Trigger Pricing Worries Oil Sellers to China in Volatile Market
Trigger Pricing Worries Oil Sellers to China in Volatile Market
(Bloomberg) -- China’s private oil refiners are making increasingly large bets on capturing a bottom in crude prices, raising concern among fellow traders about the risk of the market moving against them.
The companies, known as teapots, like to pay for their monthly crude supply using a method known as trigger pricing. That means they buy oil in batches over the month, paying the prevailing price at the time, instead of the industry norm of using an average price over the whole period.
It allows them to take better advantage of rapidly tumbling prices, when a monthly average might not fully reflect the scale of the decline. Now, after crude fell 66% in the first quarter, they’re buying in increasingly large batches, according to traders transacting with or on behalf of the teapots.
That’s a sign the teapots are growing in confidence that oil’s as cheap as it’s going to get, according to the traders, who spoke with Bloomberg on condition of anonymity. But it also represents a growing risk that they’ll back out of the deals should prices continue to fall, leaving their counterparties stuck with expensive oil that nobody wants.
Over the years, some teapots have backed out of higher-priced cargoes after oil prices deteriorated following their purchases, according to the people who asked not to be identified as the matters are private. In other cases, buyers withheld issuing letters of credit -- a type of payment assurance -- to sellers, the people said. That left suppliers with no guarantee that they’d be paid for their crude, leaving them to void the sale and be stuck with a distressed cargo.
Trigger pricing works like this. If a teapot buys a 2-million barrel shipment, it can pay for it in separate lots of as small as 1,000 barrels, or as large as the entire volume. Should it trigger prices in two tranches of 1 million barrels each at $40 and $35 this month, it could end up paying more than the monthly average. Refiners typically issue instructions to counterparties with details including the trigger price and volume via email, instant messenger or phone, executing details late into the night.
Counterparties such as trading houses that execute trigger-pricing on behalf of teapots may also find themselves exposed to a situation known as negative mark-to-market, where hedging positions placed alongside the order fall sharply below current prices. In such cases, companies may be asked by clearing houses or banks to top up their accounts or face margin calls, and in the worst-case scenario, lock in more of their liquidity on top of added financing costs.
Teapots sprung to action and increased their trigger-pricing activities after the collapse of OPEC+, according to the people. That coincided with a recovery in run rates and margins, as business activity returned after weeks of lockdown. Some of those refiners are now enjoying margins of more than $10 a barrel, industry consultant FGE said in a note.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
With assistance from Bloomberg