( Oil & Gas 360)—Energy Market Assessment: The high level of lack of understanding and the greatly reduced awareness of the economy and energy markets are providing much opportunity.
Quite a few think there has never been a Hurricane as big and damaging as Milton. This is another example of a high level of lack of understanding and greatly reduced awareness of the economy and energy markets. However, that is providing much opportunity.
Hurricane Milton moved across the Gulf of Mexico, energizing it to a Category 5 Hurricane made landfall south of Tampa Bay, Florida, late on 10/9 with winds rated at 120 miles per hour (mph), a Category 3 storm. Milton followed Hurricane Helene which came ashore on Florida’s Big Ben on 9/26 as a Category 4 storm, with 140 mph maximum winds, which added to the fear and attention on Milton. That, and reports Milton spawned more than 100 damaging tornados, helped it to be viewed as the biggest and most damaging hurricane ever.
However, Hurricane Irma, which came ashore on Saint Maarten on 9/6/2017 as a Category 5 storm (with 185 mph wind-speed peaks), was followed by Hurricane Maria on 9/19/17. Maria went on to hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 Hurricane, where it accounted for 2,975 of its 3,059 deaths. We recall reports that Saint Maarten experienced around 150 tornados.
We suspect the hurricane damage news, recession fear, and reports that a) things are doing wonderfully and b) things are doing terribly, and have only a few knowing that the U.S. has become the world’s largest petroleum product exporter. And that delayed, post-recession growth over there is a major driver of UP being the direction we head.
Total petroleum product exports in the last four weeks averaged 6.847 mmbd (Figure A, red line), 0.469 (+7.3%) more than 6.378 last year (blue line). Europe and Asia also enjoyed a delightfully mild Winter last year which increases the potential for consensus-beating oil demand growth, soon catching many oil and natural gas short.
By Mike Smolinski with Energy Directions for oilandgas360.com/Industry Insights & Opinions
