Morgan Stanley has upgraded oil prices for 2012 and
beyond to US$105/bbl. Our forecast for the near years
are unchanged at US$85/bbl for 2010 and US$95/bbl for
2011. Underpinning our upward revisions are an
improved demand outlook, and even greater concerns
about the amount of new supply and the world’s ability to
bring it on.
This is not necessarily a good news story for E&P
stocks all of which face the same problem of
replacing production. Oil is getting harder to find and
more expensive to develop and in general the industry
cost curve will rise. Therefore, it is not obvious to us that
profit margins will expand with higher oil prices. A brief
period of low oil prices in early 2009 did little to ratchet
down costs and now there is evidence of cost inflation
again.
Another major headwind is the appreciation of the
A$, which has overtaken the oil price rise. We raise our
A$ assumptions and adopt 87c in 2010, 85c in 2011 and
normalized at 88c, in line with MS forecasts.
Exploration activity though is ramping up and is
increasingly a driver for the more active stocks. WPL
has commenced a 24 well programme, with high impact
prospects targeted first to feed LNG growth projects.
Karoon and AWE are also heavily exposed to the drill bit
over the coming year in the Browse and NZ respectively.
Meanwhile LNG developments continue to be a
sector focus. We believe development and funding risk
fall most heavily on CSG to LNG, but market pricing
does not reflect this reality in all cases.
Our key picks are WPL, OSH, AWE and KAR.