General Characteristics
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- Brent crude oil is a
light sweet crude oil from North Sea.
- It has API (American
Petroleum Institute) gravity between 38-39 and has higher sulphur
content than the other well-known benchmark, WTI crude oil.
- Brent crude oil is a
global benchmark for other grades and is widely used to determine
crude oil prices in Europe and in other parts of the world.
- Brent is typically
refined in Northwest Europe, but a major portion is been exported to
the US Gulf and East Coasts, and also to parts of Mediterranean.
- It is more expensive
than the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) basket,
but lesser than West Texas Intermediate (WTI) because of higher
sulphur content than the WTI crude.
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Categories of Brent Crude oil
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- West Texas
Intermediate (WTI) crude oil is of very high quality. Its API gravity
is 39.6 degrees (making it a "light" crude oil), and it
contains only about 0.24 percent of sulphur (making a
"sweet" crude oil). WTI is generally priced at about a $2-4
per-barrel premium to OPEC Basket price and about $1-2 per barrel
premium to Brent, although on a daily basis the pricing relationships
between these can very greatly.
- Brent Crude Oil
stands as a benchmark for Europe.
- India is very much
reliant on oil from the Middle East (High Sulphur). The OPEC has
identified China & India as their main buyers of oil in Asia for
several years to come.
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Crude Oil Units (average gravity)
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- 1 US barrel = 42 US
gallons.
- 1 US barrel = 158.98
litres.
- 1 tonne = 7.33
barrels .
- 1 short ton = 6.65
barrels .
- Note: barrels per
tonne vary from origin to origin.
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Global Scenario
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- Oil accounts for 40
per cent of the world's total energy demand.
- The world consumes
about 76 million bbl/day of oil.
- United States (20
million bbl/d), followed by China (5.6 million bbl/d) and Japan (5.4
million bbl/d) are the top oil consuming countries.
- Balance recoverable
reserve was estimated at about 142.7 billion tones (in 2002), of which
OPEC was 112 billion tones.
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OPEC fact sheet
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OPEC stands for 'Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries'. It is an organization of eleven developing countries that are
heavily dependent on oil revenues as their main source of income. The
current Members are Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
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- OPEC controls almost
40 percent of the world's crude oil.
- It accounts for
about 75 per cent of the world's proven oil reserves.
- Its exports
represent 55 per cent of the oil traded internationally.
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Indian Scenario
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- India ranks among
the top 10 largest oil-consuming countries.
- Oil accounts for
about 30 per cent of India's total energy consumption. The country's
total oil consumption is about 2.2 million barrels per day. India
imports about 70 per cent of its total oil consumption and it makes no
exports.
- India faces a large
supply deficit, as domestic oil production is unlikely to keep pace
with demand. India's rough production was only 0.8 million barrels per
day.
- The oil reserves of
the country (about 5.4 billion barrels) are located primarily in
Mumbai High, Upper Assam, Cambay, Krishna-Godavari and Cauvery basins.
- Balance recoverable
reserve was about 733 million tones (in 2003) of which offshore was
394 million tones and on shore was 339 million tones.
- India had a total of
2.1 million barrels per day in refining capacity.
- Government has
permitted foreign participation in oil exploration, an activity
restricted earlier to state owned entities.
- Indian government in
2002 officially ended the Administered Pricing Mechanism (APM). Now
crude price is having a high correlation with the international market
price. As on date, even the prices of crude bi-products are allowed to
vary +/- 10% keeping in line with international crude price, subject
to certain government laid down norms/ formulae.
- Disinvestment/restructuring
of public sector units and complete deregulation of Indian retail
petroleum products sector is under way.
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Prevailing Duties & Levies on Crude Oil
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Particulars
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Rates
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Basic Customs Duty
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10%
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Cess
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Rs.1800 per metric tonne
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NCCD*
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Rs.50 per metric tonne
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Education cess
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2%
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Octroi
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3%
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War fedge
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Rs.57 per metric tonne
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Market Influencing Factors
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- OPEC output and
supply .
- Terrorism,
Weather/storms, War and any other unforeseen geopolitical factors that
causes supply disruptions.
- Global demand
particularly from emerging nations.
- Dollar fluctuations.
- DOE / API imports
and stocks.
- Refinery fires &
funds buying.
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Exchanges dealing in Crude Futures
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- The New York
Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) .
- The International
Petroleum Exchange of London (IPE).
- The Tokyo Commodity
Exchange (TOCOM).
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International oil price variation
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Particular
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Frequency
of % variation
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0 to 3.1%
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3.2 to 6.2%
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6.3 to 9.3%
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More than 9.3%
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Refiner acquisition cost for Crude oil (composite) -
Average monthly price from Apr 01 to Mar 04
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8
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16
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4
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>8
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Maximum price variation
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Period considered (Based on data from Apr 94
to Mar 04
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Percentage
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Monthly
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23.25
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Yearly
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28.73
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