WTI $51.04 -$1.94, Brent $53.90 -$1.82, Diff -$2.86 +12c, NG $3.54 +7c

Oil price

Traders told me yesterday that the market was looking to have a correction so when the EIA inventory stats came out, although initially pleasing, they found some dirt. That was in the fact that although there was a useful draw of 2.6m barrels, better than forecast and the API number it was ‘in the wrong place’ as in on the West coast and in fact at Cushing it was a build. You can only please some of the people some of the time.

Shell

It is sad to see Simon Henry leaving Shell, for me and many others he has been Mr Consistent as head of IR and then CFO. But he deserves the rest it will become and a life of luxury although I suspect many non-exec jobs beckon. He is replaced by Jessica Uhl who was with Enron in Panama before which is scarier than it really is one hopes…

Petrofac

I will come back to PFC and other OFS companies later in the week, time is short today but the trading update this morning is a bit mixed. Net profits are expected to be in line with expectations at around $410m with the Group, ex IES, better at $465m but a worse situation at IES of a loss of $55m. The sooner Ayman can boot that lot into touch the better. As one might expect revenues are ‘record’ and the company is running very efficiently but order intake at $1.4bn is low field and the backlog is only $14.5bn. The market remains ‘challenging’ but I expect order inflow to pick up sharply in 2017 as delayed orders come through.

Sound Energy

An update from Sound this morning, at TE-7 the reservoir pressure correlates with previous wells which is further good news from Tendrara. They also announce that TE-8, the step-out well is going to be a full 12km from TE-7 a confident call and they will drill for the TAGI and the Palaeozoic there. As for numbers they have announced that they have put 1.5 TCF as the top end for TE-8 alone which puts the range at 0.5 (up from 0.3) – 1.5 TCF. After all that the company will produce a CPR and if all goes to plan add more value to the play. With this and Badile likely to spud also in February the momentum at Sound continues and shareholders have much to look forward to next year.

I will catch up with a number of other results etc tomorrow.

And finally…

A busy night of football last night as Chelski cemented top spot in the league and wins for the HubCap Stealers, Spurs, the Noisy Neighbours and the Red Devils keeping the pot boiling.