Russia offers India help in leasing and building large-capacity ships to overcome G7’s oil price cap
Russia has welcomed India’s decision to not support the price cap on Russian oil announced by G7 and its allies and offered it cooperation on leasing and building large-capacity ships to overcome the ban on insurance services and tanker chartering in the European Union and Britain to continue buying discounted oil. The offer came as Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak held a meeting with the Indian Ambassador to Moscow, Pavan Kapoor, on Friday. “The Deputy Prime Minister welcomed India’s decision not to support the price cap on Russian oil, which was imposed on December 5 by the G7 countries and their allies,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. India’s appetite for Russian oil has swelled ever since it started trading on discount as the West shunned it to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Novak noted that even amid the energy crisis, Russia is responsibly fulfilling its contractual obligations for the supply of energy resources, diversifying energy exports to the countries in the East and South. To avoid dependency on the ban on insurance services and tanker chartering in the European Union and Britain, Novak offered India cooperation on leasing and building large-capacity ships, the statement said. The Indian government has been vehemently defending its oil trade with Russia, saying it has to source oil from where it is the cheapest. The imports in November were made ahead of a price cap agreed by the EU on Russian seaborne oil. But, the government has indicated that oil companies will continue to buy oil from Russia outside the price cap. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on December 7 told the Rajya Sabha that Indian refiners will continue to look for the best deals in the interest of the country. “We do not ask our companies to buy Russian oil. We ask our companies to buy oil (based on) what is the best option that they can get. Now, it depends on what the market throws up,” he had said while replying to clarifications sought by MPs on his suo moto statement on foreign policy. The companies will go after sources that are more competitive, Jaishankar added. “Please do understand it’s not just we buy oil from one country. We buy oil from multiple sources, but it is a sensible policy to go where we get the best deal in the interests of the Indian people, and that is exactly what we are trying to do,” he said. The executive body of the European Union has asked its 27 member countries to cap the price of Russian oil at USD 60 a barrel as part of the West’s attempt to squeeze Moscow’s oil revenues and limit its ability to wage war in Ukraine while keeping global prices and supplies steady. From December 5, western shipping and insurance companies are prohibited from handling Russian oil sold above the price cap. However, ships loaded with Russian oil before December 5 and unloaded at their destination before January 19, will not be subject to the price cap. A top government official said India can continue to buy Russian oil if it can send ships, cover insurance and devise a mode of payment. “The introduction of a price cap on Russian oil is an anti-market measure. It disrupts supply chains and could significantly complicate the situation in global energy markets,” Novak said. “Such non-market mechanisms disrupt the international trading system as a whole and set a dangerous precedent in the energy market. As a result, the problem of energy poverty is being aggravated not only in the developing world, but also in the developed countries of Europe,” Novak said. The two sides noted the record growth in trade between the two countries and expressed the desire to continue this interaction, increasing cooperation on trade in energy resources, such as oil, petroleum products, liquefied natural gas, coal and fertiliser. In 2021, bilateral trade between Russia and India increased by 46.5 per cent, exceeding USD 13.5 billion, the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said. In January-September 2022, trade exceeded the figure for all of last year, totalling USD 20.4 billion. Over the first eight months of 2022, Russian oil exports to India grew to 16.35 million tonnes. Deliveries of oil products and coal also increased. Meanwhile, Russia has for the second month in a row remained India’s top oil supplier in November, surpassing traditional sellers Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa. Russia, which made up for just 0.2 per cent of all oil imported by India in the year to March 31, 2022, supplied 9,09,403 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to India in November, the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said. It now makes up for more than a fifth of India’s oil supplies. Novak has also invited Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs of India Hardeep Singh Puri to take part in the international forum, Russian Energy Week 2023, which will be held from October 11-13 next year in Moscow.
Can Russia Get The Support It Needs To Shake Up Central Asia’s Gas Market?
Turkmenistan’s vision for a trans-Afghan gas pipeline to Pakistan and India may be given a fillip in the most convoluted of manners. With Europe steadily drawing down its purchases of Russian gas, Moscow is getting more creative in how it sells its fuel. In late November, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakhstani counterpart, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, reportedly discussed the creation of a “tripartite gas union” also comprising Uzbekistan. Although Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have considerable gas reserves of their own, they have been caught short by surging demand, so the idea is for shortfalls to be plugged with Russian imports. The suggestion is still firmly on the drawing board, but industry experts are now talking up ways this arrangement could be extended further. In an interview with Russian state-run news agency TASS, Alexei Grivach, the deputy head of the National Energy Security Fund, a Moscow-based think tank, suggested that once gas is being pumped down to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it would also make sense to look at buyers in Pakistan and India. Doing that would entail building new pipelines, either from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan, or piggybacking on the trans-Afghan TAPI project. All these ideas are hazy for now, and they take little heed of current and future infrastructural constraints, but they may be considered by a Turkmenistan that is struggling to find immediate sources of funding for TAPI. The kinds of conversations taking place among officials in Russia, Central Asia and Iran make it evident a major reconfiguration of the regional gas market is in course. On November 28, Iran’s IRNA state news agency reported on how Russia had agreed in principle to supply Iran with gas for onward delivery to Pakistan. Moscow has committed as an extension of that arrangement to build the pipelines between Iran and Pakistan that would be needed to carry out those deliveries. Russian gas would arrive in Iran either via Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan, IRNA reported, without making it clear where it was sourcing its information. A future Iran-Pakistan pipeline could notionally provide uncomfortable competition to TAPI, though, so it remains to be seen how much Turkmenistan will be prepared to assist with any of this. That said, other developments indicate that Ashgabat for now sees only virtuous outcomes in dealing with Tehran on energy questions. Indeed, just to further complicate matters, Turkmenistan and Iran are separately far into discussions on how to boost deliveries of gas from the former to the latter – all part of a swap agreement with Azerbaijan. On November 30, Iranian Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian met with Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov for talks in Ashgabat. No firm details about the exchange were disclosed, but the Turkmen government website cited Berdymukhamedov talking approvingly about “favorable opportunities … in the area of energy transport and transit.” The Taliban regime in Afghanistan, meanwhile, is eager to get TAPI up and going as soon as possible. The soi-disant Islamic Emirate’s mines and petroleum minister, Shahabuddin Delawar, made the point forcefully in a Kabul meeting with the Turkmenistan-based head of the TAPI consortium, Muhammetmyrat Amanov, Afghan news outlet Ariana reported on December 1. “Since Afghanistan is in a good security situation, we should utilize this opportunity and start the practical work of the TAPI project as soon as possible with the cooperation of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan,” Delawar was quoted as saying. And the westward direction cannot be forgotten either. Exporting gas that way will require the active involvement of Azerbaijan and Turkey. As it happens, a date has now been set for a three-way heads of state summit: The leaders will meet on December 13-14 in the Caspian resort town of Awaza. President Berdymukhamedov took time out of his schedule on December 3 to pop down to Qatar to watch the Netherlands beat the United States 3-1 in the second round of the World Cup. So as to make the trip look like something more than it was – the president taking a quick break at the weekend – the government website published a lengthy article arguing how this served as fresh evidence of the importance placed by authorities on sports and physical wellbeing. While in Doha, Berdymukhamedov met with Gianni Infantino, the head of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. Official accounts do not relate whether the men discussed their shared indifference to human rights. Leaving aside its cataclysmic, obfuscation-driven response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Turkmenistan does at least try to live up to its word on matters of health. According to a November 29 note on the government website, excise fees on imported and locally manufactured alcohol and tobacco products are set for a steep rise. The stated purpose of the hike is to protect the health of Turkmen citizens. What is more, the lower age limit for buying cigarettes has been raised from 18 to 21. Last week, law enforcement agencies corralled lawmakers, government officials, journalists, health workers and community leaders into a now-traditional ceremonial burning of confiscated narcotics and smuggled cigarettes. The biannual public burning of the cigarettes has been taking place since 2016, and people attending the ceremony are said to be allowed to join in by throwing items into the furnace under the attentive scrutiny of security officials. The Turkmen government is concerned that information about the country’s achievements is not being adequately disseminated around the world. Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov proposed a solution to that problem during the December 2 Cabinet meeting. He suggested that Turkmenistan set up an “International Information Center” to be sited within the State Committee for Television, Radio Broadcasting and Cinematography. Its job will be to produce documentaries and other video material that could then be broadcast on foreign media outlets. The experience of other countries in the region shows that such exercises are largely pointless vehicles for wasting and possibly purloining government funds. There is little to suggest that Turkmenistan will be any exception. Ashgabat’s efforts to promote its accomplishments on the international stage have to date been to a considerable extent focused
Natural Gas Prices Could Be Poised To Break Out
As I have said here many times before, institutional traders are like sports talk radio host in that they consistently overreact to every bit of news. Having been there, I know why. When you are 100% focused on something all day every day, any headline that directly affects that thing seems to have huge significance. So, when I think I see an opportunity based on a market underreaction to a news story, I proceed with care. Given the inherent and understandable tendency of traders to overreact in the short term it is far more likely that it is I who have the impact of the news wrong when that happens than that everybody else has missed something. Try as I might, though, I just cannot see what happened in natural gas this week as anything but an underreaction to what should have been a big story. On Wednesday morning, U.S. President, Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, announced a deal to expend US exports of natural gas to the UK. Natty reacted by reversing what was a strong downtrend, but when you think of the implications of this deal, the retracement looks like an underreaction and is probably just the beginning of a sizeable upward move. The deal itself was no great shakes and was in some ways more of a political statement than a commercial agreement, but its implications go far beyond that. It consisted of setting a target for US exports of LNG to the UK next year of 9-10 billion cubic meters. That sounds impressive until you realize that so far this year, the UK has imported around 11 billion cubic meters of LNG to Britain. It makes sense in that context that natty jumped on Wednesday in response to the prospect of continued exports, but hardly set the world on fire. That move, though, and Thursday’s weak follow up, don’t seem to be accounting for what this really means. It means that US gas production will continue to be in demand for export to a part of the world where landed natural gas prices are many times what the commodity fetches domestically. It also means that President Biden felt confident that America could keep that commitment, so is presumably not expecting major delays in the expansion of liquefaction and export capacity that is currently underway in the Southeastern part of the country. Add those things together and you have the prospect of significant upward pressure on gas prices that could last throughout 2023. If that is the case, you can see why I view the 11.5% increase in natty over the last two days as an underreaction. There must be a reason for that, and the most likely one seems to be that gas was falling before, based on warm weather and questions about growth levels as the US economy flirts with recession. Both of those raise demand questions, but with both the UK and Europe taking as much gas as they can get to replace Russian supply, serious weakness in demand looks very unlikely over the next year. While the reaction to the news in the futures contract, NG makes sense in some ways, it is hard to escape the belief that there is a lot more to come. So, I for one will be trading natty with a long bias until anything changes, expecting a quick return to the recent highs around $7.50, and maybe even a move higher after that.
India’s Fuel Consumption Jumped By 10% In November
Fuel demand in the world’s third-largest crude oil importer, India, jumped by 10.2% in November from a year earlier, according to official data released on Friday. Gasoline consumption rose 8.1% year over year in November, per data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the Indian Petroleum Ministry cited by Reuters. Demand for naphtha slumped by 18.2%, but sales of bitumen, primarily used for making roads, surged by 30.3%. India’s fuel oil consumption rose by 8.4% last month compared to the same month of 2021. Recovering demand in India is driving increased crude oil imports in the country, with purchases rising in the past few months, especially imports of deeply discounted crude from Russia. India imported a record high volume of Russian crude of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in November, with Russia beating Iraq, which supplied 960,000 bpd to India. The world’s third-largest oil importer saw crude imports rise to a four-month high in November due to robust domestic demand and the rush to buy Russian oil ahead of the EU-G7 bans and sanctions. The biggest crude oil buyers in Asia, China, and India, haven’t joined the price cap mechanism on Russian crude oil and have signaled that their energy security and continued ability to import crude from all exporters are at the top of their import policy strategies. The October-December quarter is seasonally a strong quarter for oil demand in India as industrial and farming activity picks up after the end of the monsoon season. In October, India’s petroleum product demand hit the highest for the month in a decade, analysts told The Hindu Business Line last month. Boosted by holiday seasons and higher industrial and agricultural activity, Indian demand for gasoline, diesel, and other fuels is expected to rise by around 210,000 bpd in the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarter.
OPEC Misses Production Quota By 310,000 Bpd
A new survey from Argus showed on Friday that OPEC+ production fell to 38.29 million bpd last month—1.81 million barrels per day short of its reduced quota. The 19 OPEC+ members subject to the quota produced 310,000 bpd fewer barrels in November when compared to the month prior. But that’s still 1.81 million barrels per day short of its quota for November. November’s quota was a reduction of 2 million barrels per day off October levels, although it was understood at the time that the group might not be able to reach even that reduced target. Non-OPEC members of the OPEC+ group faired better than the traditional OPEC members, raising the combined output by 460,000 bpd—an eight-month high, according to Argus. Most of those increases came from Kazakstan, which saw a 330,000 bpd production increase, and Russia’s production, which saw an increase of 190,000 bpd after restarting Sakhalin 1. OPEC’s crude production was down 770,000 bpd for November, a six-month low. The production declines were led by Saudi Arabia, which saw its output reduced by 440,000 bpd. The biggest laggards among the broader OPEC+ group now, according to Argus, are Russia, producing 670,000 bpd under target; Nigeria, producing 530,000 bpd under target, Angola, producing 350,000 bpd under target, and Malaysia, producing 170,000 under target. The members of the group that met or exceeded their production target are Oman, Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Algeria, and Gabon. Overall, Non-OPEC members under produced by 92,000 bpd, while OPEC members part of the quotas under produced by 90,000 bpd. Crude oil prices have fallen substantially this week, prompting some to forecast that the OPEC+ group could cut oil production to prop up crude prices. Brent crude was set to finish out the week more than $10 under this time last week—well below what most analysts suspect is OPEC’s price defense trigger.
Russia Is India’s Top Oil Supplier For Second Month In A Row, EAM Jaishankar Says ‘Sensible Policy To Buy Oil At Best Deal’
The Indian government has been vehemently defending its trade with Russia, saying it has to source oil from where it is the cheapest. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told the Rajya Sabha this week, ‘we buy oil from multiple sources, but it is a sensible policy to go where we get the best deal in the interests of the Indian people.’ Russia has for the second month in a row remained India’s top oil supplier in November, surpassing traditional sellers Iraq and Saudi Arabia, according to data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa. Increasing share of Russian crude in India’s oil basket Russia, which made up for just 0.2 per cent of all oil imported by India in the year to March 31, 2022, supplied 9,09,403 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to India in November. It now makes up for more than a fifth of India’s oil supplies. India’s appetite for Russian oil swelled ever since it started trading on discount as the West shunned it to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. As per Vortexa, an energy intelligence firm, India imported just 36,255 barrels per day of crude oil from Russia in December 2021, compared to 1.05 million bpd from Iraq and 9,52,625 bpd from Saudi Arabia.
Russia welcomes India’s stand to not support G7’s price cap on crude oil
Russia has welcomed India’s decision to not support the price cap on Russian oil announced by the G7 countries and their allies. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak made the statement during his meeting with India’s Ambassador to Russia, Pavan Kapoor. “The Deputy Prime Minister welcomed India’s decision not to support the price cap on Russian oil, which was imposed on 5 December by the G7 countries and their allies,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Group of Seven major powers, the European Union and Australia last week agreed to a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil after EU members overcame resistance from Poland. The price ceiling seeks to restrict Russia’s revenue as punishment for its assault on Ukraine while making sure Moscow keeps supplying the global market. Novak described introducing a price cap on Russian oil as an “anti-market measure” which he stressed affects supply chains. “The introduction of a price cap on Russian oil is an anti-market measure. It disrupts supply chains and could significantly complicate the situation in global energy markets. Such non-market mechanisms disrupt the international trading system as a whole and set a dangerous precedent in the energy market,” Novak said in the statement. According to the statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Russian oil imports to India rose to 16.35 million tonnes in the first eight months of 2022. Notably, India continues to import oil from Russia despite the ongoing war between Moscow and Kyiv.