Energy, Petrochemicals and Plastics 2

Friday, January 25, 2019

Energy, Petrochemicals and Plastics 2

1              The Week Ahead For Crude Oil, Gas and NGLs Markets – Jan 21, 2019
https://info.drillinginfo.com/the-week-ahead-for-crude-oil-gas-and-ngls-markets-jan-21-2019/

CRUDE OIL

US crude oil inventories declined 2.7 MMBbl last week, according to the weekly EIA report. Gasoline and distillate inventories showed sizable gains of 7.5 MMBbl and 3.0 MMBbl, respectively. Total petroleum inventories posted a gain of 5.0 MMBbl. US crude oil production was estimated to be up 200 MBbl/d. Crude oil imports were down 319 MBbl/d, to an average of 7.5 MMBbl/d, versus the week prior.

NATURAL GAS

Natural gas dry production gained 0.25 Bcf/d, while Canadian imports decreased 0.17 Bcf/d

NGLs

Prices improved week over week across the board. Ethane was up $0.01 to $0.30, propane up $0.02 to $0.67, normal butane up $0.02 to $0.80, isobutane up less than $0.01 to $0.80, and natural gasoline up $0.01 to $1.06.

2              Natural Gas Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast

Could See Another “Gap and Go” on Monday’s Opening

https://www.fxempire.com/forecasts/article/oil-price-fundamental-weekly-forecast-rally-drivers-are-optimism-over-trade-deal-opec-production-cuts-548174

Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Rally Drivers Are Optimism Over Trade Deal, OPEC Production Cuts

Last week’s rally indicates that two events will need to take place to sustain the current rally. Firstly, the U.S and China have to continue to make progress toward a trade agreement, and OPEC must continue to adhere to its strategy to limit output. This is because of the U.S. goal to become a net exporter while reducing its reliance on foreign oil.

3              Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf

EIA forecasts Brent prices will average $61 per barrel (b) in 2019 and $65/b in 2020. In 2018, Brent prices averaged $71/b. EIA expects West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices will average $8/b lower than Brent prices in the first quarter of 2019 before the discount gradually falls to $4/b in the fourth quarter of 2019 and throughout 2020. EIA’s forecast for the average WTI price for December 2019 of $59/b should be considered in the context of NYMEX futures and option contract values for December 2019 delivery. NYMEX trading during the five-day period ending January 10, 2019, suggest that a range of $28/b to $101/b encompasses the market expectation for December 2019 WTI prices at the 95% confidence level.

4              Oil Majors Near Inflection Point As Spending Rises
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Majors-Near-Inflection-Point-As-Spending-Rises.html

Oil prices are still down sharply from the highs of October 2018, but the industry may still increase spending this year. The cost of developing new projects might rise along with higher spending levels.

A survey of top industry executives by DNV GL suggests that capital spending on oil and gas could rise in 2019. Of the 791 senior professionals in the energy industry surveyed by DNV GL, 70 percent said they plan on either maintaining or increasing capex this year. That is up significantly from the 39 percent who said the same in 2017.

5              WoodMac Forecasts 2019 Oil Price https://www.rigzone.com/news/woodmac_forecasts_2019_oil_price-24-jan-2019-157991-article/

Brent will average $65 per barrel in 2019 and $68 per barrel in 2020, according to Wood Mackenzie’s (WoodMac) latest price forecast.

The forecast was included in an editorial published on WoodMac’s website earlier this week, which revealed that the company expects global oil demand to grow 1.1 million barrels per day (MMbpd) this year and 1.3 MMbpd in 2020 in its base case.

6              JKM reveals three surprises in 2018 as LNG’s commoditization accelerates
https://blogs.platts.com/2019/01/24/jkm-three-surprises-2018-lng/

The LNG market continues to confound expectations. The past year saw strengthening of Platts’ JKM despite new supply, as well as de-correlation from other commodities, and flattening seasonality.

7              Natural Gas Price Forecast – natural gas markets bounced slightly on Wednesday
https://www.fxempire.com/forecasts/article/natural-gas-price-forecast-natural-gas-markets-bounced-slightly-on-wednesday-548806

The natural gas markets bounced a bit during the trading session on Wednesday, using the $3.00 level as a bit of support. There is a significant amount of support just below that level, both from a structural and psychological standpoint so this move makes sense.

8              The 7 Factors Driving Oil Prices In 2019
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/7-factors-driving-oil-prices-230000721.html

Demand

China’s economic health

Global Recession and Financial turmoil

2020 Maritime Regulations

Trade war

Production cuts

Iran Waivers

9              US to become a net energy exporter in 2020 for first time in nearly 70 years, Energy Dept says
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/us-become-net-energy-exporter-150700697.html

The boom in U.S. oil and natural gas production will make the U.S. a net energy exporter in 2020 — a feat the country has not achieved in nearly 70 years, the Department of Energy’s statistics bureau said on Thursday.

10           U.S., China ‘miles and miles’ from trade deal: Ross
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/china-says-depth-talks-u-economic-trade-issues-073326679–finance.html

“There is a very large group coming. There’s been a lot of anticipatory work done but we’re miles and miles from getting a resolution and frankly that shouldn’t be too surprising,” Ross said in an interview with CNBC.

“Trade is very complicated, there’s lots and lots of issues – not just how many soybeans and how much LNG.”

11           Military buildup in Arctic as melting ice reopens northern borders https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/24/military-buildup-in-arctic-as-melting-ice-reopens-northern-borders

The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice.

12           Can Mexico Stop Its Oil Production Decline?

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/mexico-stop-oil-production-decline-220000322.html

López Obrador and Pemex have grand plans for reversing the decline, with the government coming to the rescue of Pemex, as the oil firm itself said last month. A new strategic plan aims to guarantee “the country’s energy security and sovereignty” and targets to raise crude oil production to 2.48 million bpd by the end of this administration’s term in office—the end of 2024.

Business Intelligence and Analytics 2

Friday, January 25, 2019

Business Intelligence and Analytics 2

1              The Fascinating Role of Predictive Analytics in CMS Today
https://www.smartdatacollective.com/fascinating-role-of-predictive-analytics-in-cms-today/

Predictive analytics is changing digital marketing and website management. In previous posts, we have discussed the benefits of using predictive analytics to identify the types of customers that are most likely to convert and increase the value of your lead generation strategy. However, there are also a lot of reasons that you can use predictive analytics in other ways. Improving the quality of your website is one of them.

2              Your customer service strategy
https://seths.blog/2019/01/your-customer-service-strategy/

When Tony built Zappos, he invested in having his customer service people spend hours on the phone with customers, rewarding them for going to great lengths to create memorable interactions. It created a billion dollar shoe store

3              The Most Intuitive and Easiest Guide for CNN – Towards Data Science
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-intuitive-and-easiest-guide-for-convolutional-neural-network-3607be47480

Today, we’re going to discuss this powerful neural networks. This is the second series of ‘The easiest guide for complete starters,’ and it assumes that you have pre-knowledge on the basics of neural networks. If you are new to ANN, it’ll be great to check out this previous post. Today’s keywords are convolution, filters, padding, pooling, and flattening. The core of CNN lies on understanding the functional usage of these steps and how the dimension of data changes. Are you ready to become a pixel of an image and take a trip to neural networks? Let’s get it done.

4              The Next Level of Data Visualization in Python – Towards Data Science
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-next-level-of-data-visualization-in-python-dd6e99039d5e

How to make great-looking, fully-interactive plots with a single line of Python

5              3 Big Data And Automation Resolutions For Entrepreneurs In 2019
https://www.smartdatacollective.com/3-big-data-and-automation-resolutions-for-entrepreneurs-in-2019/

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are always looking to get more done with less time. With so many tasks to complete, many business owners quickly feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Fortunately, two emerging trends, big data and automation, can reduce the amount of time required to do important work tasks.

1. Reduce Costs
2. Save Time
3. Increase Sales

6              3 trends driving the Second Golden Age of Martech: ecosystems, experts, and (citizen) engineers
https://chiefmartec.com/2019/01/3-trends-next-age-martech-ecosystems-experts-engineers/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=3-trends-next-age-martech-ecosystems-experts-engineers

There are three trends that are changing the nature of Martech. They will catalyze the end of the “first golden age of Martech” and lay the foundation for a second golden age that will be much larger, but likely look quite different.

Ecosystems — instead of marketing cloud suites vs. best-of-breed point solutions, we will have the best of both: open platforms that serve as stable foundations, augmented by large ecosystems of specialized third-party apps that are more deeply integrated.

Experts — the lines between software vendors and professional services firms will blur: software companies will offer more expert services; services firms will automate and bottle their expertise in code.

(Citizen) Engineers — in a digital world where every company asymptotically becomes a “software business,” organizations will extend commercial platforms with customized customer experience apps and business process logic, many via “citizen developers.”

Business Intelligence and Analytics 1

Friday, January 18, 2019

Business Intelligence and Analytics 1

1              How Algorithms Are Taking Over Big Oil
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/01/14/how-algorithms-are-taking-over-big-oil/

A visitor to one of BP’s natural gas fields in Wyoming a few years ago might have noticed an odd sight: smartphones in plastic bags tied to pumps with zip ties. This was an early test of a multistate initiative by the oil giant to link a network of Wi-Fi sensors to an artificial intelligence system—one that now operates the Wamsutter field in Wyoming with far less human oversight than before.

2              Hands-on: Predict Customer Churn
https://towardsdatascience.com/hands-on-predict-customer-churn-5c2a42806266

we want to get our hands dirty: building a model that identifies our beloved customers with the intention to leave us in the near future.

3              How Big Data Makes Traditional Branding More Effective Than Ever
https://www.smartdatacollective.com/how-big-data-makes-traditional-branding-more-effective-than-ever/

Big data can align itself with traditional branding strategies to bring out some of the best results as can be seen as follows.

4              Article in Journal ‘Science’ Argues MOOC Participation is Declining as Providers Pivot
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-10-article-in-journal-science-argues-mooc-participation-is-declining-as-providers-pivot

What lessons can be learned from the rise and pivot of MOOCs, those large-scale online courses that proponents said would disrupt higher education?

5              Which Model and How Much Data? – Towards Data Science
https://towardsdatascience.com/which-model-and-how-much-data-75a3999660f3

How to decide what deep learning model to use for a specific problem? How do we know whether we are using the correct training dataset or we should gather more data? Those questions are the common denominator across all stages of the lifecycle of a deep learning

6              How to get B2B marketing measurement right | CMO Strategy
https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/b2b-marketing-measurement/316293/

The holy grail for marketers has always been to correlate spend with sales. In B2B, especially for larger purchases, measurement is further complicated given an average 14-month sales cycle involving five or more decision makers.

7              Talent on Tap: Why Online Labor Platforms Are Taking Off
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/talent-tap-online-labor-platforms-taking-off/
However, one part of the gig economy that has taken off is this: online labor platforms. Popularized by Uber but also by handyman sites such as TaskRabbit, online labor platforms connect individuals and businesses with independent contractors offering an array of services.

8              How Customer Obsession Creates Accountability for Change
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-customer-obsession-creates-accountability-for-change/

Most companies claim to be customer-focused these days, to the point where the concept has lost much of its power. But when customers are truly at the center of your business, change proceeds from the organizing principle: What’s best for them?

9              A New, Faster Approach To Data Science And Machine Learning

https://getpocket.com/a/read/2448745822

Data analytics and machine learning drive smarter business decisions, greater operational efficiency, and higher levels of customer satisfaction.

10           10 Email Metrics You Need to Impress in 2019
https://www.business2community.com/brandviews/campaign-monitor/10-email-metrics-you-need-to-impress-in-2019-02158197

Energy, Petrochemicals and Plastics 1

Friday, January 18, 2019

Energy, Petrochemicals and Plastics 1

1              Natural Gas Price Fundamental Daily Forecast

https://www.fxempire.com/forecasts/article/natural-gas-price-fundamental-daily-forecast-setting-up-for-test-of-key-support-zone-at-3-089-to-3-014-547956

The market is setting up to test a value zone at $3.089 to $3.014. In order to attract buyers on the move, the weather models are going to have to agree on the return of cold weather. Otherwise, we’re likely to see a sideways-to-lower trade over the short-term.

2              Petrochemical growth spurt expected despite rising desire for fewer plastics
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/petrochemical-growth-spurt-expected-1.4981860

Canada’s slow-growing petrochemical industry is headed for its biggest surge of expansion spending in five years in 2019, thanks in large part to incentive programs by federal and provincial governments.

3              The Incredible Ways Shell Uses Artificial Intelligence To Help Transform The Oil And Gas Giant
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2019/01/18/the-incredible-ways-shell-uses-artificial-intelligence-to-help-transform-the-oil-and-gas-giant/

Royal Dutch Shell is heavily investing in research and development of artificial intelligence (AI), which it hopes will provide solutions to some of its most pressing challenges.

4              Weekly resin report: Spot resin markets roused from holiday slumber
https://www.plasticstoday.com/resin-pricing/weekly-resin-report-spot-resin-markets-roused-holiday-slumber/83911690560087

After a few weeks of minimal buying, spot resin demand returned with a vengeance.

5              Oil Price Fundamental Daily Forecast – Uncertainties Being to Exert Downside Pressure
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-price-fundamental-daily-forecast-093834316.html

Our near-term target for WTI crude oil is $48.14 to $46.85. Brent is likely to correct to $56.39 to $54.96.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

6              How Algorithms Are Taking Over Big Oil
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/01/14/how-algorithms-are-taking-over-big-oil/

Artificial intelligence has come to the oil patch, accelerating a technical change that is transforming the conditions for the oil and gas industry’s 150,000 U.S. workers. Giant energy companies like Shell and BP are investing billions to bring artificial intelligence to new refineries, oilfields and deepwater drilling platforms. Already, these investments are paying for themselves by helping drill tricky oil wells faster, predict equipment failures and slash fugitive methane emissions.

7              It’s About Time: Welcome to the “Now” Economy and Smart Warehouses
https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/its-about-time-welcome-now-economy-and-smart-warehouses

We all want everything now, putting the onus on supply chains to hurry up and give it to us. Luckily, deploying the right tech makes this possible.

Flipboard 1/25/2019

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