Energy investor Eric Nuttall says global oil markets continue to struggle with a sentiment problem that’s keeping benchmark crude prices lower than they should be.
Nuttall, a partner and senior portfolio manager at Ninepoint Partners, told BNN Bloomberg in a Wednesday interview that the issue mainly revolves around concerns about 2025 inventory levels, which many expect to rise on the back of new builds from oil producers.
But he said that based on current inventory levels, oil is mispriced.
“What we’ve seen is a complete breakdown between historical relationships, meaning if you look at where global oil inventories sit today, they’re at their lowest levels on record,” Nuttall said.
“If you look at where the price should be relative to where inventories are, we’re mispriced by about $12 to $13, so that is reflective of a profound sentiment challenge.”
He added that he believes the general consensus around global demand growth for oil next year is too bearish – another factor putting downward pressure on prices.
West Texas Intermediate crude prices were hovering below US$70 a barrel in midday trading on Wednesday – little changed from Tuesday, as traders weighed escalations in Russia’s war in Ukraine against U.S. stockpile data showing inventories increased last week, Bloomberg reported.
Nuttall said he expects prices to rise and trade within a $70 to $80 bend next year as demand grows in China and other markets.
“We’ve seen major oil traders just in recent weeks point to improvements in China… we see refining margins increasing so that’s reflective of improvement in user demand, and really our thesis on U.S. shale is that we’ve entered its twilight,” he said.
“We think growth next year will be much more modest than consensus, and its not just us thinking that, it’s actually the producers saying that… and so, we think the market is simply far too bearish.”
Trump’s impact
Nuttall said that U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s “drill baby, drill” approach to energy production is “completely toothless,” and unlikely to meaningfully impact oil and gas prices.
“There’s nothing a U.S. president can do to influence meaningful shale growth when investors don’t want it and the rocks won’t allow it,” he said.
Nuttall did, however, praise Trump’s pick for energy secretary: oil and gas executive Chris Wright.
“As a Canadian I’m very envious… they now have a gentleman that is actually energy literate, who recognizes that there is no energy transition going on, and that depriving the majority of the planet from hydrocarbons keeps them in mass levels of poverty and energy scarcity,” he said.
Wright, the CEO of Colorado-based Liberty Energy Inc., is a vocal proponent of fossil fuels who has said they are crucial for lifting people out of poverty across the world, and that the threat of global warming from their continued production is exaggerated, Bloomberg reported Saturday.
Nuttall said that one way Trump’s administration could influence oil markets next year is by being more hawkish on Iranian oil exports – something he said the current U.S. administration has not made a priority.
“We think that enforcing their sanctions, that have been in place but (the Joe Biden administration) has just been completely turning a willful blind eye, could see about a million barrels per day removed from the market,” he said.
“So that’s yet another bullish possibility that a market which is just so stuck in the mud of negativity is just unwilling to give any potential for.”
With files from Bloomberg News