The price of oil on Monday, moved up 2 percent, a significant increase adduced to be the highest since October, 2015.
According to Goldman and Sachs in a report, the market had ended almost two years of oversupply and flipped to a deficit due to oil export crisis being faced by Nigeria.
The report further says that as at 0836 GMT, Brent crude futures were trading at $48.71 per barrel, crude futures were up 85 cents, or 1.8 percent, at $47.06 a barrel.
Supply disruptions around the world of as much as 3.75 million barrels per day (bpd) have wiped out a glut that pulled down oil prices by as much as 70 percent between 2014 and early 2016.
The disruptions triggered a U-turn in the outlook of Goldman Sachs, which had long warned of global storage hitting capacity and of yet another oil price crash to as low as $20 per barrel.
Nigeria’s production output has dropped to its lowest in decades at around 1.65 million bpd following several acts of sabotage by militants known to be members of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA).
“The oil market has gone from nearing storage saturation to being in deficit much earlier than we expected,” Goldman said.
“The market likely shifted into deficit in May … driven by both sustained strong demand as well as sharply declining production,” it said.
Goldman however cautioned that the market would flip back into a surplus in the first half of 2017 as it said prices around $50 per barrel in the second half of 2016 would see exploration and production activity picking up.
In the Americas, U.S. officials warned they were growing increasingly concerned by the possibility of an economic and political meltdown in Venezuela amid low oil prices.
Venezuela’s oil production has already fallen by at least 188,000 bpd this year.
While in the United States, crude production C-OUT-T-EIA has fallen to 8.8 million bpd, 8.4 percent below 2015 peaks as the sector suffers a wave of bankruptcies.
Even in China, output fell 5.6 percent to 4.04 million bpd in April, year-on-year.
Countering this, supply rose from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as its producers are engaged in a race for market share.
OPEC pumped 32.44 million bpd in April, up 188,000 bpd from March, the highest since at least 2008.
Also preventing steeper price jumps was a recovery in output in Canada following closures due to a wildfire, as well as bloated global crude storages.
But for Morgan Stanley,”The inventory buffer may be preventing full price recovery and … the market is rightly nervous about the sustainability of outages,”
According to Barclays, “while the supply-side disruptions are supporting oil market balances, refinery margins are starting to weaken, especially in Asia,” adding that weaker demand from those refiners could produce “downside risk to prices in Q3 16.”
