EIA: Oil Prices Will Remain Above $100 For MonthsOil prices will remain higher than $100 per barrel in the coming months, reflecting the geopolitical risk from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the tight energy markets with the current and potential future sanctions against Russia, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Wednesday.
Brent Crude prices are expected to average $105.22 per barrel this year, the EIA said in its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) last week, significantly raising its February forecast of $82.87.
In its March STEO last week, the EIA said it expects Brent Crude prices to average $117 a barrel in March, $116 for the second quarter of this year, and $102 per barrel in the second half of 2022.
WTI Crude, the U.S. benchmark, is set to average $113 a barrel this month and $112 per barrel for the second quarter of 2022.
Early on Wednesday, before the EIA inventory report, WTI was up 2% at over $98, and Brent was rising by 1.6% to $101.46.
EIA’s oil price forecast, however, “is subject to heightened levels of uncertainty due to various factors, including Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine, government-issued limitations on energy imports from Russia, Russian petroleum production, and global crude oil demand,” the administration said.
The current forecast Brent price also increased the forecast for the U.S. retail gasoline price, which the EIA expects to average $4.00/gal this month and continue rising to a forecast high of $4.12/gal in May before gradually falling through the rest of the year. The U.S. regular retail gasoline price is now seen to average $3.79/gal this year and $3.33/gal in 2023. If realized, the average 2022 retail gasoline price would be the highest average price since 2014, after adjusting for inflation, the EIA said.
As of March 16, the national average gasoline price was $4.305/gal, according to AAA data.
“This war is roiling an already tight global oil market and making it hard to determine if we are near a peak for pump prices, or if they keep grinding higher. It all depends on the direction of oil prices,” Andrew Gross, AAA spokesperson, said on Monda
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Saudi Arabia Considers Ditching The Dollar For Chinese Oil Sales
The status of the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency of the world is largely based on its importance in energy and commodity markets.
According to an exclusive report from the Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia and China are now discussing pricing some Saudi oil exports in Yuan.
China is aggressively pushing to dethrone the dollar as the global reserve currency, and this latest development suggests the petrodollar is now being threatened.
One of the core staples of the past 40 years, and an anchor propping up the dollar's reserve status, was a global financial system based on the petrodollar. This was a world in which oil producers would sell their product to the US (and the rest of the world) for dollars, which they would then recycle the proceeds of in dollar-denominated assets and, while investing in dollar-denominated markets, explicitly prop up the USD as the world reserve currency. All of this would support the standing of the US as the world's undisputed financial superpower.
Those days are coming to an end.
One day after we reported that the "UK is asking Saudis for more oil even as MBS invites Xi Jinping to Riyadh to strengthen ties", the WSJ is out with a blockbuster report, noting that "Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan," a move that could cripple not only the petrodollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market - something which Zoltan Pozsar predicted in his last note - and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia, but also a move aimed squarely at the heart of the US financial system which has taken advantage of the dollar's reserve status by printing as many dollars as needed to fund government spending for the past decade.
According to the report, the talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom.
The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports, and if priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency, and set the Chinese currency on a path to becoming a global petroyuan reserve currency.
As even the WSJ admits, a shift to a (petro)yuan system, "would be a profound shift for Saudi Arabia to price even some of its roughly 6.2 million barrels of day of crude exports in anything other than dollars" as the majority of global oil sales—around 80%—are done in dollars, and the Saudis have traded oil exclusively in dollars since 1974, in a deal with the Nixon administration that included security guarantees for the kingdom. It appears that the Saudis no longer care much about US "security guarantees" and instead are switching their allegiance to China.
As a reminder, back in March 2018, China introduced yuan-priced oil contracts as part of its efforts to make its currency tradable across the world, but they haven’t made a dent in the dollar’s dominance of the oil market, largely because the USD remained the currency of choice for oil exporters. But, as Pozsar also noted recently, for China the use of dollars has become a hazard highlighted by U.S. sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program and on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
