(Finance and Economics) When will the international oil price rise more than "step on the brakes"?
China News Agency, Beijing, February 14 (Liu Wenwen) Since the end of last year, international oil prices have remained high.
During the Chinese New Year holiday, international oil prices hit a new high since 2016.
The rally has continued over the past week.
Affected by the tense geopolitical situation and the tight supply of "OPEC+", international oil inventories are at a low level.
At the same time, with the global supply lagging behind, global energy demand is emerging from the haze of the epidemic and has rebounded significantly.
OPEC's latest monthly crude oil market report maintained its forecast for global crude oil demand growth in 2022 at 4.2 million barrels per day.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently released its monthly report, predicting that global oil demand will increase by 3.2 million barrels per day this year, reaching 100.6 million barrels per day.
The combination of low inventory and high demand has significantly pushed up recent oil prices.
On February 11, international oil prices rose significantly. The main price of NYMEX crude oil futures rose by more than 5% during the session, hitting US$94.66 per barrel during the session, setting a new high since September 30, 2014, and it seems that it will hit the US$100 mark.
Considering that OPEC+ cannot fully return to pre-pandemic output, the IEA expects the gap between supply and demand to continue to worsen and warns that global oil prices may rise further due to OPEC+'s "passive" efforts to restore production rising.
With the international oil price hitting a seven-and-a-half-year high, the bullish sentiment in the market continued, and the oil service sector was in a moody mood.
On the 11th, the U.S. stock market and Chinese concept stocks generally fell, but PetroChina’s U.S. stocks rose 4.40% against the trend, hitting a new high since the end of 2018.
Chen Tong, an analyst of Yide Futures Energy Chemical, believes that during the Spring Festival, due to factors such as geopolitics and insufficient "OPEC+" spare capacity, international oil prices have soared, reaching a new high for seven years.
After the opening of the Year of the Tiger, the Iranian nuclear negotiation "agreement is in sight", the oil price soared and encountered resistance, and the upward trend slowed down.
Subject to limited spare capacity, insufficient investment and geopolitical factors, the actual production of "OPEC+" in the second quarter is expected to be more than 1 million barrels per day lower than the target production.
The "OPEC+" production increase was less than expected, which led to a delay in the timing of accumulating stocks, which was an important factor contributing to the rise in crude oil prices.
Looking ahead, will oil prices continue to rise?
Minsheng Securities Research Report pointed out that in 2022, the global crude oil market supply and demand will maintain a tight balance.
On the supply side, the idle capacity is limited, and the supply increment is lower than expected.
On the demand side, the impact of the epidemic has been effectively controlled, and demand is expected to exceed the pre-epidemic level.
According to OPEC's monthly report in January this year, global crude oil demand is expected to reach 100.79 million barrels per day in 2022, exceeding the demand of 100.10 million barrels in 2019.
From the perspective of the whole year of 2022, the fundamentals of global crude oil supply and demand are expected to continue to maintain a tight balance, which will continue to drive the price of crude oil to fluctuate upwards.
Crude oil prices may remain at mid-to-high levels throughout the year in 2022.
Chen Tong pointed out that in 2022, oil prices are expected to fluctuate from highs to lows, and the first half of the year is still in the peaking stage, taking into account the expected increase in U.S. crude oil production, the cooling of reflation transactions, and new progress in the Iran nuclear negotiation.
While international oil prices continued to rise, the domestic oil service sector was active.
In the early trading of A shares on the 14th, the oil and gas sector opened higher, and Zhongman Oil once hit the daily limit.
Behnken Energy, Tongyuan Oil, and Potential Hengxin also rose.
Domestic refined oil is about to usher in the third oil price adjustment in 2022.
This adjustment, can domestic oil prices continue to firm?
In this regard, Dai Tiandong, a refined oil analyst at Zhuochuang Information, said that the international oil price has risen to the highest since September 2014, and this round of refined oil will face a "four consecutive rises".
He further analyzed that at the beginning of the period, as the market concerned about the resumption of negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal, international oil prices continued to decline.
Driven by this, the domestic reference crude oil rate of change has fluctuated within a positive range. If the international oil price continues to fluctuate in the later period, then the current round of domestic refined oil retail price limits will face an increase, and the implementation of this increase will also become a policy since 2021. This was the fourth consecutive increase since December 31, 2018.
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