SunSirs: Energy, Demand Pessimism Dominates the Decline of Crude Oil

On February 26, U.S. WTI crude oil futures market continued to fall with a large decline. The main contract was $48.73/ barrel, down $1.17 (-2.34%). Brent crude oil futures market price also continued to fall sharply, the main contract was at $52.81/ barrel, down $1.45 (-2.77%), especially WTI crude oil has fallen to a new one-year low. Crude oil continued to decline sharply on Wednesday, mainly due to the warming of the global epidemic COVID-19.

On Wednesday, the market atmosphere was still dominated by the demand fear and panic atmosphere triggered by the previous epidemic COVID-19. Previously, the impact of China's epidemic has lowered the expectations of various agencies on the growth of global crude oil demand in 2020, generally more than 300,000 barrels/ day lower than the 1.2 million barrels at the beginning of the year. The global spread of COVID-19 in Japan, South Korea, Italy, Iran and other countries, and after the agency lowered its growth expectations, Goldman Sachs on Wednesday reduced its crude oil demand from 1.2 million barrels to 600,000 barrels/ day. It can be seen that pessimistic expectations have an unprecedented and more serious pressure on oil prices.

At present, there are also new supply risk factors in the market. In addition to the decline of crude oil production in Libya and the upgrade of export restrictions in Venezuela, there are new news in the market. On Wednesday, a fire broke out in the Carson refinery of Marathon Oil Company, the second largest refining company in the United States. The refinery is located in California with a capacity of 12 million tons/ year. At present, the fire in the refinery has been controlled. In addition, the Afghan Interior Ministry said Wednesday night that a motorcycle bomb exploded in Kabul, injuring nine civilians. At present, the United States refinery fire combined with the geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East has not played a role in stabilizing the decline of the crude oil market. Now, the market is still dominated by the pessimistic atmosphere of the epidemic.

In addition, whether OPEC will deepen production reduction is still the focus of the market. The OPEC+ meeting will be held in Vienna from March 5 to 6. Before that, any information released by the market will have an impact on the oil price. The current oil price level and the pessimistic demand expectation may further promote OPEC+'s deepening production reduction policy.

Generally speaking, SunSirs believes that the crude oil will remain low in the near future, the superposition of market risk factors will lead to the increase of crude oil amplitude, and the oversold response of the market will further increase the long risk. In the near future, the market or low volatility does not exclude the possibility of continuing to explore the bottom, but with the further digestion of the impact of the epidemic and the stimulation of supply risk, crude oil will have a rebound demand.

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