By Ann Koh and Alex Longley

Aug 27, 2020

(Bloomberg) Oil slipped from a five-month high as Hurricane Laura, which has disrupted refineries in the U.S. Gulf, took a path away from the Houston area’s massive energy infrastructure.

Laura made landfall early Thursday at Cameron, Louisiana, near the border with Texas, as a Category 4 storm and has started weakening. While it knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and has caused widespread damage, traders are waiting to assess the potential impact on both fuel production and consumption.

More than 80% of oil output in the Gulf of Mexico and almost 3 million barrels a day of refining capacity had been shut ahead of the storm, causing a spike in gasoline futures prices earlier this week. Since then prices have retreated, outpacing the decline in crude on Thursday.

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WTI is retreating from its strongest levels since March

“Gasoline has already given up most of its risk premium while WTI is at risk of breaking back below $43,” said Ole Hansen head of commodities research at Saxo Bank. “It’s incredible what a few miles can mean in terms of damage or no damage to key refinery assets.”

Prices
West Texas Intermediate for October delivery declined 0.4% to $43.20 a barrel at 8:56 a.m. in New York Brent for the same month was down 0.5% at $45.42 a barrel Nymex gasoline futures fell 3% to 131.93 cents a gallon

Laura has been disrupting energy flows, with trans-Atlantic gasoline tanker bookings jumping and more than 60 oil and refined product tankers in the western U.S. Gulf waiting for the storm to pass, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

The hurricane is likely to have only a temporary market impact, with Covid-19 continuing to cloud the prospects for a more sustainable recovery in oil prices. There are indication of the weakness everywhere with Norway’s Equinor ASA the latest to announce job cuts. India’s annual fuel demand is expected to drop to a five-year low.

Other market drivers
The UAE’s output plan for October will be a “massive” 900,000 barrels a day above its OPEC+ quota, consultant Energy Aspects said in a report, citing people it didn’t identify. Saudi Aramco appointed a new chief executive officer to run its $500 million venture capital and investments arm after the previous head departed, according to people with knowledge of the situation.