Jonathan Leff News

U.S. energy group Enterprise and oil trader Vitol raced to exploit the end of a 40-year ban on most U.S. crude exports, the first of many firms eager to "stress test" last week's historic opening. Despite a sudden change in global oil market conditions that many oil traders say has eliminated the economic advantage of shipping domestic crude far abroad, some companies that have long lobbied for the change in policy may be eager to show that their effort was not in vain, according to some experts. Houston-based pipeline group Enterprise Products Partners LP said in a statement it will provide pipeline and marine terminal services to load a 600,000-barrel cargo of domestic light crude oil scheduled for the first week of January.

Oil rocketed as much as 10 percent higher on Thursday, posting its biggest one-day rally since 2009 as recovering equity markets and news of diminished crude supplies set off a short-covering surge by bearish traders. Snapping back from a deep two-month slump that reached 6-1/2 year lows this week, oil climbed as world stock markets rose on hopes Chinese government measures to stimulate the economy would pay off, while the dollar strengthened as risk aversion eased. The rally…

The U.S. oil market is on the brink of returning to a more bullish footing known as backwardation for the first time in six months, with the discount for prompt supplies vanishing as a domestic supply glut eases. The discount for prompt U.S. oil futures versus the second-month contract - a structure known as "contango" that signals a weak market - narrowed to its smallest in five months on Friday as strong demand and flattening production added to expectations that domestic stockpiles will continue to fall over the summer. If that spread flips to a premium, known as "backwardation," it would come in sharp contrast to the global Brent futures , which is showing no signs of emerging from its 50-cent contango.

Late last November, the tanker Olympic Flag carrying 650,000 barrels of Angolan crude dropped anchor about 7 miles off the coast in Delaware Bay, a seemingly routine shipment destined for a nearby Philadelphia refinery. What happened next was anything but routine. Instead of discharging its cargo within days and heading off for the next port, the ship idled offshore for nearly 11 weeks, discharging the oil at an unaccountably slow rate, according to shipping sources as well as vessel tracking data on ThomsonReuters Eikon. That vessel finally set sail two weeks ago - but by then it had already been joined by five more idling tankers, an unusual and costly congregation that has puzzled experts and traders.

World oil prices resumed a months-long rout on Tuesday to close at their lowest in more than two years, pressured by reduced economic and demand growth forecasts. U.S. crude oil prices fell faster than European Brent, reversing a weeks-long compression in the Brent/WTI spread amid signs that U.S. refiners are starting to buy cut-priced West African or Mediterranean crudes, re-opening a once common arbitrage. The International Monetary Fund cut its global economic growth forecasts for the third time this year, warning of weaker growth in core euro zone countries, Japan and Brazil. And German industrial output fell in August at its steepest rate since January 2009. "The IMF forecast is weighing on (demand) sentiment," said Phil Flynn, an analyst for the Price Futures Group in Chicago.

In large part, the wide-ranging reaction to President Barack Obama's signature effort to cut power plant carbon emissions could have been written months in advance. Key Republicans and many industrial groups decried it as a job-killing war on coal that would drive up power prices; environmentalists and many Democrats hailed it as a landmark measure making good on Obama's pledge to tackle climate change. Behind the bombast, however, more measured voices found a proposal that was not as severe as critics had feared nor as ambitious as proponents had hoped for. Basing the average 30 percent reduction on the year 2005 - near a high point for such emissions…

Global trader Trafigura AG is seeking potential investors to buy a stake in its oil terminal and storage facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, a once-quiet port that has become a bustling hub for shipping Eagle Ford shale crude. Trafigura, which like other big commodity merchants has in recent years moved to buy key infrastructure assets to support its trading business, bought Texas Dock & Rail in early 2012, just as Eagle Ford production was emerging as the next big U.S. shale play after North Dakota's Bakken. It has since built the facility, once home to a failed steel plant, into a major gateway for shipping rapidly growing U.S. oil production as far as Canada, with two deepwater tanker berths and an expanding suite of logistical assets.

As a polar vortex snarled North America's railroads and upended freight flows this winter, everyone from agricultural giant Cargill to Dow Chemical rushed to secure the next-best form of hauling goods: trucks. In what trucking executives described as an unprecedented bidding frenzy, spot market rates surged by as much as 20 percent to record highs in the first three months of 2014 as shippers sought to minimize sometimes weeks-long delays in rail service. "We've received letters from CEOs from major chemical companies asking us if we can do more," said Bill Marchbank, vice president of operations at Houston-based Trimac Transportation, a leading bulk shipper of liquid chemicals and industrial minerals.

A detailed new case study scrutinizing the risk-management Swiss-based Trafigura is the latest effort to "demystify" the once-secretive commodity trading industry, just big merchants seek to fill a void being left by Wall Street banks. The study, "The Economics of Commodity Trading Firms," comes as U.S. regulators mull new restrictions on banks' physical commodity trading, a crackdown some large energy companies say would rob them of credit-worthy, transparent counterparties and leave them at the mercy of shadowy and risky firms.