We are still looking for another drop into the $40's.
From Bloomberg via the Houston Chronicle's FuelFix:
Four months into oil’s rebound from a six-year low, the tanker market is sending a clear signal that the rally is under threat.Here's the daily chart for the last year from FinViz:
A sudden surge in demand for supertankers drove benchmark charter rates 57 percent higher in the two weeks through May 20. OPEC will have almost half a billion barrels of oil in transit to buyers at the start of June, the most this year, while analysts say about 20 million barrels is being stored on ships in another indication the glut has yet to dissipate.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is pumping the most oil in more than two years, determined to defend market share rather than prices. A record cut to the number of active U.S. drilling rigs and billions of dollars of spending reductions by companies since last year’s price plunge has yet to translate into a slump in barrels produced. The world is pumping about 1.9 million barrels a day more crude than it needs, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
“Supply of oil continues to build,” said Paddy Rodgers, the chief executive officer of Antwerp, Belgium-based Euronav NV, whose supertanker fleet can haul 56 million barrels of crude. “All of this oil needs to go somewhere,” he wrote in an e-mail May 19.
Daily rates for supertankers on the industry’s benchmark route reached $83,412 on May 20, from $52,987 on May 6, according to the Baltic Exchange in London. While rates since retreated to $65,784, they’re still the highest for this time of year since at least 2008.
Brent crude futures advanced 38 percent from this year’s low on Jan. 13, and traded at $62.30 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange at 10:53 a.m. local time Thursday.
Increasing Exports
OPEC’s 12 members will have 485 million barrels of oil in transit to buyers in the four weeks to June 6, the most since November, Roy Mason, founder of Oil Movements, a Halifax, England-based company monitoring the flows, said by e-mail Wednesday.
Iraq, the group’s second-largest producer, plans to boost exports to a record 3.75 million barrels a day next month, according to shipping programs....MORE
