Oil's shrug emoji era
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And the award for honesty in oil market analysis goes to ... J.P. Morgan!
- "For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don't have a baseline view. We simply don't know how to model the endgame," bank researchers said in a note (emphasis added).
Why it matters: While the phrasing is unusually blunt, the sentiment is shared to varying degrees.
- Market watchers have come to grips with the likelihood that the status of the Strait of Hormuz — and the number of barrels getting through — will be messy for months to come.
The big picture: At the outset of the Iran war, J.P. Morgan's "Oil Markets Weekly" crew assumed there were "economic red lines" the White House would not cross.
- The list includes $100 oil; gasoline near $5 per gallon; and 10-year Treasury yields hitting 5% (higher levels raise borrowing costs).
- And still: "Six months later, many of those lines have been crossed, yet the exit strategy is less clear, not more."
The intrigue: The ongoing disruption of Middle East barrels, even if Hormuz transit has risen in recent weeks, will keep eroding the market's shock absorbers.
- That said, lower oil demand has done more work than expected to ease stress on supplies, which has enabled a slower drawdown of countries' oil stockpiles, the J.P. Morgan note argues.
- So "fears of inventories being close to exhausted as a balancing mechanism are premature," and there's an ample cushion to keep prices relatively contained "for now."
Yes, but: Even if crude prices haven't soared as high as many predicted when the strait was first choked off, soaring energy costs and shortages are creating pain, anger and unrest in many nations worldwide, the New York Times reports.
What we're watching: Uncertainty is also affecting dealmaking.
- Elevated yet volatile prices are shaking up mergers and acquisitions in the exploration and production sector, per the consultancy Rystad Energy.
- The conflict has "acted as both a headwind and a tailwind," a new note states. High prices are leading more companies — including U.S. shale producers — to test the market.
State of play: The value of opportunities in the global M&A market has swelled to $137 billion, yet volatile prices are "widening valuation expectations" and making transactions harder to pull off.
- Rystad expects more flexible deal structures and stronger safeguards if transactions fall apart "as buyers and sellers seek to share commodity-price and closing risk."
The bottom line: "Oil price volatility has created a deeper opportunity set, but it has also made deals harder to execute," Rystad's Atul Raina writes.
