Crisis Continue to Pressure Oil Bulls

Negative statements on future oil demand estimations by OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri and remarks from European finance ministers that they are ruling out the use of stimulus measures to combat the European debt crisis had crude oil trading much lower in Sunday evenings overnight trading session. Stochastics and the RSI remain overbought, diverging and are turning neutral to bearish hinting that sideways to lower prices are possible near term.

Closes below last Monday's low crossing at 85.17 would confirm that the corrective rally off August's low has ended while opening the door for a possible test of August's low crossing at 76.61 later this fall. If November extends the rally off August's low, the May-July downtrend line crossing near 91.81 is the next upside target.

First resistance is last Tuesday's high crossing at 90.60. Second resistance is the May-July downtrend line crossing near 91.81. First support is last Monday's low crossing at 85.17. Second support is the reaction low crossing at 83.47. Crude oil pivot point for Monday morning is 88.47.


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Crude Oil Starts The Week Down as European Debt Crisis Looms Large

Crude oil starts the week on a sour note falling for a third day, the longest decline in a month, as most traders feel that Europe will not shake off their debt crisis and economic growth will continue to be under pressure. Combine that with the return of normal production in the Gulf of Mexico as hurricane season appears to be winding down.

Crude oil was lower in Sunday evenings overnight trading as it extends the decline off last Wednesday's high. Stochastics and the RSI are still overbought, diverging and are turning bearish signaling that sideways to lower prices are possible near term.

Closes below last Tuesday's low crossing at 83.20 would confirm that the corrective rally off August's low has ended while opening the door for a possible test of August's low crossing at 76.15 later this fall. If October renews the rebound off August's low, the May-July downtrend line crossing near 92.85 is the next upside target.

First resistance is last Wednesday's high crossing at 90.48. Second resistance is the May-July downtrend line crossing near 92.85. First support is last Tuesday's low crossing at 83.20. Second support is the reaction low crossing at 82.95. Crude oil pivot point for Monday morning trading is 87.46.

Crude Oil Retreats amid Rate Hike Concerns in China

Heightened speculations on rate hikes in China have weighed on financial markets. Asian equities plunged amid worries that slowdown in Chinese growth will affect corporate profits while European bourses fluctuated between gains and losses. In the commodity sector, the front month contract for WTI crude oil fell after faltering below 86. Gold, however, climbed for another day to as high as 1377. Sovereign woes in the European periphery remained under the spotlight.

The market focus has once again turned to China. Zhong Jiyin, an economist with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences wrote in China Daily that the country needs to raise interest rates by another 200 bps to curb inflation, given existing excess liquidity. Although the government has implemented a series of measures, including increasing RRR and raising margins for certain commodity futures, the impacts on inflation are not significant and CPI rose to 4.4% y/y in October, The market has been speculating that a rate hike can come over the next few weeks. According to Zhong, raising RRR may help ease the situation but is 'not enough to reverse it. The increase in the required reserve ratios for banks can prevent the rise of excess liquidity and ensure that the situation does not deteriorate further'. It will 'do little to get rid of the existing excess liquidity. Increasing interest rates is a common measure taken to check inflation'.

In Europe, it's obvious that the bailout for Ireland failed to stem contagion. The market currently expects the EU will need to rescue more peripheral European countries with Portugal being the one after Ireland. Indeed, apart from Portugal, CDS spreads and yield spreads between Spanish/Italian bonds and German bunds have continued to soar. According to Bloomberg news, Spain's banks may struggle to refinance about 85B euro in debt in 2011 and this may trigger the country to seek a bailout from EU/IMF.

China' rate hike and European sovereign concerns have dominated the headlines, overshadowing macroeconomic data. Germany's unemployment fell -9K to 3.14M, the lowest level since December 1992, in November. Unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 7.5%. We will have housing, manufacturing and confidence data in the NY session. Growth in S&P/Case-Shiller Composite 20 index may have eased to +1% in September. Chicago Fed will report its manufacturing PMI which probably dipped -0.7 to 59.9 in November. Consumer Confidence is expected to have improved to 52.7 in November from 50.2 in the prior month.

Posted courtesy of Oil N'Gold

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Venezuelan Black Sea Oil Route Threatens European Supplies

Deliveries of Venezuelan crude to Belarus from the Black Sea may pose a threat to Russian oil supplies bound for central Europe, Russia’s pipeline operator OAO Transneft said. Transneft is preparing a letter to the European Union explaining the situation, Igor Dyomin, a Transneft spokesman, said by telephone in Moscow. “The decision has increased risks to Russian oil deliveries to Europe,” he said.

Belarus reversed the direction of one line in the Druzhba link’s southern branch on Nov. 21 to carry crude east to the Mozyr refinery, Dyomin said. The branch’s parallel line continues to carry Russian oil west to the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary and Germany, he said.
Russia and Belarus, which are developing a customs union with Kazakhstan, have clashed over oil export taxes as Russia moved to roll back a discount that allowed Belarus to benefit from cheap oil supplies. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the duty may be canceled once a free-trade area is created.

Belarus plans to take delivery of as much as 9 million metric tons of crude from Venezuela next year, a Belarusian presidential administration official said in September. Belarus’s use of the line means Transneft won’t be able to increase deliveries via Druzhba’s southern branch to meet additional winter demand and won’t have an alternative route in case of an accident, Dyomin said.

Transneft supplies to Europe have continued uninterrupted through the second line of Druzhba, which is operating at slightly more than its capacity of 17.5 million tons a year, Dyomin said. The crude Belarus received was Russian oil that Venezuela obtained via a swap at the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, Dyomin said. The 80,000 ton cargo was carried from the Black Sea to Belarus via Ukraine’s Odessa-Brody pipeline, Dyomin said. The next delivery, of 78,200 tons of oil, is scheduled to arrive at the Odessa port on Nov. 25, Kommersant-Ukraine said yesterday.

“Why Belarus can’t take that same oil via Druzhba is beyond my understanding,” Dyomin said.


Posted courtesy of Bloomberg News. Reporter Stephen Bierman can be contacted in Moscow at sbierman1@bloomberg.net.



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Michael Bagley: $100 Oil to Counter Dollar Weakness?

From Michael Bagley Oil Price.Com.....

The 13 percent decline in the Dollar Index since June has led some OPEC members to call for oil to rise to $100 a barrel. The U.S. currency's weakness means the "real price" of oil is about $20 less than current levels, Venezuelan Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said last week at an OPEC meeting in Vienna. The group, which accounts for 40 percent of global crude output, left targets unchanged and called for greater adherence to quotas, which are being exceeded by a supertanker load a day. OPEC is also concerned about the dollar because as the dollar weakens, prices go up. They're not paying any attention to production discipline.

The Dollar Index, which tracks the currency against those of six U.S. trading partners, has dropped 6.1 percent in the past month. The nominal value of OPEC's net oil export revenue will be $818 billion in 2011, 10 percent more than this year, according to U.S. Energy Department forecasts. Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya's National Oil Corp., said a higher crude price would help OPEC offset the loss of revenue from the weaker dollar.
"We would love to see $100 a barrel," Ghanem said last week in Vienna. "We're losing real income. Libya in particular would like to see a higher oil price."

Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah said in an interview that $70 to $85 is the "most comfortable" range, while his Algerian counterpart, Youcef Yousfi, said between $90 and $100 is "reasonable." Speculation that the Federal Reserve may further loosen monetary policy through so called quantitative easing has weakened the dollar. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said today the central bank may expand asset purchases because inflation is too low and unemployment too high in the U.S. OPEC kept its production target at 24.845 million barrels a day at its meeting last week. Output from the 11 members bound by quotas exceeds the group's ceiling by 1.9 million barrels a day, or about the same as produced by Nigeria or Angola, according to Bloomberg estimates.

Given our line of business, we receive quite a number of emails asking for our picks on energy and oil stocks. While we don't offer stock tips, I might suggest a resource for those of you who are looking for some additional insight and assistance. We have no paid relationship or affiliation with Pennystocks.com but Peter Leeds seems to be on a roll at the moment based on the charts and numbers I have seen lately so if you have some extra cash to put to work, you may want to visit his site so see what they are doing over there. www.pennystocks.com

In the meantime, As more details seep out about the European Union crisis meetings last April regarding Greece and the future of the euro, the key role of European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet in hammering out the compromises to stabilize the situation has become clearer. It also has made the picking of his successor that much harder. Trichet, whose term expires next year, has always been the ultimate fixer. He cut his first policy teeth in the 1980s as director of the French Treasury and head of the Paris Club, where he steered government debtors through the Latin American debt crisis of that period.

But he also put on central bank gravitas as head of the Banque de France and gained sufficient credibility to be acceptable to the Germans and other conservative northern Europeans as the second president of the Frankfurt-based European Central Bank. Trichet's eight-year term is due to expire in November 2011, and the jockeying for his succession is already well under way. For more insightful analysis on ECB moves, I encourage you to read further below where my colleague, Darrell Delamaide, has offered his insights as to who the players on the board are for the next president of the ECB.

Read more great post from Michael Bagley at Global Intelligence Report.Com


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Crude Oil Drops a Second Day on U.S. Inventory Gains, Stronger Dollar

Crude oil declined for a second day after a U.S. government report yesterday showed a bigger than forecast increase in inventories, while a stronger dollar dulled the appeal of commodities. The Energy Department reported that crude stockpiles rose by 2.32 million barrels last week, compared with an expected 400,000 barrel gain, as refineries operated at their lowest rate outside of a hurricane period since 1989. Supplies of distillate fuels such as heating oil declined less than forecast.

“Strong contraction in distillate demand, which belies the recovery in the U.S. suggested by the latest GDP and manufacturing data, is weighing on sentiment,” said Harry Tchilinguirian, head of commodity derivatives research at BNP Paribas SA in London. “It will be the second half of the year before oil breaks its range centered around $75 and sustainably rallies.” Crude oil for March delivery fell as much as 88 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $76.10 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $76.35 at 1:21 a.m. London time. Futures, which gained 78 percent in 2009, are down 3 percent so far this year.

Crude declined in tandem with European stock indexes. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index slipped 0.9 percent to 247.21 as of 1:22 p.m. in London, erasing an earlier gain of 0.3 percent, led by losses among companies in Greece, Portugal and Spain.....Read the entire article.

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Commodities Move Sideways But With A Mildly Bullish Tone

Crude oil recovers modestly in European morning. Rise in Asian stock markets and strong sentiment index in Germany boost price. Currently trading at 72.2, the benchmark contract will continue its narrow trading ahead of oil inventory report.
Germany's IFO business climate index rose to 90.5 in August, compared with market expectation of 89.1, from 87.3 in the prior month. Leading the surprisingly strong number was a +4.6 point increase in the 'expectations' component. The 'current conditions' component also gained +1.8 points during the month. In Asia, stocks advanced as several Chinese companies' reported better than expected earnings results. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index surged.....Complete Story

Oil Climbs to New 2009 High

Oil prices jumped Friday to a new high for the year after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the U.S. economy is nearing a recovery and other economic data backed him up. Benchmark crude for October delivery surged $1.81 to $74.72 after Bernanke spoke at an annual Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. By midday, oil was trading at $73.91, topping the previous annual high of $73.23 set on June 11. Oil started climbing early in the morning after financial information company Markit said its composite purchasing managers' index showed the European economy was stabilizing.....Complete Story

Oil Steady in New York as Dollar Strengthens, Equities Decline

Crude oil was little changed after falling from a five week high as the dollar strengthened and equities dropped. Oil rose as much as 0.8 percent as the dollar gained for a fifth day, reducing the need for commodities as an alternate investment. A retreat in European and U.S. equities came after four straight weeks of increases left the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index trading at its highest level relative to earnings in more than four years. “The equity markets are kind of weak this morning and pushed us down at the open,” said Gene McGillian.....Complete story

Oil Falls to Five Week Low, Gasoline Drops on Economic Concern

Crude oil fell to a five week low and gasoline declined on growing concern that the global economic recovery will falter, curbing fuel consumption. Oil dropped for a fourth day, the longest losing streak since February, as U.S., European and Asian stock markets declined. The dollar advanced against the euro, curbing the appeal of commodities to investors looking for an inflation hedge. Oil in New York is down 13 percent from an eight month high of $73.38 touched on June 30.....Complete Story