Global Oil Data Deck (August '22)

June oil market balances once again weakened off a fresh Chinese demand rout; crude prices—and even more importantly the shape of the crude curve—under continued pressure

This 43-page August 2022 edition of the Global Oil Data Deck series (attached PDF) is exclusive to paid Commodity Context subscribers.

The Commodity Context Data Decks are monthly data-dense and visualization-heavy reports on the market fundamentals and emerging trends that drive commodity market prices.

Overview

• Crude prices continued their choppy descent lower over the past month; but, even more concerning, the futures curves of both Brent and WTI flattened materially over the past over the past month, with the 12-month backwardation in both contracting roughly 75% vs end-June levels to the lowest level of the year.

• Global oil supply-demand balances loosened, again, to an estimated oversupply of 2.0 MMbpd in June, which is 0.4 MMbpd looser than May and tied with April as the loosest month since the beginning of the pandemic.

• Global visible petroleum inventories were essentially flat again in June and remain extremely low by historical comparison; meanwhile, crude inventories fell and product inventories rose slightly.

• Global oil supply rose by 0.9 MMbpd m/m to 99.9 MMbpd in June on a combination of continued OPEC production normalization, stabilizing Russian production, further growth in US shale, and a solid monthly growth out of Canada.

• Over the same time period (i.e., June), Global oil demand growth slowed to a gain of 0.4 MMbpd m/m to 97.9 MMbpd, with material progress across most regions being weighed down by fresh year-to-date lows in China.