Will Oil Shoot The Moon? The Coming War With Iran
Richard is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
BOOM! Hear that explosion? That’s black gold’s rocket ship thrusting off earth’s surface headed to the moon as the first Israeli bomb hits a clandestine nuclear facility.
PHHWWTT! That’s the sound of 2.3 million barrels of daily Iranian production immediately sucked out of the market.
SQUEEZE! Feel that? That’s Iran sealing off the Strait of Hormuz (a strategically important waterway for tankers.)
WAAAAA!!!! Hear that? That’s panic in the oil pits as traders hit the buy button as “rational” traders hit the buy button like it's 1999 when Internet stocks with no profits were valued at a bazillion times earnings, sending crude’s price into orbit.
OUCH! Feel that sting? That’s you at the gas pump as you decide to cut back on groceries.
How likely is this scenario? Sadly, getting more and more so.
Israel has recently ratcheted up their Iranian nuclear rhetoric. Certainly there is a political element here, as they desperately try to get Russia and China on board any UN resolution/sanctions, warning of the most dire of consequences, but oil bulls need not worry, the Iranians have effectively bribed the two governments via very profitable “crude” business relations. Israeli pleas will fall on deaf ears.
On the other side of the coin, even if Allah himself commanded Ayatollah Khamenei to give up the nuclear program and instead use those resources to produce something beneficial for Iran’s otherwise welcoming and utterly hospitable population, the military elite who have commandeered the actual power, would whisper the following reply to Allah into the Ayatollah’s ear-
Khamenei: “Ummm … no.”
Deaf ears.
Now, Israel takes their existence pretty seriously, what with most governments around them trying to annihilate them and all. They bombed suspected Syrian and Iraqi nuclear facilities endng those games before they started, and there’s no doubt Iran has learned from the miscues of their counterparts, so the degree of difficulty of taking out Iran’s nuclear program will be much greater, but when the Israelis say they consider Iran an existential threat to their existence, and under no conditions will they be allowed to have nukes, they ain’t bluffing, it’s only a game theory model of expected outcome, and perceived probabilities.
Yes, the risk of war is to some degree factored into the current price of oil, and let’s all pray that peace spreads over the earth (I’ll add “Middle East” to my prayer with one eye open, looking up, hoping God doesn’t think I’m pulling a con.) Assuming no war, what then happens to the price of crude?
Sure, the air will come out of the tires a little, price will sag a few dollars, let’s say 20% even; but oil is a commodity with a floor.
China craves more and more energy, billions of people rising up the economic ladder around the world are excited to purchase their first automobile, electricity for smart phones, computers, televisions, plastics (made of oil), etc. etc. The world simply demands more and more this scarce resource.
Why do you think oil companies invest in, as BP (NYSE: BP) demonstrated, risky offshore drilling; rigs that cost millions of dollars a day to operate, to maintain. Oil is getting harder and harder to recover from the earth, even with massive advances in drilling technology. These companies are betting all these billions and billions of dollars on what they perceive might be future falling demand?
Demand increases rapidly, supply, not so much.
To boot, these companies, ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A), all have rock solid balance sheets with hefty dividends far higher than US treasuries, with a commodity that will increase in nominal dollar terms if the US and Europe take the politically expedient path try to print their out of their deficits. (likely)
|
Name |
P/E |
Yield |
|
|
Exxon Mobil |
(NYSE: XOM) |
8.28 |
2.50% |
|
Shell |
(NYSE: RDS-A) |
6.63 |
5.10% |
|
Conoco |
(NYSE: COP) |
8.1 |
3.90% |
|
Petrobas |
(NYSE: PBR) |
16 |
0.70% |
|
British Petroleum |
(NYSE: BP) |
5.7 |
4.10% |
|
Marathon Oil |
(NYSE: MRO) |
6.1 |
2.40% |
|
Schlumberger |
(NYSE: SLB) |
20.8 |
1.40% |
|
5 year US Treasury |
Yield Less than 1% |
Additionally, Exxon, Conoco , and Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) have all been increasing their dividends, and BP has re-instated theirs since the Gulf disaster.
Oil is going to fly baby. What could possibly knock this rocket ship back to earth? Like it did to Daedalus and Icarus, only the sun. General Electric engineers predict that within five years the price of solar energy will be cheaper than the current price of fossil based fuels. China is investing heavily in renewable energy (especially solar), and other companies around the world are making advances in efficiency of solar cells.
The challenge is, this same five year outlook has been promised for the last twenty by optimistic solar advocates. This time, I pray that they are correct.
But sadly, until the sun truly rises, the one sure bet is darkness- that’s why they call it black gold.
Fool blogger Richard Birecki owns shares of ExxonMobil and BP, but no other companies mentioned in this post.
