A recent report by JPMorgan Chase sees a diesel market reaction coming as a result of IMO 2020, but its tone and forecast are restrained and hint at a market that is on the verge of any sort of spike in prices.
In an exhaustive 100-plus-page report published by the team led by analyst Phil Gresh, the focus is often on the equity price of U.S. refiners like Delek (NYSE: DK) and Marathon Petroleum (SONAR: STOCK.MPC). The current equity price of those companies, the report said, has “a fair amount of the IMO 2020 upside potential (that) now feels priced in,” sitting at more normal levels of price-to-equity ratio and free cash flow yield. Marathon Petroleum is up more than 32% since its 52-week low in August, and Delek is up approximately 16.5% in the last 12 months.
The range of forecasts in the industry on the demand impact of IMO 2020 on diesel demand is a large one. There have been estimates of as much as 2.5 million barrels/day of distillate demand needed to displace the high-sulfur fuel oil that no longer will be used as ships seek to stay compliant with the 0.5% sulfur restriction of IMO 2020, down from 3.5%.
JPMorgan’s estimate is a more conservative 1.8 million b/d. But it also says that there could be a “one-time step-up” increase of 2 million b/d next year during the transition.
The report is mostly optimistic about the refining industry’s preparation for the IMO 2020 transition. Among existing refineries, the report said, distillate yield (which includes diesel) in 2019 was probably a record level of 30.1%, meaning distillate output was that percentage of total output. “Looking toward 2020, we see the diesel yield creeping even higher, averaging 30.4%,” the report said.
It also projected that gasoline yields will decline about the same 300 basis points. The swing between gasoline and diesel in refineries as the industry prepared for IMO 2020 is a complicated one. It hinges in part on the use of a product called vacuum gasoil (VGO), which can be sent to a cat cracker to make gasoline or to a hydrocracker to make diesel. But it can also be blended to make another IMO 2020-compliant produced called very-low-sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO). JPMorgan’s forecast of an average yield in 2020 between diesel and gasoline doesn’t reflect the fact that over the course of the year, there will be significant swings of VGO going into diesel production or gasoline production depending upon the relative economics of the two products.
Overall, the impact on refiners from IMO 2020 is expected to be a positive for the industry, the report said. But the numbers projected in the short term are small enough that they signal only minor increases at the pump as a result of the new rule. For example, the report says that JPMorgan sees a $2/b “uplift” in the diesel crack because of IMO 2020. The crack is the spread between the price of crude and the price of the product. At 42 gallons to a barrel, that works out to a little less than 5 cts/gallon. For a refiner to get a long-term boost in its refining margins of $2/b, the impact of IMO 2020 would be considered significant. Translating it into the pump price of diesel is not.
On other issues, the report was mixed on the short-term future of crude-by-rail. The key margin incentivizing crude-by-rail is the spread between Brent and WTI. The physical spread between the two of them is currently about $7/b (as opposed to the spread for paper contracts, which is closer to $5). The report sees the Brent/WTI spread moving to a $5 level, with slower growth in U.S. production and more pipeline capacity going to the U.S. Gulf slowing the buildup in the middle of the country that drives the spread wider. Any narrowing of the spread is considered bearish for crude-by-rail.
But the forecast for crude by rail in Canada is better, according to JPMorgan. It used the phrase “rail over curtail” to describe the Alberta government’s permission to allow now-constrained production to be increased if it’s moved out of the province by rail. “We think that more barrels could move via rail as (Canadian) producers look to the positive net-back impact of additional volumes,” the report said.
Noble1
There are some good articles on the subject , one on the Financial Post TITLED : U.S. diesel demand drops as manufacturers struggle, silver lining for shipowners: Kemp
and Oil Price TITLED : Waning Diesel Demand: A Red Flag For The US Economy?
I’ll copy and paste the one on the Financial Post here :
December 5 2019
LONDON — U.S. diesel consumption is declining as manufacturing output shrinks and the volume of freight falls, intensifying downward pressure on oil prices but smoothing the introduction of new marine fuel regulations.
U.S. consumption of diesel and other distillate fuel oils was down almost 3% in the three months between July and September compared with a year earlier, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Diesel consumption has been hit much harder than gasoline, which was down by just 0.3% in July-September compared with a year ago (“Petroleum supply monthly”, EIA, Nov. 29).
Most distillates are used by trucking firms, railroads, manufacturers, construction firms, oil and gas drillers, and farmers, so diesel consumption is tightly coupled with the manufacturing cycle.
By contrast, gasoline is used mostly by private motorists, so consumption is more geared towards performance of the much larger service sector and economy-wide employment
The drop in diesel relative to gasoline reflects the slump in manufacturing while the service sector continues to generate slow but steady growth: the twin-speed U.S. economy is increasingly reflected in twin-speed fuel demand.
REFINERY RUN CUTS
Disappointing diesel demand has forced U.S. refiners to trim their crude processing to avoid a buildup of unwanted stocks and a collapse in margins.
Diesel production has averaged 12,000 barrels per day (bpd) more in the first 48 weeks of 2019 compared with the same period in 2018.
But at one point earlier in the year, before refineries trimmed their processing rates, the gap was running at almost 280,000 bpd.
By cutting runs and using their fluid catalytic cracking units to prioritize gasoline production, refiners have been able to avoid flooding the market with unneeded diesel.
The diesel slowdown is not confined to the United States. The global manufacturing and freight downturn has ensured the distillate market is weak worldwide.
Consumption growth has slowed across most major consuming centers in response to a weaker economy, including China, India, the Middle East and the EU.
There is one unexpected benefit from slack demand: it has created room to absorb the transition to new IMO fuel regulations, which will see many ships switching from high-sulfur fuel oil to diesel from the start of 2020.
The cyclical slowdown has come at just the right time to smooth the transition in the shipping industry while avoiding a surge in diesel prices for everyone else.
End quote
The article on Oil Price has been written on December 11 2019 by ZeroHedge and includes a few graphs .
Enjoy !