ENERGY MATTERS: 'When,' Not 'If' For War, SPR Flow

sg.biz.yahoo.com Thursday March 6, 1:24 AM By David Bird A Dow Jones Newswires Column

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--"If" is quickly becoming "when" as the U.S. marches ahead with plans for an assault on Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein.

For oil traders, the issue of whether the U.S. and its International Energy Agency partners pry open emergency oil stockpiles with the start of war remains the big question, even as commercial stockpiles plunge to their lowest levels in a generation.

But Energy Matters soundings suggest we'll know the answer fairly soon.

The sands of last-minute diplomacy are trickling through the U.N. Security Council's hourglass, with apparently little chance of averting war.

On the other side of the world, an emergency Arab meeting aimed at a peaceful solution degenerated into a vicious shouting match between Iraq and Kuwait. Iraq's vice president called Kuwait's foreign minister "a monkey," and further impugned his honor by cursing his mustache.

That sideshow in Qatar notwithstanding, there's little monkeying around at the U.N., where the clear attitude from the U.S. seems to be, as we've long held, that Security Council support for an attack on Iraq would be a nice fig leaf, but the U.S. and U.K. fully intend to go ahead without it.

In crucial steps in coming days, Gen. Tommy Franks, who will lead the war, meets U.S. President George Bush and Pentagon leaders to finalize plans. The timeframe already has slipped from the preferred days around the dark skies of the New Moon, which was March 3.

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix gives his next - and possibly final - report to the Security Council on Friday. Early indications are that Blix will note recent increased Iraqi cooperation with disarmament requirements, but overall disappointment. Blix won't change minds on the sharply divided Council.

That will leave the U.S. to push for a de facto endorsement of war in the early part of next week, if it believes it can muster nine votes from the 15-member council and avoid a veto from France, Russia or China, who favor more inspections.

Should Saddam Beware The Ides Of March?

The U.S. will abandon efforts to get U.N. endorsement if it doesn't have the votes, effectively starting a clock ticking for action on, or before, March 15, the fateful Ides of March, on which Caesar met his death. The key sign that the fuse is lit will be when U.N. weapons inspectors clear out.

The head of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, says plans already drawn up call for an assault "much, much, much different" than the January 1991 attack to drive Iraq out of Kuwait. The punishing attack aims at knocking the Baghdad leadership into submission within 48 hours, in sharp contrast to the 43-day battle then.

But will oil markets see a "much, much, much different" scenario than in January 1991, when the U.S. and others in the IEA opened their Strategic Petroleum Reserves coincident with the start of the war and prices plunged by one-third in a single day?

We still believe the Bush administration, mindful that retail gasoline prices are within pennies of record levels and inventories are scraping bottom, won't be able to resist opening the taps to drive prices down.

With a month left in the heating oil season, our analysis of Energy Information Administration data shows commercial stocks at their lowest since 1991 in New England and at their lowest-ever end-February level in the New York harbor region.

So far, the administration sticks to its mantra that the 600-million-barrel emergency stockpile is meant to be used in the event of severe supply disruptions, not to cool down prices. But the loss of Iraq's 2.4 million barrels a day of production and war in the world's oil patch provides the dictionary definition of "severe supply disruption" that will open the taps, even if record low U.S. inventories don't.

With much recent dialogue between OPEC and IEA officials, there's evidence of a strong coordinated plan for both an endorsement of still-higher output from OPEC - essentially Saudi Arabia - and an opening of consumer nations' strategic stocks.

OPEC's Easy Decision In Difficult Times

While ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries face one of their most important meetings next Tuesday in Vienna, their impending decision couldn't be easier.

OPEC will pledge that, when needed, they will agree to supply the market with what's needed. In OPEC parlance, that would likely mean a suspension of output quotas, but widespread cheating by those with the ability to do so already has poked holes in the group's 24.5 million b/d production ceiling.

OPEC has enlisted six non-OPEC exporters to join in, with Russia, Norway, Oman, Egypt, Mexico and Syria expected to attend and endorse the plan, even though none of these countries can add significant volumes to the market in the near term.

At the risk of seeming to write the group's communique in advance, we'd expect a strong message from OPEC that stabilizing the market at reasonable prices is in the mutual interest and mutual responsibility of producer and consumer nations. That translates to an acknowledgment that consumer stockpiles will be opened, a de facto admission that OPEC doesn't have the spare capacity - at least immediately - to cool down prices. But the combination of OPEC and IEA should send prices from near $37 now for Nymex crude to around $25-$28 in the near term.

U.S. officials admit part of the reason the SPR wasn't opened after Venezuela's oil workers mounted a strike in December was that they anticipate the need to draw down emergency reserves at the start of the war.

Although stocks are historically low in the U.S., refiners aren't shutting down operations due to lack of supplies, meaning there isn't need to open the SPR prior to the start of the war, U.S. officials say. The Energy Department continues to take baby steps toward easing supply worries by deferring shipments into the SPR to keep more oil in the open market, with some 18.5 million barrels freed up since December.

But officials point to an IEA statement of Feb. 20 for guidance on coming actions regarding strategic reserves. After a meeting of the group's governing board, IEA "noted the arrival in world markets of supplementary volumes of crude from Middle East producers. It welcomed producers' decisions to replace supplies lost through reduced exports from Venezuela.

"In light of the tight oil market, the governing board welcomed oil producers' demonstrated commitment to increase production to offset any further disruption in supply. IEA members remain firm in their commitment to make additional volumes of oil available to the market to reinforce producers' efforts if needed."

While this may appear to give producers the first crack at stabilizing markets, it really speaks of a tandem approach, which doesn't require producers to squeeze out every last barrel of spare capacity before the strategic stocks are tapped.

In fact, we hear the joint plan is a recognition that it probably isn't a good idea - even if it were possible - for the Saudis to try to pump out 10.5 million b/d claimed capacity right away. The Saudis, the world's largest oil producer and exporter, haven't pumped near that level in more than a decade, and admit it will take several weeks or months to get to the peak. Standard practice of keeping 10% of production capacity idle for operational reasons speaks to flat-out Saudi output only on a five-alarm emergency basis.

U.S. officials note, too, that expected stepped-up Saudi output of a few hundred thousand barrels a day beyond current levels of above 9 million b/d is still some 50 days from U.S. shores.

And that's far longer than the Bush administration will be willing to wait for a serious drop in oil prices, which would provide a political boost.

The short-term solution is clearly the SPR.

It should just be a question of "when," not "if."

-By David Bird, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4423; david.bird@dowjones.com

(David Bird is senior energy correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires.)