The Officials

Flat price is vacillating, up and down like some who are already enjoying Christmas. What the hell, the moves are minor, so don’t worry. The window saw a flat price slip, from above $73.30 to below $73, though it found some support in the $72.90s. But it quickly rebounded towards $73.20. It’s like a kid who can’t decide whether to play with the bear or bull action figures it just unwrapped for Christmas. Or someone who had one too many And then it came back down again… After all that choppy window action, Brent ended European trading at $73.17/bbl. Up and down faster than Father Christmas in a chimney!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Except Totsa. Totsa was awake and rummaging through the Dubai window looking for cargoes like an excited child sifting through a Christmas stocking on the hunt for chocolate. Buyers and sellers exchanged partial gifts all in good Christmas spirit. Right? And the French were rewarded with another 4 convergences! They got three Upper Zakums: one from each of BP, Exxon and Reliance. Trafi wanted to be different to the rest and nominated an Oman. By our counting, that makes a total of 29 convergences in December in the Dubai window, of which 27(!!) have gone to Totsa. More than one cargo per calendar day and working towards half of the Upper Zakum monthly program. Don’t call it a squeeze, call it a Christmas embrace. Tight we know So far, two other cargoes went to Mitsui and Glencore, who’ve been left to fight for Totsa’s leftovers all month. Thank you to our kind readers for helping to cross-check the data! Singapore friends, you are awesome!

It was a flat price slip and slide. Throughout the Asian session Brent flat price remained supported just above $73 before Europe came in and put an end to that. By the window, we were even troubling the low $72 range. Team America didn’t even bother turning up to try and arrest the downward momentum, which saw Brent end far down on the day, at $72.06/bbl. Perhaps they’re already tucking into the mince pies.

Totsa continues to vacuum clean the Dubai floor. Anything the market throws at them, Totsa sucks up. And they are
winning; the premium is jumping. The food fight has moved from the North Sea window to the Dubai window. And it’s getting
messy with Totsa fully dominating the market. More bids, more lifting… it’s become a deeply entrenched pattern of the
Dubai windows for months now. An offer from BP, they’ll take it. Something pops up from Trafi, they’ll snatch that. Unipec
or Exxon places an offer and it’s bound to get a hammering from Totsa. All the sellers seemed to get their fair share of
smacking. Only a few sellers got to return the favour by hitting a Totsa bid, but Vitol, Exxon and Equinor all managed to
squeeze it into their busy schedules. The French zeal saw Totsa gain yet more convergences: one each from Phillips and
Trafi, which both handed out Upper Zakum. By our counting, that gives Totsa 23 convergences so far in December – not
quite on par with November, but still a vast volume. The market is a bit dry and premia react – the Dubai physical premium
surging 97c yesterday to $1.12 today!

We saw good Brent support at around $72.00/bbl and the line roughly held. The downward momentum was first arrested
at noon bouncing back towards the mid-$72 point, choppy as the indecisive Americans couldn’t pick between up or down,
so in the end they picked both and flat price bounced up and down, with a climb through the window to close at $72.80/bbl.
Before 15:00 GMT, we were threatening to go below $72 again, but there’s plenty of resistance to going lower, so flat price
just keeps vibrating in the same narrow range and clung on to the $72 handle. The only ones making money are the volatility
sellers. Tight trading ranges suggest many European traders have closed out their positions and shut up shop for the
holidays, but the American traders are more active.

Totsa’s cleaning up in Dubai! The window was inundated with Totsa bids, and the host of sellers did their best to smack them but they just couldn’t keep up. Reliance, Exxon and Mitsui were all trying their best to clear the trading table of Totsa’s endless bids. Vitol took on the lion’s share of the work trying to keep a lid on things, clobbering as many of Totsa’s bids as it could. But even that wasn’t enough to get through the mountain of Totsa bids and the Frenchman had three left untouched bids by the time the window no closed and Les Amis withdrew them. The French vacuum cleaner didn’t limit itself to just bidding and was also lifting offers left, right and centre. With such aggressive bidding from Totsa and sellers’ hands full, the Dubai physical premium edged up to 97c, the strongest so far in December. A $1 premium is tantalising!

Flat price doesn’t look very flat. The graph shows the volatility of the past couple of days: a consistent decline following the bombshell Powell speech last night and a choppy climb today, especially after lunchtime, as the Americans woke up, apparently having taken stock of the Fed fallout. But the Brent price range is very restrictive and the market doesn’t like seeing it go too far either way at the moment, so it quickly toppled back down to under $73. Major events but constrained volatility. These price fluctuations are small but relentless. Today it was still a very narrow range of barely more than a buck, as the market sees little cause for optimism on supply and demand fundamentals, but there’s plenty of buying from China whenever flat price descends towards $70 and lots of technical support around that level.

Only one man has the power to send everything plummeting at the same time. Mr Power Powell. And only Total has the power to vacuum dry the Dubai market! The Power! Powell’s press conference had almost every asset class tripping and tumbling. Oil didn’t like it either and slid in the latter hours of American trading last night. A small jump in Brent flat price of around 20c on the rate cut announcement was overshadowed by Powell’s hawkish rhetoric and the subsequent slide down to around $73, 60c lower than before the announcement. Though the dollar’s now the highest in 2 years, so that’s surely a key driver in oil’s price slide. Asia was happy to catch its breath, reassess and consolidate, but Europe didn’t like the news when it woke up, so pushed it down even further and it fell all the way to $72.87/bbl by the close of the Asian session.

Prices are again flirting with $74 bucks as the sparring continues in the North Sea although no punches were landed. The window players calmed down from yesterday’s chaotic showing. Today they were all pushing Midland around. Gunvor and Equinor brought it to the table, while Mercuria and Totsa were bidding. BP came in to offer Ekofisk, but all the attention was centred on Midland, so it didn’t get any interest. But the price wasn’t right for anybody and there wasn’t a single trade today. Not a sausage ☹. Although Totsa wasn’t keen on buying North Sea physical cargoes today, that didn’t stop it buying up loads of CFDs in the window!

The French Connection keeps on connecting More Upper Zakum for Totsa! This time it’s Reliance providing the UZ, while Vitol gave the French behemoth another Oman convergence. We’ve tallied them up and that makes 15 convergences in the Dubai window to Totsa so far this month! Unsurprisingly, the window showed yet another bidding frenzy by Totsa, whose bids overshadowed those of Mitsui, Phillips and Hengli. Bid after bid came flying down on the creaking deals table, as Totsa slammed its fist and shouted for attention! Again, it took a plethora of sellers to hold the rampaging bull at bay: Exxon stepped up to the plate again, while Vitol and Reliance obviously slapped a few Totsa bids too, and Equinor joined in on the fun again. After another exciting instalment of the long-running Totsa Show, the Dubai physical premium firmed up to reach 95.5c, marginally stronger than its previous December high. Is a $1+ coming? Do the bears like the woods?

Tasting menu turned food fight. There were more players than other December windows: BP, Mitsui and Gunvor all joined the familiar trio of Trafi, Totsa and Equinor today. Gunvor got stuck in, selling a 12-14 Jan Forties to Trafi at Dated +$0.55, while it was also offering Midland. Totsa didn’t want to be left out and bought a 10-14 Jan Midland from Equinor at $1.60 over Dated. Mitsui, for all its bidding for Ekofisk and Forties, went home empty handed. Although it was offering Forties, BP didn’t feel like Mitsui’s bids came up to standard, and the two went their separate ways.

It was another big day in the convergence stakes, with four more. You’d be forgiven for thinking Totsa had bagged another 2 mill bbls of crude, but you’d be mistaken. Glencore has been quietly plugging away in the Frenchman’s shadow and today was rewarded with an Upper Zakum cargo from Exxon. Exxon did declare another Upper Zakum and guess who it went to! Totsa, of course. So did other convergences for UZ from both PetroChina and BP – one from each. So, Totsa’s reached 13 convergences in Dubai so far this month. And now Dubai partials have overtaken Brent, gaining a 3c/bbl premium!

Totsa can’t stop, won’t stop. If it were anybody else, it would be noteworthy, but Totsa’s proclivity has set the standard very high. It would be more notable if Totsa were less active. We just wonder when (if) that day will come… As it is, it was back to bidding in the North Sea, looking for another Midland. And Johan Sverdrup too. The hungry Frenchman collected an 8-10 Jan Ekofisk at Dated +$1 from Equinor, the prolific seller of December so far. It also snatched a 12-16 Jan Midland at Dated +$1.60 from Gunvor. Of the massive 34 cargoes traded so far in December’s windows, Totsa has bought 18! Along with its 10 convergences in Dubai, that makes for 17.6 mil bbl across both windows, averaging out to 1.6 mil bbl per trading day!! On track to beat even their own massive haul last month?

Capitaine France is still going strong and has absolutely dominated the Dubai window so far in December. Of the 10 convergences we’ve seen so far this month, Totsa has grabbed all of them! It’s not fair, hoarding all the love from the sellers such as Exxon and Vitol, while the other buyers like Glencore and Mitsui are left out in the cold to fend for themselves . But we have to respect the grind of the most determined market participant. This also hasn’t stopped Totsa bagging its fair share of cargoes in the North Sea too, which has seen a grand total of 32 trades so far this month. Totsa collected 16 of those, by our counting. How long can they keep this up?? It’s been months and there’s no sign of flagging!

‘Higher, higher!’ Chanted the markets as Brent flat price touched $74.30/bbl this morning. But the market is indecisive and has a short attention span, so was quickly tumbling back to below $73.70 before rebuilding towards the mid-$74 range by 17:30 GMT. What we’ve learnt today is that the market is an unpredictable mistress, but flat price looks very happy in the lower half of the 70s for now. Volatility is up compared to recent record lows, so moves in either direction are likely to be aggressive and rapid. It may even mount an assault on the $75 handle within the next week, if Chinese buying keeps propping up demand sentiment or the troubled regions of the world boil over.