Oil fell to its lowest in three months on Monday, as the prospect of another year of oversupply and weak prices overshadowed chances that Opec will reach a deal to cut output.
Donald Trump’s surprise win in last week’s US presidential election boosted the dollar and stocks but undermined oil. Crude has also fallen because of waning expectations that the world’s largest exporters will agree to reduce production this month.
Brent crude futures fell 50 cents on the day to $44.25 a barrel by 2:50pm GMT, while NYMEX crude futures dropped by 57 cents to $42.84 a barrel.
“In the same way that a strong Opec agreement was needed to continue the rally above $55, a lack of agreement will be needed to break below $40 and right now, we’re at $45,” Petromatrix strategist Olivier Jakob said.
Opec plans to cut or freeze output, but analysts doubt the group’s ability to reach an agreement at its meeting on 30 November.
Opec said on Friday its output hit a record 33.64 million barrels per day in October, and forecast an even larger global surplus in 2017 than the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Thursday.
Yet, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih has said it was imperative for Opec to reach a consensus on activating a deal made in September in Algiers to cut production.
“Opec know what needs to be done but too few members will agree to take the production pain for the price gain, knowing also that the price gain incentivises non-Opec to produce more, lengthening the rebalancing process,” PVM Oil Associates analyst David Hufton said.
The dollar index hit an 11-month peak on Monday, driven by an aggressive sell-off in bonds that has pushed Treasury yields to their highest since January.
Ordinarily, a strong dollar would push oil lower, but the correlation between the two is at its most positive in two months, suggesting they are more likely to move in lockstep with one another than in opposite directions.
Data from the InterContinental Exchange on Monday showed investors delivered the largest weekly cut on record to their bets on a sustained rise in the price of oil.
Mexico’s oil regulator on Wednesday said state-owned oil company Pemex must take a minimum 45 percent stake in its first-ever proposed joint venture with would-be private partners to develop oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep waters.
Global oil majors are widely expected to bid in the December auction to help develop the Trion light oil field in the Perdido Fold Belt just south of Mexico’s maritime border with the United States.
Companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil operate lucrative developments in nearby U.S. waters while Mexico has yet to achieve commercial production on its side of oil-rich Perdido due to a lack of technical expertise to tap such fields.
The call for bids to partner with cash-strapped Pemex on Trion follows the constitutional energy reform enacted in 2013 which promised to reverse a decade-long slump in crude production by luring new players to explore for and produce oil.
The regulator said the Trion joint venture will be bid out in the form of a license contract, which is similar to a concession, and will include two operators, one of which must have between a 30 to 45 percent stake in the project.
Interested bidders have until Sept. 15 to pre-qualify for the auction by meeting both financial and technical minimum requirements, while the final version of the contract and bid terms will be published on Sept. 30.
The license contract to partner with Pemex on the project will be awarded on Dec. 5. Mexico will also auction 10 separate deep water fields, including four that surround Trion, in December.
Under the terms of the energy reform, Pemex can partner with companies in exploration and production projects, but rather than being allowed to pick its partners, they will instead be selected by an auction run by the oil regulator, known as the National Hydrocarbons Commission.
The partnership will allow Pemex to share the investment needed to successfully develop the field, the company’s first major deep water oil project.
The Trion field holds some 480 million barrels and will require about $11 billion worth of investment.
The field covers about 483 square miles (1,250 square km) and is located under more than 8,202 feet (2,500 meters) of water.
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The next bidding round in the opening of Mexico’s oil and gas sector will be called by the end of July and consist of 15 shallow water blocks for exploration and extraction in the Gulf of Mexico, Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said.
Coldwell announced the round, denominated 2.1, at an event in the northern city of Monterrey on Wednesday.
The following round, or 2.2, would be called by the end of the summer and comprise 14 onshore blocks for exploration and production in the gas-rich Burgos basin in the north of the country as well as in southeast Mexico, Coldwell added.
Mexico ended the oil and gas monopoly of national oil company Pemex at the end of 2013 to open up the industry to more private sector investment. However, the auctions of oil and gas blocks have been complicated by a sharp drop in crude prices.
Crude futures on Wednesday hit their highest levels in 2016, beyond $50 per barrel. Coldwell said it was very hard to forecast whether the recovery in prices would last
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Mexican state oil company Pemex has picked the deep-water Trion field near the U.S. border as the first one it will farm out to other operators to help it develop untapped resources, the firm said on Friday.
The search for private capital to boost areas previously discovered by Pemex is a major step in the opening up of Mexico’s oil and gas industry, a process enabled by an energy reform that ended the company’s monopoly in 2013.
Pemex Chief Executive Jose Antonio Gonzalez Anaya told a news conference the company’s board had approved the step and that Trion would likely be operated by a company other than Pemex.
“It’s a big, important field,” Gonzalez said.
The Trion field, located in the Perdido area, will require about $11 billion worth of investment and more farm outs will follow, Gonzalez said. In total, the Trion field contained some 480 million barrels, he added.
Pemex did not have a specific number of investors in mind for the Trion field, he said. The companies involved in the farm out should be announced in December, when Mexico has scheduled its first auctions for deep water fields.
Speaking at the same news conference, Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said the Trion farm out would be in the form of a license and that the field was 2,500 meters (8,202 feet) deep.
Two years of falling crude prices have hurt Pemex, which wants partners to boost output and improve margins.
In the first quarter of this year, Pemex ran up its 14th consecutive quarterly loss at about 62 billion pesos ($3.6 billion), as both crude prices and output fell.
Earlier, Pemex announced that Luis Rafael Montanaro Sanchez had been named as the new director of Pemex’s ethylene unit.
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