Crude Oil Falls as Naimi Says Record Prices Are `Unjustified'
By Mark Shenk
June 13 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil fell as Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said record prices are ``unjustified'' and the state oil company signaled it may soon start pumping from a new field.
The June 22 ``meeting in Jeddah will discuss the price rise, which are unjustified by fundamentals, and suggest appropriate solutions,'' al-Naimi said in a statement today. [u][color=blue]The kingdom will start pumping oil from its new 500,000 barrel-a-day Khursaniyah field within the next month, a board member of Saudi Aramco said.[/color][/u]
``The Saudis are trying to get some of the heat out of the market and off of them at the same time,'' said Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Newedge USA LLC in New York. ``The meeting is an attempt to get beyond the blame game and find solutions to the problem of high prices.''
Crude oil for July delivery fell $1.88, or 1.4 percent, to settle at $134.86 a barrel at 2:46 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures reached a record $139.12 a barrel on June 6. Oil fell 2.7 percent this week.
Prices have moved more than $3 each day this week as the market digested Saudi announcements, falling U.S. crude-oil stockpiles, increasing price forecasts from Wall Street banks and a strengthening dollar.
``This meeting is expected, God willing, to produce positive results that will contribute to stabilizing the international oil market,'' al-Naimi said.
Saudi Arabia invited nations including the U.S., Russia, Norway, U.K., China, Germany, India and Japan to the meeting, al- Naimi said. The kingdom is the world's largest oil exporter and the most influential member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
OPEC Gridlock
``The meeting underscores the central position the Saudis hold,'' Halff said. ``It's clear that OPEC is somewhat paralyzed and too divided to take action. The meeting is a way to bypass OPEC and end the gridlock.''
Members of OPEC, which pump more than 40 percent of the world's oil, have kept production targets unchanged at the group's past three meetings, on Dec. 5, Feb. 1 and March 5.
``There is a need for an increase in oil production, but price gains are outstripping the growth in demand,'' Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in Osaka, where he is attending a meeting of Group of Eight finance ministers.
``The position that more development, more investment and an increase in supply are needed is becoming universal and is something we support,'' said Kurdin.
`Sizable' Increase
Saudi Arabia is likely to propose a ``sizable'' increase in oil production at the meeting, the Middle East Economic Survey reported today, without saying where it got the information.
Current oil prices threaten the global economy and hurt the long-term interests of oil producers, Ibrahim al-Muhanna, an adviser to al-Naimi, was cited as saying by the newsletter.
Khursaniyah will start ``very, very soon, definitely within the next month,'' Khalid A. Al-Falih, who is also an executive vice president at Saudi Aramco, said in a telephone interview today. He couldn't say when full production would be reached. The field is forecast to produce as much oil as the daily output of Ecuador, OPEC's smallest member.
Oil in New York rose more than sevenfold since trading at $17.45 a barrel in November 2001, and reached 28 record highs this year. A similar pattern was seen in equities eight years ago, when Internet-related stocks sent the Nasdaq Composite Index up 640 percent to its highest level ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Bespoke Investment Group LLC.
``I think that at about $80 the market crossed into the irrational exuberance level,'' said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts. ``It's hard to find a rational explanation for the gain of the last six months.''
Falling Demand
Oil demand this year will rise 1.1 million barrels to 86.88 million barrels a day, OPEC said in a report today. That's about 60,000 barrels a day lower than last month's estimate.
Global oil-market volatility, reflected in price moves of more than 2 percent in two-thirds of the trading days this month, has snarled attempts by industry players to plan for the future.
Volatility is a measure of how far the price of a commodity such as oil deviates from average closing prices over a prior period, such as 30 or 365 days. Futures traded in New York veered 41 percent from the 30-day average today, according to Bloomberg data. They strayed 41.7 percent from the average June 11, the highest volatility in 16 months.
Brent crude oil for July settlement declined $1.84, or 1.4 percent, to $134.25 a barrel on London's ICE Futures Europe exchange.
Rising Dollar
Prices also dropped because the rising dollar reduced the appeal of commodities to investors looking for an inflation hedge. The U.S. currency is heading for its biggest weekly gain versus the euro in more than three years as inflation accelerated in May, raising speculation the Federal Reserve will increase borrowing costs this year.
The dollar increased 0.6 percent to $1.535 euro at 2:57 p.m. in New York, from $1.5439 yesterday.
To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Shenk in New York at [email protected].
Oil Rally Topped Dot-Com Craze in Speculators' Mania
June 13 (Bloomberg) -- The rally that drove oil to a record $139.12 a barrel last week surpassed the gains in Internet stocks that preceded the dot-com crash in 2000.
Crude rose 697 percent since trading at $17.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange in November 2001, and reached 28 record highs this year. The last time a similar pattern was seen in equities was eight years ago, when Internet-related stocks sent the Nasdaq Composite Index up 640 percent to its highest level ever, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Bespoke Investment Group LLC.
The Nasdaq tumbled 78 percent from its March 2000 peak, erasing about $6 trillion of market value, as investors concluded that prices weren't supported by profits at companies such as Broadcom Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. Billionaire investor George Soros and Stephen Schork, president of Schork Group Inc., say oil is ready to tumble because prices aren't justified by supply and demand.
``There's nothing different between this mania, the dot-com mania, the real estate mania, the Dow Jones mania of the 1920s, the South Sea bubble and the Dutch tulip-bulb mania,'' said Schork, whose Villanova, Pennsylvania-based firm advises the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Wall Street firms and oil companies on the outlook for energy prices. ``History repeats itself over and over and over again.''
China, India
Oil climbed on growing demand from China and India, whose economies expanded the past seven years at an average annual pace of 10.2 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively. Supply disruptions in Nigeria and Iraq and declining production in Russia also boosted prices. Investors added about $250 billion to commodity index trading strategies since 2003, according to Mike Masters, president and founder of Masters Capital Management, a St. Croix- based hedge fund.
Crude futures fell 1.4 percent to settle at $134.86 a barrel in New York today. The Nasdaq added 2.1 percent to 2,454.50 on oil's decline and a government report on consumer prices that matched economists' forecast.
Money is flowing into oil as the global economy slows. The worst U.S. housing slump since the 1930s and more than $390 billion of writedowns and credit losses at banks will slow global growth to 2.7 percent this year from 3.7 percent in 2007, according to the World Bank.
Investor Demand
The U.S. economy's expansion may slow to 1.3 percent this year from 2.2 percent in 2007, dragging down oil demand by 240,000 barrels a day, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg and Energy Department data. In China, the second- biggest fuel consumer after the U.S., economic growth may fall to 10.1 percent from 11.9 percent, the Bloomberg survey shows.
``I don't know if you can classify it as a bubble or not,'' said Masters. ``But there is no question that investor demand is having an effect on price. Very little of it has to do with physical supply and demand of crude oil.'' Masters testified at a Senate hearing in May on the role of speculators in commodities markets.
Gains in oil are the result of a ``bubble'' caused by speculation from index funds and a tight balance between supply and demand, Soros said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on June 3. ``The bubble is superimposed on an upward trend in oil prices that has a strong foundation in reality,'' he said.
`Momentum Players'
Commodity index traders account for about 40 percent of the open interest, or outstanding contracts, in the 12 agricultural commodities for which the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reports data, according to Chicago-based Bianco Research LLC.
Crude futures more than doubled in the past year and surged $10.75 a barrel on June 6, the biggest rise on record and the largest in percentage terms since June 1996. Robert Aliber, a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, says the risk of a ``correction'' has increased because prices climbed so fast.
``You've got speculation in a lot of commodities and that seems to be driving up the price,'' Aliber, co-author of ``Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises,'' said in an interview from Hanover, New Hampshire. ``Movements are dominated by momentum players who predict price changes from Wednesday to Friday on the basis of the price change from Monday to Wednesday.''
Limited Supply
Burton Malkiel, a Princeton University economics professor and author of ``A Random Walk Down Wall Street,'' says the rise in oil may be justified because supplies are limited and demand in developing economies is increasing. That distinguishes oil from the market for technology stocks in the 1990s, where supply ``could be expanded infinitely'' and new stock issues helped push down prices, he said.
``The picture is fundamentally different than the Internet picture,'' Malkiel said in an interview from Princeton, New Jersey. ``I'm not saying we're running out of oil, but we're clearly supply-constrained. Five and 10 years from now, the price is going to be higher than $134.''
The Nasdaq reached a record intraday high of 5,132.52 on March 10, 2000, in a rally that started in June 1994. Investors plowed $199 billion into mutual funds dedicated to U.S. equities during the 10-month stretch leading up to the peak, including $36.5 billion in February of that year, data from TrimTabs Investment Research in Sausalito, California show.
The flood helped boost the price-to-earnings ratio on shares of Irvine, California-based Broadcom to 617 in March 2000, according to Bloomberg data. Shares of the semiconductor maker, which surged 351 percent in 1999, lost 89 percent over the next three years. Broadcom gained 1.9 percent to $25.79 in Nasdaq trading today.
``You can look at the chart and say oil's taking on the characteristics of a bubble,'' said James Bianco, the president of Bianco Research. Still, ``it may have a long way to go before it eventually peaks,'' he said.
Oil fell $3 to $133 a barrel on Thursday on news that China will raise retail gasoline and diesel prices for the first time in 8 months to help refineries recoup losses from record oil prices.
Demand from China has been one of the main factors driving oil prices to a record near $140.
China is to increase fuel prices by 1,000 yuan ($145.50) a tonne from Friday, industry sources told Reuters
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