Fears over Iran and Nigeria keep oil traders nervous

OIL prices edged back toward record highs yesterday as the threat of war on Iran and the disruption of supplies from Nigeria kept international traders nervous.

Nerves were frayed further when US energy giant ExxonMobil announced it had pulled out non-essential staff from the Nigeria's largest oil export terminal amid growing fears dissidents were liable to attack the site.

Meanwhile, Iran has refused to rule out the use of oil as a weapon in the worsening stand-off over the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear quest.

In New York yesterday the new main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in June, rose 54 cents to $73.87 (€59.53) per barrel in electronic deals.

Earlier that same contract went as high as $75.35pb (€60.72), matching the record achieved last Friday.

Meanwhile BP's profits were hit in the first quarter following the fall out from last year's hurricane season in the US. The British oil giant reported a 4% fall in profits thanks to the impact of storm damage to rigs and the shutdown of its biggest refinery in the US.

BP's profits totalled $5.27 billion (€4.25bn) between January and March compared with $5.49bn (€4.43bn) a year ago.

Hurricanes knocked out its Thunder Horse rig in the Gulf of Mexico and production has yet to be restarted, contributing to group output falling below last year at a time when crude oil prices averaged $61.79 (€49.80) a barrel 5% higher than the final quarter of 2005.

Paul J Harris, head of energy and emissions, Bank of Ireland Global Markets, said prices will stay under pressure, making it unlikely prices would fall back to last August's high of $70.85 (€57.10) as some have been anticipating.

Iran and Nigerian supply factors continue to weigh on the minds of traders, he said.

Because of attacks on Nigerian pipelines the global market is down 500,000 barrels of oil per day from that source and the fear is that supplies will continue to be disrupted by dissidents, as the move by Exxon yesterday highlighted.

That is not surprising when the 'corporate culture' of stock, bond, or commodity traders is examined. They operate in a near chaotic and dynamic arena in which a host of notional or purely arbitrary buy and sell benchmarks dominate their lives and determine how professionally successful they considered. On top of this the really successful salesmen (and face it that is what they are) virtually live in their offices spending 70 or more hours a week and six and some times parts of all seven days there trying to drum up business or trying to read the omens to determine what their part of the market is going to do next.
This produces a remarkably ingrown mentality that frequently has little or no knowledge of much of anything but office politics and the constant chaos and turmoil of the market.

The result is a persona that can combine apparent poker aplomb publicly towards the perpetual turmoil of the markets but is in reality hypersensitive to fears of uncontrollable outside forces (wars and politics or weather)panicking the market. The endless hours spent staring at the green screen or on the phone also creates someone who is superficially bright but totally unknowledeable about the likely causes and consequences of any unprogrammed event. The traders reaction to sudden dramatic events is almost always blind panic covered by a thin skin of sang froid.

I remember years ago watching Wall Street Week in Review taped the day after the murder of South Korean President Park Chung Hee. The featured guest was the CEO of one of the major bond trading houses. A man with an Ivy League degree who had literally grown gray through years of endless days in some office in lower Manhattan. When asked by the host what his take on the Park murder was his response was "It could be catastrophic." Now since this murder was an internal event caused by the fury of Parks's secret police chief when the Prez told him he was being sacked and had zero connection to any actions by the North Koreans or even a coup in the ROK and the level of Cold War tension was about the same as usual other guests looked puzzled and bemused at the gloom and panic the esteemed guest was radiating. However, considering the blinkered, narrow way traders look at the world it made sense. I imagine this fellow knew a good bit about bond ratings and the projected bond yields of some of the big Korean industrial conglomerates but couldn't have written two paragraphs on the history of the ROK since 1945. The man was surely not at all stupid but the culture he had lived in for decades produced a personality that was wildly unknowledgeable about virtually anything beyond the green screen.

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