分析师：委内瑞拉油补美国战略储备纯属幻想

Stephen Schork of the Schork Group writing the following. Washington is treating Venezuela's enormous reserves as though they are immediately available barrels. They are not. Stephen joins us now for more. Stephen, do you remember that song? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. Absolutely. So some of the Pollyanna's takes on the Venezuelan oil there as if we just stumbled upon 65,000,000,000 barrels of oil sitting out of tank, out of dock, with a loading arm, ready to get into a empty tanker.

That's not going to happen. What we have here is a situation of decades of the Bolivarian revolution introduced by Hugo Chavez in the early two thousands that has absolutely decimated the Venezuelan oil industry by, as New Yorkers like to say, the warmth of collectivism. So it took twenty five years to destroy a once vibrant industry in Venezuela. It is going to take more than just a couple of years to get it stable and to get it to be a significant player on the global market.

We're talking at a minimum five years, if not ten years, before Venezuela oil makes a significant impact on the global oil market. Stephen, it's one thing for Chevron to get a deal, as we saw this morning for developing oil fields in Venezuela. Do you understand this deal that president Trump struck with Venezuela to take ownership as a nation of some of the oil fields in Venezuela to potentially help plug the SPR? Do you understand any of the logistics behind that?

Well, the the the notion that we are gonna use Venezuela oil to plug the SPR is pure fantasy. From a technological standpoint, from an engineering standpoint, can it happen? Yes. Realistically, is it going to happen? Absolutely not. Venezuelan oil is the highest viscous, heaviest, densest oil in the world. The SVR logistically cannot handle that oil. So what you would have to do is what they do. They cut the oil, the Venezuelan, with a diluent to make it viscous, to get it to be able to move actually through a pipe, and then they upgrade it.

The SPR is a storage facility. They don't have the hydro treaters. They don't have any of the equipment to upgrade the Venezuelan oil. So first, it would have to go to a refinery. They would have to upgrade it, then it would have to go into the SPR. Again, logistically, is it possible? Yes. Realistically, economically, will it happen? Absolutely not. So the notion that we're gonna use Venezuelan oil to replenish the SPR is pure fantasy.

It will not happen. Stephen, how much more time do we have before the SPR is actually completely emptied, at least the viable oil that we can extract? Yeah. Absolutely. So at the current rate, the annualized rate, which we're falling by, and I'm using the midterms, November as a benchmark, will be down to about 245,000,000 barrels, which is a fraction of the 700,000,000 barrels of its of its capacity. Now, of course, the previous administration drew down barrels, and now this administration has accelerated that.

So at our current rate, at some point in the New Year, we're gonna be at a level that look. We're already at a level that we only have about fourteen weeks worth of import cover left in the SPR. At the start of the war, we had thirty weeks. So we've halved our import cover of the SPR since March. So by certainly by the second quarter of next year when demand kicks in going into summer, we are gonna be at significantly dangerous levels with the remaining barrels sitting left in the SVR.

Stephen, just how vulnerable are we going against hurricane season on the refining side? Now the refining side, that and that's the crux end. So commercial we're talking about the SVR. These are government owned. We all own the SPR barrels. The commercial stocks of crude oil in The United States are actually in good shape. What is not in good shape are diesel, gasoline, jet fuel prime inventories. Those are at lows, and and the concern the overarching concern in the market right now is the situation in distillate.

And this all stems from the war, but not the war you're thinking about. This is the war between Ukraine and Russia that has decimated Russian refinery capacity and has decimated the European distillate market. So The United States refiners were doing everything they can at max capacity to get oil, jet fuel, gasoline onto the market. They are now the marginal supplier of distillate fuels going into Europe at this point.

Now we're in the summer. Demand for distillate is at its weakest, and inventories should be building. They're not. Inventories, in fact, right now in The United States are at the lowest point for the season ever, and we're at the weakest demand part. So as we go into fall and as intermodal demand picks up, as agricultural demand picks up, as heating demand picks up for distillates, we're looking at an extremely dangerous situation.

Dissolate prices are now at the third highest level in the futures that they've ever been. They were hired twice during in 2022 when inflation was running rampant. But, certainly, we are on a course where inventories are extremely low at a point of the season where demand is out of its weakness. Now you just move that along along the number line here. A couple months, when demand begins to pick up, inventories are at a very dire situation for us here in The United States and especially for our European trading partners.