Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand with news the slowing Chinese economy is keeping the oil price low, and it might stay that way because supply is rising, and quite quickly.
But first, although there were no surprises in US initial jobless claim levels, they did rise last week to 229,000 on seasonal factors so there are now 1.65 mln people on these benefits, maintaining the low recent levels. No labour market stress signs yet still.
But there are signs of lingering inflation pressures in their producer prices for October with them up +2.3%, a rise from the +1.9% year on year rate in September. The October rise was slightly more than analysts were expecting. Higher prices in their booming logistics sector caused the twist higher.
The August improvement in EU industrial production was not maintained in September and it ended down-2.0% from the same month a year ago.
But despite that disappointment, Q3-2024 EU GDP came in +0.9% higher than the same quarter a year ago, and employment was up +1.0%. These are the expected levels, so no surprises here. While these levels are low and benchmark poorly with other major economies, there are still positive.
The Australian labour market update for October shows employment rising by +16,000 when a +25,000 rise was expected. Their participation rate slipped slightly, allowing their jobless rate to hold at 4.1%. But this also means their employed workforce is +387,000 higher than a year ago, a healthy +2.7% rise. But almost 40% of that rise was for part-time work; a year ago part-time jobs made up only 31%, so the shift away from full-time positions is rising.
And staying in Australia, their largest bank has concluded that the 2024 "stage 3 tax cuts" are not flowing through to more consumer spending, rather being used to build resilience (or build back some capacity) by paying debt down faster, especially mortgages.
Container shipping freight rates were virtually unchanged last week, 2.4 times higher than a year ago, and 140% higher than pre-pandemic levels in early November.
Bulk cargo rates rose +13% last week from the week before in a sharpish move up, to be almost the same as the same week a year ago.
The UST 10yr yield is now at just on 4.40% and down -5 bps from yesterday. The key 2-10 yield curve is still positive by +14 bps. Their 1-5 curve inversion is now inverted by only -3 bps. And their 3 mth-10yr curve inversion is little-changed, still by -17 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield starts today at 4.72% and up +2 bps. The China 10 year bond rate is up +1 bp at 2.10%. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is up +5 bps at 4.79%.
Wall Street has started its Thursday with the S&P500 down -0.4%. Overnight European markets were all up +1.3% except London which only rose +0.5%. Yesterday Tokyo ended its Thursday session down -0.5%. Hong Kong fell a sharp -2.0%. Shanghai fell -1.7%. Singapore was however up +0.5%. The ASX200 ended its Thursday session up +0.4%. And the NZX50 rose a minor +0.1%.
And we should probably note that the share price for Xero hit AU$171 yesterday, a record high.
The price of gold will start today at US$2574/oz and down -US$15 from this time yesterday.
Oil prices are +50 USc firmer at US$68.50/bbl in the US while the international Brent price is now just under US$72.50/bbl.
In its November update, the IEA says that with surging supply, and cooling demand in China, even if the OPEC+ cuts remain in place, global crude oil supply will exceed demand by more than 1 mb/d in 2025.
The Kiwi dollar starts today at 58.8 USc and down -10 bps from yesterday. Against the Aussie we are -10 bps softer at 90.7 AUc. Against the euro we have also slipped -10 bps to 55.6 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just on 68.5, and unsurprisingly down -10 bps from yesterday.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$88,820 and down -4.0% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been high at just on +/- 3.2%. Despite the slip, the price in NZ dollars is still above NZ$150,000.
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84 Comments
Globally oil's balance has gone from 300 billion barrels in 1972 Club of Rome to 1.7 trillion proven reserves today so the bank balance is in the black stuff. Technology doesn't sit still. Hence we didn't run out of oil in 1990 as predicted by CoR. Unfortunately some doomsters are still stuck in 1972 and can't seem to grasp technological developments over time.
https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/images/figure1.png
Now that is the elephant in the room. The doomsters said we would run out of oil whereas it is tracking we just run out of babies.
"People underestimate how quickly this effect will be felt. South Korea currently has a total fertility rate of 0.81. For every 100 South Korean great-grandparents, there will be 6.6 great-grandkids. At the 0.7 fertility rate predicted in South Korea by 2024, that amounts to 4.3 great-grandkids. It’s as if we knew a disease would kill 94 percent of South Koreans in the next century."
"No nation that has had its TFR drop below 2.0 has ever seen it rise back above 2.0.
So, within not too many hundreds of years, and depending on the TFR, there are likely to be less than one billion people alive, and possibly only one-tenth of that, lower than it was 10 000 years ago."
https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2024/8/health-care-in-for-a-roller-coast…
If we continue to discover more oil, this doesn't change the hard fact that once this resource is drilled, and burnt or converted to other derivatives, it will never replenish itself again likely in the lifespan of the human race. It may seem fine now, or keep us being able to continue our current standards of living for a longer period, but historically we keep drilling and using more of it at an exponential rate.
Global oil demand is expected to decrease in the near term. Given birthrates falling off a cliff, who is predicting exponential(!) growth rates in oil demand and what would it be used for? You are going to make a killing on the futures market and be uber rich like all the other oil doomsters.
https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-ne…
Interesting articles and graphs. I struggle to see the impact in the aviation sector yet but It'd be good to given the level of use there. I'm just acutely aware that the oil industry is large, powerful and influential when it comes to global politics and lawmaking. I don't expect to see any drastic shift to make life harder for them given they drill and sell a necessary global resource. The projections are hopeful, but I'd be skeptical on any pledged changed in usage in the current climate.
"1.7 trillion proven reserves today so the bank balance is in the black stuff."
Cool, only around 46 years until we reach zero then. Unless Elon can provide enough vials of his semen, humans will be functionally extinct around the same time we burn the last molecule of geologically stored sunlight.
"For wells that have relatively wide well spacings (over 600 ft), the post-stimulation total enhanced ultimate recovery (EUR) can be from three to four times the original EUR.
...At current commodity prices, the NPV-10 of a Eagle Ford or Bakken Shale refrac well is typically between $3.5 to $4.0 million with a payback between 1 to 2 years.
Given the fast cycle times of the shale sector, initial rates of return on refracs are also often north of 100%. With such returns, which often exceed those of new wells, refracs have increasingly become a key strategy for operators, and activity is expected to more than double this year."
https://jpt.spe.org/guest-editorial-where-are-refracs-going-and-can-we-…
"The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects U.S. oil price to average about $77 per barrel in 2024. At the 2018-2023 weighted average break-even price of about $55 per barrel, it seems likely that development drilling will continue at levels of around 5,000 wells per year. That should result in continued deterioration of well performance because the most probable explanation is that the plays have been over-drilled.
Figure 6 shows that average well spacing in core areas of the Permian plays is about 300 to 400 feet between bottom-hole locations with well paths even closer. Some bottom-hole locations are only 100 feet apart."
"The problem is that when wells are too closely spaced, their reservoir drainage radii overlap and wells “cannibalize” each other’s production. Optimum well spacing is a complex reservoir engineering problem and it is simplistic to assume that there is correct distance between well paths. Nor do I wish to imply that operators don’t understand how to optimize production. Nevertheless, a report by SLB in 2017 indicated significant interference when laterals were 660 feet apart. A 2021 study suggested that well spacing should be almost 1600 feet.
Other explanations for decreasing EUR include poorer reservoir quality, less effective completion and fracking practices, and declining reservoir pressure. It is beyond the scope of this post to diagnose the problem except to say drilling wells too close together seems like the most plausible explanation."
https://www.artberman.com/blog/beginning-of-the-end-for-the-permian/
See below
Germany nonsensical energy policy doing it's bit to boost oil demand and having to fall back on French nuclear to keep the lights on. An expensive lesson in why you don't let ecotards anywhere near energy policy.
“With wind generation levels at their lowest since 2014, Germany was producting 700 MW of power from oil-fired units, their highest output in four weeks, Montel Analytics said on Wednesday.
There is no wind in the centre and north of Europe. There is a battle for that power, which is causing the shortage,” said Jean-Paul Harreman, managing director at Montel Analytics.
“Demand is not at top levels yet. French nuclear is foreseen to provide around 8 GW of additional generation to the market in Europe but if it gets colder, French demand will add additional pressure as it is very temperature sensitive.”
https://montelnews.com/news/652d5434-12f1-459b-bec5-8c1236f3ef28/german…
"Had Germany spent $580 billion on nuclear instead of renewables, and the fossil plant upgrades and grid expansions they require, it would have had enough energy to both replace all fossil fuels and biomass in its electricity sector and replace all of the petroleum it uses for cars and light trucks."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/09/11/had-they-b…
Whilst I agree with keeping the greenies away from the steering wheel, didn't Germany roll out solar in the 90s initially? The technology has changed since then substantially. However their geography doesn't lend itself to wind or solar. Would be interesting to see what a newer roll out of bulk panels and some intelligent grid management would achieve.
Also, the $580B quoted for nuclear, would have 4 x'd to $2.4T and the programme would have kicked out by 2-3 decades if typical nuclear powerplant budget over runs and timelines are taken into account. I'm a fan of nuclear but it needs to be thorium, simplified and miniature/modular.
If people actually thought climate change was an actual problem, rather than a social engineering project, this stuff could be rolled out pretty quickly.
"If we harness a larger chunk of idle shipyard capacity, we could perhaps even add 200GWe of new nuclear capacity each year. For context, the global nuclear fleet currently stands at just below 400 GWe capacity and supplies around 10% of world’s electricity.
...The Electric Power Research Institute study presented conceptual designs of large ships with 1.2 GWe of nuclear capacity, used for making both ammonia and jet fuel, as well as a design of a smaller 600 MWe multi-production platform that could produce electricity, ammonia, and desalinated water. The CAPEX (capital investment) costs for the Nth-of-a-kind vessels (so assuming licensing work was done for the first-of-a-kind) were around $1.5 billion, depending on the configuration.
The cost of the end-products from these vessels was competitive with the long-term average costs for their fossil fuel-based counterparts—even without carbon-taxes or fees that would increase their competitiveness even further. Ammonia could be produced below $250/ton ($290 for the multi-product platform), and jet fuel at below $85/barrel.
The larger, dedicated ships would each produce 1.2 million tonnes of ammonia per year and 4 million barrels of jet fuel per year, respectively. At the moment, the world uses 170 million metric tons of ammonia and more than 2 billion barrels of jet fuel per year."
https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-18-fall-2022/the-future-of-nucle…
Agree. Posted the other day Fervo is doing a 2GW project in Utah. Fracking + geothermal has massive potential anywhere in the world going by their projects to date.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/interior-geothermal-fervo-energy-categ…
This clown shows will push more and more Kiwi's moderate kiwi's in the opposite direction. There is also the million or so immigrants who came here to be equals and I expect will be supporters of the Bill. Seymour has a swagger on, he knows this does not die with the Bill and be a great election platform next time around.
"Parliament exists because of Te Tiriti" I don't think so. Parliament exists because the colonial leadership chose to replicate the Westminster style of government when they set up the democracy here. For the parliament to be truly representative Article 3 would be more prominent.
There is time and a place for a haka. Parliamentary process should allow ideas to be floated and debated as part of democracy. I didn't agree with the bill as a whole, but these are democratically elected PMs and should respect the House.
Embarrassing and ego-fueled by TPM.
As I said I don't agree with the entirety of the bill. My point is that parliament should be a functioning democracy - a place of discussion of ideas, even if you don't agree with them.
The Hikoi is a protest. A parliamentary haka is not, it's unconstitutional. Should all parties start shouting down an idea and suspending parliament, if they don't agree with what's being discussed?
Watching a range of footage, the state of the house is in a serious state of disarray, unfortunately being driven by Greens/TPM, and largely comes down to ego and self importance.
I hear you however, like I said, parliament exists because of Te Tiriti. Maori will never let this issue slide, it is never going to be ok. You are not going to dilute Te Tiriti under the cloak of "democracy" because Te Tiriti was never about democracy for Maori. I mean, stop and think about it for a moment, Maori would never have signed a treaty that could be amended, adjusted, or even removed by British bringing more people here to outvote Maori under a democracy. It defies all logic and is not what Maori signed in 1840.
We can continue to grow as a prosperous first world nation or we can tear ourselves down the middle - because that's where we are heading.
TK I suggest you taking a position that many take but is essentially flawed. You are trying to say what the colonial leadership and Rangatira of the time were thinking, with a 21st century lens over your perspective. It cannot be done.
Personally I suggest it would be easier to understand the colonial side, but during some studies some years ago I did read texts which claimed to have studied historical references which claimed that many Rangatira signed the Treaty as an effective way to get the colonial powers to assist in defending them against other, marauding Iwi. Security was their motivator.
What Seymour is doing doesn't rewrite history, as some claim, and doesn't renegotiate the Treaty as others claim. It will not stop or replace the Treaty claims process which is trying to put some form of recognition on how Iwi were treated by the colonial government. It cannot undo the wrongs, nor fully compensate for them, but if you want to go down that track there literally can be no end, because absolutely no one in the country today can look into their ancestral past and not find some level of injustice inflicted on their ancestors. What Seymour is trying to achieve is establish a pathway forward without a burden of the past that provides everyone, irrespective of the ethnicity, culture, or heritage an equal opportunity. To do anything less is to only inflict further injustice, is that what Maori want?
It's way to complex to address here, but briefly. Te Tiriti is an agreement between Maori and the Crown, all a democratic vote is doing is redefining the Crowns interpretation. The Crown needs to come to Maori with a proposal to amend Te Tiriti if they wish. Secondly, this is an attempt to define Te Tiriti as the European version which Maori did not sign. Thirdly, yes we are now in the 21st Century, but has the US abandoned it's Constitution or right to bear arms? That's a lot older than Te Tiriti.
If any identity wants to perform a haka then let them do so within their correctly allotted speaking time and in their allotted position on the floor. Crossing the floor of the house and threatening in the face of an mp is simply outrageous and uncouth. Seems to be TPM and certain of the Greens, having realised that their vote in the house is inconsequential are now embarking on tearing the house down. Parliament has inherent and extensive powers to protect the discipline and the security of all of the mps. Now would be an appropriate time to introduce such measures before the ructions worsen.
We should allbe treated equally under law, I'm not advocating we aren't. In fact, I'm onside with gangs being outlawed and cracked down on as well. Zero tolerance for crime.
What I'm not ok with is ACT pushing an extreme agenda, backed by ultra-right groups such as Hobsons Choice, looking to redefine what Te Tiriti is to Maori under the cloak of "democracy" and "all NZers being equal. Te Tiriti gave Maori sovereignty over themselves and their customary resources.
We are only here because National had to do a deal for power. Seymour could have chosen to make a positive contribution (he's not untalented), but here we are.
Haha, pretty much. I sort of get the impression over 50% would support the bill. The old "silent majority" problem.
I mean most of us want to live in representative democracy where people are treated the same regardless of ethnicity, age and belief's.
I mean I sympathise with the Maori people. What they were promised differed from what was delivered in the deal they struck in the 1840's. But it is now 2024.
The potato famine happened in the 1840's. You don't see me knocking on the door of Buckingham Palace asking for recompense for the wrongs committed on my people.
Terrible analogy. Ireland did not sign a treaty with the English sovereignty in that they would retain ownership of lands, fisheries, water etc. There wasn't a mass migration of English settlers to Ireland who then imposed their will causing the Irish harm. And the Irish had similar value systems around property rights etc. None of that is remotely analogous to the Treaty here, nor to the native people of this country.
Blobbies: What. !!!! That was one of the most ill informed comments yet when you said. "There wasn't a mass migration of English settlers to Ireland who then imposed their will causing the Irish harm"
And it continued in New Zealand.
But I still support this bill. It will eliminate such problems.
Are you saying that after Ireland was bought into the UK in 1801, the English sent thousands of settlers to Ireland, causing internal conflict, upending established Irish norms and this contributed directly to the potato famine? Yes there was migration, but was it actually the cause? Was a treaty established prior to mass migration with the Irish to guarantee them rights?
Or was Ireland basically primed for the potato famine anyway, through a ramp up in its population from 1700s onwards through to the 1800s when blight hit?
Sure, England had some influence here, they were close neighbours geographically and often at war, again its simply not analogous to the treaty of waitangi. It's drawing some long bows to try to compare them (pun intended).
The English could've halted or reduced food exports from Ireland at the time. But sacrifices would've been needed, as potato was the staple diet of poor Irish farmers.
Imagine if the English were exporting all the good food they could from New Zealand and blight took out Kumara crops resulting in 25% of the Maori population dying of starvation because English wouldn't dial back the exports.
Blobbles
Time for some swot
Here is an extract.
"".......The fifty years from 1641 to 1691 saw two catastrophic periods of civil war in Ireland 1641–53 and 1689–91, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and left others in permanent exile. The wars, which pitted Irish Catholics against British forces and Protestant settlers, ended in the almost complete dispossession of the Catholic landed elite....."
And here is the link
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland_(1536%E2%80%931691)
I'm not suffering inter-generational trauma from 1 million of my ancestor's fellow Irishmen dying from starvation and another 250k being evicted from their properties. What about the Highland Clearances in Scotland by English landlords where ~150k farmers were evicted from the lands?
There'll be countless races around the world that got a massively raw deal who would've loved to have traded places with Maori. Nevertheless they just got on with it and made the best with the bad cards they were dealt.
Christopher Luxon flew out to the Apec summit in Peru on Thursday evening. Before leaving Wellington, he held a press conference in the capital where he openly offered lengthy criticisms of his coalition partner’s bill.
“You do not go negate, with a single stroke of a pen, 184 years of debate and discussion, with a bill that I think is very simplistic,” he said.
Yep. Lot's of rant, and desire to suppress any discussion.
But here is an example of reasoned discussion. Even if you don't agree.
https://www.bassettbrashandhide.com/post/david-seymour-interviewed-by-j…
No DS burying Jenny-May was what she deserved, having been captured by the emotive hysteria. She encapsulated every single point that is complained about the MSM on this site. Seymour is simply arguing for democracy. Maori don't want it because if the Treaty goes out for discussion and debate, it will be all the treaty including Article 3, which to all intents they almost managed to sideline. You could argue in some respects that through the Tribunal, the Treaty has been renegotiated by stealth and Article 3 is being ignored. The so called Principles in effect ignore it.
I've listened to a lot of debate on this in the last few weeks and the ONLY person who makes sense is David Seymour. The Maori activists and Greens (Chloe) especially don't.
One for JFoe...'money and velocity' with a side order of Godwins Law. (Steve Keen)
(10 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBI7skL6eIQ
Wouldnt stop asset accumulation by the wealthy (without additional actions) but is reminiscent of Labours 1930s state housing programme in its basis.
In its November update, the IEA says that with surging supply, and cooling demand in China, even if the OPEC+ cuts remain in place, global crude oil supply will exceed demand by more than 1 mb/d in 2025.
Chinas vehicle fleet is going full electric, backed by nuclear and renewables. Unsurprisingly, China sees its reliance on tin pot oil dictators in far off lands, and extended energy pipelines as a geopolitical threat to its future. The blowing up of the Nordstream pipelines by the US showed this clearly. NZ somehow is blind to this, no matter what political stripes you wear.
One of the beauties of the current Chinese system is that they literally plan 5/10/20/50 years into the future. That sort of long term thinking means they will continue to grow in the way they want, continue to execute, albeit slower and with a few more social impacts.
We can't even think beyond 2-3 years with our political system. So nothing ever gets done for the long term and we end up suffering hugely for it, labouring an ever increasing of societal/technical/environmental/infrastructure/monetary debt onto the next generation, pointing the finger and saying "YOU FIX IT", while only doing what's best for ourselves right now.
People tend to plan ahead when there is leaps and bounds for standards of living to be gained snd secured. The west have gotten comfy and dont see this need any further as they have gone from community minded to further down the scale towards individualism. The cost being the utilitarianism as a default.
Imagine where the oil price will go if they ever get nuclear fusion into production ...
Meanwhile, back in today's world, the US is a major producer of oil. But - and it's a huge "but" - their costs of extraction & production are higher than many others. Further, many extractors couldn't break even without government subsidisies (i.e. tax payer support).
The "drill, baby drill" policy of the new administration could well become unstuck real fast.
Fusion as its currently know, will be ridiculously expensive. Think about the magnetic containment in tokomaks required to keep a stable plasma state. Those magnets definitely aren't cheap and use a lot of rare earth materials. And they degrade quite quickly too...
If someone comes up with a better way (hopefully Wellington's fusion lab can win the race!), then it might just be cheaper. But if they were to go into production with current state, I think the cost of power coming from them would make them severely uneconomical. We need a breakthrough or two yet to change that.
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