Oil price collapse

Equity, energy, bond and currency markets all were launched into turmoil as the global oil price collapsed. Hit by both a demand and a supply shock, oil has fallen nearly 50% this year. Although oil producers are likely to be hit hard by this latest development, the longer-term effects of the price collapse are not all bad. The worry for individual governments trying to counteract any negative effects is that there may be little they can do for now.

The impetus for Monday's selloff in oil was the collapse in talks between Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on further cuts to oil production. This was the fastest collapse in price since the 1991 Gulf War - Brent crude settled around US$34 a barrel, down 24% - but it comes just five years after another price collapse in 2014-15, when prices fell to $30 from $115 in 18 months.

Back then, OPEC and Russia eventually came to an agreement to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day (mbpd). That amounted to approximately 2% of global supply. This time, as Riyadh pushed for even more aggressive cuts of up to 3.5% of global supply, Moscow balked.

With no agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC states, Saudi Arabia did the same thing as in 2014 - it launched a price war by boosting production and discounting its product to Asian and European economies to grab market share.

The Saudis are able to undertake this aggressive push because production costs are low in the kingdom. The cost of producing and transporting a barrel of oil in Saudi Arabia (and other Arab Gulf states) is less than $10. In Russia, it is $30. In the US, it is closer to $50.

So by boosting supply and forcing prices lower, Riyadh is putting pressure on those higher-cost producers, particularly the US, where production has increased to 12.8mbpd from 5.5mbpd in 2009, overtaking Saudi and Russia to become the world's largest producer. The last time Saudi pursued this strategy in 2014-15, 1 million barrels of US production were removed as it became unprofitable to operate some wells.

But the policy is not without pain: The fiscal break-even price for Saudi Arabia is approximately $83 a barrel. This means that for every dollar the price of oil falls below this level, Riyadh must borrow money to fund its spending. In 2012, Saudi ran a fiscal surplus of above 13% of gross domestic product; after the oil-price crash, this flipped to a deficit of 15% of GDP in 2015. In effect, Riyadh had to borrow $100 billion that year to balance its books.

This is true for all states reliant on oil as a key source of government revenue, particularly in the Middle East. The fiscal break-even price throughout the Persian Gulf region is far above current oil prices: in the United Arab Emirates it is $70, in Oman $87, in Bahrain $92 and in Iran $195. All of these countries will be forced to borrow more money, cut spending or draw down on reserves (which, in the cases of Saudi and the UAE run into hundreds of billions of dollars).

For states with stressed debt positions already - Bahrain's debtto-GDP ratio is already approaching 100%, for example - the probability of a systemic crisis is heightened.

For other oil-producing states, the pain may be less severe, but still substantial. In Russia, the fiscal break-even price is $42 a barrel, but its currency is likely to suffer (it was down more than 8% on Monday) and could create its own crisis momentum.

In the US, a depressed oil price for a substantial period of time is likely to pressure its own oil production. But the economy as a whole is much less reliant on the industry, and declines in the price of gasoline provide an effective stimulus to consumer spending, the main driver in the US economy. A report by the Brookings Institution in 2016 suggested that the oil price collapse in 2014-15 had a close-tonet-zero effect on the economy as greater consumer power was balanced by declining capital expenditure in the oil industry.

For oil-consuming nations, the oil-price slump could prove a very timely fillip. China is now the world's second-largest oil consumer and largest oil importer. In 2019, China imported a record 10.1mbpd. If the price of oil remains where it currently is, this would suggest roughly a $30-abarrel price discount this year, in effect saving China more than $100 billion. This boon obviously could not come at a better time for the Chinese economy, still reeling from an effective shutdown in February caused by the Covid-19 outbreak.