US oil stocks evaporate to 27-year low
Heather Stewart Thursday January 16, 2003 The Guardian
Crude oil stocks in America have run dangerously low, raising fears that the government will be forced to tap its strategic reserves even before any full-blown conflict with Iraq.
Inventories are down to their second-lowest level since records began in 1976 as the oil workers' strike in Venezuela holds back supply, the US department of energy revealed yesterday.
Official estimates put the minimum stocks needed to run US refineries at 270m barrels a day but the DoE said there were only 272.3m barrels left in the system, down 6.4m barrels from a week earlier.
The shortfall helped send oil prices soaring again yesterday, with Brent crude for February delivery up 64 cents a barrel to $31.25 by the afternoon.
Paul Horsnell, oil analyst at JP Morgan, said that with US refineries guzzling 15m barrels of crude every day there was just four hours worth of slack in the system.
"Things are getting a bit tight if it gets below 300m barrels," Mr Horsnell said. "Once you start running below that level, prices become more and more sensitive even to minor changes in supply."
With the build-up to a conflict in Iraq accelerating, Mr Horsnell said, there was considerable potential for interruptions in supply in coming months. "What's alarming about this is that it's got nothing to do with Iraq - it's got nothing to do with the Middle East," he said.
The US government holds a massive strategic petrol reserve in salt caverns below Texas and Louisiana. Despite the spike in the oil price, industry spokesmen insisted yesterday that it was not yet time to turn on the taps.
"I don't see a reason, really, to release the SPR," said John Felmy, chief economist for trade body the American Petroleum Institute, arguing that there was not yet a crisis. "We can't declare an emergency at this point."
Mr Horsnell said that, although the oil price would be high enough normally to justify dipping into the SPR, the White House might be hoping to keep back supplies until the outbreak of a war with Iraq, when prices might rise further.
There is little sign of an early resumption of normal oil supplies from Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest exporter, where striking workers are trying to force president Hugo Chavez to call early elections by starving the oil-dependent economy of cash. Cumulative loss of production is approaching 100m barrels.
The oil markets were temporarily calmed last week by the prospect of a compensatory increase in supplies from Opec, the oil producers' cartel. But yesterday's jump in prices suggested traders are losing faith in Opec's ability to help. Oil ministers from the Opec countries agreed to raise production by 1.5m barrels a day at a meeting in Vienna last weekend.
Lawrence Eagles, at commodity analyst GNI, said the 270m-barrel floor was probably an overestimate of the minimum amount needed to keep refineries running, and just-in-time production methods meant a smaller margin for error was sufficient.
"Regardless of whether that particular cut-off point is right, though, we have clearly gone down to very low stocks," he added. Mr Eagles calculates that reserves, plus the SPR and stocks of finished oil products, could keep the US economy going for 77 days.